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nod, our heads hanging low as if an unbearable weight is sitting on our shoulders. How could we possibly misunderstand the consequences? The BSA winning the war means only one thing — the crazy extremists get to wipe out humanity. The only force that stands between them and their goal are hundreds of Sequencers who can observe their every move and intervene. Weird. Shouldn’t we have…
    ‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Since the BSA exists, Sequencers can see what the BSA is doing. Now, the BSA seems to turn satellites against us and is about to win? How can that be? Why didn’t we win first what with satellite control and all?’
    ‘The BSA has always been very loosely organised, if at all,’ Runner explains. ‘They don’t have a command structure. If a handful of them decide to invade a city, then we can only see it when it’s already happening. Often it’s too late for us to stop them. We have to move our forces and that can take hours or even days. Then the BSA is already done killing and is moving on. It’s impossible to anticipate their moves. They are everywhere and nowhere. They can be anyone. If you look from far above you see people. Who’s a BSA member? You can’t tell. If they only pull out their black flags and uniforms right before an attack, how would you know who’s who until it’s too late? That’s their advantage — they look like you and me until they pull out their guns and cause a bloodbath.’
    ‘If they were more organised, their movements would follow a pattern and it would be easier for us to predict their next actions,’ Kat says. ‘But they don’t behave like troops. They are erratic, chaotic and extremely brutal. Each small BSA group is autonomic. Once in a while we get to watch one BSA group attacking another. They have no idea they are both BSA! Can you believe that?’
    ‘What happens then?’ I ask.
    She shrugs. ‘The attacked group whips out their black flags, the attackers stop, and everyone has a party. Sometimes we get there soon enough to take them down, sometimes they disappear before we can move in our forces.’
    ‘Isn’t that…isn’t that an unusual degree of organisation for the BSA to shut off an entire island and gain satellite control?’ I turn to Runner. ‘Is that even possible? Don’t you overestimate them?’
    ‘It has happened before. Two…no, three times.’ Ben says. He still sits on the floor, the bowl of rice between his feet. ‘Not the satellite control stuff, but the assembly of a number of BSA subgroups. One man, talented in organisation and leadership, took command and turned BSA followers into soldiers. Trained them in combat. We saw it and took them all down. No problem. We prefer it to this,’ he waves at nothing in particular, ‘…chaos of factions.’
    ‘And now you can’t see them anymore,’ I note.  
    We all stare at Ben’s rice bowl as if a solution could be dug up there.  
    Yi-Ting clicks her tongue and grins. ‘It will work,’ she says. ‘You can fly, Ben. Let’s assume the BSA can control satellites and fake satellite imagery. I don’t quite believe it; it’s way too sophisticated compared to a simple failure of transmission, for example. But let’s pretend for now, it’s possible. So they see we are here and we have fun playing with our airplane, and you have fun with your sharp shooting and torturing Micka.’
    Runner frowns at that, but she continues undisturbed. I suppress a smile. ‘So far, we’ve given no sign of knowing they can see us, let alone modify satellite data. So far, all we do is quite boring, except of course, when we fly to Taiwan to search for their base camp. Am I correct so far?’  
    Kat and Runner nod. ‘Cool,’ she says. ‘They watch from far above and probably want to cover our whole camp, if not the whole of Itbayat. I doubt they’ll zoom in to check if I brushed my teeth this morning, or to count the screws on Ben’s airplane.’ She claps her hands