~———————~

Six kilometers, two laps around the Capital grounds in the gray before dawn, just me, the smoke, and the sound of my own breathing. This time belongs to me. My eyes drift to the far perimeter, the pyres burning still slow and steady through the night. No burials. No graves. The plague dead go to flame, clean and efficient, ash where the old world once stood. The smell gets into your clothes and stays there, greasy, bitter, with that undertone no one names but everyone recognizes. A stark reminder. I learned to run through it without breaking stride.

This is Dominion’s Capital. A week after the world ended, it’s still holding.

I return to my suite, shower, change, pull my hair tight. Uniform set. Another day begins.

By the time I step back outside, the yard is already filling. New recruits, children brought in over this first week as each of us generals started pushing into our regions and took stock of who was left. Most will be sent back out into our five divisions. A few may stay under Adrian’s direct command here. Right now they are just bodies that need shaping before the chaos outside finds its way in.

My hazel-green eyes track them as I pass. Older groups starting their day with drills beneath the banners, staves snapping up and down like rifles in small hands, serving as examples to the newcomers. Their instructors are barely older, voices still high as they bark orders. Children teaching children. Keeping rhythm because rhythm is what they have.

One of the older boys at the edge of the yard catches sight of me and straightens. “General.” His salute is crisp, staff tucked tight against his shoulder. Two others follow a beat later, cleaner than most adults ever managed before the world fell apart. The new ones only stare, still too raw to know when to move.

The Capital has what the outside world has already lost: running water, food, power humming through the lines from the generators. It draws them in as much as Dominion does. I don’t fault them for that. A safe building and a meal is a better argument than ideology when you are 10 and alone.

Above me sway the banners which hang where everyone can see them. The unblinking eye inside a black sunburst, Dominion’s authority radiating outward in dark rays. We hang them high so the children always feel the weight of it above them. So they remember where safety and order comes from.

The speakers crackle across the yard as I cross toward the administrative block. A foxtrot from another century drifts beneath the morning noise, then cuts. One of Adrian’s communications children reads the day’s update in that same flat, unhurried voice. Dominion Policy Reminder. Curfew at twenty hundred. Report to your assigned superiors for meal and drill schedules. Missed formations and unattended duties will not be tolerated. Report any infractions to the nearest Crow Eye post. A beat of silence, then the music returns, violins dragging through faint static.

The Capital already had its rhythm. The new recruits just have to fall into step.

A girl carrying ledgers against her chest presses herself to the corridor wall to let me pass. “General Kaelis.” I nod once and keep moving. The old Dominion children know the forms. The new ones will learn.

I tug my ponytail tighter and feel the Dominion jacket pull wrong across my shoulders again. After more than a week of wearing it, I am done pretending not to notice. The cut works on boys and men. On a woman, it binds in all the wrong places. If mine fits this badly, Kira’s must be worse. I need to have someone under Christina alter them before I spend another day fighting the thing.

Some boys from the administrative teams kneel beside a solar rig near the far building, wrenches too heavy in their hands. Two fight a pump valve that won’t seal, working from half-remembered steps in the wrong order. They’ll learn by breaking things and forcing the parts back together until failure teaches them the order. I don’t stop. Books had their time. Survival teaches faster.

Inside, logistics children chalk tallies straight onto the concrete. Soap, iodine, gauze, gloves. A team staggers past with a replacement solar panel, boots scraping, arms shaking. The Capital runs on what Adrian’s children can keep standing. No need to spend fuel when there are hands.

Adrian’s broadcast last week drew the line under the old world. Before it, we were a fortress building itself in secret. After it, we became a symbol. No more supply chains. No more outside resupply. Just what we can scavenge inside the fence, and the hands willing to carry it.

Before that broadcast, Ronan had pushed to show the world more, each of us on camera with our abilities on full display. Fire. Magnetism. The works. Adrian shut it down without ceremony. This is not a performance. We do not audition for the desperate, he said. I agreed. I had no interest in spectacle.

Spectacle found us anyway. After the broadcast, we pushed back out, reclaiming roads and buildings, gathering the skilled survivors we could use, and leaving small pockets of civilization behind for later. A few resisted. Two days into consolidation, some tried to break for the tree line. I felt the familiar cold focus settle in, the part of me that does not negotiate with disagreement. One clap, palms meeting with sharp compression, and the air turned into a directional burst. Fast. Practical. Three bodies hit the ground. The rest slowed when the reality finally caught up.

