This guy's smirk was unbelievable. Sitting on the other side of what could generously be called an Exhuman interrogation room, fifteen feet of transparent plastic and metal cage and comms between us, you'd think he was sitting on a throne over there.

I cleared my throat delicately. "Sir, what I don't think you're getting is that this is an unprecedented offer, and not one which is likely to be made again, or sweeter. Total amnesty for being Exhuman...it's unheard of."

His grin broadened. It was unnerving.

"Funny you should say that. That's just what they told me you'd say."

"Who? Who is telling you what I'd say? And...why the hell does it even matter?" I shook my head. "Whether someone else predicted this offer or not, that doesn't change how good an offer it is."

"I want full human rights. I deserve it."

"You know we can't do that."

Instead of getting upset, he just leaned back in his chair. "You can, you just won't. There's a big difference. But it don't matter what you will or won't, because without our help, you'll be swept away soon enough. All I gotta do is keep my nose clean and wait."

He leaned forward, and even though we were fifteen feet apart, and the walls of plastic and metal kept me well out of his range, I still found myself nervous at the few inches of his approach.

"And you fine folks," he continued "have done nothing but make me damn good at keeping my nose clean and waiting. So yeah. If you want my full cooperation: I'll take that amnesty, and human status as well."

I shook my head at him, frowning as I tapped away on a tablet, issuing orders remotely. "Just tell me, who put you up to this? Who told you what I'd say, told you to reject the offer, told you where the arbitrary line is you're all waiting for?"

"The resistance," he grinned.

"Yes, but who?"

He stood and walked to the door on his right. "I'm ready to go back in now. Thanks for the chat, love."

I almost growled at him. But I didn't. Instead, I took out some of my irritation at jabbing the button on my tablet with enough force that my finger hurt, sending out the orders I'd queued earlier. It took less than a minute for an armored escort to appear in his doorway and lead him out. And once he was gone, I collapsed backwards into my seat, melting inside and out.

The worst part was how familiar it was getting.

"Ma'am." My aide said the same damn thing every time he appeared, like he used the phrase for echolocation.

"Let me guess. The administrator wants a report."

"Yes ma'am."

I shook my head. How damn familiar it was getting.

Another report in. Another day of being chastised for not doing enough by a man who was doing nothing, a man I could order sent home, if I wanted. Another day of the resistance's influence growing, cancer-like, through these Exhumans.

Vox Humanus, a name -- if you could call it that -- was all we'd gotten of this new resistance leader. He or she...or it, for all the XPCA knew, operated completely differently than the previous resistance leader. Whereas Soran had just used the resistance to further whatever unkowable aims his powers pressured him towards, worked underground like a traditional resistance movement, amassed arms and supporters...Vox seemed to exist only in ideas, memetically spreading through the camp. Almost like a religion.

Couriers -- or less charitably, missionaries -- would show up randomly at people's doors. They would provide aid, literal humanitarian aid sorely lacking in the city. They would provide conversation and companionship, a slice of human interaction in a place where bitchiness and violence were the norm. They'd talk about something coming, a new dawn for Exhumans, providing a hope which had been long dead.

In short, they did exactly as our interogees said. They provided humanity, something the XCPA could neither squeeze out of them, nor compete with.

The leader's name was the real stinger. Vox Humanus. The voice of humanity. How long had he considered adding 'ex-' to his name? How different a meaning would it have? To be the voice of Exhumanity would be divisive, would go the route of the old resistance, us-versus-them. But the voice of humanity? To bring out the human in each Exhuman, to treat us as one, by blanket term, by his name?

Phew. A lot to unpack there. And a dangerous adversary.

I was on my way out of the meeting with Captain Malcom, and though that was a relief, I had to pause and turn around to seek him out again. I found him engaged with some lieutenant, basically having the same conversation we just did. I waited for them to finish and he turned to me.

"Something to add, Director?"

"Yes. Offering the Exhumans amnesty isn't working, and we're out of carrots," I told him. "I think it's time to start employing the stick."

He looked offended. "The whole city is already on a razor's edge, and you want to start disciplining them?"

I pulled out my knife and waved it lazily in the air. Not standard issue, composite blade, nanofiber-reinforced. Honed and blackened.

