“Anything they do is a help, Gaston.” Lille looked down at his desk, at the piles of reports stacked neatly to the side. “Planning an invasion is so much work, even for those in a supporting role like us. But I wager it can wait until morning…and I’d further bet you haven’t had a decent meal in months. Dine with me tonight? I would look forward to hearing more about the Alliance and its strange ways.”

Villieneuve smiled and nodded. “I would consider that a mercy, Ricard. The leavings from your pantry would make a feast in the Alliance.”

*   *   *

Tom Warren ducked into a small alley, and dropped down behind a garbage bin.

He was scared. He was scared shitless.

He knew they were after him, but he couldn’t run any more, not without resting for a few minutes. It was summer in Liberte City, and the alley reeked, so much he had to force back a retch. But it was a place to hide, at least for a little while.

He’d been an agent all his adult life, and he’d been in tough spots before. But all of that paled before running like a rat through the back streets of the Union’s capital city with a pack of Sector Nine agents on his tail. He’d thought he’d been afraid before, but now he knew what terror really felt like.

He’d been in Liberte City for three months, sent there to investigate rumors that the Union was working to secure an ally in the war everyone knew was coming. He’d come with a few contacts, and massive amounts of cash for bribes, expecting it to go far with the deprived Union masses. But he’d never seen a population so effectively terrorized by its government, one that they would choose squalor and despair over any prospect of reward. He’d been there weeks before he’d managed to get anyone to talk to him, and even then the information he’d paid dearly for had been sparse, non-conclusive.

He’d kept at it, but even as he did, he’d found his own courage failing. He knew the Union’s government was a totalitarian oligarchy, that the vast majority of its people had long been cowed into submission, but then he began hearing stories. Of Sector Nine. Of Level Zero, the maximum security section of their headquarters. Stories of small rooms with stone floors…and drains for the blood.

He’d powered through the fear, and he’d finally gotten the evidence he needed. The Union had reached out to the Alliance, sought to bring them into the war.