Others started calling it Flashpoint. I never asked them to. Naming these things still feels childish. Like most things here, I endure it.

Two preteen guards stand at the inner doors, staves vertical, hands clenched too tight around the grips. They see me and snap straighter. “General.”

I nod as I approach. I am not sure what they would do if I decided to push past them. Probably nothing useful. The posture is theater, but necessary theater, so I let them have it.

They swing the doors open without a word.

~———————~

The office smells like paper, dust, and the soap from a clean shirt. Maps and tallies cover the table. The world reduced to ink, numbers, and lines. No smoke. No whining. Just control.

Adrian is already inside.

He stands at the far end of the table, dark hair falling across his brow as he shifts a stack of papers aside. Lean. Deliberate. His eyes are the color of storm clouds held in place by will alone. He looks no older than his mid-thirties, but it’s not his face that commands the room. It’s the pressure of him. Being near Adrian always feels like standing at the edge of a drop you cannot see the bottom of. Your instincts go quiet. Your breathing adjusts. Fear seeps in whether he calls it or not.

Those of us who came from the old order had a name for it years ago, back around the transition when Adrian took over. It was before my time there, the story already moving in low voices about the new boss by the time I arrived ten years ago. Before then, Orbis Arcanum still operated the way it always had. The Aurelian Foundation was the public face, clean and legitimate, the kind of organization governments could fund and stand beside in photographs. Orbis Arcanum was the real influence behind the scenes.

Control was understood to run in the family. Authority passed the way old wealth passes, the son stepping into the father’s role with the same mission and sharper tools. Ownership did too, each new heir presented as the next steady hand guiding the same machine. Adrian’s father had built influence the slow way, through favors, leverage, budgets, and files that never left the building, all of it resting on power inherited through older generations of the family. He could bend people by force of certainty alone, making resistance feel costly before anyone could name why. Fear came from consequences you did not see until it was too late.

Adrian took that same pressure and made it immediate. When he entered a room, something in people folded. Resolve thinned. Even the stubborn felt their bodies choosing compliance before their minds caught up. The name moved through back channels first, not as a flourish but as shorthand among those who had been there and survived it. Nightmare Shroud. No one said it because they understood him. They said it because that was the closest language they had for what it felt like to stand near him.

Adrian almost never uses it here. He does not need to. The threat of it settles on its own.

I clasp my hands behind my back. “As stated in my report, supplies are stable. First consolidation point is secure in my region. Food intact, water flowing. Patrol rotations are holding. Medical stocks refreshed. No shortages this week. We’ll be able to push further tomorrow once the replacement solar panel is in place.”

His gaze lingers on me a beat longer than necessary, then he nods once. “Very good, Kaelis. And discipline?”

“Maintained. Captains and lieutenants drill daily. The children obey.” I pause. “When my forces moved in, some refused to fall in line. Those who resisted were killed.”

I do not soften it. To him, necessity is explanation enough.

His pen taps once against the paper. “And Veynar? He was able to get what was needed for you?”

I let out just enough breath to be honest about my irritation. “He’s approaching his eastern perimeter. Collected the spare solar panels. He said he’d be back in time for tonight’s address. Once they’re in, I’ll have them moved over and ready to go out tomorrow.”

Adrian’s eyes narrow slightly. Not suspicion. Recognition. He knows exactly how little patience I have for Dimitri.

Dimitri Veynar doesn’t frighten me the way Adrian does. Adrian doesn’t wield fear as punishment. He allows it to exist so disorder never finds room to form. Dimitri uses fear only after the fact, as correction, a lesson designed to hurt rather than prevent. He enjoys it. That difference matters. It’s written into him. Detached. Clinical. He looks at people the way a butcher looks at meat. Not cruel out of passion, but out of indifference. His pale Slavic features, thin dark hair, and that air that never warms unsettle me in a way that has nothing to do with discipline.

His power reflects it. Time stutters around him when he chooses. A body can be locked in place while the mind stays fully awake inside it. Pain does not stop. Fear does not stop. They just have nowhere to go until he lets them hit all at once. He enjoys that more than he should.

