Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) by John C. Wright Page B

water,’ cause we can’t tell if he’s alive or not. Ramirez gets the radio going just at this point …” Peter paused.
    The guard asked, “So what happened?”
    “You got a cigarette on you?”
    The boy looked uncertain. “We’re not supposed to give you anything or hand you anything. Orders.” But he stepped in the room.
    “What’s your name, soldier?”
    Again the boy shrugged uncomfortably. “Can’t say. Orders. Don’t give you anything, don’t apologize, don’t give your name.”
    “They tell you I was here without any trial? No arrest warrant? No nothing?”
    Now the boy shrugged again, but, this time, with a look of blank indifference. “What do I care about that?” he said.
    “It’s unconstitutional, soldier.”
    “What do I care about that?” the boy said again.
    “You swore to support and defend the Constitution,” said Peter softly.
    The young man grinned as if Peter were a simpleminded child who still believed in Santa Claus. “Fuck that,” he said.
    “I didn’t quite hear you, soldier,” said Peter, even more softly.
    “This isn’t 1776 anymore, you know. This is the new millennium. Get with the program. We’re running things now. Some of the Pentagon, some of the Congress, they’re our boys now, and they make sure we get to do whatever the mission requires.”
    “Your mission is attacking American civilians on American soil?”
    “No. They’re just little people. Just in the way.”
    All this time Peter had been hoping that Azrael had enchanted these people, like Wil had been enchanted, to make them do stuff they did not want to do. But no; it looked like these fellows knew what they were doing and were neck deep in it.
    Why the hypnosis, then? Peter had a guess. His father had warned him what happened to mortal men when they saw too many things from the Other World, touched them, trafficked with them. People tended to forget and to be forgotten. Azrael might have enchanted his henchmen, done something to their minds, to allow them to work alongside supernatural monsters like Kelpie and Selkie, without forgetting their names and their lives.
    Or he might have enchanted them to shut up and stand still when on guard duty, so that they would not say or do something accidentally to mess up Azrael’s plans.
    The soldier was still chatting on about the little people. “Civilians get in the way, we can shoot ’em, gas ’em, burn ’em: no one is going to look into it. Not the papers, not the press. They get switched, if they do.”
    “Switched?”
    “Switched for one of our side. Skin ’em alive, throw the skins in the water. An hour later, someone who looks like him is walking around. Something.”
    “So that’s your side, is it? You must be fucking proud to look in the mirror in the morning.”
    The boy shrugged again. “The world turned out to be a weird, fucked-up place. UFO-type weird, you know? Voodoo weird. And there’re things in the water, coming. Nightmare things. Things people can’t fight. Invisible things.”
    “You don’t know jack, soldier,” said Peter, grimacing. “My family’s been fighting against the night-world for centuries. We got it under control. We got—”
    “You got nothing, old man!”
    “You swore to them, didn’t you? Azrael and his crew.”
    A hushed whisper. “We don’t say his name. The Warlock. He’s got the Power.”
    “So. The U.S. government you swore to protect and defend when you put on that uniform has got one whup-ass monster-truck shitload of power too, seems to me.”
    The boy snorted. Evidently that did not seem worth answering.
    Peter said thoughtfully. “Now, let me get this straight. When you joined up, did you swear to fight for the flag of your country, or did you swear to cut and run when some freak in a pointy hat doing card tricks managed to give you the willies and turn your sissy-ass spine all yellow? You love your country, soldier?”
    “Don’t make me laugh. What’s to love? Compared to what’s