"Please, I don't want to die painfully so... make it quick?"
"Why would I kill you?"
"Isn't that what you people do?"
"No, surrender quietly, and I won't even slap you."
"Alright."
"Besides you didn't know what you were doing was wrong. The ones I'm actually going to slap are your teachers." -- Lessons
News like Pax Humanis coming after one is especially alarming when one has no idea why they're coming.
Executive Oin was young, and technically in charge. Since he was very young, that amounted to following every single lesson his tutors had given him as if it were a set of sacred instructions. For Dereggers, the instructions for profit without loss might as well be sacred instructions.
He didn't try to run from his fate. He faced it like any true man might, with a weapon leveled at the only door. It wasn't the gun that gave the enforcer pause. It was his age.
"We can talk, can't we?" he asked. "Before I get what I deserve?"
His killer was... about. About average height, about average hair, about middling weight. So unassuming that the wallpaper would stand out against her. She was also not about to raise any weapon or -well- act like a murderer.
"You deserve an education," she said. "For one, you're following your advisors' suggestions as if they're the only truth. Second... you're like sixteen."
"I'll be sixteen next year," said Oin.
"Oh, that makes it so much better," the murderer mumbled with a roll of her eyes. "The point is, you're still capable of learning better ways. You're capable of accepting evidence. The ones I'm after... are the ones whispering poison into your ear."
Poison? "I'm following the best economic theory in my polity."
"And what would you do if I told you there's better ones from outside your polity? Ones that could lead to bigger and better profits?"
"I'd ask to know the strategy, of course."
"Ask your tutors about the same hypothetical. I'll wait."
She wasn't actively trying to kill him, so Oin sent enquiries to his advisors. Each one sent back an urgent plea to never trust anything outside of his polity. Those foreign influences were a threat to the true way, and so on.
As his tutors so frequently advised, he did his own research, and found that the murderer, Vik, was telling the truth.
He gave her the addresses and security codes for his advisors' manor houses.
[Photo by Drew Dau on Unsplash]
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