Kin sat in the van with the screen open in front of him.
The System had given him a live window into the compound, built from the cameras Odile's crew had hacked three weeks ago and the drone parked on a rooftop two streets over. He could see the gate. He could see the guardhouse. He could see the residential building and the service entrance and the third-floor corridor where Nia was supposed to walk.
He could also hear.
The earpiece gave him the audio from Nia's mic, and the mic picked up everything within ten feet of her. He heard the boots on the gravel. He heard the gate grinding open. He heard a man's voice, low and formal, say, General, we are glad to have you back.
Nia did not answer.
The boots moved. The gate closed. The corridor opened up on the screen, and Nia walked into it in the general's uniform with the general's face, and Kin watched her pass three soldiers who did not look at her twice.
So far so good, he thought.
Then Nia took out the general's phone and rang the warlord.
He delayed, but picked up.
"General." A man's voice, smooth, unhurried, with an accent Kin could not place. "I heard you were taken. I heard you were returned. I am glad you are well."
"Thank you." Nia's voice. The general's voice. Low, dry, unbothered. "I need to see you."
"I am sure you do."
"It is urgent."
"Everything is urgent, general. That is what urgent means." A pause. "I am on my way to the stadium. The speech is in the evening. Whatever you need, it can wait until I return."
"It cannot."
"Then tell me what it is."
"I will not say it on a phone."
"Then it can wait."
Nia did not answer for a beat. Kin watched her stand in the corridor with the phone against her ear and the general's face on, and he could see her jaw tighten even through the mask.
"You should divert," she said. "Come to the residence. It will take you twenty minutes."
"No."
"It is important."
"I said no." The warlord's voice had changed. It had gotten thinner. "You are not my father, general. You are not my handler. You are a soldier who has been in my service for a very long time, and I am grateful for it, but you do not order me to divert. You do not tell me where to go. If you want to take something down, take it down. If you want to warn me about something, warn me. But do not call me on a phone and tell me to come to you like I am a dog who has been whistled at."
Silence.
Kin watched the screen.
"Very well," Nia said. "Come to the residence when you return."
"I will come when I want to come."
The line went dead.
***
In the interrogation room, the general laughed.
He was still strapped to the chair. He had been awake for the last hour, and he had heard everything, because Odile had left the speaker on the earpiece turned up so he could hear his own voice coming out of Nia's mouth. He had not said a word the whole time. Now he laughed, short and dry, and leaned his head back against the chair.
"That," he said, "is what I have been dealing with for eleven years."
Odile looked at him over the top of the folder.
"He is an asshole," the general said. "He is a mule. He is a mule who has decided he is a horse. I have kept that man alive for a decade. I have built his speeches. I have chosen his suits. I have told him where to stand and when to smile and which villages he was not allowed to visit because the people there would have shot him. And now he is on his way to the stadium and he will not come when I call. In six months he may decide he does not need me. In a year he will have me killed."
"Do you want him dead," Odile said.
The general looked at her.
"I would dance on his grave," he said. "I would bring my wife. I would bring my daughter. I would stand on his grave and I would dance."
Odile did not show any expression. She set the folder down and leaned forward with her elbows on the table.
"Then it would help us," she said, "if you told us the suite."
The general's face closed.
"No."
"Your own man is on his way to the stadium. He is going to give a speech tomorrow morning that will kill seventeen hundred people, and he will not come when you call, and in a year he will have you killed. You just told me all of this yourself. And you are still protecting him."
"I am not protecting him. I am protecting the position." The general shifted in the chair. "If I give you the suite, he dies. If he dies, there is a vacuum. I have been holding this country together for eleven years. If the vacuum opens, I am the one who gets buried in it. I am not helping you put my own name on a list."
"That list was written the moment Kin walked into your office. You are a dead man nevertheless. Just give me the suite number. We can rig explosives there and give him a death like the one he offers his citizens."
"That list was written the moment he walked into my office, yes. But there is a difference between being on a list and being the reason the list exists." The general looked at her. "I will not give you the suite. Not yet. Ask me again when you have nothing left."
Odile looked at him for a long moment.
Then she looked at the speaker on the desk.
***
The warlord gave an order to three of the general's guards.
They were not in the same room. One was manning the gate. One was on the ground floor. The third was in the room when the order came.
"The general is there, but I already do not need him. Kill him and blame it on the rebels. Say they brought back a corpse. That way even their followers, the ones who are constantly recruit every year, will lose trust in them. They will be afraid of being hunted down by the military for the severity of kidnapping and killing a general."
The message reached the three, and all of them left their positions at once, as if a switch had been hit. They moved upstairs, pulled by something they did not question.
---
On the screen, the corridor opened and a guard walked into frame.
Kin saw him before Nia did. A young man in a pressed uniform with a sidearm in his hand, coming out of the stairwell behind her with his eyes already on her back. Kin heard the safety come off through her mic.
Move.
He did not say it out loud. He could not. He sat in the van and watched the screen and did not breathe.
Nia moved.
She turned at the last possible second and the round went past her ear and buried itself in the wall. She dropped into a crouch. The guard fired again. She was already somewhere else, because she was small and fast and the room was small, and the second round hit the doorframe where she had been standing. She had Kin's .50 under the jacket and six minutes to reach the warlord, and now there was a young man in a pressed uniform trying to kill her in the corridor, and she was running out of time.
"Kin." Nia's voice in his ear, tight. "I cannot take him down. He is too close and too large. I can only run. I can also hear two distinct footsteps coming this way. Did they find out I am not the general?"
Kin reached for the door of the van.
"I am coming to get you, Nia. Wait for me."
"Wait." Odile's voice, sharp. "If you go in now, you ruin it. The plan is still intact. She can stall him and take him down with your gun, because that room is soundproof from the inside. She can still—"
"Odile."
"Kin. Listen to me. If the guards see you in the compound—"
Kin opened the door.
He stepped out into the yard with the katana in his hand. He did not run yet, because he was still talking.
"We are weapons formed against corrupt leaders," he said. "That is what the System tells me. Every man in that compound is however also a weapon, just with someone else's hand on the trigger. I have killed sixty-two of them in one night and I did not feel anything."
"And that is exactly why—"
"But we were humans before becoming weapons." Kin looked at the screen. Nia was in the corner now, trying her best to take the man down. She avoided firing, because if that .50 went through the door the mission would be ruined.
"I lost many teammates this week. I am not losing another one."
Odile was silent for a long moment.
Then she cursed. Quietly, thoroughly, in a language Kin did not recognize.
"Go," she said. "But know that you are the reason the plan failed."
"The plan will work," Kin said.
He then darted off.