The United Asiatic Armed Forces rescued them, so the official story went. They performed emergency treatment on them too, at the nearest naval port, Neo Taipei. The news didn’t report that there was a day-long voyage back across the pacific at speeds Iris hadn’t been aware a gunship could travel at. The fact that the keel could survive slamming off waves like a skateboard in a park turned out to be less surprising than meeting Commander Mendel outside the politely named cosmetics facility.

“What the hell did they do to your hair?” he asked.

Iris’ surprise flipped to frustration. “They butchered it, is what they did! They said they would have to replug it as part of the bonding process with the new synth skin, so they hacked it off my old scalp. Now I’ve got a swing cut. I hate it.”

Mendel shook his head. “Silvy is gunna cry when she sees this. Now come on, I’ve got a pitbull for a lawyer trying to get Dr. White out of UAAF’s hands.” He gestured to a transport car, and they got in.

Iris looked out the windows, watching the city roll by. When they had docked, getting patched up had been her first order of business. “I didn’t expect the city to be so green.”

Mendel leaned over and looked out too. Barely a scrap of concrete could be seen, just glossy windows peering into the jungle. “Looks like their civilization already collapsed, if you ask me.”

“What’s wrong with plants?”

“That ain’t plants. That’s kudzu. An African weed that’s caused more building collapses than the last ten earthquakes put together.”

“What? Then why don’t they get rid of it?”

“Because it’s edible. Rumor has it they engineered the bitter taste out of it a few years back, but if you ask me, that’s just the government’s way of tricking people into eating the stuff.”

“I thought they ate rice here.”

Mendel nodded and sat back in his seat. “They do, but you gotta have something to eat with your rice. The people here are lucky that the kudzu grows so well. Some of the Tibetan districts are so forsaken the people eat stewed rats.”

Iris frowned and stopped looking out the window. “I liked Seoul more.”

“I’ll try my best to get you another vacation visa to go back, just as soon as we’re not neck deep in black hat terrorism, alright?”

The detention facility was built on reclaimed land, built up into the ocean like a fortress. Iris could only guess what had prompted the construction, whether it was to change the tidal currents at the port, or as some war monument from the 2012 collapse, or maybe it had just been built because to get to it required walking over an expanse of bare concrete as the building loomed, like the road to a king’s castle.

The road had a crowd on it. Thousands of people organized into rows and columns, swinging their arms around cheering. Iris couldn’t believe her eyes until she stepped out of the car and looked at it. They were doing calisthenics while singing some kind of anthem her computer refused to translate. All she got was a subtitle label reading, “UAAF propaganda.”

“What the hell is this?”

As they walked up to it, to get by and to the facility, the routine wrapped up, and a speaker stepped out before them all. “Sit down, sit down, you all have worked hard,” he said. The man was tall, buff, and his hair had enough gel in it to stand it straight up. For a moment, Iris wondered who he was, then she got the ping. Governor Xi Chang, the leader of the Taiwan District and winner of every popularity poll the news could host. Iris was rather certain that, aside from the blatant rigging, it was because he was one of the few politicians that didn’t need security entourages and bullet-proof glass around him at all hours. He was a HAB unit with a heroic sob story to boot.

“Bastard’s blood, he’s the one we need to talk to. What the hell is this,” Mendel grumbled as he pulled out a nicotine vape pen and stuffed it into his mouth.

The crowd happily knelt down in front of him. Some waved, but they all listened to him like a church preacher had just stepped out. Maybe one had. “What a beautiful day. Hard to think that just last week, we narrowly stopped a terrorist bombing. We would have lost access to the Korean fish hatcheries. Would have been no more sushi. Worse than that, people would have starved… but, our security teams put a stop to it in time. The strength of Asia United resisted and prevailed.”

Iris arched an eyebrow at her boss, but Mendel just shook his head.

Xi paced before the crowd, atop a small platform. “I want to thank everyone who has come here today. The conspirators who worked with those terrorists are, right this moment, being brought to justice. We’ve got names, addresses, arrest warrants, all facilitated from the ground up, by the prudence and just action of citizens like you.”

Iris wanted to vomit the more she listened. She knew for a fact that not a single person in the crowd had done anything to catch the smugglers nor the terrorists. One big lie to give purpose to their lives when they inevitably got up and filed back to the city to labor for twelve hours a day. She wanted to turn off her hearing, but forced herself to listen because it helped her get an understanding of the man.

When a security officer, bulked up unnecessarily in a full augment suit painted to look like a police uniform, gestured for them to continue into the building, she let out a sigh of relief. The inside of the facility had an oversized aesthetic. Double high ceilings, all in bare concrete. Every sign, posting, and label was posted at least seven feet off the ground, forcing them to crane their heads to read anything. The first room was a reception hall, a waiting room with an enormous digital clock that both showed the time, and which ticket was currently being served. It sat on seven hundred and twenty-eight when they arrived, and hadn’t moved by the time they called an elevator and ascended to the eighth floor to meet with Governor Chang.

He eventually sat down across from them, folding his hands on the faux mahogany desk. The only sound beside the creak of furniture was the burbling of his salt-water fish tank. “Blumhagen,” he said with a smile. “I do believe you’ve been thoroughly underestimated.”

Commander Mendel glanced at Iris, and responded, “Large groups tend to underestimate smaller groups. Doesn’t matter how competent the people involved are. It’s arrogance, plain and simple.”

“And yet, I think you don’t have even a clue what’s going on,” Xi said.

