In a country with thousands of professional hosts, it was difficult to attain even the moderate level of standing that Mei Tsa had. She had maintained her position how many hosts kept their standing in the Chinese system; with the understanding that there was always someone else to blame, yet no one who deserves credit. The extent to which she was surveiled as a Chinese citizen was thus irrelevant, for a lifetime of hosthood had constructed a panopticon within herself that subjected even her private speech under its gaze. In a sense, the communist system had taken much from American corporate values.

  Two weeks prior to this arc, she had been called to a meeting with her superior; he was not a man Mei knew to be possessed of much intelligence, nor was he expected to be. She had grown of late to view her own ambition as a problematic fact for her career.

  "The girl's name is Lanara." He passed over a picture of a teenage American girl and her family; Mei noticed she did not look much like her parents. "We'll need her Revenant."

  "With her still attached to it, or no?" said Mei.

  "Unfortunately, the need for secrecy overrides personal conscience in matters such as this. She shouldn't be left alive. As for what we know of her - she's a young girl, one with no value but her Revenant, which is to copy another Revenant she's witnessed before. It reminds me of the ferment scientists once thought coated the bottom of the sea, out of which, it was supposed, that all life differentiated itself from." he said. "While you've acted as medic for a few missions before, I've been directed to assign a particular team of hosts beneath you. Some you may recognize from your time at Ningsing."

  He passed a file folder over to her.

  Mei opened it to its front page, then looked over the list. "I recognize most of them. Particularly... Xinyue? She already had her previous Revenant given to someone else, no? Will she be any better with this one?"

  "There are some shortcomings among your group, but they're refinable enough with proper command. Hunting teenagers is hardly a situation where specialization will be required. Xinyue will synergize well with Yuchen, regardless."

  "Yuchen isn't on this list."

  He turned it to look over it again, then turned it back to her. "Then she was removed at the last minute - I hadn't been given the time to look over it twice. But regardless, you have several Revenants. You'll be conducting assassinations of a few Urasaria students on the way, of course, a list of simple targets with a largely predictable route. None of your hosts will be coordinated with each other, so they will need to be spaced out, but we similarly doubt your targets will be coordinated."

  By coordination, he was referring to a strategic concept, taught at all academics but generally understandable to any group of allied hosts. Because the frantic pace of fights do not allow much verbal coordination, allied hosts need to know each other's Revenants well enough to develop an instinctual understanding of who is to counter what and the source of attacks. This has been the primary reason for the creation of mentor and protege arrangements at academies, whose architects (with some merit) had thought first-years needed mentors close to them in age, lest too wide of a gap cause undue condescension or rebelliousness.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "And the start date of this operation?" said Mei. "I notice there's none listed. And you also say a largely predictable route, but there's quite a mix of years here and even potential students. There's no guarantee that Urasaria Academy itself will be their starting location, nor this even being the route they take."

  "I see you're attempting to get at the heart of matters, asking questions. Very good. The simple answer is that there is no start date because the Urasaria Academy students have not yet set one. There are two currently protecting this girl, and when they are unable to have her Revenant removed themselves, they will ask their friends for help."

  "Sato and Jakuzure."

  "Yes. They will regroup at the Academy and be easily trackable from there by the usual informants, and all necessary information will be provided to you. Disperse it to your group at your discretion."

  "Disperse it? They haven't received their own copies of this?"

  "They know nothing more than their assignment is in the United States and that you are leading them. But when choosing what they know, remember - people can only believe what they are allowed to imagine."

  "Given the composition of this group, might I ask- my authorized level of disciplinary force..."

  "The group is as much your responsibility as it is your reflection."

  "How burdensome a freedom like that is." muttered Mei.

  For the remainder of her work day she reviewed over the files. Of particular interest was the file on Aimee and her girlfriend, and Mei was reminded she would likely be facing the sundown side of her twenties without a woman to call her own.

  Mei had never married, of course; the lesbianism of female hosts was still a debated fact in China, generally preferred to be left undiscussed; but she could not help but feel frustrated when she saw young lesbian couples, for their presence seemed a mockery of her own choices she had made in the past. But of course many of the frustrations Mei had with were with herself, as people's often are.

  Then there was her elderly father at home. As a woman, she was expected to take care of him, not her brother, and she resented how this duty fell to her.

  Her father had worked for the same manufacturing company for decades, yet as is often the case, had been laid off with little restitution; the Chinese system did not offer enough of a pension for him to retire under, yet he never quite managed to find work after. He would often tell Mei of when he had received notice he would be laid-off, which was not even delivered to him in-person but by letter; he had been in such rage that he had come back to his workplace and demanded to meet with his manager, and needed to be dragged off the lot by police when he would not relent.

  He told her this with pride, and she considered it one of his few admirable traits.

  On her way home, she decided to detour through a stretch of country that was not yet urban. It had grown littler of late; the rapid industrialization of China had increased the standard of living commensurate to what it sapped from the fauna immediately surrounding it. She saw near the end of her run a channel of a river, one that had lost its water recently, and a few feet from it saw a dead fish, which had almost made it into a patch of nearby water.

  He had made his gamble - fishes in drying shallows who feel their confinement and leap while there is still time may yet regain the main river and survive. Or perhaps, Mei believed, he had a mere migratory impulse or shot of boredom rather than the intelligence to survive, for she did not wish to construct narrative where there was not, nor imbue with importance the motions all small creatures must make when impinged upon by a largeness they cannot fathom.