"How long do you think you can balance a situation on a razor's edge?" I asked, examining the blade.

"Excuse me?"

"You said the situation's on edge. Balancing." I looked up from it to him. "How long do you think you can keep it there?"

"Is this a threat, Director?" He looked around, and found the other XPCA in the area watching us dispassionately.

"No," I laughed. "Why would I threaten you with physical violence? I outrank you, by a huge margin. I could have you packed up and sent away with a word. I could disappear you to some podunk base in Alaska...or have you performing a useful function in helping the evacuees, instead of...whatever it is you aren't doing here."

"Then what is this?" he sputtered.

"This--" I put the knife away with a flourish. "Is a question. You should recognize them by now, since you spend all day spewing them at people. How long. Do you think. The situation. Will hold?"

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"I-I don't...understand…"

"It's not a hard question. You're informing me that I'm unaware of the consequences my actions will have on the city. You are implicitly telling me that you know more about this place and this situation than I do. Which, given that this is your post, is hopefully correct. So. Use that expertise, and tell me. How. Long?"

"I don't...I don't know. Until the resistance grows to a critical mass? Until Vox tells them to act, like Soran told them before?"

"And do you have figures on that?"

He shuffled from his seat, only to sit at a computer and log in, pulling up files. "The...last resistance...was at work for at least three months...they reached about fifteen percent of the city actively supporting them before they moved."

"But this situation is different. That movement was focused on amassing weapons, supplies, information, soldiers. That was an armed insurgent uprising. This one is all propaganda and belief."

"It spreads faster," he agreed.

"It involves less commitment, less involvement, less risk. Fifteen percent is nothing."

"Nothing?" he asked, pulling up reports. I shook my head at watching him work. For a professional, he was a damn ameteur. I wheeled his chair to the side and took his place.

"Just looking at the number of people we've pulled against the population census data. We're already looking at closer to twenty percent. But here--" I dragged some figures into a spreadsheet and began the process of auto-collating, graphing, then mapping them. "Locations of known missionaries, and their intended targets, colored by date."

The map was a mess, but one with a pattern. It looked like a thermal image of the city, blue around the edges, but growing red hot towards the front gate, towards the heart of New Eden.

"What does this mean?" he asked.

I pointed. "Like all belief structures, it started on the outskirts of society. Say what you will about New Eden, but like any other place, those with their backs to the wall are the most desperate, the most willing to turn to radical ideas. They're the oldest missionaries, and over time, you can see their influence spread further and further inward and forward. They begin skipping over sections soon enough."

"Because those Exhumans wouldn't convert?"

"Because they were already converted. Many of them become the next wave of missionaries. You can tell as much from data by what it doesn't show as what it does."

He stared, open-mouthed at the display, and, not gonna lie, I had a moment of crushing egotism as I saw him realizing why I'd been sent here. The same data, hell, the same computer he was just sitting at, but instead of clicking through reports to see if anyone ever told me some piece of data, I could interpolate, extrapolate, elucidate.

"So what's that mean?" he asked.

"Well," I said, pulling up the much more straightforward census data, and similarly tabling and mapping it, to overlay with the heatmap we already had. "That means, given a generous estimate, we're looking at forty percent of New Edeners either supporting or sympathetic to Vox."

I wheeled the chair to face him and found him gaping at me. "So," I asked. "How long do you think the city can stay on your razor? Until we pass fifteen percent? Because we crossed that point two days ago."

"Forty percent can't be accurate. That's just...data manipulation. Statistics."

I grabbed the back of his chair and put my face in his personal space. His breathing stopped. This move drew a lot more looks than playing with a knife, I noted with some amusement.

"I've asked you how long, and it seems clear to me, you haven't the faintest idea. Not of how long, not of how many, not of the nature of what we're facing. And yet, you, with all this incredible insight, with all this abundant knowledge, with all this expertise, you are telling me what I should and shouldn't do. It's been three days since I've arrived, two since we found out about Vox. Is it one until the situation is out of our control?"

"I-I d-don't…"

I brought my face even closer. I could see myself in his blue eyes. "If you d-don't, then d-don't tell me how to do my job. The carrot isn't working. We're bringing out the stick."

"Won't that…" he swallowed hard. "Never mind. Ma'am."

"Spit it out."

