Modern military theoreticians have had plenty to say about the role of metahumans in warfare. Since the Second World War, they’ve had active roles in just about every major military conflict. However, their presence alone, no matter what strength the individual metas possess, has almost never been enough to turn the tide of an entire battle. It took some time before people figured out exactly why. Entire papers have been written on the subject, but the short version is that metahumans can capture territory easily, but they can’t hold it. Even the strongest metas have weaknesses, and if forced to hold a position alone against a large enemy force for long enough, someone will figure out that weakness, or stumble onto it by complete accident. And when they go down, the enemy will retake that position instantly. Only conventional soldiers can hold territory in the long-term. All metahumans are really good for is destruction.

Knowing that, I was fairly skeptical about the plan to capture the Andromedan warship. The Council is a cut above most other metahumans, but we’re still only ten people, plus or minus a few dozen of Network’s bodies. Short of killing every single person aboard, it didn’t seem possible to take the ship, even if we did manage to disable the self-destruct failsafe. As it turned out, that was the hard part. Taking the ship was easy.

After Gilgamesh and I were finished, team three boarded. Geas and Machina. Five minutes later, the ship was ours.

Getting the Andromedans to surrender was never in the cards. We don’t know how to communicate with them, and even if we did, they’d obviously rather die than be captured. However, killing the entire crew of the ship would mean losing the chance to study them, and provided we can decipher their language, interrogate them. Instead, we put them to sleep. Geas is the world’s most powerful telepath, but even so, he isn’t capable of rendering hundreds, maybe thousands of people unconscious at once. That was where Machina came in. He’d been the one to figure out how to suppress telepathic powers, creating the blockers that ensure the Council can’t be manipulated by Geas or anyone else. In the process of doing so, he found a way to do the opposite, and amplify a telepath’s abilities vastly. It’s energy-intensive and draining to use, hence why Geas doesn’t use it all the time, but in this case, he was willing to bear the burden.

During our strategy session, Pallas was the one to ask the obvious question- if he could do that at any time, why bother sending the other boarding teams at all? The answer was twofold. First, because it was possible that Geas wouldn’t be able to put the entire crew to sleep at once, and if someone on the command deck was unaffected, they’d be able to detonate the ship. Second, because the assault was an opportunity for Grendel to feed. Nobody seemed entirely comfortable with the latter point, but everyone certainly saw the logic in the former one. No sense in taking chances.

Most telepaths are more than capable of putting someone to sleep temporarily. However, no metahuman ability is exactly the same as any other. Though Geas can do most of the things other telepaths can, he’s got one unique ability of his own- the one that gave him his name. He can issue commands, or perhaps compulsions, that his targets find themselves forced to carry out. In this case, he issued a single command to the entire ship- ‘sleep.’ It won’t last forever, but thanks to the power amplifier, it should last long enough for our purposes. We can’t exactly leave them all lying around, mostly because they’d starve, but dealing with the logistics isn’t a part of my role in this entire operation. That’ll be up to the people we leave behind on the ship. Something tells me most of it will end up falling to Network.

Once the ship was ours, Pallas was given the order to finish off the rest of the enemy fighter craft, and those of us aboard the Andromedan cruiser convened on the bridge. Gilgamesh didn’t say a word to me the entire trip up from the ship’s bowels to its peak. Once we arrived, he immediately beckoned Machina and Geas to him, and began conferring with them in an urgent tone. Their body language made it fairly clear it was a private conversation, meaning that until Astro brought the Irrepressible over to dock, I was essentially alone with Donovan.

It was Donovan who stood on the bridge with me, not Grendel. I’d gotten a single look at his other half before we’d left for our battle stations. There was nothing externally different about him at the time, but his entire demeanor was different. None of the guilt behind his eyes, just a wide, cruel smile. The man who stands before me somehow looks even more haunted than usual.

“You have a rough time of it?”

For a moment, I’m not sure if the biochemist heard me properly, the look in his eyes is so vacant. Then he speaks.

“The part of the ship where we boarded... it was some sort of aquatic hatchery, a spawning ground. All of their little children... he ate them” Donovan looks down at his hands. “I ate them.”