And unlike the rest of us, Dimitri didn’t get selected. He’s a scientist by nature, and his path to command had been the same as his nature: analytical, cold, and precise. Orbis Arcanum had supposedly developed the plague as a tool years ago, then locked it away after some lab accident. Dimitri spent years figuring out how to make it viable on the scale Adrian needed. When he had the answer, he walked in and traded it for a seat at the table. He hadn’t been chosen for command. He’d purchased it with other people’s deaths. That alone makes him dangerous in ways I track carefully.

“Operations are holding,” I say, pulling my attention back to the report. “The consolidation points are functioning. Repairs are minor. The system’s working.”

Adrian leans back a fraction, fingertips resting on the map as if the world beneath them might shift if he lets go. “The system must work.” His voice carries no urgency, which somehow makes it more absolute. “You saw what happened in the old world, even before I found you. Its leaders fractured under their own ambition. Its adults poisoned everything they touched. This time there is only the young. Easier to mold. Easier to discipline. Easier to lead. They will not poison themselves with politics and pride.”

His eyes lift to mine, and the pressure in the room tightens by one degree. “The plague cleared the field. You generals are strong enough to hold what others could not. Dominion requires faith as much as discipline.”

I believe him. I’ve seen that rot up close. Nations choking on compromise. Progress strangled by argument. I started in the Israeli military because I believed in something worth defending. Over time I realized the people giving the orders had stopped believing the same thing and hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. I didn’t leave. Not yet. In my line of work you don’t just walk away clean, and I wasn’t naive enough to think I could.

Adrian found the fracture before I ever said it out loud. The transfer orders came down like weather, signed too high to question, arranged in a way that surprised even my superiors. One week I was still wearing the uniform, still operating inside rules I no longer trusted. The next, I was assigned to Ironclad Solutions.

Ironclad was the mercenary arm beneath the Aurelian Foundation’s clean public image, the branch that handled affairs too messy for annual reports. Organizations that needed to be discouraged. Individuals who needed to have accidents. Sometimes the work looked cleaner, security contracts, site protection, convoy work, just enough legitimacy to help the rest pass unnoticed. The kind of work that kept the machinery running without anyone admitting it existed. I’d been good at it. Better than I’d expected, which told me something about myself I wasn’t certain I’d wanted to know.

Only later did I understand what sat beneath the Foundation’s name. Orbis Arcanum. The real order, the quiet architecture behind the public story. And Adrian offered something the others never had, a reason that did not require looking away from what you were actually doing.

Slow gains. Fragile order. All of it erased in weeks anyway.

His way is harsher. Brutal, if I’m being precise about it. But it is order. And order survives.

His hand comes down flat on the papers. Final. “Weakness is death.”

“Dominion will endure,” I answer, cadence matching his without pause.

~———————~

I left Adrian’s office and stepped into the outer hall. The air was cooler there, less heavy with paper dust and the particular pressure of his presence. The radio had moved to a waltz, then the communications child’s voice again. Policy Reminder. Food line, Tin Choir form by units. No running. Report forged emblems. Curfew remains at twenty-two hundred. The same flat delivery, unhurried, like the world outside wasn’t still burning. I was almost starting to find it comforting.

Then I found Kira. She lounges in the corridor like it belongs to her. The jacket sits open at the collar, posture arranged in that particular way she has of holding a room’s attention without seeming to reach for it. I try to tell myself she’s doing it due to the ill-fitting cut, but if I’m honest, she’d find a way to show the same cleavage even if it fit perfectly.

Her fingers slide along the light fixture overhead, barely touching. The glow fades as she drains the energy from it, slow and idle, something to keep herself occupied when there’s no audience worth performing for.

She notices me and her smile sharpens. “Rhea.” Her eyes move over me in that unhurried way she has, and she lets the pause sit just long enough. “Finally. I was starting to think I’d have to entertain myself all morning.” She tilts her head toward the corridor. “Adrian’s locked in there planning. Cassian’s disappeared somewhere. And you know how helpful he can be when I need something to do.” The word sits in the air with exactly the weight she intended. “I’d find Ronan, but he wouldn’t know fun if it jumps on him, and now Dimitri isn’t even back yet.” She exhales, irritation slipping through the smile. “I have all this energy and not one of them willing to help me burn it off properly.”

Her gaze settles on me, measuring.

“Unless you’re finally open to suggestions.”

