With their own fleet of Sweepers far outnumbering the Sinclairs, there was no need for them to dig in their heels like this. The Mad Dogs helped Sweepers during the Falling Infestation, but that had been basic self-preservation. Anyone with a brain knew that the Dead Ringer was run by the Mad Dogs mob. Part of her was viciously pleased when the Dead Ringer newspaper rose to her defense, but mostly she felt squeamish. ( - sound like Clae, he’d informed her, and even his lack of you sounded exasperated.) She needed to know what everyone was saying, so she could give them a proper and well-educated fuck you in case she ever met one of these idiots in person. If she was head Sweeper, she’d do this right. Citizens wrote to the papers, bemoaning her ineptitude: Why couldn’t she have just not damaged anything? Why couldn’t she have prevented the infestation from coming at all? Why hadn’t she done her civic duty and shared the truth with everyone from the start? Okane suggested that maybe she should avoid the papers for a while, but she ignored him. When infestations came up now, the public reacted in hysterics. As good as it was to have people who knew about infestations, in this instance it proved extremely annoying.

It couldn’t be blamed on mobsters or another far-fetched reason, not now in Amicae’s age of truth. Where those incidents had been either picked at or overlooked entirely, stories about this one had ballooned. Damage had been done, yes, but it hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as what she’d done to the army barracks in September, or even what she and Clae had done to a residence in August. It came on the tail end of an infestation, just as reported in the Amicae Sun. Laura’s dismissal had been a shock, initially.

Mirah bolender