“Are you a sincere believer?” asked the Count, the absurdity giving him the first taste of amusement since his bereavement. “In what cause? The cause of a paedophilic vore fetishist? Or…or are you an actual communist?”

  Ash flushed, a fresh wave of heat prickling up his toad-bloated throat. “I believe it is worth—no matter the odds—fighting to reclaim the WBAE. I believe that the sand will continue to drift without a future until a homeland is established. I believe that the King, or more so the King’s new powers, are the best chance we have at achieving that objective.”

  He carefully avoided any direct endorsement or insult of their psychotic leader. To Ash, the disturbing personal inclinations of Ramiro were subordinate to his function in the higher struggle.

  This strain of hyper-pragmatism had actually been inculcated in him during his brief stint with The Company. All field agents, before their diplomatic assignments, were taught to separate the utility of the local institutions from their unsavoury moral veneers. One had to understand that a leader could simultaneously eat children and be the prime candidate for rule, since much of the merit existed in no particular leader but in the supra-personal system of talent and resources drawn in by the gravity of their charisma. It was that less visible network of well-doers behind the cannibal that deserved allegiance, that should not be discarded just because of some scandal of ultimate historical insignificance. Furthermore, agents had to learn that sometimes what appeared to be barbarism was not barbarism but the most efficient, most necessary, most impactful strategy for succeeding in sub-optimal conditions. It was from this logic that The Company, including himself when first stationed here, had shown no hesitancy in allying with the bloodsuckers and probable cannibals of The Church or, indeed, with The Empire’s own defected gangmembers. Without such dispassionate logic, one could not survive the messy politics of Saana.

  Ramiro may have been a serial-killing, kid-eating paedophile. Ash didn’t care, accepting a serial-killing, kid-eating paedophile as the fastest and only path to a prosperous future. Sooner or later—once the assassination quests poured in, once The Company dropped its hitsquads from the boat, or maybe once the teen on his rampage found the target—Ramiro would catch a well-deserved knife, and when that happened Ash would shed no tears – so long as it was not today. For today, he needed that villain to endure, to use his might to build for them a home; then, from under a permanent roof, surrounded by lands to till and sow, Ash and the rest of the institution that would survive the hog could burn and spit upon his image as they welcomed the next imperfect but essential leader.

  Ash could shout this truth without hesitation. The same ethos of pragmatism enabled him to sit across this coffee table and communicate as a peer with a whore-addicted anime freak, although—by his estimation—this man may never have been the right man for any task.

  While the interrogator stirred towards this epic defence of the cannibal, his interlocutor’s amusement had already died.

  The Count slumped back in his seat. “But these beliefs no longer matter – the basic fact is that we won't be conquering any territory." He reverted for a moment to a bygone personality. “Grasses of the plains, reaching tall for heaven’s gift, dream of verdant Springs; yet the smiling sun persists, with no tears as we wither.”

  He then sat in the hollow silence of his loserdom, staring at the untouched tea as he meditated on the absurd waste that’d been his existence.

  Ash, unmoved by the poetics, leaned forward into the space the man had conceded. "It’s not over yet.”

  The Count glanced up with boredom. "Aren't you another self-styled numbers guy? The trend is not that subtle. The enemy has…” he aborted the thought, finding it utterly pointless. “I was never deluded enough to think we could win in direct combat. My delusions extrapolated further, into the economic prospects of the slaves, which would have continued to earn bank even after a retreat. We could have licked our wounds, infiltrated some minor territories – it doesn’t have to be this arid plot of dirt.”

  “And that’s still an option.”

  “Is it, though? As I’m sobering up, it’s occurring to me that I was far from the only one here captured by a mania. The whole operation reeks of a needless urgency. Why now, while they’re still around? Why take the war to them? Why the West Bank versus all the free space that borders the savannah? These mistakes circle Ramiro’s delusion, and much like me—and much like you perhaps—he’s not going to withdraw from his delusion until the opportunity is…” The man’s eyes dilated again. “I think he's going to splash all of these bodies against the walls of the castle, and then his own.”

  Ash, trying to maintain eye contact, struggled against the lie-detection mapping. From the first word, it’d locked into a rigid constellation of green, from which it had at no point wavered, not even during the Count’s questioning, which was purely rhetorical.