I keep walking, not breaking stride.

She falls into step beside me anyway, voice turning light, threaded with complaint and something else underneath it. “You know, you could stand to loosen up. All that discipline, all that self-control.” She clicks her tongue softly. “What a waste.”

“At least Draven never let me get bored,” she says then, voice going languid, letting the subject shift the way she shifts everything, with total control of the moment. “Ironclad’s favorite commander for a reason. Strong hands. Curious.” Her smile goes briefly unfocused, genuinely reminiscent for half a second before she weaponizes it again. “He had a talent for keeping me entertained most evenings. Very creative use of whatever was nearby.”

I keep walking.

“He was on the short list,” she adds, almost to herself. “One of the mercenaries Adrian considered bringing in after me. If he’d made the cut, things would have been considerably less dull.” Her eyes cut back to me, sharpening. “Though I suppose he indulged in enjoyment too much for your taste.”

I stop just long enough to meet her gaze. The Kira in this corridor, deliberate and practiced, a weapon in the shape of a woman, is not what I remember from the first time I met her.

That had been years ago. Adrian had summoned me not long after joining while I was still running operations with Ironclad. Orbis Arcanum wanted combat assessments done on Velvet Veil, an influence division built on proximity and allure, on getting men drunk on their own desire. Useful in private rooms or at galas. An open question under pressure, to have men and women forget what they were trying to protect. He wanted to know which of them could function outside such environments built to flatter them.

They were waiting in a mirrored training hall when I arrived. Mostly women, but a few beautiful men as well. All carefully curated. The air itself felt charged, heavy with perfume and deliberate intent. They knew how to be looked at. They had built entire careers on it.

I’ll admit I lost my focus briefly before I found it again.

When I stripped the drills down to fundamentals, balance and leverage and controlling a fight rather than inviting one, most of them faltered immediately. They were built to be desired. Women with bountiful chests and smooth skin that begged for attention, men beautiful in a deliberate way, sharp cheekbones, full mouths, lashes too long to look accidental. Every movement said come closer.

Then I made them move like fighters. Their hands were soft, unused to friction. Their posture collapsed the moment they had to guard their ribs instead of presenting them. A few stumbled when I made them run the line at speed, top-heavy and off balance, cursed by the very shapes that made people stare. Several laughed it off. A few lost interest the moment they understood that seduction alone wouldn’t stop a strike.

Kira complained constantly like the others. But learned and didn’t give up anyway.

She stopped treating her body as an obstacle and started using it. She knew exactly what her chest did to a room, and she flaunted it on purpose, letting her cleavage pull focus high while her hands and weight did the real work. A feint with her shoulders, a deliberate shift of her hips, then a fast step inside. Their eyes followed what she offered, and her fist arrived where they weren’t looking.

Then she added the other blade. A few low words delivered with a lazy smirk, just enough heat to make an opponent breathe wrong, blink once, lean in a fraction. Desire is a delay, and she used it like one. Distraction folded into the attack rather than substituted for it. It was effective. More than that, it was intentional.

When I reported back to Adrian, I named the handful who might actually function outside a drawing room. Kira Damaris among them.

He’d nodded once and I’d gone back to work. Only later did I understand it had been part of identifying who among Velvet Veil might be elevated to command in the new order. If I’d known that at the time, I might have argued harder for someone more agreeable. Later still, I understood it had also been a test of my own judgment.

Her smile widens, pleased she’s managed to make me pause. “You never liked him,” she says. “Too much indulgence. Too much enjoyment.” She shrugs, unapologetic. “You’ve never had much patience for either.”

I say nothing. She shrugs again, the light above us going dark as she finishes draining it. “You tested me, sure. Taught me how to fight.” Her grin turns teasing. “But you never did learn how to enjoy it.”

She steps back and the performance drops with it. “You’re no fun,” she says, the words stripped of their flirtation, reduced to something flatter.

The doors at the far end open and Cassian walks in.

He cuts a different figure entirely. Tall and broad, his dark skin catching the corridor light as he wipes grease from his palms with a rag. Head shaved close, the practical habit of someone who works near machinery. His stance is soldierly and precise, but with an ease underneath it. A faint buzz follows him sometimes, a low whisper of static that the children have started talking about in quiet voices. His power is magnetokinesis: bending metal, pulling it to his will, disrupting machines. Flashy enough to hold recruits’ attention. Practical enough to keep Adrian satisfied.

