Zhanghai and the Restorationists built a superweapon codenamed Polyphemus below Four Eagles. The drugs were used to fund it. The Atalantan refugees were used as slave labor. The atomic material will be used to transfer the energy from the Heart to the weapon. The energy in the Heart comes from the absorption of human souls. The-

“Isaac,” Reed cut in.

Isaac rubbed his eyes. He currently sat on her bed while she went through the drawers of her desk. After ruffling through them, she held up a stack of papers that instantly made Isaac recall the Dedericks. Rather than information on superweapons, Reed’s papers featured none other than stick figure drawings of herself in heroic, theatrical poses.

“This is my movie idea,” she began, displaying each drawing with pride in her voice. “Starring Hibiscus “Reed” Reed as Reed, of course. You remember my stellar acting from the orientation film, right?”

Isaac raised an eyebrow. “I remember you sweating up a storm.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny. In any case, the title of my movie is Destiny Reed. I’ll be that sort of handsome, scruffy-looking action star who starts the movie only in it for herself.” Her eyes took on a dreamy look and she unconsciously hugged her stack of papers. “Since the Navy has to fund it, they’ll be a big part of it. I’m just a cultivator who doesn’t want any trouble, but the Navy recruits me because an old flame of mine recently kidnapped an heiress. I don’t care about the heiress, but she’s in possession of an old cultivator medallion worth a fortune on the black market. So I go help the Navy and I’m really cool and full of one-liners.”

She raised a finger and slowly twirled it in the air. “But don’t worry. I have character development. You see, in the second act, I manage to briefly rescue the heiress with her medallion. I learn she’s actually a cool girl and we bond over shared interests from our childhoods - watching movies. But then the old flame attacks in a big battle. I save the medallion, but he makes off with the heiress.”

Isaac stifled a laugh. He had never seen her speak with such energy before. Reed punctuated every moment in her movie with a wave of the arms or jab of the finger. She paced in circles across her clean floor as she spoke. “You see, I have the medallion now, and that’s all I wanted, right? So why do I feel so empty? But I leave anyway, forcing my idealistic sidekick in the Navy to conduct the attack on the old flame's base without me. Right when all hope is lost, I fly my fighter, shoot down the old flame, and tell my sidekick that I changed my mind, kid. The innate goodness of man and the connection we all have in our hearts as people won the day and made me come back to save the heiress.”

Reed looked at her final drawing - her carrying the heiress bridal-style out of the exploding base. “God, I’m such a fucking genius.”

While Isaac clapped for her, she concluded her story outline with a theatrical bow. “Once the Navy makes this movie, I’ll be a household name. I’ll be a big time actress. I’ll be somebody.”

Isaac tilted his head. “You’re already somebody, though. You’re Reed.”

“Yeah, I’m Reed, but who is Reed?” She spun the wooden chair at her desk around so the rear side of it faced him. When she sat on it reverse-style, she rested her arms on the back. “Reed, the writer. Reed, the artist. Reed, the musician. Reed, the actress. I want to be at least one of those. I want to be somebody.”

“Then who am I?” Isaac asked. In Patuxet, nobody ever really thought about questions like this. Everybody knew their role, and the roles were miner, bartender, gaslamp-lighter, things like that. You needed to know your role, because all you had time to do was work. And if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat.

“You’re Isaac, the guy taking down the big-time conspiracy.”

He supposed she wasn’t wrong, but-

“Couldn’t I say the same for you? You’re helping me, after all.”

Brunette hair bobbed along when Reed shook her head. “If we’re the same thing - people taking down the conspiracy - then I’m clearly second fiddle to you. You’re the one leading the effort. You’re the protagonist and I’m just the deuteragonist. That doesn’t work for me. I want to be the main character in my own story, not just somebody supporting someone else in their story.”

“...uh-huh.” He scratched his head. “Life’s not really a story, though.”