  Ash heard a heartbeat racing in his eardrums. But it was his own, the Count’s thudding death-quiet underneath.

  “Are we finished?” asked the Count.

  Ash, dampening the pulse monitoring and sighing silently to calm himself, kept his gaze firm. “You are beholden until I see fit to release you, Count. The loss of these items is not a trivial matter. They need to know everything.”

  The Count stared right through the response. “Where is your delusion coming from? I, at least, had the excuse of any gambler, needing to recoup my losses. What loss can’t you admit, Turncoat? The most rational, most obvious choice here would be for you to switch sides…again.”

  Ash wanted to reach across the table and throttle this twink’s conceited throat.

  “I’ve never switched sides, Count,” he answered, reminding the man of who here had bowed to the enemy. “There were no sides when I transferred.”

  The Company and The Empire’s relations had been amicable back then. After writing in his reasons for a transfer—Ash realising he could be much more effective with the locals—he’d been given a swift approval, his boss sending him off with a farewell lunch. They’d even granted him an unexpected exception to keep his character and the training manuals copied to his Mental Library. Someone higher than his boss had agreed.

  “Is that the cause of sensitivity?” asked the Count. “Have you invested too much in this personal narrative of defection?”

  “Buddy, anyone would feel sensitive when confronted by such conceit. You can’t say that this is over yet. All signs point to The Company’s evacuation. They have no commitments to this region. They will not risk their relationship with The Church to land a force in defence of something so profitless.”

  Ash knew this fact personally and quantitatively. During his assignment for The Company here, he’d been disguised in a team of financial analysts, tasked with assessing the economic potential of Suchi. The region, bogged down with all the religious rigmarole, was determined to have little value beyond providing new recruits, and the conclusion had been to redirect all personnel to more productive areas. Their Kanaru operations largely by-passed the city, being managed from their Public Zone to the north and nearby Chayoka. The recent events had not altered any of this, their policy remaining one of calculated indifference.

  That indifference had been central to his transfer. To him, at least The Empire were willing to do something to improve this corrupted wasteland.

  “Nothing,” he continued, “indicates moreover that this teeny-bopper is committed to it either. I say he’s just sticking around to collect his loot. Once that little quest is done, once he’s dunked on the King enough times to satisfy his ego, I’m sure he’ll slip off in boredom back to wherever he came from.”

  Ash hadn’t fallen for the hysteria following the kid’s exposure. Crusadingintheshadows was as much a loser as his ID suggested: reckless, showboaty, misanthropic, long-winded, and palpably insane. Maybe the kid could lead an army or stomp a duel – so what? An empire was a much deeper, much richer, much more impressive behemoth than the flashy nothings of a battlefield, and the revelation of this idiot savant at The Company’s helm had only reaffirmed Ash’s dictum that leadership must be divorced from the larger institution.

  His argument was attended by the Count in silence. It seemed only to confirm the man’s previous assessment, and his look grew more and more distant, like one crossing over a bridge and glancing back at a crowd too fearful even to take the first step.

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  Ash didn’t understand this look at first, until his Peopleworker metrics pinged it as contempt.

  His toad-face tightened. “Is anything I’m saying logically unsound?"

