An adjustment of the scissors made her flinch, freeze, then stop. She didn’t move again as he removed the scissors and began snipping hair away from the side and back of her head. Kinky locks of hair wound into locks with gold wire fell to the floor.

A prolonged scene. The fighting between Titans was ongoing in the background, but the Nemean Titan didn’t move.

He stopped when there was nothing left to snip.

He looked back, ‘offscreen’, then took the scissors, still with lengths of hair sticking out around the place where the blades connected, and hesitated. His expression, distorted because it was painted across an uneven surface, looked concerned for a moment.

A moment later, he stuck scissor blades into the ear canal in one abrupt, smooth motion. Deep.

His victim reacted, thrashing, body arching. Her face was visible for only a moment and it was a dull blur. Not something the agent had recorded for posterity. He brought his boot up and back down in a hard kick against the side of her face.

Knocking her out. Maybe mercifully.

The scene tilted like the ‘camera’ floated underwater, unsteady, overcompensating. Taking in more. A young Victor used the toe of his boot to move his victim’s head. Half shaved, half of it scuffed and bruised, blood in the ear canal, the other half left alone.

A man I didn’t recognize or know, older, put his hands on young Victor’s shoulders. Two girls roughly his age approached, one of them with a smudge of blood around one nostril, a bloody handprint on her shoulder. Too old to be Rune. Wrong face shape to be Othala.

Maybe the younger girl was Othala. Maybe she came in later.

Behind them were men. A group, all standing together.

Attacking a family in their own home. Outnumbering them, because they were fucking cowards.

Welcome to Empire Eighty-Eight? More likely welcome to the Clans. An induction for the younger generation. Ugliness creating ugliness.

Gold letters appeared across my vision: YOU CAN SHOOT NOW. ASAP WHEN YOU GET YOUR GUN.

I nodded for Lookout’s benefit. I watched the scene, the group, the body of the girl lying on a kitchen floor. Another woman sitting against the corner, maybe unconscious.

My adolescent anger at Empire Eighty-Eight felt so petty. I’d seen the aftermath of beatings, I’d argued it, I’d hated them, but I hadn’t seen it or lived it. Always a background thing I’d gone out of my way to confront or meet.

It just… felt bad, that it was such a big thing, seeing it, but it had occupied so relatively little of my thoughtspace.

Which, I felt, was still better than living it by perpetuating it.