Merlot knew shredder gas was fictional — made from nightlock berries crushed into a fine powder. Yet it was a chilling parallel to Zyklon B, used at Auschwitz, which was all too real, unlike Catwerp. So far, the story had been growing darker, with Lolita stubbornly refusing to give up on her quest for revenge. He had forgotten what made Lolita so unyielding, forgetting at times that he could be stubborn, refusing to accept the doctor's diagnosis that he had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from the war.
Merlot read in the news that the president's son mostly kept to himself. He didn't blame him — how could anyone live freely with the Secret Service following every move? Online dating was out of the question, not with scammers pretending to be him. Sure, the kid was cute, but too young for Merlot's taste. Besides, it's hard to enjoy a real date when paparazzi can turn one awkward moment into a headline. Maybe they should get a life and let the boy have one.
Merlot never collected celebrity selfies like Pokémon cards. He refused to pose as a fan—it made him feel small, like he mattered less than the person beside him.
The president's son's upbringing had been sheltered. He couldn't have a birthday party as a kid without the paparazzi turning it into a spectacle. That was the hidden curse of having a father in the Oval Office: a life stripped of normalcy, shadowed by cameras and suspicion.
Still, Merlot couldn't feel sorry for him — not when he stood to inherit a tax-free estate, assuming the bill passed. Maybe that was his father's way of showing love. But Merlot suspected the boy would have preferred time and attention over another expensive toy. He'd seen on television how the reporter interacted more with the son than the president ever did from behind his desk. Perhaps the estate was his father's way of making up for lost time. Merlot didn't need a trust fund—he needed Medicaid. Some wounds can't be bought away.
After all, years of therapy hadn't erased the memory of being expected to raise a boy, not a girl. Yet he had grown into the man he was never meant to be.
Merlot scowled at Borealia's latest decree. The head tax, born in 1885 to punish the Red Dragon, was her way of saying thanks for the free labour. Once the railroad was done, she didn't need his workers anymore—just their wallets. After all, the Red Dragon's sons had laid her tracks, bled in her tunnels, and died for her progress. Borealia called it nation-building; he called it theft with paperwork.
Borealia at least had the decency to look sorry—sort of—after targeting the Red Dragon. Uncle Sam? Not a shred of regret after flattening Nippon. Nippon had started it, yes—but in the end, history was less about truth and more about who could wear the crown of cruelty.
Borealia's history books praised her morality and charity—except when it came to the enslaved woman who torched Montreal. That part got edited out. Too messy for a clean narrative.
Felix, Merlot's character, had to learn the truth about Intermarium: a place far uglier than Lolita's fairy tale, where patriotism was served with sanitized history and convenient lies.