Chapter 18 - No Way Out

I had enough.  I had since been released from re-education and living with Sophie in the Gustafson estate.  There had been no word of Wolf and only that Oliver had been dragged out of Pleagos and thrown onto the Island.

We were made to watch the monthly reels like everyone else and I winced.  Ingrid was staying with her family and as she was considered non-existant, she thankfully never had to see the films.

Several more Commissars had been reassigned.  I didn't understand now what it meant and thought so differently when they first reassigned Sigmund Delemont all those years before.  The pace of such movements and activity were increasing rapidly and we began to wonder if something within the state apparatus was changing, possibly collapsing.

The most unheard of events was Schols set fire to his own prison and released all the inmates.  He was shot by his own guards who then tried to round up as many of the escaped convicts.  Most were captured, a few fled into the outskirts of the city, fewer still blended within the city and some successfully stayed free for almost a year.

There was talk of open rebellion and it felt like the Artesians again, but there were none in sight.  None except Sophie and I tried my best to see if there was any tell, anything I missed in her that could say something about Knut.

And as quickly as things seemed to be unraveling.  Nothing.  Law and order prevailed.  I felt now it was a dystopian nightmare that they would reset every few generations, maybe less.  There would be another Karl Knutmudsen, another Artesian, a Muse, and whatever the Capital found amusing.