He glanced around, looking for support in those around. But as though propelled by his gaze, the officers around us immediately found ways to make themselves busy and not get pulled into the conflict. I had to grin internally, being at the top of the chain of command had some excellent perks. I think the situation was exacerbated by the fact that they heard the Director was coming to visit, and then up shows this lanky, teenage-lookin', hundred-something-pound girl. And now even better, when that scrawny teen gets in their boss's face and starts yelling.

"W-well, I just meant...and no disrespect, ma'am...but...wouldn't punishing them...just...increase sympathy for the resistance?"

Well what did you know? He could make a coherent argument. I gave him a few inches of breathing space as a reward. "The resistance's spread is memetic, viral. It went from fifteen to forty percent saturation in two days, because that's how exponential growth works. At that rate, we're looking at one-hundred percent in two more days. And you propose doing nothing?"

"I don't want to make it worse."

I laughed, right in his face, real unpleasant-like. It felt awkward as hell, but I was really pushing the bad-cop angle right now. "Worse than hundred percent saturation? What, you've tried nothing and that was your only idea?"

He gave me a shifty look, thoughtful, but helpless. And I finally let him go.

"Have the identified missionaries brought in and detained. Have it proclaimed to those--" I pointed at the core of the heatmap, where the word of Vox was not yet rooted "--that joining the resistance is considered a subversive act, and by terms of the New Eden amnesty program, a punishable offense. Make a big show of the raids, let the Edeners know we're taking the resistance members, let them see the danger of joining."

"Ma'am," he said, giving a salute, and apparently just happy that I wasn't on him like paint anymore.

"Then let's go. We've got a root to weed out, before it grows any further."

The next few hours were a lot more enjoyable. Not that I didn't find some professional pride in getting in people's heads and shredding their esteem and conflicts until they were a smooth-bore vessel for doing exactly what I wanted, but I wouldn't say it was exactly fun. Especially not when they were people just trying to make it by, trying to do their jobs, even if they were kinda sucky at them.

Instead, I got to sit and watch, or oversee technically, as the fire I lit under him was spread through the base. He pulled in his usual suspects of underlings and minions, and lambasted them as I had him, pointing emphatically at the maps and figures I'd pulled together and prophecising the same doom I had instilled.

I'd talked about the resistance being a virus, and that was true. Benign as it appeared, for the moment, it seemed to exist only to spread itself. But who could say what form it might mutate into next? Ideas were a powerful thing, and these were out of our control. And more significantly, they held sway over these Exhumans that we were supposed to.

It was like the old man I'd interviewed yesterday had said -- the resistance was about humanity...with only vague allusions towards enemies. We needed control of the situation before the vague disappeared, and the enemies resolved into the XPCA.

But we were a virus, too. Just as Vox could mobilize his ideas through the Exhuman host, so could I through the XPCA with orders. All at once, the city was no longer a fertile and nurturing place for Vox's ideas to be nurtured, but instead inhospitable. I knew the weaker members of the resistance would back off at once, those afraid of making waves or risking their lives, they'd go back to their sullen lives, thinking the others who remained stupid.

Which was a double-edged sword. We'd cut down on popular support, at the cost of sympathy, but also hone the resistance down to only its more fanatical members. It increased the danger of radicalization...but I also had to keep in mind the mission statement of the XPCA -- to protect the innocent. Those who would back down when given the chance deserved the chance to do so.

It was, in the end, a numbers game with human players at work. Gross to reduce it to that, but it was what it was. Vox and I were seated on opposite sides of this board, and all the XPCA and Exhumans of New Eden were the pieces to move around, to kindle and infect, to maneuver...and to capture.

As I watched my pieces move around me, orders being issued, plans being drawn up, exosuits being unracked and prepped, I had to admit, I did enjoy it. I'd been doing this Black Shark thing for quite a while now, and never had I had any form of opposition to my movements. I could wish the stakes were a little lower for my first game, but that didn't diminish the fun of the act.

I stretched and then went back to my office and let them go. I gave direction and ideas, I didn't micromanage. This wasn't the kind of battle you could win like that anyway. Pieces moved on their own. I blacked out my window and, finally with a little privacy, sat down at my computer.

And cracked my knuckles, my back, and my neck. And then got to work.