“You sure?” Reed questioned. She looked out the window - though it was late autumn, the sun shone brightly and a rare heat spell kept her dressed in an undershirt. Along her left arm, a river of gray skin cut through the usual pink paleness; this was where Jackson destroyed her arm all those months ago. When Reed put a hand below her shirt to scratch her stomach, a wave of unnatural grayness remained there as well. Isaac looked at his own regrown fingers on his right hand - a few were still gray from when Sam cut them off in the park.

“You look like you want to ask me something,” she said. Isaac blinked himself back into focus - he did indeed have something on his mind. But he found himself stuck in a tough balancing act. He fully trusted Reed, who was arguably his best friend here. But…one of his seven comrades was possibly a traitor. He couldn’t just up and go and talk about Four Eagles, the superweapon, the biomechanical mass known as the Heart that seemed like the key to everything. Even if Reed wasn’t a traitor, she did have a mouth, and she might tell Babs, and Babs might tell Dan, and Dan might tell Oksana…

Though it gave his heart an uncomfortable feeling, he decided to avoid that subject and focus on another question that was bothering him. “Yeah…if you don’t mind - and feel free to tell me to pound sand if you do - I have to ask. Just how much of pre-Unleashing history do you know?”

“Eh. I know a little bit.” She cracked a grin. “Every Reed kid gets private tutors. If you asked my brother or sister, they could probably give a complete rundown of mankind’s entire history, but me…history’s so goddamn boring, Isaac.”

He squinted at her in confusion. “Boring? But there’s so much to know. It’s fascinating.”

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“History is just people arguing and fighting each other,” she complained. “Sometimes it’s over farmlands. Sometimes it’s over ideology. But it’s always something like King Humperwengen of Ostermark, through his marriage to his first cousin Grand Duchess Anna Maria, went to war with King Pierre Delaroux for three miles of shitty swampland. Two thousand died in the war, nineteen-hundred of them from dysentery. It’s just wars and wars and wars. I always asked my tutor things like, ‘What did they do for fun back then?’ but then she’d hit me and we’d go back to random battle number forty-five.”

As sunlight poured through the window, she let out a nostalgic sigh. “That’s why Derek Domino was the best. My tutors always stuck me in front of the piano, but he let me play guitar. They tried to sit me down to learn trigonometry, but he let me learn how to garden. That’s how education ought to be. Just let the kids learn what they want to learn.”

Isaac’s only formal education consisted of the classroom sessions on the base each day. Though there was some stuff he didn’t care for - chemistry was drier than Osip’s sense of humor - the Navy designed the curriculum for the overall goal of making him a good cultivator and soldier. Even though he didn’t want to learn it, he knew he needed to. But Isaac wanted to get stronger, so any sort of knowledge helped him. For someone like Reed, who only had specific interests, he could see where the problems lied.

“In any case,” she continued. “I could give you a basic rundown of world history, unless you want anything specific.”

Though world history greatly interested him, Isaac did have something particular in mind. Based on the shared knowledge of Knyzosis and the octagon symbol, he strongly suspected the modern-day Restorationists were descendants of the Sect Hidden in the Mountains, if not their Theodite offshoot. And based on the Knyzosis book he previously read to learn the art, both the Sect and the Theodites strongly studied one particular group of people.

“I need to know about the Greeks. They inspired the Restorationists, didn’t they? They want to create their utopia called Kallipolis and there’s something about a philosopher-king.”

Dust floated through the sunlight. Reed leaned back and thought about it. “Alright, I’ll tell you. But you’ll owe me a sandwich for every ten minutes of consultation.”

“How about I get you a reuben when we’re on leave tomorrow?”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment. “...goddamnit, you’re good. Alright, deal.” After shaking on it, Reed slumped on her chair. “The Greeks…well, I guess they’re not the most boring. To make a long story short - they’re the ancestor of our civilization. Arcadia, Elysia, Lawrence - our way of life and thinking comes from the Greeks.”

“But they lived three thousand years ago.”

“History doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Everything comes from something before it. It’s all just one big chain.” While Isaac pondered that, Reed continued. “The Greeks had to deal with the same thing we do now - the best way to govern ourselves. What do you think is the goal of a good government, Isaac?”