  The Count shrugged, his silk robes rustling softly, then he looked aside into a complicated thought and began to ramble his way through it. “If you or I were in his role, trying to blackmail a man into doing his bidding, I wonder what pressure point we would have picked.” He shook his head helplessly. “Maybe bribery…maybe an offer to keep the staff – reneged upon later, of course. The…” he paused as earlier, his pupils dilating. “…that would never have occurred to me.” He raised a hand at Ash, warning him not to restrain him from the journey with another trivial question. “And where, I ask, does that insight come from, this knowledge of this deepest fact not even comprehended by ourselves? Can a person without interest possibly understand that? I’m doubtful. That would be terrifying in its own way, if one could reconstruct the secret corruptions of a soul just by skimming some nerd’s oblivious profile. But I don’t think that’s it. I think the enemy is interested…is human in his own way, somewhere beneath the fa?ade of juvenility. Too human, maybe – too unfathomably human. It's somewhere from this humanness, from a personal comprehension and interest—he IS interested, have no doubt—from somewhere in this interest resonates the insight, an instantaneous recognition of one’s twin glimpsed across a crowded street. A ‘collection quest’…that…” the Count laughed at the absurdity “…that…that’s…no, he is not here for something so offensively trivial. We have to go deeper into the heart of ourselves, and ask more. What are the weapons for? What’s the…what’s the cruelty for? What are we for, collected in our delusion squabbling over nothing and understanding nothing? What is he for? He doesn’t have to be here. That…that…that…that’s something we have forgotten in our delusion.” He snapped his fingers. “A snap of his fingers, and the machine would do his bidding once again, as it had during the takeover. His troops would land—fuck The Church, he’d just kill them, too, that would be the most sumptuous of cruelties, the true prize over some bit-player cannibal—and, after they kill the priests, they would sweep through our millions, reclaiming everything with that ash-silent efficiency. They could do that. He doesn’t have to be here in their stead – yet he is. Why? Why dirty the hands? Why…That is the question, isn’t it? Why IS he here? I think…” His face, which had taken to grinning, scrunched into a squint. “I think…I think he chooses to be here. He chooses to keep the dogs of war within their leash. He, who has armed himself and continues to arm himself, chooses to move forth entirely alone into the mad throng of blood and cruelty, like some gluttonous devourer...of cruelty…slaughtering and slaughtering and slaughtering and slaughtering…all this slaughtering and all this cruelty monopolised for himself…for his own unfathomable love…for the love of the…for the love of the…for the love of the cruelty?...no, no, it takes more than the cruelty to birth the cruelty…then, the love of…”

  The Count, whose face had turned increasingly sterner over the tail of his rambling, paused at the precipice of an epiphany. His squint narrowed, and his gaze rested in judgment, as if weighing not just the matter’s nearing silhouette but the wisdom of approaching for a clearer view. He then squinted narrower yet in resolve, like one sealing their vision against the rising bluster of a snowstorm.

  But, abruptly, the look of concentration dissipated.

  As he’d been warned, the why and the how of these matters were secondary to the greater fact.

  He snapped back to the interrogator with his stare of contempt. “No, just that’s not for you or me to learn. We’re too delusional to even probe the shallow depths of ourselves.”

  His eyes remained enlarged and reddened with the residue of the visited chill.

  Stepping out of the tent’s flap, passing the guards, Ash was hit by a wall of sensation. The claustrophobic gloom opened into the sprawling chaos of the encampment, where attendants rushed to and fro and a continuous stream of newcomers condensed next to a nearby Reincarnation Monument. The Lightstones blazing on their pole hurt his vision, and as he adjusted, he rolled the tension of the strange interview out of his shoulders.

  He navigated through the compound to another tent, where other intelligence officers were lounging in a makeshift breakroom. Several were gossiping and dipping finger foods into steaming cups of stimulant-infused brews while footage of the ongoing slaughter glowed on a wall for their entertainment.

  Ash grabbed a mug and poured himself one of the non-laced drinks from a carafe. A younger agent sidled up beside him, eager for the office gossip. The kid was barely half his age, sporting a patchy, ill-advised beard and an abrasive British brogue.

  "What’s the secret deets, Geezer Keeg?” the younger agent chirped. “‘Ow’d you keep that girly lad yapping? Lad stonewalled me five in.”

  Ash took a sip of the tea—a calming citrus—his mind still uncomfortably buzzing with the lunatic’s ravings about gluttonous devourers and unfathomable love.

  "It’s obvious why he put up no meaningful defence,” he said. “Thought the cause was completely lost – from the start.”

  The British agent snorted, filching a cookie that Ash was about to grab. "Well, yeah. Obviously." He chewed for a second, then paused, his brow furrowing as he reassessed the older analyst's stoic toad-face. "Wait...Geezer Keeg, you’re ‘avin a chuckle, mate? You can’t believe we ‘av a shot? That’s mad.”

  He tipped his chin at the rampage on the wall.

  “I do,” said Ash.

  “Aw, that’s right mad!” The British agent laughed and slapped the old man’s shoulder, before returning to the others.

  Ash carried his ancient bulk to a corner sofa where a female colleague quietly worked, and beside her he drafted his report on the interrogation, summarising and highlighting the key revelations. Reviewing footage, he spent a chunk of UP on one of the automated linguistic-based lie-detection protocols he’d picked up at The Company – this came back inconclusive, the subject oscillating between too many registers and moods. He flagged the Arab member of the Count’s entourage for further investigation, although Ash didn’t expect this to be pursued, most of their intelligence out in the field hunting for enemy spies.

