The Brotherhood's base looked like
a logging camp
that had given up on logging
and developed other interests.
Six buildings. Functional.
The kind of construction that prioritizes
not falling down over everything else,
including looking like anything in particular.
Maren walked us through the gate
like she owned it,
which I suspected she approximately did.
Two people on the wall watched us come in.
Neither of them called out.
They just tracked us
with the specific attention
of people whose job is to know
who belongs and who doesn't.
I looked back at them.
The system gave me nothing.
No crimes. No targets.
Just two people doing a job.
That was still strange to me —
the silence of the system
around people who hadn't done anything.
Like a noise you get used to
suddenly stopping.
"Don't read everyone," Maren said,
without looking at me.
"I'm not."
"You have a reading face."
I filed that away.
I needed to fix my reading face.
She brought us to the second building.
Inside: a long table, benches, a fire,
and five people who stopped talking
when we came in.
I looked at them.
They looked at me.
The system pulsed.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Nothing.
One ping.
Small. Almost apologetic.
[TARGET: JORIN, AGE 15]
[ROLE: SABOTEUR]
[CRIME: —]
The crime field was blank.
That was new.
[CLARIFICATION: JORIN HAS COMMITTED NO CRIMES]
[SABOTEUR ROLE IS DARK-CLASSIFIED]
[HE IS HERE FOR THE SAME REASON YOU ARE]
[NOTE: THE SYSTEM FLAGGED HIM AUTOMATICALLY]
[NOTE: THIS IS WORTH THINKING ABOUT]
I agreed it was worth thinking about.
The system had flagged someone
with no crimes
just because his Role said he'd cause damage.
Which meant the system
could be wrong.
Or it could be right in advance.
I had no idea which.
Jorin was looking at me
with the careful expression
of someone who has learned
that new people require assessment
before they require anything else.
Fifteen. Big for it.
A scar along his jaw
that had been there long enough
to fade to white.
"Villain," he said.
"Saboteur," I said.
A beat.
He almost smiled.
"Maren find you at the ridge?"
"Just past it."
"She found me at the river." He leaned back.
"Took three days of following me
before I trusted her enough
to stop running."
"I didn't run," I said.
"You were ten." He shrugged.
"Give it time."
The other four had gone back
to what they were doing —
a girl maybe twelve repairing a boot,
two boys playing something
with carved wooden pieces on the table,
a kid young enough that I wasn't certain
of any details at all
sitting very close to the fire
like they were trying to absorb it.
Calla had stopped in the doorway.
I looked back at her.
She was looking at the room.
At the fire.
At the five people
who had not moved away from her
automatically,
had not done that shuffle
of unconscious distance.
Her face was doing that thing again.
The shape of something
she'd half-forgotten.
"Come in," Maren said behind her.
"The Plague Bearer effect is weaker
on people who know it's coming
and don't care."
"It doesn't work like that," Calla said.
"No," Maren agreed.
"But they don't know that yet,
and by the time they figure it out
they'll already be used to you."
Calla looked at her.
"That's manipulative," she said.
"Yes," Maren said.
"Sit down."
Calla sat down.
The girl repairing the boot
looked up and said,
without preamble:
"I'm Dessa. Curse Role.
Everything I make eventually breaks.
I'm very good at repairing things
because I have a lot of practice."
"Calla," Calla said.
"Plague Bearer."
"I know," Dessa said.
"Maren sent word ahead.
I moved my bunk away from yours
so if you have bad nights
it's not as concentrated."
Calla opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"Thank you," she said.
Dessa nodded and went back to the boot.
I sat down across from Jorin.
He was looking at me
with the same assessment
he'd started with.
"What's the Villain system actually like,"
he said.
Not a casual question.
He'd been waiting to ask it.
"It finds targets," I said.
"Shows me what they've done.
Gives me leverage."
"Automatically?"
"Automatically."
He thought about that.
"Does it ever get it wrong?"
I looked at him.
