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The memory of Kuroda's son haunts him like a relentless ghost. He no longer experiences an erratic fluctuation between anger and grief, as he did in the aftermath of the incident. There is only a sense of pervasive agony. Without rage, there is nothing to subdue the suffering.

Seisui loved to fish. Well-stocked trout ponds are located throughout the capital city of Ichidou, nestled in groves of vegetation extinct elsewhere on the planet, surviving here as a result of careful climate control. The temperature in Ichidou is kept 30 degrees Celsius higher than the surrounding countryside. Ice and snow, commonplace elsewhere on the planet all year long, are seen only often enough to become a novelty, not a perpetual way of life. Kuroda found it disconcerting to be outside, away from the familiar sights and smells of the slaughterhouse, but Seisui's enthusiasm made up for it. He was proud of his son - an intelligent, patriotic boy, and every time Seisui hauled a fish out of the water, grinning triumphantly, Kuroda's pride grew. Kuroda devoted countless photographs to Seisui's fish. One of them resides on the desk in his office, and he studies it regularly; the edges of the frame are worn from handling. He remembers that day clearly.

"Target is responding to the bait!" A series of faint tugs, barely discernible vibrations adding tension to the fishing line. Seisui waits patiently for the right moment, then sets the hook. The target begins to struggle, resisting the unnatural force attempting to guide it. It pulls back and dives to the bottom of the clear pool. Seisui reels it in slowly, unconcerned. "Objective obtained, sir!" The captive is dragged ashore and held aloft, gills flaring outward with each strangled breath. Kuroda's camera clicks softly.

They walk home together; Seisui chatters about his friends at school and a recent field trip to an algae farm ? one of many responsible for the production of a majority of the planet's oxygen, paper products, food, fuel, and fertilizer. Once in the door, Seisui is eager to show off his prize.

"Mom! Look what I caught! Rebel scum!"

The prisoner's arrival is not met with enthusiasm. Kuroda's wife doesn't eat meat - not since the letter she received from her sister. It arrived clandestine in the morning newspaper, concealed in the fashion section. Kuroda found his wife focused intently on the colourful pages and wondered whether she'd soon be insisting on a new dress or an unnecessarily expensive pair of shoes. Shrugging, he returned to his breakfast. When he looked up again, she was staring at him, her yellow eyes radiating animosity.

"The people you kill ... what happens to them afterwards? Do we really eat people?"

Kuroda casually pocketed his hands. "Terrorists aren't people." He burned the letter in the kitchen sink and scattered the ashes in the backyard, dark flecks on a fresh layer of snow. He recognizes now the strain this incident placed on their already weakened relationship. Instead of condemning her sister's radicalism, Kuroda's wife became envious of it, sparking revolutionary ideals of her own. She watched with awe and respect as her sister's fugitive boyfriend ascended the country's most-wanted list, yet questioned the legitimacy of the many allegations levelled against him. Reisen was never the type to hurt anyone, and any reports to the contrary automatically invoked her suspicion. Even Kuroda, who spent what she saw as an irrational amount of time with Reisen when they were younger (previous to Reisen's defection), had a tendency to turn the television off whenever another special bulletin came on. The news eagerly showcased results of Reisen's criminal compulsions, but never the procedures. Somehow, it was too graphic and disturbing for viewers to witness grainy security footage of combating shadows, but displaying photographs of corpses afflicted by various tools of brutality was, by all means, acceptable.

When she heard that her sister had been killed, leaving behind a young boy of her own, Kuroda forbade his wife from mourning. He told her they could not afford to appear sympathetic to her cause. She mourned privately, refusing to leave the house for over a month, and when concerned parties questioned her whereabouts Kuroda always told them she was atoning for the damage her sister had caused.

Kuroda's wife observes her son with obvious concern. Her hand twitches.

"Can I rip the guts out?" the little boy asks, already going for a suitable knife. He's done this before, and poses little danger to himself.

"Go ahead, son. Be careful with the knife." Kuroda assents, smiling at Seisui before disappearing into the living room.