Mendel frowned. “I’ve got a clue or two.”

“Perhaps you do. You’re here in Taiwan afterall.”

That raised both of their eyebrows. “Taiwan? Aren’t you a government man?” Mendel asked. “I thought United Asia referred to regions by number.”

Xi laughed. It was a polite, canned laugh fit for television broadcast. Sounded exactly like Jack Forester on the news. Iris wondered whether the noise actually was an exact replica of Forester’s. “I’m not terribly concerned by what the bureau calls this island. What are they going to do? Write me a letter?”

“Send an army. Rescind your authority,” Iris offered.

“They can ask their army to march over here and do something about me, sure, but give it a few months, and they won’t be able to pay their army.”

Mendel shifted. The expression in his face tightened. “This is sounding almost treasonous.” He had good reason to be concerned. The arrest warrant and contract Blumhagen had been given were both authorized and backed by the United Asia parliament, the bureau. That same bureau was known to have a department for internal interrogations. They kept listening bugs in all their offices.

Xi reached into his draw and dropped a collection of cracked devices that looked quite similar to listening bugs. “That’s for me to worry about, not you. I’m here to make a deal. To cut to the chase, I don’t give a single shit what your lawyer has to say about international law, or human rights, or whatever he wants to pull out of his ass. What matters is my guards are loyal to me. Dr. Errol White is in my prison cell, with my guns pointed at him. I also know full well that I won’t survive the next five years on my own.”

Iris frowned and slowly cranked her reflexes up. She gripped the arm of her chair and listened, the flow of words slowing down for her to process. It let her keep cool. “Don’t tell me you also think there’s going to be famine.”

Xi nodded. “Population collapse is inevitable. Taiwan doesn’t have the farmland to support its current population. We won’t even have an economy if international communications break down. We need allies.”

“And UAAF ain’t that?” Mendel asked.

Xi sneered and leaned back in his chair. He got up and pulled a whiskey bottle out from a cabinet, also faux-mahogany. He gestured to the two of them, and Mendel shrugged in affirmation. Two glasses were set down and Xi poured. “UAAF represents six billion people, and… how do I put this charitably? They aren’t known for being good. If they have to cut off a district to save the rest, their only concern is rewriting the history books to hide that district ever existed in the first place. Us? An Island in the pacific? We have to be supplied by ships. Can’t even put a bridge to us apparently. Storms are too rough. You think the bureau is going to care when they start counting the beans and realize they only have enough food for five of their six billions? What if they only have enough food for one billion?”

Iris watched the two men pick up their liquors, and again wished she had a module to get herself drunk. She couldn’t, so she asked, “Food might be tight right now, but there is enough to go around, isn’t there?”

“Tell that to the homeless,” Xi said with a sneer. “They get counted in the census, but not in the food rationing. That’s five, ten, sometimes twenty percent of the population is underfed and off the books. The bureau just calls them useless eaters and forgets about them. The war that’s coming? It will be unlike anything humanity has ever seen. The only thing close will be the 2012 apocalypse, but at least that had a cause. What do we have now? Our own stupidity?”

“Mr Chang,” Mendel said, swirling his whiskey glass. “You’re talking as though you think we have some leverage to negotiate with you, like we’re part of some organization that can help you. I’m sorry to say that Blumhagen is nothing more than a small military contractor. We shoot people. We break things. Sometimes we arrest terrorists. Diplomacy isn’t our strong suit.”

“And yet, you seem to have one of the strongest warriors in the whole world, working for you.”

“Doesn’t mean much if nukes come into play,” Iris said. Xi’s attitude was rubbing her the wrong way. It irritated her and worked her up. It had to be the way he said anything with a slight smile, as if he couldn’t bring himself to take anything seriously no matter what he was discussing. Even the idea of billions of people starving to death didn’t seem to register with him. He looked like they had taken out more than just his body when they put him in a HAB unit. She guessed his backstory had been fabricated too. No way someone like him jumped on a grenade.

“Mutually assured destruction is an outmoded paradigm. When the famines hit, there won’t be any countries. Soldiers are going to abandon their posts. Why do you think I put in so much effort to make these people, these mindless bodies one step removed from flesh zombies, obedient to me?”

Iris leaned towards him. “You sound just like the woman I cut in half the other night. You know that?”

That finally wiped the grin off Xi’s face. “You’re new to the idea of our coming doom. You won’t last long thinking of all these soon-to-die humans as people. No one ever does. Well, if they do, they tend to kill themselves before long.”

Mendel cleared his throat. “Mr. Chang, do you know who is the one who hired the smugglers? The one who bought off the UDS-Blue Key?”

Xi shrugged and turned up his hands. “Don’t you? BISON is an American company, isn't it?”

“Fuck,” Mendel groaned. He rolled his head back, staring at the ceiling as he took it in. Iris just queried the internet for who was in charge of the company. Mr and Mrs Sherman, the founders of BISON, owners of the Jefferson Berserkers team for the War Games, controlling shareholders of Unified Distribution Services, and on the boards of two different news media organizations. Every news article was speculation about their bids for congress, stock manipulation on pharmaceutical companies, self-help lectures they gave, and tabloid attacks on the extent of their cosmetic surgery. They had also just held a Victory Garden Conference, as they called it, encouraging everyone in the Americas to start their own vegetable garden, using BISON chemical products of course. The picture of rampant billionaires.

Silvy pinged Iris while she was still scanning through and trying to get a grasp on the Shermans. “Iris, I think your data line has been tapped. UAAF is spying on you.”