There really isn’t a single thing to say to that. I look back at the Council’s three founders, and see three men who don’t view Andrew Donovan as anything other than a weapon. The man needs psychiatric counseling, not to spend his days slaving away in a lab and his nights being used to eat alien children. He doesn’t say a word as I guide him to a chair with a large hole in the back to accommodate an Andromedan’s tail, and drape my trenchcoat over his shoulders.

Within half an hour, most of the others have joined us. Beringer and Zero elected to remain behind on the ship. The former supervillain didn’t have much of a role to play on this mission- I think he just came along for the excuse to get out of the house. Blake, Pallas and Network come aboard together, with Thorn bringing quite a few of his other bodies along. About a dozen of them alone come up to the bridge, most of whom start dragging comatose Andromedans out, while others sit down at various consoles and start slaving this ship’s systems to the Irrepressible’s. Others, I’m sure, are already spread out through the whole cruiser, locking away our unconscious captives and cleaning up the corpses Gil, Grendel and I left in our wakes.

“Well, I think that went just about as well as it could have,” Blake declares cheerfully. He seems like he had the time of his life getting to be the captain of his ship in a proper space battle.

“I concur,” adds Gladwin. Despite having just destroyed several hundred Andromedan fighter craft, she seems completely unruffled- even her hair is as perfectly styled as ever. I can’t imagine what power she uses to accomplish that effect. In sharp contrast, my armor and coat are thoroughly stained with Andromedan blood, which I have a feeling will be a real pain to get out.

Gilgamesh took off his Myrmidon Armor at some point, but his expression is no more readable for it. Machina, similarly free of his armor, which stands a few feet behind him, is positioned to his right, while Geas, seeming exhausted but determined to stay on his feet, is to the left.

“Agreed,” Robards adds. Normally Geas would have jumped in already, but his current state seems to have prevented that, which I count as a small victory. “All objectives accomplished. Outstanding work. The three of us will be remaining on this ship for the time being, to take control properly. Everyone else should return to the Irrepressible and prepare for the return trip.”

Checking the clock on my helmet HUD, I notice with a start that it’s barely been four hours since we arrived. Now we’re getting ready to head back, and taking the Andromedan cruiser with us. Everyone seems to be taking that in stride, but perhaps excluding Astro, everyone is also exhausted. We head back to the ship in relative silence, where I take my coat back from Donovan and waste no time in putting it in the laundry machine, its pockets emptied. Cleaning my armor will be a more difficult prospect, but with any luck, I’ll have it finished by the time we get home, so nobody notices any blue bloodstains and forces me to improvise an explanation.

The next several hours are something of a blur. Preparing to depart takes a little longer, because the Andromedan battleship is coming along with us, but that process requires nothing from me, so I change into something comfortable and collapse onto a sofa in the common room. Returning to zero-g is slightly disorienting, but being weightless is relaxing, even if it doesn’t make the less literal weight of the last few hours disappear. Eventually, some of the others join me, seeming to share the sentiment of being exhausted but not wanting to be alone. An indeterminate amount of time later, Astro informs us that we’re ready to leave, and everyone lethargically straps themselves in. Without really intending to, I let the ship’s motion as it accelerates for our subspace jump lull me to sleep.

The journey home goes by even faster than the trip out. After a few days of rest, I get the itch to continue my ingestivation, but the circumstances conspire against me. Geas is still aboard the other ship, meaning I can’t speak to him, and Network seems distracted whenever I try to start a conversation, probably because he’s got half a hundred bodies working tirelessly to get control of the Andromedan craft. On one of the few occasions that we do talk, he mentions that Gilgamesh is proving helpful with that process, demonstrating a great deal of knowledge about the vessel’s inner workings. My theory about him having been a captive aboard one in some past life looks more plausible by the minute.

Donovan doesn’t leave his room once that I can tell, not even for meals. In his absence, Professor Superior and I play chess a lot, and he doesn’t win a single game. The old man asks about a lot of things, from my experience on the battleship, to stories from my time in Pax, and I indulge him as best I can, at first omitting some of the more gory details, and then when it becomes clear that’s what he wants to hear about, picking the most vivid ones I can think of. He’s not a sadist of any sort, he’s just an old man who spends all his time in the Council’s secret base, and my recollections are entertainment to him. He tells a few stories about his own supercriminal days too, including the occasional clash with the iconic heroes of yesteryear, like the Vanguard.