The boy stares at the dead fish, imagining a bad man (like the one he always sees on TV) in its place. "How dare you look at me with such disrespect!" He drives the knife into the eye socket, slicing easily through the offending optic. "You disgust me!"

"Seisui! There's no need to play such violent games!"

Seisui's mother is never supportive of games where someone ended up dead, but for Seisui those are the only games worth playing. He sees no harm in it ? it's what strong, courageous people like his father do every day.

"But mom," the boy frowns, sounding his age. "I'm under strict orders to annihilate political dissidents."

"Is that so?" She leaves the boy to his fish, locating her husband.

"Kuroda."

"Hmn?" He barely registers the sound of her voice, engrossed in a spreadsheet program on his computer.

"There's something wrong with our son."

"What's the matter with him?" An audible hint of curiosity seeps into his tone, though Kuroda is reluctant to express an interest in anything his wife has to say. Nine times out of ten, even mundane conversation will result in her screaming at him. The thin webbing holding their marriage together exists only because of their son. Kuroda knows she would fight for custody of the boy, and he's unwilling to share. Seisui means too much to him.

"He wants to be like you."

"He may experience some difficulty enlisting at his age."

"This isn't a joke! Having you as a role-model is bad enough. You want him growing up thinking it's acceptable to slaughter children because their parents are reluctant to drink the water?"

"There's nothing wrong with the water."

"That's not the point!" Enraged, she seizes a nearby vase, sending it crashing against the wall. Scarred orchid pedals litter the floor. It's at this point that Kuroda mentally re-asserts that it was love which brought him and this woman together - not denial of a personal observation that female genitalia looks too much like an infected wound to be classified as attractive.

"What broke?" Seisui emerges from the kitchen, looking worried.

"It was an accident." His mother attempts to reassure him in a flat, emotionless tone and exits the room hastily.

"Father?" The boy is not entirety convinced.

"It's okay, Seisui." Kuroda does his best to comfort him, pulling his son into a hug. He tells him he has nothing to worry about. Seisui knows his mother and father fight sometimes, but it still scares him.

Everything's going to be okay ...

Kuroda had never intended to lie to his son. Words spoken with such honesty and trust now conjure violent discord in his stomach. He continues to stare at the photograph, thinking back to the circumstances surrounding Seisui's death, blaming himself.

"I'm home."

He knew something was wrong right away - the house was too quiet. There was no sound of Seisui's footsteps running to greet him, no boyish laughter derived from the simple joy of a boy reuniting with his father. The only thing that greets his ears is the sound of his wife chopping in the kitchen - the repeated whack of a sharp blade against the flat surface of a cutting board. He turns his head toward the kitchen in alarm; the scent of blood is detectable from here. As he approaches the kitchen, he notices small crimson dots on the floor.

He finds his wife engrossed with the contents of her cutting board, back turned to him. She acknowledges his presence without facing him, her tone heavy with elements of strain, sounding foreign and somehow far-away, "Welcome home."

"Where's Seisui?"

"He waited for you all day; missed his daddy. He wanted so badly to be just like you, Kuroda, but I can't let that happen. One mass murderer in the family is enough." She turns to him, holding the heart of their son in her manicured hands. "I hope you're hungry."

Everything following this is a tangle of confusion with only a few fleeting moments of clarity. He remembers the rage, instantaneous and impulsive, causing him to act even before he had the opportunity to think. He remembers locking his hands around her throat, squeezing with no desire to stop, wanting only to squeeze harder. He doesn't recall opening the channel, causing energy to surge through his arm, exiting his hand where it orbited, flaring outward in concentric rings. It wasn't until the woman's face began to petrify that it occurred to him - murder would send him straight to the slaughterhouse where he worked, this time on the crowded trains instead of the front door. He isn't afraid of dying, but the lack of anyone to perpetuate the memory of his son is not something he's prepared to accept. He reverses the process, cutting off the energy from its divine source. The woman is still alive, twitching spasmodically, but makes no sound. He fills the bathtub with water and watches her drown.

Her death was ruled an appalling suicide; her motives for the murder and subsequent drowning the product of psychosis. Cause: Unknown, but likely a late-onset neurobiological disorder - the incidence of which has fallen to nearly zero, amplifying the tragedy of the circumstances. Even the Emperor, still mourning the loss of his own youngest son, expressed his sympathies.

