We crept through the swamp, approaching our targets. They were bent over a dead probably-not-a-brontosaurus, but I didn’t feel like asking Sage what it was. There were four of them, dressed in camo with orange vests, all level 3. So they’d got some experience under their belts, probably mostly as farmers, but they wouldn’t be expecting us.

The Grignarians drew their creepy, melting goo guns. "Hang on, I want to talk," I cautioned them.

"It is easier to talk to one than to many," Greenwarden suggested. He had a point, but nevertheless, I shook my head.

“Only shoot if they start it.” The safeties were on, so if we killed any of these miners, they'd just respawn back in their camp. I didn't see a need for violence. I was trying out the new version of Shad, the one that thought first, shot second. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

I held up both hands as we approached. The hunters looked up. Three of them leapt for the weapons they had left lying on a muddy hillock. It hurt to see anyone abuse their weapons that way, even though I knew that every time I stored my Ruger Alaskan in my inventory, it emerged clean of any debris or gunpowder residue, and presumably theirs would work the same way.

"Hold on, I want to talk," I shouted.

The one who hadn't gone for his gun was Sam, our target. He was still sitting on his heels beside the body of the dead dinosaur. He looked to his friends. "It's alright, I reckon they're here to talk to me."

He had a distinctly southern drawl. Louisiana, I thought, or maybe Mississippi. He looked like a good old boy, middle-aged, just a little too young to have been regenerated by the soul coins, balding, sunburnt, with a paunch under his overalls, and bright orange dinosaur blood all over his arms.

"Yeah, I am,” I agreed.

"And them?" He nodded at the Grignarians.

"They're here to help the conversation move along in the right direction."

"How about," Sam said, standing up slowly, "you let my friends go back to our camp, and I'll stay here and talk to you."

“But Sam,” one of them began.

Sam shook his head. “This is my problem to deal with. Besides, what are they going to do? Kill me? I'll just end up back in our camp. They can keep killing us if it amuses them, but it's not going to get them anything. Same thing, they can't really hurt us, but if we manage to kill one of them, they'll have a long walk back to get here. So, I think it benefits all of us to do it the civilized way.”

“That’s mighty generous of you," I said, and motioned for Sage to stand down. Our backup plan had been for her to lasso Sam and hold him in place while we dealt with his friends. I was glad he was cooperating. His friends shouldered their weapons and left, shooting dark glances back at me as they went.

We stood there in the swamp, the muck up to my boots. Sage hopped up on a nearby hillock and pulled a folding chair out of her inventory. Sam just stood there, dripping sadly. He looked like he was expecting us to start talking, so I kept quiet, hoping to put him off balance. The Grignarians spread out in a circle around him. They weren't pointing their guns at him, but they weren't not pointing their guns at him either.

At last, Sam wiped his sweaty brow with the back of one mud-and-blood-stained hand, leaving a brown-and-orange smear. "So, uh, what can I help you with?"

"You must have known we'd find out, Sam," I said quietly. "What'd they offer you? Your own continent? Fifty million soul coin?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, that's the most clichéd line I've ever heard," Sage said, rolling her eyes loudly as only a teenager can. Which reminded me it was going to be her birthday again here before too long.

"You were working for Waters," I said.

He flinched. "No."

"Sure you were. You and..." I rattled off a string of names. "You betrayed us. We offered you a chance to be part of our team, and you betrayed us. You let Waters walk right into our base, do unspeakable things to our friends. He's got most of our non-combat miners locked up in there right now. You probably met some of them. Dwight, Juana, Mama Grace. Ever had a meal at her restaurant?"

"Everyone's had a meal at Mama Grace's restaurant," Sam muttered, looking at his feet through the muck.

"Exactly. How could you have done this?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sam insisted.

"Of course you do," Sage said. "We have evidence. It'll be easier for you if you'll just help us answer a few questions. You won't be the first of your friends to squeal."

The man seemed to visibly age and wither before my eyes. He looked away, his eyes unfocused, before looking back to me. "Don't know what you're talking about," he mumbled.

Something was off here. Not the denials, that made sense. But his manner was wrong. I messaged Sage and Greenwarden. He's stalling.

Yes, Greenwarden replied. I could see no trace in his face to give away the fact that we were communicating. We are detecting several human miners converging on this location, carrying weapons. Shall we move to engage?

