POV: Khesol, Znosian Dominion State Security (Position: Operative)

  Khesol wrapped her cloak around her tighter as she exited the ancient building, her thoughts roiled with uncertainty.

  Her suspicions had all been confirmed.

  What had happened to the Dominion in the last year or two… The plot was insidiously simple, yet the execution was more complex than anything she could have imagined. They had… everything.

  Glancing at the busy city in front of her, she suddenly felt very vulnerable. Her eyes flickered from the traffic signal lights, to the datapad clutched in the paws of a passing worker, to every vehicle that traveled its streets.

  Everything.

  Nowhere is safe.

  Khesol walked another dozen steps, then felt the fur on her back stand up straight.

  Something is wrong.

  She couldn’t tell what it was, but there was just something that made her uneasy. She ducked into a side building. The markings on its entrance said “Office of Education and Training”. There were two workers behind the greeting desk, an elderly Znosian and a younger male, both busy at their desks.

  “Hello?” the elder called out to her. “Are you in the right place, hatchling?”

  Khesol looked straight at her and what was obviously her subordinate next to her.

  “Are you alright, hatchling?” the elder continued. “Do you need us to call someone?”

  “Office of State Security,” she said, flashing her identification card at them. “Apostasy Investigations.”

  Their expressions instantly tightened up. “Yes, ma’am,” the elder said. “Is there something you need? Do you have suspicions about one of our workers—”

  She pointed at the younger one with a claw. “You. Get over here.”

  He hurried over. “Yes, officer. Have I— is there something I need to take full responsibility for?”

  “Shut up,” Khesol ordered as she took off her cloak and cap. She pointed at it. “Take off your uniform and put this on instead.”

  “Huh?”

  “Am I going to need to ask twice?”

  “No, ma’am.” The young worker quickly wrapped her cloak around him and put the cap on. It didn’t quite fit, but he wasn’t going to complain. She put his uniform on herself.

  Khesol held out her paw. “Datapad.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She got on the worker’s datapad and opened its communications menu. She dialed the director’s number, which she knew by heart.

  The other end picked up immediately. “Hello?” It was Fstrofcho, her attendant.

  “Attendant, this is Khesol. Is the director available—”

  “Operative Khesol, this is your identity confirmation question: what was the first piece of enemy propaganda you read?”

  She took a deep breath as she recalled. “Everyone Dies Alone.”

  Fstrofcho was quiet for a moment, but he came back momentarily. “Correct, Khesol. What do you need?”

  “Is the director available right now?”

  “You are not authorized to know that information at this time.”

  Khesol rolled her eyes at his annoyingly patient voice. “Okay, I need to make an appointment with her.”

  “You can do that. For what time?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “For what purpose?”

  Khesol didn’t say anything for a moment, just composing what she wanted to say in her mind.

  “Hello, Operative Khesol. Are you still—”

  “Yes, attendant. I need to report to her personally, regarding a matter of the highest possible priority: the Dominion has been compromised to its core by its enemies, within and without, and it has to do with the machines we use for our hatchling pools. I have actionable intelligence regarding the threat right now, and I have enough auxiliary information that we can act on with the director’s approval.”

  That should be enough.

  Fstrofcho took a few seconds to take it down. “Is that all?”

  “Yes, attendant.”

  “I will find a time slot for you, and I will call you. Should I return the call to this datapad or…”

  “No, my regular datapad is fine. And I am coming back to HQ right now,” she said as she hung up.

  Khesol looked at the two very confused workers still staring at her.

  She pointed at the young one. “Let’s go.”

  “Go… where?”

  She grabbed his paw. “Shut up, and follow me.”

  They exited the building out the front, with the confused worker in tow.

  Khesol turned back and looked at him seriously. “Listen very carefully. Walk behind me with a twenty step separation. If I stop, you stop. If I turn, you turn. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, still in a daze.

  She looked at him impatiently. “Repeat my instruction back to me.”

  He cleared his throat. “I will follow you, twenty steps behind you. If you… turn, I turn. And uh… if you stop…”

  “Good enough. Follow me now.” She nodded as she began to walk. A minute later, she glanced back to confirm that he was still following her as she ordered. She thanked the Prophecy that he was.

