“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

Samuel P. Huntington

Nigel Matterson was exactly as crazy as Jacob Trials had imagined.

Three days now, three days he'd been locked up in this ridiculous room, staring outside to the gardens beyond through a narrow window set high in the rear wall.

Three days with no visitors except Matterson, who had already visited half a dozen times or more, a different topic on his mind each time.

Three days in this strange, dusty old room.

In one corner was a small single bed, blue and red linen on top. An uncomfortable wooden chair sat in another, under a small wooden desk upon which sat an old desk lamp with a blown bulb. That was it, except for the bookcases.

The bookcases lined every other wall, every available space. It wasn't much, to be sure, but Trials had never before seen a bedroom so dedicated to books above all else.

The books meant little to Trials, but some of the titles he thought he may have heard of. De re publica, Il Principe, On Liberty, Das Kapital, and hundreds of other books with names like 'the critique on pure reason.' They were in multiple languages - he saw European ones including English, German, Italian, what he took to be Latin, and Cyrillic writings, Asian writings that he tentatively thought were in Chinese and Japanese, and yet others he was unsure of.

The names of the authors he was a little more familiar with, though he couldn't have said what any one of them did with confidence. Rousseau, Mill, Hobbes, Plato, Paine, Nietzsche, Montesquieu, Fukuzawa, Marx, Engels, Cicero, Guevara, Castro, Bolivar, Mao, Voltaire... Again, most of the author's names were written in a language he couldn't understand. He had training in Russian, German, and a smattering of other tongues, but merely enough to make getting around abroad possible when there was nobody available to help him; not training to read philosophical treatises or political manifestos.

In one corner was a shelf filled with religious texts, the Bible, Qur'an and Torah sitting beside the I Ching and Bhagavad Ghita.

Not what Trials would have expected to find in a teenage boy's room, and that was definitely what this was. The setting was all wrong, but the bed, the desk, the size and layout of everything; this room was for someone's child, and Trials would lay good money on it being a son.

Which made the bars harder to understand.

The door was barred, a security cage jutting inwards into the room that allowed Matterson to stand and talk with Trials whilst being safely protected from him. The window also was barred, even though the window itself was not nearly wide enough for a person to pass through. It was as if this room was some strange kind of prison.

Matterson had refused to answer any questions related to their current location or why he had had Lucy bring Trials here. He had explained, though, that he had wanted to meet, and had used the fortuitously captured Mike as the bait to lure him in. He'd sounded like a proud parent when he recounted Lucy's decision to volunteer to bring Trials in herself.

When Trials asked about Mike, Matterson simply smiled and assured him there was no need to worry.

The first time Matterson entered the room, watching Trials through the security cage bars as his captive searched the room for a weapon or a way out, was shortly after a couple of his mercenaries had dragged Trials in and left him there. He spoke as if to the air, ignoring Trials when he tried to interrupt.

"I suppose first we need to get past the obvious, don't we?"

He spoke nothing like Trials had expected. His voice was smooth, enunciated and eloquent. He sounded well-educated, a strong British accent that wouldn't have been out of place in the halls of Westminster a few generations ago. It threw Trials, who had definitely had a different image of the man in his head from the media storm a few years ago.

Matterson didn't wait for a reply.

"I am the man who made innocent girls slaughter their families. Yes. I did that."

Trials stopped and looked at Matterson, who looked back with a bland, empty smile. His green eyes were perturbing, not quite making eye contact but rather seeming to look at a point somewhere just behind Trials’ temple.

"I corrupted them because I could, because it needed to be done, to show it could be done."

"Because you're a sick fuck," snarled Trials.

Matterson continued as if he'd heard nothing.

"But what you should know is that that is the very least of what I have done. The smallest, most petty of my actions, and I am not proud of it. Indeed, I asked myself before I did so whether it was really necessary, whether it could provide any worthwhile data for my studies, but in the end I concluded that the experience could indeed offer some valuable insights."

Trials sat slowly on the bed and stared at this man, this man who was speaking coldly and clinically about his own horrific acts.

"To break the bond between child and parent, to turn a loving daughter into a vengeful weapon of malice. I needed to know how far one had to go to accomplish such an act. And of course, there was the added bonus that by allowing my actions to be revealed, I could confirm for myself what measures would be required to extricate oneself from the penal system.”

Trials said nothing, but his thoughts raced. Was Matterson trying to tell him he had gone to prison deliberately?

