He left the phone booth on the sidewalk in a lousy mood. Vil would have expected him to come home directly after work, but plans had changed, and he would be home late today. And so, when Namir All had spotted the phone booth on his way to the meeting, he had entered it to place a call to his girlfriend. However, the operator must have been new at her job and connected him to the wrong apartment, despite him being very clear that he wanted her to connect him with Valor-bat 18, not Valor-bat 16. Not having time to place a second call—and not trusting the operator to get it right the second time either—he walked quickly down the sidewalk and into a small backstreet.

The dark, narrow alley reeked of rotting garbage and stale urine, its corners clogged with discarded newspapers blown in from the cobblestone street outside. Namir knocked on the nondescript wooden door at the end of the backstreet, its green paint peeling with age, eager to escape the filth. He was still wearing the sharp, tailored suit he had donned earlier in the day as First Assistant to the Minister of the Interior of the People’s Council.

A stern-faced man, short for a Jerrassian, opened a small shutter to peer at Namir’s face. Satisfied, he unlatched the door, which creaked open with a sound much too loud for Namir’s comfort. Namir stepped through the door and into the warm air inside. The dim room he now found himself in smelled of sweet beer and rank sweat, its cavernous darkness lit only by kerosene lamps hung from the wooden beams holding up the ceiling.

“Glad you could make it, All,” a gruff voice called from across the room. Moram Kor, a large woman with streaks of silver in her fur, stepped into the middle of the room and embraced him. “Do you have any news from the People’s Council?”

Namir nodded a no.

“It’s the same old debates every day,” he said. “The same cowardly platitudes. The Council is selling us out to the capitalists. There’s constant talk of rebalancing the budget to allow for the restoration of the annexed territories. I’m doing my best to prevent that from happening, but the Chairman is insistent. If you ask me, the capitalists should be shot like the orvat-var they are, not catered to. They dilute the purity of our ideology. They’re unworthy of sharing our motherland.”

Shouts of “Hear, hear!” rose from the back of the room. Namir All had always been something of an orator. He knew how to get people to follow him into hell.

“Are we ready to make our move yet?” Moram asked, eager for the Jerrassian Liberation Front to take action.

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Namir hesitated. “I don’t think we are,” he said, careful not to upset his compatriots. Despite longing to see the Chairman’s skull pierced by a lead bullet, he couldn’t let himself be swept away by his own rhetoric. “I hate to say it, but right now, the majority of the people would rather live in the sham state the People’s Council offers than in the true workers’ paradise we could create together. Storming the Hall of the Political Bureau is only the first step. We have to prepare for what comes after the revolution. Without the people’s support, we risk civil war—and I’m not sure we’d win.”

Holding his breath, he waited for the reaction. He could hear the unsettled rustling of paws on the wooden floor but, to his relief, no one voiced their objections. He still commanded the respect of his comrades.

“Well, where does that leave us, then?” Moram asked sharply. “The Front was created to depose the illegitimate government. What’s our purpose if we can’t even do that?”

It was a rhetorical question, and the room remained silent. “We can’t win the people’s hearts without a platform to influence them. But we can’t get that platform unless we’re in charge of the government. And now you’re saying we can’t take over the government unless we’ve first influenced the people! That puts us in an impossible situation,” she concluded.

“I understand your frustration, comrade,” Namir replied in a soothing tone. “But let me propose another way.”

He had spent months thinking about this during the tedious sessions of the People’s Council where his presence was required but his help was not needed.

“The people follow the Council,” he explained. “What if we let them continue to do so? But instead of replacing the People’s Council, we force them to change their policies to align with ours.”

“That sounds all well and good,” Moram said, her voice laced with skepticism. “But how do you plan to make that happen? Granted, you’re the First Assistant to the Minister of the Interior, which gives you… some influence over her. But she’s only one voice in the People’s Council, and not a well-respected one at that. She’s the head of the secret police, after all. That doesn’t exactly win her any popularity.”

“I don’t intend to simply ask the Chairman to change his ways,” Namir replied. “I’m going to demand it.”

“At gunpoint?” Moram’s irritation was evident. That was, after all, what she had been advocating all along.

“At gunpoint,” Namir confirmed. “But not a gun aimed at the Chairman himself. I’m suggesting we take hostages instead. Let’s say we storm a school or hijack a bus, execute a handful of hostages, and then demand the People’s Council change its policies. If they refuse, we kill the rest. No matter how much the people love living under the corrupting influences of the Council, they won’t stand for the slaughter of innocents. When children are dying, they’ll rise up. The Chairman will have no choice but to bow to our demands. The People’s Council would remain in power on the surface, but it would be us leading United Jerr from the shadows.”