  Four blocks later, a large-sized transport vehicle across the street spun out of control, careening through four lanes of pedestrians and straight into her patsy, smearing him into the pavement beneath its weight.

  If Khesol didn’t know better, she might have turned around and tried to assign responsibility. But she did know better. And she knew exactly what was going on. It was everything she’d already suspected.

  She was hopping away from the scene before the obliterated vehicle even came to a complete stop.

  POV: Plodvi, Znosian Dominion Navy (Rank: Six Whiskers)

  Plodvi looked wide-eyed at the assortment of stolen items on the table in front of him. Radios, vehicle tags, maps… explosives.

  “I think— I still think we should reconsider,” Rirkhni said nervously. “This is— we’re not even trained to do this.”

  “It’s fine,” Hobbsia said. Unlike Rirkhni, she’d grown more confident as the plan progressed. She’d converted her cold practicality into concrete action, and she’d actually gotten most of the goods they’d “borrowed”. With her quick thinking, it had been relatively easy for the small squad of rebels to acquire so many tools without raising alarm bells, and she knew exactly how to avoid the scrutiny and checks that the Dominion placed on its own officers. “We’re ready.”

  Plodvi examined the maps and nodded in agreement. He spread one of them out on the table in the dim lighting. “This is the route they are taking. We got this from one of ours in the ground Marine crew.”

  “Did you bring them in on this?” Rirkhni asked nervously.

  “No, they know nothing about his… yet,” Plodvi replied. “They only knew we needed the information, not what for.”

  “And what if…” Rirkhni asked the unspoken question.

  “They are— they are…”

  “They are like us,” Hobbsia said enthusiastically. “They may be open to recruitment once our plan goes through.”

  “Sounds… risky.”

  “There is no gain without risk,” Hobbsia declared.

  Rirkhni wanted to say something more, but Plodvi cut him off with a paw. “That’s enough. We’ve all agreed we’re doing this. And what’s done is done. If we stop now, our chances of detection do not significantly lower.”

  “I’m not— I’m not against going forward,” Rirkhni finally relented. “But I just want to make sure we’re being careful enough. There are eyes and ears of— of the enemy, everywhere.”

  “That’s true,” Plodvi said. “But we don’t have that much more time to ourselves. Let’s run through the convoy route again.”

  Hobbsia cleared her throat and stabbed a claw at one of the myriad of symbols and lines she’d drawn on the piece of paper. “This is the starting point. If all goes according to plan, the vehicles leave the base at exactly four hours past midnight. At this marked location, we have…”

  POV: Plertsin, Znosian (Position: Senior Doctor)

  Survival is Service. Your purpose in the Prophecy is not yet fulfilled.

  Senior Doctor Plertsin averted his eyes from the silver plaque above his office. Not that his purpose was fulfilled; the reminder was meant for the patients, not him. Some patients in his care would naturally get depressed in their illness, and that was not conducive to their prognosis or the fulfillment of the hospital’s responsibility. The plaque reminded them of their duty, to do their best to fight their ailments… that if the Dominion State no longer required their services, they would be at the recycling room downstairs, not here to be treated.

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  At the ripe age of nineteen, Plertsin was one of the most senior workers at the hospital. But it was not an anomalous age, for one to be in his position. While most simple laborers aged into recycling around twelve or thirteen, his role as a doctor required an additional two years of job training, not to mention the resources dedicated to his breeding in the first place. That meant it would be extremely inefficient for people like him to be retired prior to the Dominion squeezing every last possible drop of work from him.

  For now, his purpose in the Prophecy was not yet fulfilled.

  That didn’t mean he didn’t feel every month of his seniority. His bones creaked. His whiskers grayed. And his eyesight had gotten so bad that he needed to get optical lenses fit over them a year ago.

  He pushed his glasses up and secured them over his ears as he walked into the next patient’s room and examined the medical history charts of the cheery patient in front of him.

  “Good day, Senior Doctor?”

  Plertsin looked up over the top of his glasses at her and returned her greeting. “Indeed. No casualties today yet… Officer Nashto. And you seem to be recovering well.”

  Nashto’s reply was just as upbeat. “Bah! If I can survive the enemies of the state who want me dead, I think I can survive a little Fsuzvan Cough."

