“That won’t hold him long,” Lantern-Eyes said, and when I glanced back over at her, I saw her reach underneath her oversized uniform jacket and draw out a pragmatic-looking black handgun. “We’ve got to move—and shut up while we do.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN:

Lieutenant Lantern-Eyes

Lantern-Eyes held that handgun comfortably, correctly, one-handed and with her finger resting outside the trigger-guard. What the hell else was she hiding underneath that jacket?

The wall clanged again behind me, suggesting that Indigo was attempting to beat his way through with fists alone. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t succeed. Lantern-Eyes was already walking away again, at a faster clip than before, apparently expecting I would follow.

Typical Republican. Assuming I’d just do what she told me. I should walk off now, while Indigo was locked up and she wasn’t looking. Strike out on my own. Find the Philosopher Stone and get Benny and get gone. It wasn’t like I could trust her, after all. The Republic had gotten me into this mess in the first place.

But there were monsters on this ship, and right now I didn’t have any way to defend myself. Lantern-Eyes was just on the edge of my flashlight’s glow, a few more steps from disappearing entirely.

I hurried in her wake.

Why would the Republic send someone to this ship alone? Had she been sent alone? I had absolutely no idea how army ranks worked—was it normal to send a lieutenant somewhere alone? Or maybe she wasn’t army, maybe she was in the astromarines? I had only a vague idea of the differences between armed forces. Were there more Republican soldiers stationed on this ship, in the dark, watching and waiting for… what? The Philosopher Stone was on this ship; if the Republic had been here, in some form, for five years, why hadn’t they gotten the Stone and left?

For that matter, why had the Republican Senator sent us here if the Republic were already aboard?

Whoever she was and whyever she’d been sent here and wherever her back-up was, if she had any, the lieutenant seemed to know a lot about the ship. She led me through unseen rooms, passing under broken doorframes, turning sharply this way and that in the dark and following some route she seemed to have mapped out perfectly in her head. I was tense at first, worried that Indigo’s clanging had summoned some of the monsters that had been chasing us, but nothing appeared as I followed Lantern-Eyes. Maybe we were lucky, or maybe she knew some way that avoided the monsters. Just in case, I tried to keep my steps quiet.

What if the Senator hadn’t known the lieutenant was aboard? If her mission had been classified at a high enough level, it was possible only the President had known. Or if the Senator knew that Lantern-Eyes had been sent here, maybe he thought that she was dead. Otherwise why send us, and why not warn us of a military presence already here? Not even Quint had mentioned it.