Even though he was hungry, Amar lacked the will and desire to leave his bed. He knew he was delaying the inevitable, much like when he was a child and the mere thought of going through the day’s lessons depressed him. He glanced at the ancient alarm clock. The lateness of the hour finally forced him to confront the day.

Instinctively, as he cleaned up and dressed, he reached out with his mind. Outside his chambers, he lightly touched the thoughts of nearby servants and personnel. Thankfully, nothing was unusual. They were merely concerned with their own work as they bustled about the presidential palace. Only a few thoughts lingered on him and General Vosla. None were at all positive but also none were truly threatening, and that was all that mattered.

Amar muttered curses as he once again put on the costume of the elites of the First World. He had been stranded on the First World for over six years now, but he had never gotten used to the lack of vibrant colors and the useless, ugly strip of fabric that had to be tied firmly around the neck with excruciating difficulty. The look of himself in the mirror in the bland trappings of his place of banishment was enough to make the familiar, old yearning for home flare up.

Almost as soon as he stepped through the doorway, a young servant still in her teens emerged from a side corridor. Amar sensed right away that she was terrified of him. Nonetheless, she asked him if he wanted breakfast with flawless decorum.

“Yes, thank you,” Amar replied in excellent Ruthene, marred only by that accent people always seemed to notice but could never identify with certainty no matter how well-traveled they were. “I do love the coffee in this country,” he said as he followed the servant down the cavernous corridor at an assuring distance. He was tempted to add, though, that no matter where he was, he had never failed to enjoy coffee, one of the few untarnished blessings he ever found in this loathsome world.

After he ate (and the servant got away from him as soon as her duties would allow), Amar left the ornate dining room with a sigh. He should have already checked in on General Vosla and President Makowski by now.

As he made his way to the president’s offices, everyone from cleaning staff to military officers clumsily avoided him. He suppressed a perverse urge to broadcast “I’m not the one you should be worried about” into their minds.

An inhumanly tall and bulky figure blocked the door. Sunlight streaming through the windows glistened off its metallic, crimson skin.

“Good morning, Ruiner,” Amar said. A noise that was half a crackle of static and half a grunt came out of a head that was vaguely reptilian.

Amar had never worked with Ruiner before, but apparently Ruiner got around “the community.” As Amar understood it, Ruiner was once a scientist dying from stage 4 cancer. When the corporation he worked for purchased an extraterrestrial war-robot on the black market, he uploaded his consciousness into the robot’s CPU, at the cost of nearly all his intellect, memories, and sanity.

“Is Vosla and the president inside?” he asked, masking his discomfort over the fact that Ruiner, who was in Vosla’s words supposed to be their “loyal muscle”, was treating him like an outsider. Ruiner made no reply except to step aside, almost petulantly.

“I appreciate the conversation,” Amar muttered, secure in his certainty that the very concept of sarcasm was quite beyond what now passed for Ruiner’s mind.

President Konstantin Makowski sat cheerfully at his desk. Only the fact that he was slightly slumped over and was humming some old song for children gave any impression that something might be wrong with him. Vosla was smoking a cigar nonchalantly, perusing a well-worn copy of The Tempest in Ruthene. His aged but still muscular body and his pockmarked, stony face were both relaxed, but even in repose he still radiated a sense of threat.

“There you are,” Vaslo said, not lifting his head from the pages. “I was beginning to think you had overslept.”

“How’s the president?” Amar asked, eager to get through what had become an almost daily ritual. “It’s been a while since he had any…uh, adjustments.”

“Oh, he’s doing just fine,” Vosla said.

Amar tried to read Vosla’s casual, disinterested tone and his lazy body language. He hated not being able to read Vosla’s mind. In fact, it often terrified him. Vosla’s psychic defenses were extraordinarily thorough for a mindblind. If Amar tried to skim Vosla’s thoughts, he would only find memories of lyrics from some musical called Toomorrow. Theoretically Amar could still break through that and other defenses and dig deeper. After all, even before he learned how to read, Amar was being trained in the art of what his people called truthseeking by the very best. However, to crack Vosla’s mind, Amar would have to be physically close to him and stay in a state of intense concentration. And in that scenario, a bullet would go right into his brain before he could even get too far.

Even the briefest and most casual encounters with Vosla were totally disconcerting. And while he couldn’t read his mind, Amar knew Vosla knew it.

“I still have some work to do before I resign,” the president declared while abruptly sitting up and striking an officious pose. “You’ll help make sure all the details are addressed, I’m sure, General Vosla?”

“Of course, Your Excellency,” Vosla replied with mocking deference.

“Are you sure?” Amar said, as he gently scanned President Makowski’s mind, which was not at all broken, but simply…derailed. “He won’t be able to engage in anything beyond casual engagements.”

At last, Vosla bothered to turn his full attention to Amar. “I decided it would be preferable if he remained in seclusion until my inauguration. At this stage, having him in public achieves little except the invitation of unnecessary risks.”

“People are going to ask questions.”

Vosla sneered. “I will concern myself with the international press myself. No explanation as to why President Makowski would name a war criminal”—he spat out the phrase with practiced disdain—“as his preferred successor seems to satisfy the scavengers for long. Still, I can manage them myself, I think, but your services may still be needed until I am formally in power, naturally.

“In fact, I’ve been forgetting to mention that I will need you this afternoon. 14:00 precisely. According to reports from the southeast, a young sergeant has finally crushed the insurgent forces in the east and he has already arrived in the capital to be publicly honored. Originally, I was going to have you set up Makowski to award our stalwart champion, but I decided it should be me. After all, I succeeded in putting down the resistance Makowski had failed miserably to crush for years. And how better to legitimize the upcoming transition?”

“What do you need me to do?”

“I have precious few assurances that the military and the security forces are sufficiently loyal, and until the presidency is mine I can’t really do much to, let’s say, encourage such fidelity.”

Amar supposed he should feel relieved that Vosla was finding new uses for him, other than keeping the president in line. He agreed to scan the crowd, while of course hiding from the press and the public behind whatever officials appeared to prevent anyone from recognizing him or, worse, him being filmed or photographed. Of course, there would also be the strain of telepathically ensuring no one in such a large gathering would recognize him as the supercriminal Exile. Still, it was a simple enough request, and Amar agreed readily enough before leaving to do whatever he needed to do to keep away from Vosla until he was needed.

As he returned to his quarters, Amar couldn’t help but reflect on how there was a time not that long ago he would have never bet on someone with Vosla’s reputation. The general was well-known in the community for always being true to his word, but there were also a few stories of him exploiting loopholes and technicalities in his own promises with brutal bureaucratic efficiency. But there was no one else. The authorities had uncovered Amar’s last remaining safehouse and civilian cover identity in Cape Verde, and almost all of his usual allies were currently imprisoned, deep in hiding, or dead. What other hope was left?

And even if he gives you what he promised in exchanged for the presidency, you’ll end up returning home with an invading army. His own thought made him grimace.

Amar laid back down in his bed and tried to read but found he could not focus on the words.