Let them come. Sage, as soon as they start, throw a Tame around our friend here. I don't want him getting hurt.

Got it, she replied.

I turned back to Sam. "You can stall all you want, but we're going to find out what we want to know sooner or later."

“Or we’ll get rid of you,” Sam said, his face flushing. “Boys! At ‘em!”

Six men in ghillie suits rose out of the swamp. The ghillie suits reminded me strongly of the ghillie monsters we had faced back in our initiation chamber. I almost had a pang of homesickness.

My pistol was in my hand. I fired two shots at each of the first three, just regular rounds, drilling them right in the center of mass. These men must be about level two. They had around 80 health each, and my ordinary shots were packing a walloping 18 HP damage these days. So, two shots, center of mass, dropped them each well into the yellow.

Stolen novel; please report.

Sage tossed her Lasso around Sam, Taming him instantly. "Just keep him there," I bellowed as I quickly Reloaded my pistol. There was no point making him turn on his friends. We were already going to be giving him a bad enough day when we were done here.

The three I’d winged were firing rounds at us, but their aim was terrible. I had a Shimmer Ring on my left hand that made me harder to hit. With the difference in levels between us, the one slug that did make it through my coat to my body barely broke the skin.

The Grignarians focused their fire on the other three miners. Great purple ropes of jelly-like substance spat from their guns and coated the three. For a moment, it looked like another layer of ghillie suit. And then, they started screaming. They dropped to the muck, rolling about, clawing at their faces and hands as the gel began to dissolve them.

"Ew," Sage said, watching. I couldn't help feeling some sympathy. I dispatched one of the three that I had injured with another two well-placed shots, and then paused. "Either of you two ready to surrender?" I asked.

One held up his hands. The other raised his shotgun to fire on me again, but I sent a Trick Shot of a Double Blind Round right through his skull. That dropped him.

"You," I said to the one surrendering. "Get back to your camp. Stop them from doing anything else stupid."

"I want to help," he said, starting toward his friends, but I leveled my gun at him.

"There's nothing you can do for them. They'll respawn in a minute. Don't come back or we'll make it worse. Do you understand? There's worse things than dying here, one of which is dying over and over again to my friends' weapons. Trust me, I know just how bad that stuff hurts."

Already, one of the three the Grignarians had shot lay still in a minute he dissolved in a shower of green and purple sparks. Shuddering, the last miner looked away from his two friends.

"Sam's a good guy," he whispered, staring across to where we had Sam, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. "He really is. I'm sorry he crossed you. We didn't know what he was planning, and he still hasn't told us the details. But believe me, he didn't just do it to gain money. It must have been his wife and kid."

"Oh?" I holstered my weapon as the other two miners finished screaming and mercifully died.

Sam was standing rigid, unable to move thanks to our Tame, but he must have had access to his chat because his friend shook his head and said, addressing Sam directly, "No, I will not shut up. You brought this on us. We can't afford to have all of Misfits Guild angry at us. Especially when I don't think it's really your fault."

He looked right at me. "Sam came in with his wife and two kids. One of them didn't make it out of the initiation chamber. Since then, he's been dedicated to protecting them, but they signed a really bad contract. What I heard, one of those aliens is going to ship them off to some other reality engine where we won't have the same rule set. They'll be back in the meat grinder. Sam said he had a plan to make sure that didn't happen."

I nodded grimly. "I get the picture. What about the rest of you?"

"I'm signed with the System and have been paying my debt down. It's still got a long way to go, but I think I'll make it."

"You know other people like Sam?" I asked.

"Unfortunately."

"I want you to spread the word. Misfits Guild is trying our best to find a way to make Alabaster Sky and the other conglomerates back off. We are not going to rest until we've got a way to help people like Sam's family. You hear?"

"Yeah. I’ve heard your reputation and I believe you,” the miner said.

"Now get back to camp and keep your people out of my hair," I ordered. He trotted off, double time.

"Well that was helpful," Sage said brightly. "Should we let him go?" She indicated Sam.

“In a minute.” I approached Sam. His eyes were bulging, but Sage wasn't letting him speak. Her lasso wrapped around him an impossible number of times.

"Look, I understand the aliens have us all over a barrel and some of us have it rougher than others. I sympathize. But I need to know what you know. Right now, they’ve got my grandpa and my girl and a bunch of other people I care about. They could be doing terrible things to them. You saw how your friends were hurting just here, right? I'm sorry we had to do that, but it's a good reminder that just because we respawn doesn't mean we can't be hurt. I need to help my friends, just like you needed to help your family. We're going to talk now, man to man, and I want some answers."