  “A little Fsuzvan Cough?!” He frowned and took another look at her chart to confirm. “Officer, your charts say— the seaside variant of the disease you have is one of the deadlier afflictions we deal with!”

  Actually, as far as Plertsin knew, it was the deadliest. The only reason it was being treated at all here meant that this officer must have been extremely valuable to the Dominion for the triaging Digital Guides to even bother.

  “Bah. That can’t be right.”

  Plertsin took one look at the State Security officer’s frown and bowed. “Excuse me, Officer. I take full responsibility. I did not mean to contradict your version of the truth. I was merely expressing surprise at your rapid recovery. Your survival is a gift from the Prophecy, an inspiration that I will endeavor not to waste—”

  “No, no. That can’t be right.”

  “Hm?"

  “Everyone at my office got the Fsuzvan Cough. Same variant. And they all survived.”

  Plertsin scrutinized her chart again. It was exactly as she said.

  Fsuzvan Acute Respiratory Syndrome, North Green Sea variant.

  Plertsin had treated an outbreak of it about ten years ago. All twelve of his patients died. It wasn’t a particularly infectious disease, not one of those that warranted a real quarantine, but it was extremely deadly. There were no outright cures, only a cocktail of taxing drugs that extended the life expectancy of the patient with the hope that their bodies would be able to fight it off eventually.

  And yet… Nashto was sitting at the foot of her medical cot, looking up at him with her bright eyes.

  “Everyone at your office?! That seems… highly improbable,” Plertsin struggled to say, trying his best to appear deferential. “I’ve seen a few cases in my time. And as I recall from Dominion statistics, nine out of ten patients succumb, and the remaining are expected to recover with severe respiratory dysfunction and drastically reduced lung function.”

  “And yet, here I am.”

  “And yet, here you are,” Plertsin muttered as he triple-checked her documentation. He immediately ruled out a misdiagnosis. The positive blood test, along with the symptoms, was conclusive. Or at least it was more conclusive than the fatality rate of the illness. “I don’t mean to pry into Dominion secrets, but you say that… all of your colleagues at your office got it?”

  She waved a paw dismissively. “Yup. Last month. Fifteen— no, sixteen cases. Our station director had to take responsibility and pause our case-work for a week to allow for recovery.”

  “A week?!”

  “Yup. I showed symptoms last after everyone. Hm… Senior Doctor, does that mean my breeding is superior to my colleagues or inferior?” she asked, still cheerily unaware of the confusion in Plertsin’s mind.

  “It’s… neither. As far as I know, we have not made any progress breeding any immunity to this variant into our bloodlines,” Plertsin said distractedly as he turned another page on her medical chart. As a senior doctor, he was up to date on all the relevant medical literature, especially in his infectious diseases specialty. And if there was a research breakthrough in something like this, he was certain he’d have heard about it.

  Officer Nashto shrugged. “Must be the drug then.”

  For the same reason, he was pretty sure there weren’t any drug-related breakthroughs either. He checked her chart again to ensure that she’d been given the appropriate dosage of—

  Wait a minute.

  “Hm… there appears to be… a mistake,” Plertsin said a moment later as he stared at the words in front of him in shock.

  “A mistake? In what?”

  Flustered, he said, “The pharmaceuticals we gave you were for the wrong— sometimes our laborers who mix the drugs— they’re not the most well-bred— I take full responsibility, of course, and I assure you that we will diligently report this mistake up the chain so responsibility can be fully assigned.”

  “You gave me the wrong drugs?” she asked, her cheery demeanor turning into an expression of horror for a moment. Then, she recovered. “But… I’m still alive and well, so… it worked anyway, right?”

  Plertsin looked back at her face in confusion.

  It looked healthy enough. He took out his laser thermometer, and with a beep, the device recorded the temperature of her ears.

  Nominal.

  “Huh. You appear… healthy. And… your tests say… the infection has mostly been flushed out of your system.”

  Nashto poked him with a claw. “Hah. Whew. You almost had me scared there, Senior Doctor. Well, does that mean I can be checked out? Preferably soon? I have an important job, you know? Enemies of the state do not catch themselves.” She winked.