“I am telling you this not because I want to..,” continued Matterson, “…but because you need to know something before we talk. When I said these were the least of my actions, I meant it. I have accomplished far more, done far greater things than those deeds might lead you to believe. Think on that."

He left the room without acknowledging the curses coming from Trials that followed him.

"Have you read any of these books, Mr. Trials?" asked Matterson in another of their chats.

He was standing within the security cage and smiling amicably at Trials, as if this was nothing more than a friendly conversation between two old acquaintances.

Trials looked around, and shook his head.

"Then you really should, whilst you have the chance."

There was no threat in Matterson's voice, though his words could easily have been read to be one.

"I'm alright, thanks," replied Trials without pausing. "I'll choose my own reading material once I'm out of here."

"Of course," said Matterson, unfazed. "A pity, though. All the answers are there, you see. The important ones, anyway."

Trials felt his curiosity piqued. There were depths to that last comment, he was sure.

"All the answers? Like what?" he asked.

Matterson stared straight at him, eliciting the disquieting feeling Trials still could not suppress. Something behind his green eyes, behind that empty smile, was dull and dead. Yet whatever it was, it was watching nonetheless. Trials felt his muscles tensing involuntarily – some unknown force inside of him made him desperately want to attack this man, to throw blow after blow into his skull until it cracked.

"The answers to what we are, Mr. Trials. The answers to how to use what we are." The dead smile never slipped from his lips.

"Thanks, but I know what I..."

Trials' reply faltered on his lips, tumbling out half-unsaid.

You think you're a hero... he heard Mike say.

"...am."

You're not.

"Self-doubt, Mr. Trials? From you?" Matterson, noticing the hesitation, spoke with amusement in his voice. "How unlike you. Still, I suppose it must be difficult. The Ministry gone, the few survivors cleaning their wounds at home, you without contacts or back-up. You really have been left to the wolves."

Trials' felt a shock of recollection.

"Answers to what?" Trials asked, hoarsely.

Nigel Matterson turned and walked away.

After that conversation, Trials was left alone for the rest of the night. His mind swirled with the many things that didn't add up, that hinted at things going on beneath the surface that he had no knowledge of.

“Self-doubt? From you?”

Matterson had spoken as if he knew Trials, when they'd never met before.

There was much more.

The General had known the layout of the villa where Mike was being held before they attacked. He’d spoken of rooms he couldn’t possibly have seen, and made it in before Trials.

And why hadn’t Trials heard him? The General couldn’t possibly move that silently, could he?

And... years ago, the interrogation with Lucy Lawntie... he'd spoken as if he knew Nigel Matterson, as if he knew his ways of speaking. Left to the wolves... How had The General known Matterson's favoured turns of phrase?

Yet... The General was dead, probably in some regioni police mortuary while the officers tried to work out where all these dead bodies were coming from. Lucy had killed him without a thought, so there was little likelihood that they had been working together. And why would they be? What possible connection was there between a man who worked to prevent dangerous cults and ideologies from becoming a global threat, and a psychopath who compelled others to commit horrendous acts of violence?

“Have you ever thought about control, Mr. Trials?”

Matterson’s smooth voice came to his ears at the same time the door swung open and he walked in, the early morning light through the narrow window framing his face. Trials did not look up from where he was futilely scratching at the mortar around the bars of the window with a blunt knife he had been given with his food. Dust covered his wrists, but there was little difference in the depth of the bars' foundations.

“Control is difficult, Mr. Trials,” Matterson continued, paying no attention to Jacob and his efforts to dig the bars out. “Self-control, strategic control, the control of our own destinies… difficult.”

Matterson gestured to the cage bars in front of him.

“You see? You have no control over your own fate now. You cannot step outside, cannot exercise properly, why, cannot even eat except at my behest. So you scratch at the walls despite knowing that I would never allow you to progress far enough along to make escape a possibility.”

Trials paused, staring ahead into the wall and giving an exhausted sigh. He seemed torn for a minute, knowing the futility of the task, but eventually grabbed the knife and began scratching at the wall again.

“How about free will, Mr. Trials? Do you believe in that?

The scratching did not stop.

“Of course you do, Mr. Trials. But you’re wrong,” said Matterson. “There is no free will for the likes of you. Why, you don’t even want it. You would prefer someone else to take action, to take responsibility, to take the blame. Exactly what most people want.”