He knows now that it had been important for her to hurt him in the best way she knew how - through his son. He thinks there was also something in her maligned reasoning that felt she might be teaching him a lesson, getting through to him in a way she'd never been able to achieve before. It's possible that she wanted him to experience what it feels like to lose a child to a senseless cause, wherein lies the downfall of her argument - her cause was senseless, motivated by anger and desperation. His isn't.

The only thing Kuroda regrets is not doing it sooner.

He thinks about Kokkan and wonders how the boy is coping with the pressures of his new profession.

It won't bring his son back, but this is one life the General is determined to preserve. It's the re-visitation of a missed opportunity; a way of trying to assuage the guilt.

As a member of the special division, Kokkan lies awake at night and listens to conspiratorial mutterings. Unlike the others, he is not a volunteer. The others view the special division as means of prolonging life. To join the special division is the ultimate expression of optimism. Each member possesses the hope that they will someday be rescued or encounter circumstances enabling them to expose the truth, as the outside world knows nothing of what goes on behind the brightly-painted mural walls. Because he isn't here by his own volition, Kokkan wonders why he's here at all. The only logical solution he can come up with is to suspect Kuroda of applying a final, desperate method of torture to extract any information with the potential to aid his country in the extermination of terrorists. This makes him distrust the man, but there is something about the General that brings this judgement into question - a sense of genuine concern he gets whenever the man passes by him and stops to ask how he's doing.

Long hours are spent cleaning up after the soldiers and the butchers - the two sometimes interchangeable in the tasks they performed around the slaughterhouse. Animals needed to be fed and watered, their pens cleaned regularly, floors washed, human remains processed. Nothing was wasted, even bones were ground-up and used for fertilizer. The special division did everything no one else wanted to.

When he works Kokkan sticks close to Aki, the woman he met when he first arrived. Her kindness was not limited to that first day - she often goes out of her way to procure extra rations for him, disappearing with a guard only to return bruised but smiling, carrying a piece of beef jerky or a small container of salted fish.

It's late when Aki settles beside him, his feet hanging over the edge of his bunk, knees drawn close to his chest. She rubs the length of his back and hums softly, prepared to stay there until Kokkan falls asleep, but she never has the chance. The door to their meagre quarters is thrown open and soldiers march in, barking orders.

"Get down on the ground!"

The prisoners knew this day was coming, but hoped for more time. Their unrelenting optimism is shattered by the march of steel-toed feet.

There will be no escape. Any information they've learned will die with them.

"Don't kill the boy! General's orders!"

With one exception.

Hearing this, Aki turns to Kokkan and smiles. "You'll be okay, little lamb." She presses her hands to his cheeks, trying to drive back the hysterical tears rising in the boy's eyes. "Don't cry, little lamb."

The members of the special division fall one at a time. No ammunition is wasted - the soldiers all carry bladed weapons. Aki is still focused on Kokkan when a soldier drives a sword through the top of her head.

"Oh, little lamb ..." She goes down with a thud. The soldiers clear out, leaving Kokkan with a mop and a bucket. He already knows what to do with the bodies.

Kuroda shifts in his chair, anxiously awaiting an update on the scheduled execution. For now, all he can do is keep Kokkan alive, switching him from one division to another, but he's devising a strategy to have the boy confined to less psychologically scarring duties somewhere within the slaughterhouse. A knock at the door brings the news he's waiting for.

"Excuse me, General? Special division six has been purged, sir. The boy will be transfered to division ten."

"Thank you, Captain."

Kuroda reaches down, opening the bottom drawer of his desk. Inside is something he keeps hidden, even from himself. It's a photograph of himself and the woman he would someday marry, standing alongside Reisen - now the most-wanted man on the planet, then a dedicated military doctor, and his best friend. Kuroda stares at the photograph for a long time. He can imagine Reisen returning home to find Kokkan gone, the last of his family destroyed. He tries to delight in the man's suffering, but can't. He knows that pain far too well.