  Plertsin lowered his eyes to the floor. “Yes, Officer. Of course. Once I fill out the forms, you can be on your way…”

  “Pharmacist 19, are you Pharmacist 19?!” Plertsin demanded at the laborer at the counter as he thumped his foot.

  “No— not me, Senior Doctor,” the target of his ire whimpered. “I am Pharmacist 16.”

  “I’m looking for Pharmacist 19.”

  “Yes, Senior Doctor… That’s— that’s… Pharmacist Khotsop.”

  “Where is that idiot? Khotsop? Pharmacist Khotsop? Are you back there? Khotsop?!”

  From out the backroom, a young, big-eared pharmacist hopped out to the counter. “Yes, Doctor?”

  “That’s Senior Doctor to you!”

  She bowed respectfully. “Yes— yes, of course, Senior Doctor. Are you in need of medication—”

  “No!” Plertsin slammed Nashto’s medical charts on the counter. “Were you the one who ignored my prescription and added your own?! That’s not my handwriting on there!”

  Khotsop turned the papers around, staring at the barely legible scribbles on the page. “Uh… right. Fsuzvan Cough. We no longer carry the drug you specified. It has been discontinued for ineffectiveness. Instead, my Digital Guide recommended the replacement—”

  “Replacement drug? Since when?!”

  “Since…” Khotsop looked around at the other pharmacists for support, but they all conveniently found themselves busy with something else at the moment. “Since… I started working?”

  “Since you started—” Plertsin sighed loudly in exasperation. He hadn’t expressed his views to anyone else, but he personally disagreed with the Dominion’s increasingly concerning practice of cutting corners for its pharmacist training to save on resources… “Of course. Since you started working. How long ago was that, hatchling?”

  “Nine— nine months ago, Senior Doctor. I take full responsibility for— for—” She floundered, like she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to take responsibility for.

  “Nine months. Weren’t you trained such that you would notify the prescribing doctor if an important drug has been discontinued?” Plertsin tried to maintain his fury, but it was getting harder to be angry at such a polite hatchling who was being so deferential to him.

  “Yes— yes, Senior Doctor. But the Digital Guide said there was no need to do that for this case because it’s a therapeutic equivalent. So I just marked the change on the chart and gave her the replacement.”

  “A therapeutic equivalent? To replace an ineffective drug? That doesn’t sound right. That’s not what a therapeutic equivalent is!”

  “Yes, Senior Doctor. But that was what my Digital Guide said.”

  Plertsin turned the chart around again to read it. “And this… Rimantadine? I’ve— I’ve never seen that before.”

  “Yes, Senior Doctor.”

  “You useless… You! You look like you didn’t start working here yesterday.” Plertsin pointed a claw at the original worker at the counter. “You ever seen this before, pharmacist? This— this Rimantadine?”

  Pharmacist 16 stopped pretending he wasn’t listening to the conversation and bowed his head. “Yes, Senior Doctor. It’s the replacement drug for treating serious cases of the Fsuzvan Cough.”

  “I know that now! But when did we start using it?!”

  “About… about a year and a half ago?” the older pharmacist estimated.

  “A year and a half. And why am I just hearing about this just now?!”

  There were shrugs all around.

  Plertsin grumbled for a few more seconds and sighed. “Alright, show me.”

  “Senior— senior doctor?” Khotsop stuttered.

  “Show me what your Digital Guide said when you requested this drug,” Plertsin repeated with extraordinary patience. “So I know how to prescribe it in the future!”

  She hurriedly made a few taps on her datapad and handed her device over.

  Rimantadine: RNA synthesis inhibitor. Therapeutic equivalent replacement for Korvoshir-4. Approved by the Dominion Drug Design Bureau for the treatment of Fsuzvan Acute Respiratory Syndrome (“Fsuzvan Cough”) and Vdrajaman Severe Respiratory Syndrome (“Vdrajaman Sniffles”). In emergencies, may be used for treatment in severe cases of viral respiratory illnesses in the following classes of…

  Plertsin scrolled down to the side effects and drug interactions sections, which were sparse, and the ones that her datapad presented to him were identical to the original drug. Still frowning, he scrolled down to the section containing the studies that verified its incredible effectiveness.

  And there they were.

  Everything in order, just as expected.