  Overall, that case seemed a flop. They knew how the staff had leaked, but the more vital who would probably remain a mystery forever. Nobody involved seemed about to receive justice, not even the pervert, who’d been left and forgotten to continue the commanded shutdown of business.

  The accusations of delusion continued to prickle at Ash. He didn't believe he harboured any. The logic behind his confidence in The Empire was, admittedly, highly contrarian, but it was based on data anyone could observe. It wasn’t as if he’d been persuaded by Ramiro’s revolutionary rhetoric, the man obviously as crazy to him as everyone else.

  Perhaps the missing key was him being a so-called turncoat. His familiarity with both organisations gave a grounding that could be difficult to articulate. Where his compatriots perceived The Company in almost mythic terms, especially as they’d increasingly conflated the organisation with the teen’s flashy feats of combat, to Ash it adhered to a simpler, bureaucratic logic. He knew the limits of its vision and its manpower. Much of the world still lay beyond its dominion, and that included many parts ostensibly within its borders, which were in fact controlled through much more tenuous mechanisms of alliance building and stochastic threats of reprisal.

  To check the soundness of his thinking, he turned to his female colleague and, after establishing the context, gave the logical refutation he’d been blocked from delivering earlier. He explained the macroeconomic realities of the region and the pattern of indifference and restriction shown by The Company, even now as they retreated without their teenage leader.

  She responded with a shrug. "I don't know, dude. That's, like, way too complicated.”

  “It’s not that complicated. Which part are you having difficulty with?”

  The girl, her gaze dull and uncomprehending, shrugged again. “But that’s sick if true.”

  Ash sighed over a generational despair.

  Like anyone his age, he struggled to dialogue with these Roboboomers, most of whom seemed to blank out when you dragged on longer than a sentence. His drinking buddies would’ve understood. Alas, they were either out on the battlefield or back in The Slums after defection.

  He sent a carefully worded message to his best and wisest friend Steve.

  A response pinged back instantly.

  —Serenity: Dawg, I’m not reading any of that BORING shit. Get your fucking head in the game. It’s SHOW time, baby! I’m taking the tornado to this FUCKING PUSSY-AAAAAS KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID! I’m about to stretch him out and smoke more of these rocks off his faggot corpse!

  There was a brief pause for a crackling noise followed by a nostrilly inhalation.

  —Serenity: FUCKING GET HYPED, DAAAAAAWG! GET HYPED!

  As the com-line disconnected, Ash chewed a cookie calmly, his worldview still robust.

  Steve—lest one get the wrong impression—was normally a pretty sensible individual, the smartest person Ash had ever known - and not the slightest bit homophobic. In fact, he was a devout ally, only using such language in private where, a mere joke, it harmed nobody, just like calling blacks the n-word, which—again—Ash would only morally condone if it was kept to private communications amongst a friendgroup who balanced their irony with historical sensitivity and ethical compassion. He’d just happened to catch Steve at the wrong moment, the friend’s role in command at times necessitating a certain ‘energetic’ concentration, where one had to abandon social niceties and lose themselves in the frenzied antagonism of warfare. If anything, the usage in such cases of exaggerated, pseudo-villainy demonstrated a lucid moral regard for such profanities as highly anti-social.

  There was a groan from the agents gathered before the footage of the teen’s rampage. In a macabre fortress decorated with mutilated corpses, he’d just teleported behind a Texan Duke and bisected the man right through the abdomen. Holding his victim’s upper section by the hair, he twirled it around his head like a cowboy’s lasso. Loops of brightly coloured intestines went flying out across the guards fleeing the pursuit of his floating weapons while the kid taunted in a regionally-misplaced accent. "Oh, Christie in a coffin! Dat dag-nabbed ol’ boy Cripple’s gone done and chopped da boss again! YeeeeEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEeeeeehaw!”

  This grotesque showboating, as it inspired panic in the others, restored some of Ash’s challenged confidence.

  Why couldn’t the others see as clearly and rationally as he did? Their opponent was a clown, someone fundamentally unserious, not a Cthulhu-esque horror leaving victims babbling about things incomprehensible.

  Hopefully, the next subject for interrogation would possess more grounding in the facts...