Beringer is the lowest on my suspect list by a mile. Obviously I maintain a healthy level of suspicion in all our conversations, but he’d have to be an incredibly talented actor to be faking his eccentric-old-man schtick and hiding a cunning killer beneath it. Frankly, I like him, and when he talks about his latest inventions, it reminds me of a friend.

Besides him, I don’t talk with many of the others. Pallas is a little friendlier towards me after our late-night chat, but only superficially so. Astro almost never leaves his captain’s chair, though he seems a little less ecstatic after a few days have passed, the high of the battle fading. Zero mentions over dinner that she’s spending most of her days trying to code translation software capable of deciphering the Andromedans’ language using mathematical notation as a baseline, but a lot of the details go over my head.

Then, almost before I know it, we’re back.

This time, we don’t emerge right at our destination. For one thing, there’s some risk of it being picked up by various space agencies, which wouldn’t be ideal. For another, we’re bringing an Andromedan warship along, which would most certainly cause an international panic if anybody noticed. Instead, we exit subspace in the asteroid belt, and leave the Andromedan ship there, though not before Machina sets up a translocation beacon, so they can go back and forth without having to take the Irrepressible. Then, a five-minute jump later, we’re parked back in Earth’s orbit, all satellites and telescopes conveniently pointed in other directions, thanks to Network’s people on the ground.

I spend a day at the Council’s facility, readjusting to Earth’s gravity, undoing the modifications made to my gear for space, and decompressing mentally. Then I go home.

The feeling of returning to my apartment after almost an entire month in space is what I imagine veterans feel after coming home. My tour of duty was shorter than most, but it was also a great deal more intense. I felt a certain amount of whiplash on the way to our confrontation with the Andromedans, after having spent so long chiefly concerned with the street gangs of Pax, but it’s nothing to the whiplash I feel being back. In that state, I let two calls from Liv go to voicemail, not because I don’t want to see her, but because I don’t want her to see me.

Then, of course, I take a hot shower, pour myself something strong from the liquor cabinet, and call her back.

Angel that she is, Atalanta agreed to watch the city while I was away, so we don’t have to reunite over the phone. Once she knows I’m home, she’s over within the hour. We’ve gone longer without seeing each other in person, but never so long without being able to communicate at all, not since we first met. I had heavier things on my mind most of the time, but seeing her walk through the door, I realized how much I’d just missed the sound of her voice.

When I said that to her, she called me a sap, of course.

The cover story for my extended absence involved a deep-cover mission with the Russian mafia, but when I tell her I’d rather not talk about it, she accepts it easily enough. Liv hardly has a problem with the darker side of my job, but she also doesn’t love dwelling on it. Even if I could tell her what I was really doing during that period, I’d probably opt not to burden her with the details.

We spend the night together, but after that, Liv has to head home. She’s spent nearly a month covering for me in Pax, and while her city doesn’t have quite as few protectors as mine, she’s still got a responsibility that I wouldn’t want to keep her from. Before she leaves, she extracts a promise from me to pick up the phone next time she calls, ‘or else.’

Once Liv is gone, it’s time for me to get to work. She’s kept things under control in my absence, dealing with the city’s gangs as necessary, and even cracking a few cases. I make a mental note to congratulate her the next time we talk. After an extended absence, I’ll have some work to do reminding the city who to fear, but most of that can be done on autopilot. I’ve got years of experience operating in this city, after all. The main focus of my attention isn’t the state of the city, it’s the Council. The Andromedan mission was my first real look at how they operate, and in my reflections on the voyage home, I came to one conclusion. If I’m going to take them on, I need help.

Jason went up against them and lost. That much is fairly obvious. He had more experience than me, knew them better, had more tools at his disposal, and he failed. The only rational reason why is that he went at it alone. Even after working with me for years, there were things he didn’t tell me about. The same went for Haley and Clay, his teammates. He kept people at a distance, no matter how close he was to them. I’m not him, though. I don’t have to make his mistakes. He told me that I was going to have to surpass him, and he was right, but not just when it comes to skill and experience. I have to learn from his errors so I can avoid recapitulating them.

Haley and Clay are two of the most powerful metahumans I know. They’re also loyal friends. So is Liv. But those aren’t the traits that I need right now. I need someone cunning and ruthless. And I need someone who the Council won’t expect.

I need my nemesis.