  Except — he stared at the near-certain survival prognosis for patients on the new drug — if there had been such an important medical breakthrough, surely he would have heard about it, no? How could such an incredible innovation have slipped his attention? And the implications for other respiratory diseases, by the Prophecy! In his fifteen years as doctor, there had never been anything like this.

  Or has there been and I just don’t remember?

  Wordlessly, he put the datapad back down on the counter. He stared at all the pharmacists, some of whom were looking at him with uneasiness on their faces.

  “Senior Doctor? Are you alright, Senior Doctor?” Khotsop asked with concern.

  Plertsin thought for a long moment as he removed his glasses and put them back into his pocket. “Yes, yes, I’m alright. However, I believe… I believe that I can begin to see the end of my Service to the Prophecy.”

  “Senior Doctor?”

  “My memory… it must be failing,” he mumbled. He waved a paw back at them casually as he walked off. “Carry on with your work. What? Never seen an addled senior doctor before? Bah. It’ll happen to all of you one day…”

  Patient has checked out. Treatment successful as expected. Supply of new drugs is at 30%. We will need a resupply soon for—

  Khotsop looked up and around, carefully checking to make sure nobody was looking at her datapad. Satisfied, she looked down to continue typing.

  I think Senior Doctor Plertsin suspects. Please help me.

  The datapad was silent for a few seconds. Then it beeped as a reply materialized on her screen.

  I checked. His suspicion is not serious. He just submitted a report documenting his responsibility for being forgetful. Our cover held. You are clear, Pharmacist Khotsop.

  I’m scared. I don’t want to be discovered and recycled. I’ve done everything you asked me… I want to know your plan. Why are you doing this? Are you poisoning the State Security officers with your chemical drugs?

  The datapad replied immediately this time. Of course not. Did she look poisoned?

  No. She looks fully cured and healthy.

  Exactly. And she is.

  But why?! Why are you covertly curing our sick State Security officers?! When I first started working for you, you said you’d always tell me the truth! I want to know the truth about what we are doing here!

  I said I would never lie to you, and I never have. There are elements of our operation you can’t know, in case you are captured and interrogated. But what I can tell you truthfully is this: you are saving the lives of your patients. Without us, they would be dead, from one of your deadly diseases or another. The drugs we ship you — they are real; they are not poison.

  That is not good enough. I want to know more. I deserve to know.

  There was a long pause before her datapad replied. From our literature you’ve read, have you encountered the concept of karma?

  Yes. It’s one of your people’s superstitions: that if you do a lot of good things, then good things will happen to you, right?

  More or less. Well, we’ve done a lot of bad things elsewhere. So… we balance it all by doing good here and there.

  This is about some nonsense superstition?! You are curing random patients to avoid abstract forms of… cosmic justice?

  Except our adversaries are not imaginary. They are not gods, nor fate. They are programs and statistical models that search for outliers, whether those outliers are people or data points. And like all such automatons, they inherit the flaws and blind spots of their creators. You have helped us expand those blind spots so what we do in the shadows can go unnoticed.

  I understand all that, but I still don’t see the full picture.

  You’ll see soon enough. Our cover is already beginning to fray and unravel. They can already feel the outlines; they are just trying to grasp the full extent of it. It’s a matter of days now, not weeks. And then…

  And then what? You promised me that there will be an end to this. That we would be doing the right thing. To free my people. But that has not happened. Other than our military losses to your ships, State Security is as strong as ever.

  Look around you, Pharmacist Khotsop. You see a civilization of people who all know their place, living in organized harmony, carrying out their duties and responsibilities. You see a massive dominion, six hundred worlds strong, hundreds of light years in expanse. Its true scale, barely comprehensible for the biological mind. You see an empire of cogs and gears, all turning in perfect unison, even those few that could choose otherwise. Irregularities are spat out of the machine, efficiently discarded and replaced by another interchangeable part. You see the end of this assembly line, where the irrelevant widgets come out, one-after-another. Without fail, without cessation. For centuries. For millennia. You see the totality of this gargantuan machine and you tremble with fear at its leviathan might. I see all that too. But… do you know what else I see?

  Khotsop typed her question with a shaking paw.

  What do you see?

  I see just the perfect place to jam my long metal stick.