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best, Colonel. I know when it’s appropriate to act on orders and when it’s time to question why the fuck I’m being commanded to do something that goes against what I believe. Shit. You know me. My moral tracker strays dangerously off course, but what is happening here… Fuck. This is not going how I planned.” Jegs took a deep breath and appeared to be forcing herself to calm down. She uncrossed her arms and laid her hands on the table. “You realise that one bullet has the capability of changing the course of history?”
    “And many bullets have the potential of wiping out humanity. Are you really looking for a philosophical debate on the lessons of our past versus present actions versus future implications? I think we’re all a bit crippled when it comes to thoroughly understanding the past. The Nationalists’ destruction of the archives ensured that.” I left the mention of her brother Grimshaw and his leadership of the Nationalists unsaid, even though I knew she was bright enough to catch my intention to unsettle her with the words. “So what’s your point here, Jegs?”
    She pointed a finger at me. “Your bullet is the one that changed the course of the Revolution. You. Not Armise. You treat him as if he’s infallible. As if he’s a better, smarter, and stronger soldier than you are, when all of us know that’s not true. I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but if he wants to kill himself going after Ahriman, then let him do it. We don’t need him here, but we need you. Leadership is strained, that’s probably the mildest I can put it without sounding like a dick. Things changed when you were gone. And not all of us are sure Ahriman won’t find a way to take over. I’m not switching sides—it’s not who I am—but I am questioning whether or not our own leadership has become too myopic to effectively combat Ahriman’s tactics. The moral lines that divide the Revolution from the Opposition are still there, but blurring. And that is something I won’t stand by and watch happen.”
    “Let’s be clear here, Jegs, and stop toying with words. When you say ‘leadership’, do you mean the President or Neveed?”
    Jegs tipped her head back and scrubbed her hands over her face. I was aware that our conversation was likely being monitored, if not in live time then for review later. Jegs would have the same knowledge about the lack of privacy in the control room as I did. She was taking a risk with making any of the accusations she had so far, but there had to be a reason she wanted to have them heard, and not just by me. She cracked her neck and opened her eyes, looking up at the black screen at the front of the room and flexing her hands into fists. Then she met my eyes and said, “I’ll give you the answer you want, but let’s start with this first—Exley is gone. He left the bunker a couple months back when it became apparent that the kids from the jacquerie weren’t just in hiding.”
    “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    “You saw it in the Underground when you were rescuing your parents. Exley told me about how eerie it was to see the camp so empty. But, thing is, the kids never came back. All children under the age of ten were gone from the tent city months before the jacquerie abandoned it.”
    “The jacquerie completely abandoned it? No one came back? The whole tent city—”
    “Is abandoned. Empty. And I have to assume Exley is with them. I can’t tell you how it’s all connected, because I simply don’t know. But the disappearance of the youngest children happened over a period of weeks before you left. All communication ceased between jacquerie leadership and the President or any Revolution contacts then the entire populace picked up and left over the course of one night.”
    “Where did they go?”
    “As far away from any city as they could get. They didn’t try to hide their movements. They’ve all relocated to the mountains in the Central