I nodded to Sage. "Let him go."

She undid her Tame and Sam fell to his knees. He closed his eyes. "I can't lose them," he said. "They told me they'd ship us to different systems and I'd never see my wife and daughter again."

"Bastards," I spat.

"I'll tell you everything, but can you help my family?"

"I can't make promises," I said. "We've kind of pissed off some of the big guys. At this point, I think they're doing things to spite us. But I'll do everything I can, and I really believe that what I'm doing is going to help us all in the end.”

“Besides," Sage pointed out, "you don't really have a choice. We're going to get the information one way or the other, and they're going to know that somebody gave it to them, and then they're going to come looking and they'll see that we talked to you. Have fun telling them that it wasn't you who helped out."

"Sage," I admonished.

"I thought most of the kids were in the Lotus Eater levels anyway," Sage said.

"We were. That's why our debt's so high. Didn't do anything to start paying it off, and then when we had our contracts called in, there was nothing that Kronos could do to stop them hauling us out."

Damn, I hadn't realized that. "I'll have a word with Kronos next time I see him," I promised.

Sam looked at me oddly. "You have a lot of heart-to-heart talks with the personification of the Reality Engine itself?"

"You'd be surprised."

Sam sighed. "All right, here's what I know. Waters have us pick up these weird totems from a crafter he knew. He assigned a place along the walls of your outpost. We had to go, take the totem out of our storage, leave your guild, join his special guild, and activate the totem and bury it all within two seconds. Took a little bit of practice, but I managed," he said proudly.

"What did these totems do?"

He shrugged. "I'm a farmer, not a crafter. I don't really know. They were called Embassy Sticks. The crafter was from a guild I'd never heard of. Something called," he scratched his head, "Hoosier Mamas, that's it. Like moms from Indiana," he clarified.

"Very clever."

"Yeah, the guy had a stall in Threshold on the corner of First Street and New York Boulevard. We never met Waters in person during all this. It was all done by chat.”

That was the other end of Threshold from where Misfits usually hung out, not coincidentally right adjacent to Free Human League territory. “The crafter was named Wyatt, I think. Anyway, he gave it to me. I waited until my assigned time slot, and I buried it." He bent to the muck and drew a rough circle. "So, here's your outpost.” He made a slash at one side. "There's the gate, and I buried mine right here." He placed a finger in the muck at about the two o'clock position on our outpost.

"Outside the wall?" I asked.

"No, just inside the outermost wall," Sam said. “And then I was teleported out and to the base of Gloomwing Damnation. Waters kicked me out of that guild right afterwards and said I could get back to farming, and that he'd pass along word of my good deeds to my family's lien holder. I haven't heard anything from them, though.”

"Thanks," I said. We had another clue now. I passed along the information about Wyatt to Colonel Ames.

"Hold on," Sage said. "You said Gloomwing Damnation had an outpost of their own?"

"Yeah, sure. Wasn't much of one. Not compared to yours, but they had something."

"Where was it?" she asked.

Sam's brow furrowed. "Uh, it was a Phase Three zone. It was..." He scratched his head. "Tryin' to remember. Oh, right. Some sort of screwed up fairy tales. Like Hansel and Gretel, but creepy."

"Hansel and Gretel are always creepy," Sage said. She turned to me. "I'm pretty sure there's only one Brothers Grimm zone, and we've already been there."

Let's take this private, I told her in chat. If Waters comes sniffing around, I don't want him to know what we're thinking.

We're gonna hit him before he has time to react, Sage replied confidently. But she listened to me and kept her lips shut.

Greenwarden said, "Is this all, Captain Williams? We were hoping for more excitement in a fight at your side."

"Oh," I said cheerfully. "I'm starting to think of some very exciting ideas."

Sage's eyes narrowed. “Exciting?”

“We were always going to need a Shad plan here sooner or later." I tipped my hat to Sam. "Thanks for your help.”

“I’m sorry for betraying you."

"I'm sorry too," I said. "And I really do wish your family the best. But if you cross our paths again, I will hunt you down and make your life miserable."

"Understood." His shoulders slumped.

I turned to my people. "Let's get out of here. Got some more heads to crack."