Prophet

by Sin Blaché

“I’m not going to talk about what they were doing in there,” he says slowly. “It was obscene. Still is. It’s happening right now. There’s a cabal of sadists in possession of the conviction that they’re saving the world running that shithole and its redacted fucking city.”

“The problem with imagining a home you want to return to is, of course, that you tend to exclude people from it you don’t want there with you.”

“Anyway. One model of nostalgia sees it as a psychological response to trauma and discontinuity. A defence mechanism. Big social changes can conjure it. Wars, revolutions, 9/11. People feel dislocated, so they conjure an imaginary past they long to return to. This fantasy place of safety. So nostalgia is emotional and psychological, but it’s also political. Highly manipulatable, either politically or in the marketplace.

“Yes,” Rao says. He’s learning the less he says to Hunter the better. Using words in her presence is like putting out targets in a live-fire exercise.

He shakes it firmly and is about to say something suitably lighthearted when the words turn to ash in his throat. He’s met her eyes. Seen deep, deep resignation in them. Ah, he thinks, slowly. She doesn’t think I’m going to survive this.

He looks like John Denver, Rao decides. An amoral, balding, asshole John Denver.

Chills, a cold sweat, the smell of his childhood kitchen, his father’s burnt toast acrid in his nostrils, charred caramel of spent rounds, thick sludge of dread and self-loathing fresh and new in his stomach, everything balling up inside. He can’t care. He won’t care. He cares too much.

Espionage rests on trust, on passing, on leverage, and on betrayal, and Rao’s existence breaks the whole system.

“I’m a test subject with my wits about me and free access to a weapon. I could blow my brains out and ruin your chances to get what you want. Every hostage situation begins and ends with confidence.”

“You’re a savant.” “People usually call me a dickhead, Kitty, but that’s a word I’ve heard, yeah.”

Adam always tries to roll with the punch, no matter where it’s coming from. Hunter, on the other hand, calls a punch a punch.

“You want to use him as a live disposal unit.” “Absolutely,” he says, his smile broadening. “Our very own human Yucca Mountain.”

“Rough?” “Rough. It’ll pass.” “Adam’s therapeutic regimen involved bed rest and beating the shit out of a couple of goons,” Rao explains.

“I always thought the end of the world was going to be, you know,” he says, after a deal of silence, “properly apocalyptic. Fires. Tidal waves. Floods.” “No, Rao,” Adam says, the tiredness, the resignation in his voice as heavy and obvious as his conclusions. “The end of the world is just people glued to toys.”

There’s so much silence, and for once in his life, Rao doesn’t feel the need to fill it.

“We lost Estrada,” Adam says. “What’s the situation?” “Baker.” “Details.” “Dead.” “How?” “Something. I saw hands.” “You didn’t investigate?” “With respect, sir, fuck that all the way home. No, I did not.”