Chapter 84: Colossal Cache
"What did you do to convince them to work for you?"
Darius’s question was pointed and sharp, his voice full of accusation and hatred. Phillip lazily held his hands up, still restrained to the table, and suppressed a smirk, clearly happy to have shared some of his grief.
"Don’t shoot me, I just did my job. Most of them were easy enough. Promise them a couple of credits or a shiny new relic, and they were almost too happy to join us. The tricky ones were the idealists, the political types who had issues with the way things were run here."
His face puckered up as if he were sucking on something sour.
"I had to make all sorts of promises to them. Most want some kind of voice in how the Senate would run the Fort once we won. Others wanted vengeance against the High Elders. You have no idea the kind of hoops I had to jump through to get approval for those kinds of things."
Darius scoffed.
"I do not give a damn what you did! All I care about is that we have compromised assets within the city. Now I need to know what they have sworn to do!"
Over the next five minutes, they ran through the list of names. With every single one, Phillip explained what he recruited them for and why. The causes varied widely, but the purpose they served was almost always the same:
Prepare for revolution.
The Clayton plan was ingenious. According to the spy, they knew that any direct assault on the Fort was little more than suicide, and so they sought another method of infiltration.
If Phillip was entirely accurate with what he knew, which was a long shot given he was a spy, then they were anticipating a victory at key battles over the next month. If that happened, they would then order all of the converted men in the Fort to cause diversions, distracting the High Elders until the Claytons were already upon them.
Red verified his story the entire time, her eyes never leaving the spy’s. It seemed to unnerve the man, who grew increasingly tense under her gaze, until he snapped.