Conrad Winters is probably the most complicated figure in my life. He’s also one of the most important, after Jason and Liv themselves. He’s just a year younger than me, and when I was starting out as Jason’s partner, he was beginning his life of crime. Unlike me, it wasn’t a life he chose. He was born into it- born for it. His father, Byron, was a notorious supervillain from the sixties, who disappeared alongside his heroic opposite number, the Virtruvian, in the early eighties. The elder Winters refused to take on an alias, preferring to be known by his true name. And after he disappeared, his final contingency plan took effect. A legacy. A son. A clone.

Gestation didn’t start until ten years after Winters’ disappearance, and then it was another sixteen before he was properly ‘born.’ The first fifteen years of his life were spent in a tube, having knowledge of the world downloaded directly into his brain- from the most basic concepts like language to complex ones like quantum physics. When he emerged, it was as the perfect inheritor of his father’s name, complete with the same meta-genius. Soon after, he set about trying to remind the world why it had once feared the Winters name. That was how we first met.

One of his father’s most iconic inventions, a literal death ray, was on display at an exhibit about supervillains in Pax. Conrad came to town intending to steal it. I was the one who showed up to stop him. It was hate at first sight. For five years after that, we fought frequently, with Winters finding excuses to come to Pax just so he could have a shot at revenge, and me following close behind whenever he popped up anywhere else. It was a classic rivalry, the kind I always thought only existed in movies, complete with each of us developing a grudging respect for the other.

Eventually, frustrated with my own inability to catch Conrad, I asked Jason for advice. He told me that if I wanted to know how to stop him, I had to get inside his head, and the best way to do that would be to investigate his origins. I’d realized years ago that the timeline of his birth and his father’s disappearance didn’t match up in the slightest, but I’d never looked too deeply into it. With Jason’s help, I tracked down where he’d been born, and broke into the abandoned lab. The things I learned there didn’t just help me understand Winters better- they ended up helping him understand himself.

The first revelation was that Conrad hadn’t been the only clone of his father. There had been several dozen others, all of whom were incinerated after they failed to manifest metahuman abilities at age thirteen. Conrad was the only one that had. The second revelation was even worse. As it turned out, knowledge wasn’t the only thing that had been downloaded directly into his brain while he was developing. His father had included subliminal programming that would ensure his son upheld what he saw as his legacy. A compulsion to follow in his father’s footsteps, even using the same equipment and following the same mode of operation. That was news to me, and it was news to Conrad too.

He didn’t believe me at first, but I had brought evidence, and I like to think that he knew me well enough by that point to know I wouldn’t have lied. After that, our relationship changed. We’d been on opposing sides for long enough that we couldn’t quite just become friends, but Conrad made it clear that he had no intention of continuing to go along with his father’s plans for him. I offered to help him find a way to get rid of his programming, and to my surprise, he accepted. When I asked why, he told me that he’d simply thought about what his father would have wanted him to do, and then done the opposite.

After we managed to excise his father’s influence, Winters and I didn’t see each other for a while. We’ve kept in contact since then, but aside from a few brief visits whenever Conrad found himself with business in my city, we gave each other some distance. It’s hard to just bury the hatchet with someone you spent years fighting, but at the same time, we weren’t exactly mortal enemies during most of that time. And when I was thinking about who to call on for help dealing with the Council, Conrad was the first and only name that came to mind.

Rejecting his father’s legacy also meant giving up his super-criminal lifestyle, which left Winters at something of a loss for what to do with his life. Obviously getting a nine-to-five job wasn’t in the cards, but he had lived on the wrong side of the law for long enough that becoming a vigilante wasn’t exactly either. Putting our heads together, we reached a kind of compromise. He could put his skills as a criminal to use against deserving targets, rather than for the sake of infamy and fortune. Last I checked, he was in Qatar, working on some scheme involving the Saudi government, but apparently nothing so urgent that he wasn’t willing to get on the next flight back to the States when I gave him a call.

Normally, we meet up for drinks or a meal, but this time, I’m bringing him directly to my headquarters. He’s never been inside before- even after our alliance, Jason would never countenance it. But I’m planning on trusting Conrad with some serious secrets- it wouldn’t be fair of me not to let him into my inner circle first.

“So this is the infamous Baker Street. I’ve got to admit, it lives up to the hype.”