Keeping Arcadians safe was the instinctive answer. But, now that Isaac was a bit of a brain expert, he knew that the goal of a good government in Elysia would be to protect Elysians. Ditto for Lawrence.

“Keeping your people safe,” he answered. He thought about it some more and frowned because the military dictatorship wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “Making the people happy.”

“If that’s the case, what’s the best way to go about it?” She tapped her fingers along the chair. “Sigismund elects their leaders. In Zhanghai, leadership is inherited. Here, it’s the military. All the little Greek city-states had their own ways of government, too. There was a lot of violence and oppression, just like there is now. To solve that question, this one philosopher gave an answer. His name was Plato.”

The name didn’t ring any bells, but still, Isaac had to sit and reflect. “This guy lived three thousand years ago, too, and we still know what he wrote about?”

“That’s what history is all about. The Reed education puts a big emphasis on the classics.” Another sigh. “That was Viola’s doing. She loved the classics, and she was a hero, so now all good Reeds have to know them. It’s boring, but in a nutshell - Plato proposed that philosophers should govern. The best way to keep people safe and happy is to rule justly. But since absolute power corrupts absolutely, only philosophers are smart enough to know a just rule would benefit everyone, including themselves.” Reed tapped the side of her head. “Pretty convenient that a philosopher says philosophers oughta rule, right?”

Considering the way Zhanghai and the State Police gunned down striking Patuxet miners, or the murder of his brother for seeking the truth, or the squalid conditions of Four Eagles, there did seem to be a distinct lack of justice in Arcadia.

“The people don’t elect the philosophers, of course,” Reed said. “Kallipolis has one ruling class consisting of the brightest and best. The philosophers teach them how to rule justly, and since the kids are also raised as philosophers, they know it’s in their best interests, both morally and materially, to rule justly as well. And once you have someone competent in charge, happiness sort of just trickles down. You raise everyone else to be content with their lot in life and submit to the philosopher's rule. But since the philosopher is ruling justly, it’ll be easy for the people to buy in and feel content. Because they have a big man upstairs genuinely looking out for them.”

“But…isn’t that just what the Arcadian military says?”

“Of course. But you’ve seen it yourself - Arcadia isn’t doing a good job of backing up what they say. So, despite all the propaganda, people start looking for alternatives. And that’s where something like Restorationism comes in. Compared to the government now, a ruling class that genuinely cares for the people seems like a pretty good thing.”

Isaac ran a hand through his hair. “But…why does there need to be a ruling class? Couldn’t everyone just be free to do as they please?”

With a nod of her head, Reed gestured towards the window. “Everyone was free five hundred years ago. Because they were free, they couldn’t work together when the Unleashing happened. That’s why you had atomic warfare afterwards. When people are free, it means they’re free to achieve happiness at the cost of others. In contrast, something like a ruling class and Restorationism - sure, maybe you have to be happy the way they want you to be happy, but the trains run on time.”

The conversation was approaching uncomfortable territory. “Do you want a ruling class?”

A vigorous shake of her head answered him. “Of course not. I want the freedom to fuck off and do my own thing more than anyone else in the world. But I lived in a mansion and never starved a day in my life. If you’re a malnourished factory worker or tenant farmer, you won’t have time or energy to study why freedom and democracy are good. Understanding we can have an entire new system requires education. Keeping a government based on order, rather than some abstract concept like freedom, and swapping out incompetent military chiefs for wise philosophers who talk about utopia is far more straightforward.”

When Isaac first arrived at the base, many of the northern and western conscripts were both starving and illiterate, so Reed had a point. He leaned back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. “I think I want to make a world based on freedom. But I guess I gotta be in a position to remake the world first.”

The sun started to set. The first shadows of the night fell across Reed’s pale skin as she stood. “Well, let me just tell you something. The only thing you’re in a position for right now is to get a good night’s sleep. Because tomorrow is our day off, Isaac, and let’s be clear.”

She leaned forward, her gray eyes inches away from his. “I am getting absolutely plastered tomorrow, and you’re coming along for the ride. You’re gonna be my deuteragonist for once.”