Erna shared his sentiments exactly. These were people who’d spent long years working to undermine the royal administration they so detested. And she doubted they were pretending to go along with Nike so they could attack the Genesis Army from within, either. Tricks like that wouldn’t work against Lylat intelligence, and the Knights of Valor knew it.
By that point, nearly a full third of the people there were showering Nike with applause.
Erna was aghast at how quickly they’d changed their tunes.
“I figured this would happen, yo,” Annette snarled from beside her as she glared at the secret society members with a mixture of boredom and contempt.
“What are you talking about?”
“They didn’t change their minds. They never hated the government, just their lots in life. The only thing that changed was where that anger was directed.”
“There has to be more to it than—”
“How many times have I told you? This country’s people just aren’t worth saving, yo.” Annette rested her chin on her hands. “If they all cooperated, they could overthrow the government like it was nothing. Even the cops and army have a rank and file that’s made up of ordinary people. All they have to do is work together. There’s tons and tons of countries that have had revolutions by doing just that.”
“………”
“The bottom line is, the people of Lylat don’t have the balls to do the same.”
She looked over at the secret society members clapping and sucking up to Nike.
“After all, they’ve been brainwashed to think that Galgad’s to blame for all of their problems.”
“That’s not—!” Erna spluttered, but she couldn’t bring herself to deny it.
There had been clues all over the place.
There was the way those youths had been unabashedly discriminating against a Galgad citizen by that tenth arrondissement canal.
There was the way the Bertram miners had idolized Nike.
There was the way people had been watching the king’s celebratory parade with delight.
No matter how badly the government exploited them, most of Lylat’s citizens were loyal to it all the same.
Rather than so much as think about revolution, they praised the king and the aristocracy, they discriminated against people from the Galgad Empire, and they tried to curry favor with their Genesis Army overseers. They were cattle cheering for their own butchers. There was no other way to put it.
“Some of them manage to break the brainwashing, sure, but you just saw how when they get fed false truths, talked down by their allies, and threatened by the Genesis Army, they fall right back into their old programming.”
“But why…?”
“Klaus was right—this country has a sickness.”
Erna thought back to the info from their briefing and gasped.
Over in the middle of the lecture hall, there were still some people resisting Nike’s claims. “I don’t believe you!” they cried as they valiantly stood up to her. Over half the officers were unswayed by Nike’s honeyed words, and they rose to their feet and urged their hesitant comrades to do the same.
“Seems to me—”
Nike spoke up.
“—like anyone who disagrees might just be a Galgad spy.”
In an instant, her bloodlust filled the hall.
It was that same chilling pressure that Erna had experienced back at the Bertram Mines. She began sweating so badly, it was like her body had broken down.
All the students who’d been so defiant just moments ago immediately shrank back. If they obeyed Nike, they would live. If they opposed her, they would be arrested on the spot.
When faced with those two options, not a single person dared defy her. After all, most of the secret society’s members were just college kids with no formal training.
“Don’t you worry your little heads. I’m here now. And I’ve protected this country from those Imperial fiends this long, haven’t I?”
Eventually, Nike started walking.
There were footsteps audible from outside the window. The lecture hall was surrounded. Nike had come with numbers.
“Oh, my beloved citizens. Listen to me and me alone.”
Nike slowly lifted an arm. She waved her hand with the elegance of a conductor, then brought it to a stop in midair.
When she did, her index finger was extended—and pointing straight at Erna’s face.
“Based on our investigation, those girls are from the Galgad Empire.”
Oh no, Erna thought as she quickly turned to flee.
The students who’d sided with Nike were all fired up. “They’re Imperial spies!!” they bellowed. “They were trying to brainwash us! GET ’EM!!”
Running away was essentially admitting that Nike was right, but Erna doubted that the officers would listen to reason.
Then the lecture hall windows shattered as a swarm of agents surged inside. As the Knights of Valor recoiled from the broken glass, the agents began making their arrests.
Erna stepped up and leaped toward the middle of the hall. One of Annette’s homemade smoke bombs tumbled from her skirt and exploded. The ensuing cloud of white smoke billowed out and filled the entire room.
“Use the smoke to get out of here, everyone! We have the home field advantage!!”
All she could do now was help as many of her comrades flee as possible. More importantly, she needed to get away from Nike. If things went on like that, the Knights of Valor were going to go down for good.
The Knights of Valor had told her about their escape routes. If she could just get to the reference library on the south side of campus and knock over one of its bookcases, she could escape to the tunnels underground.
Erna raced through the smoke, then leaped out one of the very windows the Genesis Army had smashed its way in through.
When she landed in the quad outside, though, she found a man waiting for her with his fists raised.
“TRAITOOOOR!”
She bit her lip.
That wasn’t a Genesis Army agent. Erna’s attacker was one of her own Knights of Valor allies. It was the man who’d offered her juice instead of wine at her welcome party.
He’d known that she would go for the hidden passage, and he’d circled around to cut her off.
Erna found herself reminded of something Klaus had once taught her.
“Why don’t the masses revolt? It’s because the nation is afflicted by a powerful sickness.”
“The administration is of the aristocracy, by the aristocracy, and for the aristocracy, yet the people tacitly approve of the very hyper-stratified society that neglects them—and the reason for that is simple.”
“It’s because they don’t hate the government.”
“A small handful of intellectuals and activists might denounce the government, but their discontent never spreads far.”
“What they hate isn’t the monarchy, it’s the Galgad Empire.”
“They’ve been brainwashed to loathe Galgad. They’re taught that it’s the root of all evil. Everything from the radio to the newspapers to the rumors they hear on the street fills their ears with daily stories of Galgad’s barbarity.”
“That’s why the revolution never comes.”