When we first met, Winters was dyeing his hair silver-white to match his father, though I didn’t find that out until our third confrontation, when I pulled off his mask amidst a brawl. It looked pretty ridiculous on an eighteen year old, but he didn’t change it until after he found out about the whole brainwashing thing. Now he dyes it black, which is a much better look. What hasn’t changed is the way he keeps his hair gelled even with the mask on, a touch I never bothered with. He’s wearing a black button-up with the sleeves rolled back, and a grey vest over it, though I can only assume his true ‘formal wear’ is inside of the briefcase he’s carrying. For my part, I’m wearing my armor and coat, sans helmet. Thinking back, I realize that it’s the first time we’ve seen each other in person since I took up Jason’s mantle.

That realization sparks a moment of self-consciousness, but it doesn’t last. I helped Conrad through the process of his own self-realization. He isn’t going to judge me about mine. In fact, he sent me an actual hand-written letter just days after I first put the suit on, congratulating me on ‘finally getting your shit together.’ I hadn’t even told him that it was me, he’d been able to discern that just by watching grainy security camera footage of me fighting on the internet.

“You know, my father once spent a year in a high-security prison, playing chess with the Vitruvian. His crew offered to break him out, but he told them he wouldn’t leave until he’d won the game. Whenever he was ready to make a move, the Vitruvian would break into the prison and tell Father what it was, and then inform the warden of the prison of how he’d gotten in, so they could fix the flaw in the security system that had made it possible.”

Conrad is full of these stories about his father’s exploits. They were a part of his ‘education,’ downloaded during his artificial gestation, in order to ensure he had the proper respect and adoration for his progenitor. He used to tell them with admiration in his eyes, while he had me tied to a chair. I used the opportunity to escape while he was monologuing, of course. Now he tells them with ironic amusement and a hint of resentment.

“That sounds… tedious.”

Cracking a grin, Winters sets his briefcase down on a table and finds himself a seat.

“Doesn’t it just? I’m glad we can talk like sane, civilized adults, you and I.”

“Agreed. And thanks for coming. Can I get you a drink?”

Winters takes a moment to gauge my expression.

“I have a feeling I’d regret refusing this offer, so… why not? I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

He’s clearly as canny as ever. I grab two beers from the fridge, and don’t fail to notice his eye-roll as he accepts his. Most of his father’s traits and affectation, he’s rejected, but the gentleman-criminal thing is still very much there. I’ve seen the liquor cabinet at his mansion in Massachusetts- it’s nothing but brandies and scotches. That’s not even getting into the wine cellar.

“Not that I’m not flattered to finally be invited here, but why did you insist that I come to you? The villa where I’m staying in Doha is lovely, though you’d probably have baked alive in that outfit.”

The banter feels a little forced, maybe because I’m not really firing back the way I usually do. Or maybe it’s because this isn’t just a social call. I told him that I needed his help, something neither of us are particularly fond of saying to anyone.

“It was for your benefit. I’ve got a tracker in me, and I didn’t want to expose you.”

Conrad raises an eyebrow. We’re getting to the serious stuff now, and I can tell he’s intrigued.

“A tracker? I hope you didn’t bring me out all this way just to cut it out of you.”

“No. I had it put in voluntarily.”

That gets his attention. Winters leans forward, interest undisguised.

“Before I go any further, it bears mentioning that what I’m about to say is highly sensitive. Just knowing this information will put your life in danger. If you want to back out now—”

“Kellan, come on. Spare me.”

He seems almost insulted that I thought to offer him a chance to back out. In retrospect, there was really no other answer he could have given.

“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Taking a long drink, I pull up a chair. It’s a long story that I’m about to tell, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about how best to frame it.

“About two months ago, I was contacted by a group calling themselves the Council. They’re a collection of powerful, influential metahumans, who effectively control the entire world. Their founder, a man who goes by Gilgamesh, claims to be in some sort of time loop that resets upon his death, but had a number of his previous lives cut short by apocalyptic events, leading him to assemble this group in order to prevent such scenarios from taking place. They count Marcus Robards, Nicholas O’Connor, and Jessica Gladwin among their number, and at one time, my mentor, Jason Hunt was one of them. Before he disappeared, he left them with instructions to recruit me in his stead, should he ever be indefinitely indisposed.”