Matterson’s voice grew stronger as he spoke, though still in the same clinical tones. He crouched down so he was eye level with Trials.

“These books, Mr. Trials. My books. The most famous books in all of history, and… Have you read them?” he asked.

Trials shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“No, you haven’t, have you? Well, Mr. Trials, that means you are… normal.”

Nigel’s voice became bright, almost cheery as he stood up.

“Perfectly normal. Honestly, I would be surprised to find even one person who has read all of these books. Oh, everyone knows of them – the cliff-notes version, the wiki-version, the faintly remembered 60 minutes at high school – but no one has actually read all of them.”

“So what?” demanded Trials, finally giving into his frustration, throwing a hostile glare towards his captor. “There’s a million books out there, a hundred million. What does this have to do with anything?”

“These books are about people, Mr. Trials, and power over people. Each one of them a towering edifice of oration, a marvel of thought and philosophy, ideas and stories that literally changed the world. They offer answers to the human condition, explanations and remedies for our vices and innate flaws, yet they are full of contrary opinions, incompatible ideologies, and obvious biases and assumptions. They showed me that in the depths of human ideals, there are black holes of nothingness.”

Something glinted in Matterson’s eye as he made a cold, hard smile.

“They showed me how lost humanity is.”

“Don’t you see?” asked Matterson, sweeping his hands wide and gesticulating as if to encompass the whole world in the sweep of his arms, “There’s no answer to any of it, so people will take any answer. It’s... wonderful!”

"You think you can offer them answers, then?" asked Trials sardonically. "You think you're a messiah?"

Matterson laughed, a cruel laugh full of malice, and when he spoke again his voice was cold.

"Again, a fallacious question...," he replied, "...one based on the presumption that it is what I want that matters. It's not what I want that matters, Trials, but what others want from me. It's so easy, Jake... May I call you Jake..?" He waved his hand dismissively, not waiting for an answer, "...so easy to offer hope, to offer purpose, to offer reason to others. People who find a thread of truth will cling to it even when it has become knotted and frayed beyond use."

"People aren't so simple, Matterson. They change their minds all the time."

Trials cursed himself for being drawn into the conversation even as he spoke.

Matterson's eyes snapped up to lock on Trials', and his satisfaction at getting a reply was obvious.

"About their clothes, about their next holiday destination. They change their minds about their wallpaper. Small, petty things, Jake. When was the last time you knew someone who changed their job, their political affiliation, their god, their family? Have you? Have any of your beliefs genuinely changed since your formative years?"

Trials wracked his brains for an answer he felt Matterson couldn't contemptuously dismiss. Politics? He'd been quite political at university, but it was true that he just voted how he always had these days, if he bothered to vote at all. Work? His job was a part of him now, quite literally, but he was a special case. Surely ordinary folk didn't encounter the same problem.

Family? Well, you couldn't choose your family. Religion? He almost laughed - he'd never been a believer and wasn't about to start now. Did that mean he was inflexible?

Matterson apparently read his thoughts.

"Can't think of anything? Because people don't change, Jake, not much, not without some major trauma or a little... push."

His final sentence hung in the air, insinuations and implications swirling around Trials' mind.

"Creatures of habit, set in their ways, old dogs... We have a thousand ways to express the fact that people resist change." Matterson leaned up to the bars as he spoke. "The irony of it all, of course, is that most people aren't happy. They aren't even content. So they search for a cause that supports their deeply-held yet ill-defined beliefs, and throw themselves into it. They will vociferously argue against their friend about a political issue they barely understand, they'll demonstrate in the street against an event that has no bearing on their day-to-day lives, they'll lynch the man next door at the behest of the tabloids, and they'll strap a bomb to their chests and blow up a plane."

"What do you think you've been doing all this time, Trials?" continued Matterson, as he reached down into his pocket and withdrew a small metal key. "The Ministry tries to control these ideas, these ideals that drive people to do things... unacceptable to the state."

Trials' eyes were locked on the key as it entered the lock and turned slowly. At the click of the tumbler he was up, moving faster than he would have thought possible. Not fast enough, however.

"Still haven't accepted your fate then?" said Matterson, the small smile returning to his lips. He had twisted the key back the moment Trials moved.

Trials yanked at the metal bars of the door in frustration, making them rattle loudly.

"Such a small thing to accept, for a man who has spent his life letting others control him. Is it just because you can see the cage, I wonder?"