Kira changes the instant she sees him. The flatter version of her vanishes, and in its place comes that liquid, deliberate warmth she wears like perfume. She saunters toward him with slow confidence, hips swaying, every step meant to be noticed.

By the time she reaches him she’s already smiling. One arm slides around his waist, the other curling lightly over his shoulder as she rises onto her toes and leans into him like the space belongs to her. Her mouth brushes close to his ear, voice dropping into a low, sultry murmur meant only for him.

Whatever she says pulls a grin out of him so wide it breaks clean through his usual restraint. He looks almost boyish for half a second, caught off guard by his own amusement. Kira smiles like she knew exactly what it would do, then lets him go and glides past him down the corridor as if she hasn’t just rearranged the air around him.

~———————~

The doors opened again while I was still standing there, and Ronan stepped in.

He fills a corridor the way most people fill a doorway. Broad shoulders pulling the dark fabric of his jacket taut, the kind of physical presence that recalibrates a room without him doing anything deliberate. His head is shaved smooth, maintained by choice rather than necessity. The cure had restored his hair a year ago when Adrian brought him in, and he’d taken a razor to it the same week. Vanity, I’d thought when I first heard it. The faint copper in his brows says what his scalp doesn’t: red-haired Irishman, Boston-bred, and somehow that tracks perfectly.

Heat clings to him faintly as he enters, the air bending in a subtle shimmer that isn’t quite visible until you know to look for it. Outside, his drills had left the yard echoing with children’s shouts, thin arms straining against repeated bursts of scorching wind until they found their footing or didn’t.

“Rhea.” He nods. “Another set fell today. Weak legs. Weak will.” His voice is low, rough as gravel left in the sun. “I pushed them until they collapsed. That’ll put the fear into them to improve.”

“Fear makes them move,” I say. “Discipline makes them last. There’s a difference.”

His lips pull up slightly. “Cruelty tempers steel. You don’t harden them by easing the blade.”

“You’ll break them if you drive too far past the edge. Strength is in what you can sustain, not what you can spend.”

For a moment the air stirs between us, a faint ripple lifting the loose hairs at my temple as his power rises with the words. Then he stills it, a low deep chuckle rumbling in his chest.

“Same argument as always,” he says.

“And neither of us moving,” I reply. The corner of my mouth allows itself a fraction of upward movement. It’s familiar ground, the kind of difference that sharpens rather than cuts.

He nods. “Anyway,” glancing the hallway. “I was looking for Cassian. Thought I saw him come in here. Wanted to get a few rounds in before we all head back out tomorrow. You see him?”

I nod toward the side passage. “Kira found him first.”

His mouth drops a bit, and releases a sigh. “Of course she did.”

“She mentioned wanting company. He wasn’t fighting the idea.” I pause. “His hand was on her back when they turned the corner. He didn’t seem to be interested in sparring.”

Ronan exhales, half a laugh without warmth. “She gets bored and somebody pays for it one way or another. Sure he appreciates it though. Stay near her too long though and she drains you.” He shakes his head once. “No wonder her power works the way it does.”

He glances back at me and pauses. Something shifts in his expression. Small. Quickly controlled. But there.

“Well,” he says, a shade too casual, “if Cassian’s occupied, maybe you and I step into the ring instead. See how things go.”

I give it a brief, practical consideration. “We’re also heading out in the morning. I still have the day to close out.” I shake my head once. “No time. Have your logistics team book the arena for when we’re both back in the capital.”

Something like disappointment crosses his face. Then discipline covers it, smooth and practiced. “Fair enough,” he says. “Another time.”

“Another time,” I agree.

He gives a final grunt, adjusts his jacket, and turns back toward the yard. The shimmer of heat follows him until the doors shut.

I stand alone in the corridor for a moment.

Different philosophies. Different methods. But I trust his commitment, and the trust runs both ways. That’s worth more than most things here, where what passes for loyalty is usually just well-maintained performance.

~———————~

By evening, the newest recruits fill the yard. Every child brought in this week, lined shoulder to shoulder beneath the banners. Captains stalking between rows. Orders snapping, laggards shoved back into place.