Even doing my best to make it sound as serious as possible, the story feels ridiculous when put in such simple terms. If I was trying to convince a random person off the street, I’m sure they would laugh in my face, but Conrad knows better. He’s probably thinking through the implications of my words, and coming to many of the same conclusions I did when this was first explained to me. The Council’s existence is a missing piece of a puzzle that you didn’t even realize was missing. So many things fit together better when it slots into place.

“Let me guess, you think they’re responsible for Hunt vanishing?”

“Exactly, but I’ll get to that. Obviously, I accepted their offer, which is why I’ve got a tracker in me. It’s a part of their communicator implant, which also serves as a translocator beacon. That’s why nobody ever sees Machina or Pallas flying out to their secret base all the time.”

That doesn’t seem to be much of a surprise to him. Conrad’s father built a prototype translocator decades ago, though it knocked out the entire New York electrical grid the one time it was activated, and burnt itself out immediately after. The technology has existed for years, just never in a form cost-effective, safe, or reliable enough for anyone to use.

“There are five other members, most of whom you’ve never heard of, but the one that’s important is Network. He can copy his consciousness into other people, replacing their personality with his. And each of his copies has the same power. The Council has used him to infiltrate and subvert every major world government, military, intelligence agency, and corporation, plus who knows what else. Through him and Pallas, they basically run… everything. And they aren’t even actively malicious. They use their influence to push people and institutions in the right direction. Preventing wars, spending less on bombs and more on schools, getting the entire world to start switching to renewable energy. Pretty much every good thing that’s happened in the world in the last twenty years is thanks to them.”

Conrad frowns pensively.

“Damn. I’ve probably interacted with this Network guy without even realizing it.”

“I’m sure we both have. But here’s the kicker. All of that good stuff they do? It’s just side projects. Their main interest is in protecting the world from anything that might do serious damage. Most of the threats that conventional hero teams deal with are ones that the Council has assessed to not be worth their time. Either that, or they neutered the threat in secret, and then had one of the teams that their members lead step in to take credit for it.”

“Including the invasion?”

As expected, he’s quick on the uptake.

“Got it in one. There were five ships originally, the Council dealt with three months beforehand, and then took advantage of a crisis they knew we could handle to consolidate their power. It’s all shady, but they still do good work. That’s why Jason joined them. Problem is, before he disappeared, he figured something out. The other members of the group weren’t just chosen for their skills or resources. Each of them was responsible for the end of the world in a different timeline. And most of them have no idea.”

“That include Hunt himself?”

I chuckle.

“No. Actually, he discovered their existence independently, and threatened to expose them if he didn’t get a seat at the table.”

Conrad’s eyes widen slightly. I don’t blame him. That was probably one of the ballsiest things Jason ever did. Admittedly, it was before the Council had quite as much power as it does today, but considering he was literally the only one to ever discover them- or at least the only one who didn’t have his mind wiped -it’s indisputably impressive.

“So you think the looper killed him over that?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I’m not sure. Everyone in this group has secrets, and I’m sure he dug up more than a few. I’ve got a decent idea of who was involved, but not the whole picture. Not yet. That’s why I asked you for help.”

“Okay. Why how? You said you’ve been working with them for two months.”

I don’t get the impression that he’s upset I waited that long to contact him. He’s just wondering what’s changed.

“We’ve got a window of opportunity right now. The main suspects in my investigation, Machina, Geas, and Gilgamesh himself, are all off-planet right now, on an Andromedan warship we just captured.”

Despite what it might look like, I’m not dropping sentences like that casually just to sound cool. It would simply take too long to explain every detail like that in total depth. Conrad seems to take it in stride.

“I suppose that explains why the lovely Olivia has been doing your job for the last month or so. In any case, you’re right. Their attention is elsewhere, meaning we have increased latitude to operate. There’s no time to waste. I only have one question.”

“What?”

“How do you know I haven’t been subverted by this Network fellow already?”

If I tried to give him some line about how Network only targets people he truly things deserve it, I’m sure Conrad would laugh in my face. Luckily, I’m not quite that naive.

“I don’t. That’s why I spiked your drink with nano-bombs.”

Winters gives me a long look, trying to discern whether I’m serious. Most people would react with outrage, but when he realizes that I am, he just nods.

“In that case, this Council’s days are numbered.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re finally taking things seriously.”