before TV journalists interrupted their telecasts to show images of the burning towers. He’d gotten so drunk he laughed at the news coverage, he told us, until an off-duty cop took a swing at him. And Wills had just neutralized a group of hags trying to infiltrate the U.S. military days before its planes were to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Wherever we went, countless people died in our wake.
“I stayed a couple days more,” Wills said. “I just wanted to see it, you know? I boarded one of the planes, conned the pilots into thinking I was military intelligence and needed to be on the flight.”
“Are you serious?” Derringer raised his eyebrows. It was dangerous for Wills to admit this. Any deviation from a mission could lead to severe reprimands, if not outright expulsion.
“I had to see it. We flew lower over the city than I had expected. And then, the flash.” He shook his head. “One hundred thousand dead, in a second. One hundred thousand . Try to imagine it. All that heat. All those lives. And then the thousands who went afterward, who took a few days or even weeks to go. Imagine that.”
“They came up with worse,” I said, “less than a century later.”
We drank in silence for a bit.
“The looks on people’s faces in that airport, when they saw their towers fall,” Derringer said. “You should have seen them.”
“I cheated too,” I confessed. The drink was getting to me, along with everything else. “After I’d finished off the hags in Poland, before I started the Recall, I made my way into one of the camps. Had a uniform and everything; they let me in.”
“Glad you did it?” Wills asked.
“No. I wish to hell I hadn’t.” I’d never realized a human being could get so thin and not die. They were dying, of course; plenty of them. But the ones still alive were the worst.
More silence, more drinks.
“What I console myself with,” Wills said, “is that they’re all dead anyway. Really. So long ago, and so long dead. Nothing we can do about it.”
“I’d thought it would feel like that,” I said, “but it doesn’t. They’re in front of you. They’re real, they breathe. The pain doesn’t seem very historical when you’re steeping in it.”
The screams I’d heard in that camp. The vacant expressions I’d seen. And my job was to ensure that it happened, that the hags didn’t save them.
“It makes you hate all these people, doesn’t it?” Derringer asked later, after the third or fourth round.
“Which people?” I asked.
“ All of these people.” Derringer glared at the diners in the restaurant. It was a glitzy place, only blocks from the Capitol—not the Washington I’m currently assigned to, of course, but the new Capitol. Most of them were upper-level officials with their supplicants and tempters. “The more I do the job, the more I hate how stupid people today are.”
“They’re not stupid,” Wills said. “We’re very… privileged to know what we know.”
“They’re gerbils. Rats . It’s our job to keep their cage nice and secure.”
“Maybe you should request some time off before your next gig,” I said.
“Time.” Derringer practically snarled that. “What a hilarious concept.”
We all pondered that one for a while.
“Imagine being able to kill a hundred thousand people in one instant,” Wills said. “Imagine that power, and that hatred.”
“They all hated each other then,” I said.
“I know. They made up some military excuse, but they really only dropped the bomb because they thought the people in Hiroshima were subhuman. They wouldn’t have done it to people like themselves. They didn’t think of it as murder, exactly. It was more like… wiping a slate clean.”
In my time, the different races and ethnicities have been blended together for generations. The survivors of the Conflagration had better things to do than cling to biases against rival groups—they were just desperate to find mates and
Wherever we went, countless people died in our wake.
“I stayed a couple days more,” Wills said. “I just wanted to see it, you know? I boarded one of the planes, conned the pilots into thinking I was military intelligence and needed to be on the flight.”
“Are you serious?” Derringer raised his eyebrows. It was dangerous for Wills to admit this. Any deviation from a mission could lead to severe reprimands, if not outright expulsion.
“I had to see it. We flew lower over the city than I had expected. And then, the flash.” He shook his head. “One hundred thousand dead, in a second. One hundred thousand . Try to imagine it. All that heat. All those lives. And then the thousands who went afterward, who took a few days or even weeks to go. Imagine that.”
“They came up with worse,” I said, “less than a century later.”
We drank in silence for a bit.
“The looks on people’s faces in that airport, when they saw their towers fall,” Derringer said. “You should have seen them.”
“I cheated too,” I confessed. The drink was getting to me, along with everything else. “After I’d finished off the hags in Poland, before I started the Recall, I made my way into one of the camps. Had a uniform and everything; they let me in.”
“Glad you did it?” Wills asked.
“No. I wish to hell I hadn’t.” I’d never realized a human being could get so thin and not die. They were dying, of course; plenty of them. But the ones still alive were the worst.
More silence, more drinks.
“What I console myself with,” Wills said, “is that they’re all dead anyway. Really. So long ago, and so long dead. Nothing we can do about it.”
“I’d thought it would feel like that,” I said, “but it doesn’t. They’re in front of you. They’re real, they breathe. The pain doesn’t seem very historical when you’re steeping in it.”
The screams I’d heard in that camp. The vacant expressions I’d seen. And my job was to ensure that it happened, that the hags didn’t save them.
“It makes you hate all these people, doesn’t it?” Derringer asked later, after the third or fourth round.
“Which people?” I asked.
“ All of these people.” Derringer glared at the diners in the restaurant. It was a glitzy place, only blocks from the Capitol—not the Washington I’m currently assigned to, of course, but the new Capitol. Most of them were upper-level officials with their supplicants and tempters. “The more I do the job, the more I hate how stupid people today are.”
“They’re not stupid,” Wills said. “We’re very… privileged to know what we know.”
“They’re gerbils. Rats . It’s our job to keep their cage nice and secure.”
“Maybe you should request some time off before your next gig,” I said.
“Time.” Derringer practically snarled that. “What a hilarious concept.”
We all pondered that one for a while.
“Imagine being able to kill a hundred thousand people in one instant,” Wills said. “Imagine that power, and that hatred.”
“They all hated each other then,” I said.
“I know. They made up some military excuse, but they really only dropped the bomb because they thought the people in Hiroshima were subhuman. They wouldn’t have done it to people like themselves. They didn’t think of it as murder, exactly. It was more like… wiping a slate clean.”
In my time, the different races and ethnicities have been blended together for generations. The survivors of the Conflagration had better things to do than cling to biases against rival groups—they were just desperate to find mates and
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