At the blank crime field
still sitting in the corner of my vision
where his file had been.
"I don't know yet," I said.
He nodded slowly.
Like that was the right answer.
Like a yes or a no
would have told him something
he didn't want to know.
Maren set two bowls on the table.
Sat down at the head.
"There are rules," she said.
"You mentioned," I said.
"I'm going to be more specific now."
She looked at me,
then at Calla.
"One: nobody uses their Role
on another Brotherhood member.
Not for testing, not for practice,
not because you're curious.
Two: nobody leaves the camp
in the first two weeks.
That's not a trust issue,
that's a Church patrol pattern.
Three:" she paused,
"if the system gives you a target
inside this camp
you tell me before you do anything.
Anything."
I looked at her.
She looked back.
She knew.
Not what the system had shown me —
she didn't know the specific flag.
But she knew the system
had looked at her people
and done something.
She was asking me to tell her
what it found
before I decided what to do with it.
I thought about Jorin's blank crime field.
I thought about the note:
THE SYSTEM FLAGGED HIM AUTOMATICALLY.
THIS IS WORTH THINKING ABOUT.
"Agreed," I said.
Maren held eye contact
for one more second.
Then she picked up her bowl.
"Good," she said.
"Eat."
I ate.
The fire was good.
The food was unremarkable
in the specific way that food
tastes remarkable
when you've spent a night
in a dark forest
not thinking about whether
you were going to eat again.
The small kid by the fire
had fallen asleep sitting up.
Nobody moved them.
Jorin caught me looking.
"Thresh," he said quietly.
"Eight years old.
Came in three weeks ago."
"What's the Role?"
"We don't know yet."
He said it carefully.
"The orb assigned something
but the display didn't — work right.
The Elder said it was void.
The system doesn't seem to agree."
I looked at the small sleeping kid.
Then I looked at the corner of my vision
where the system lived.
Slowly, like I was asking politely:
I looked at Thresh.
The system was quiet for a long moment.
Then:
[THRESH — ROLE UNCLASSIFIED]
[NOTE: THIS ROLE DOES NOT EXIST
IN CURRENT SYSTEM RECORDS]
[NOTE: IT EXISTS IN OLDER RECORDS]
[NOTE: THOSE RECORDS WERE REMOVED]
[NOTE: THIS CHILD IS SOMETHING
THE SYSTEM WAS NOT SUPPOSED
TO ASSIGN ANYMORE]
[NOTE: HANDLE WITH CARE]
I stared at that for a long time.
The fire popped.
Thresh didn't move.
Jorin was watching my face.
"Reading face," he said quietly.
"Yeah," I said.
"Bad?"
I thought about removed Roles.
About records that shouldn't exist.
About a Church that falsified documents
and a system that read belief as truth
and an eight year old kid
asleep by a fire
carrying something
nobody was supposed to carry anymore.
"I don't know yet," I said.
For the second time tonight
Jorin nodded like that was
the right answer.
The fire burned down.
Outside the Brotherhood walls
the forest held its position
and the Church filed its papers
and somewhere Elder Croft
slept the clean sleep
of a man with no doubts.
Eleven months until Dova's son's ceremony.
I had a list.
I had time.
I had a camp full of kids
the world had already decided
were acceptable losses.
The system pulsed.
Patient. Warm, almost.
Like a teacher who can see
the student is finally
starting to understand the assignment.
[NOTE: YOU'RE DOING FINE]
[NOTE: THRESH IS IMPORTANT]
[NOTE: SO IS THE LIST]
[NOTE: YOU'LL FIGURE OUT
HOW TO HOLD BOTH]
I looked at the sleeping kid
by the fire.
I looked at Calla
talking quietly with Dessa
about something that was making
the shape of a smile
come back to her face.
I looked at Jorin
who had survived fifteen years
of being flagged as dangerous
for something he hadn't done yet.
The world had decided
all of us were acceptable losses.
The world was going to regret
doing the math on that.