edge at the bottom of the pit. Five people were shackled by their ankles directly to the stone with less than half a meter between them. They were hunched in on themselves and none of them moved.
The only way down to the pit seemed to be a small lift cage dangling from a pair of chains attached to winches in the ceiling.
Rivers saw me eyeing the setup skeptically and laughed. “It’s perfectly safe,” he said. He ushered us inside and used the small space as an excuse to press up against me. Ian wrapped a possessive hand around my waist and neatly switched places with me. Rivers backed up fast with a nervous laugh.
The cage slowly lowered into the pit. The people huddled at the bottom didn’t bother to look up, despite the fact that the winches and chains made a hellacious noise.
“How long have they been like this?” I asked.
Rivers glanced down at the captives. “No idea. But the hole breaks their spirit pretty quickly. They’ve been down here at least twenty-four hours, starving and dehydrating in the heat.”
The cage settled onto the ground. Corporal Rivers was right; the darkness of the pit clung in dancing shadows every time our light sticks moved. My smart glasses fought to compensate, but it was a losing battle.
“Let me go first,” Rivers said. “Just in case any of them are still feeling energetic.”
“I need them alive,” I said.
He unlatched the safety chain across the door and stepped out. The nearest captives curled more tightly as if to protect themselves from a blow. “Ms. White is with MineCorp. She’s here to examine you. Give her any trouble and I’ll stun you, then withhold water rations for the day,” he said. “Get on your feet. Now,” he shouted when none of them moved.
Three of them silently lumbered to their feet. The remaining two didn’t move, not even when Rivers kicked them. All five of them had the same buzz-cut hair.
I held the light stick up and approached the first person. The light revealed it was a young woman with a bruised face. She kept her eyes glued to the floor.
I desperately wanted to move on, to see if Ferdinand was here, but my cover depended on this ruse, so I pulled out my penlight and asked her to track the motion. Her reactions were slow and her eyes were foggy. I wasn’t a doctor, but that couldn’t be a good sign.
I was examining the third captive, a middle-aged man, when I caught a flurry of wireless signals. Rivers touched his ear, frowned, and glanced at me.
My ninety-minute timer still had a few minutes left, but that didn’t mean anything. The response had arrived from XAD Six. MineCorp had no record of me, and they had been hacked recently. They requested I be held for extraction tomorrow. The mercenaries were to be sent on their way after questioning. The ship would be kept under surveillance.
Rivers was ordered to subdue both of us because they figured my guard wouldn’t take lightly to someone attacking me, even if he wasn’t complicit in my plot. Rivers quietly acknowledged the order. I touched Ian’s arm and tipped my head at Rivers. The corporal was very carefully not looking at us.
He knows, I mouthed to Ian.
Ian frowned. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rivers go white-knuckled around the stunstick. I couldn’t let that touch me. Ian’s eyes widened and he moved just as Rivers brought his arm up to hit me.
I scrambled out of reach as Ian caught Rivers’s arm. I heard the crunch of bones, but by the time I turned around to see if Ian needed help, Rivers was unmoving on the floor and Ian had the stunstick.
“How did you know?” Ian asked. He riffled through Rivers’s pockets, pulling out his blaster and com.
“I heard the messages,” I said. I slashed a hand through the air when he would’ve questioned me further. “Leave it at that. MineCorp has outed me as a fraud and asked Rockhurst to hold me for questioning. You and the other ‘mercenaries’ are to be questioned and released if you weren’t in on it. When Rivers doesn’t report back, they’ll send the base after us.”
Ian pocketed the com and handed me Rivers’s blaster. He sent Aoife one of our encoded messages, the one that meant we were fucked, then said, “Turn off your mike.” We both went radio silent because Rockhurst could track us by our conversation if we didn’t.