We generals stand on the platform beside Adrian, our commanders ranged behind each of us. He has his own four at his back, the ones who keep this Capital running. They stand the way his people always stand: precise and unreadable. Behind each of the other generals, our own commanders hold the same formation. Different functions than Adrian’s but more suited to our regions. Proof of structure, visible to anyone watching from the yard below.

Adrian’s speech runs its usual course. I let my eyes move across the groups while his voice carries the familiar words. Dimitri was back with his’s commanders. They move only when commanded, not a degree past it. Kira’s cluster close to her like a stage troupe, mimicking her posture as if proximity is authority. Next to me was Cassian’s group. All drilled and exact, each line precise. On my other side Ronan’s. I’ve never found clear category for. Too rough to dismiss, too reliable to mock. Simply his, and that has always been enough.

My attention settles on the four who stand at my back.

One of those spots is newer than the rest. James Carter should be here with us. He had been thirteen. Wiry, sharp-eyed, the kind of quiet competence that builds over time rather than announcing itself. He’d come up through the training ranks for my fighters over the two years before the plague hit, and I’d started trusting his read on things, on people, on what a situation actually needed underneath what it looked like it needed. That kind of judgment is rare at any age.

He didn’t make it through the first week.

He’d been close enough to that threshold that when the plague came down, it came down on him fast. Age came to him earlier than some. And suffered like most of the world that first week. The adults, the near-adults, anyone who’d crossed that line. We had known we would lose people from our own ranks. The generals were protected. Those under us were not. I’d done the calculation before it happened, same as everyone else.

I hadn’t let myself think too specifically about which names would be in that number.

I think about it now, watching Bryce Hayes stand where James used to stand. Bryce is eleven. Unlikely to be effected before the plague burns out. Wiry and sharp-eyed, brown hair cropped close, already roped with muscle from drills he sets as hard for himself as for everyone under him. One of James top Captains I promoted to Commander. Fiercely loyal, sometimes too fierce. He drives his squads with a zeal that borders on reckless, which I’ll need to temper before it costs something I can’t replace. But his eyes are moving through the crowd right now with exactly the right wariness, and at this stage that matters more than finesse.

Beside him stands Christina Young. Eleven, steady as poured concrete, chin-length black hair blunt-cut and even. Her face still carries the roundness of childhood but her voice carries like a commander’s. She runs the administrative groups, organizing housing and repairs across our section of territory. What had once been training exercises is now reality, whole towns of younger children looking to her for order. She’s holding it. I watch her silence a fidgeting recruit in the crowd with a single look. That’s not something you teach.

Catherine Torres stands at twelve, always neat, braid tight, a slate under her arm even here on the platform. She runs logistics with the kind of meticulous care that makes me trust the numbers she gives me without checking them twice. Double counting everything behind her glasses. Checking things coming in and out. Beside her, Corey Collins is her opposite in manner: twelve, freckled, dirt-smudged from his foraging runs, lanky but sharp. He shifts foot to foot right now, but his eyes are fixed on the captains below, already measuring their competence. Good. That’s the habit I want.

They stand with their backs square. Proof of structure.

Adrian’s voice sharpens near the end and pulls me back in. “You were chosen. You will endure. One nation. One rule.” The silence stretches, precisely as long as he intends it to. Then: “Weakness is death.”

“Dominion will endure.”

We answer as one. Lieutenants echo behind us. Captains drive it down through the new recruits until the words move through the yard like a current.

I give the affirmation with the rest. Outwardly firm. Voice matching theirs.

Inwardly, I’m watching their faces.

The trembling staves. The sideways glances. Eyes fixing on nothing, or fixing too hard on something just to have somewhere to look. I’ve seen this before, in basic training, in the field, in rooms where the wrong decision had already been made before anyone asked for input. It’s the look of people who have been given an order they cannot refuse and are still deciding whether that means they are protected or trapped.

Maybe it’s the chaos of the week. The world outside is barely a week dead and they’ve been pulled from whatever was left of their lives into a formation and handed a stick. Fear would be the reasonable response to that, independent of anything Dominion is doing.

Or maybe it’s something else. Something worth keeping an eye on.

A single leader making decisions, rather than groups of men arguing in back rooms until everything burned. That was supposed to be the difference. That was what I’d signed on to. I still believe it can be.

I keep the question exactly where it is. Filed. Not answered. Not dismissed.

There will be time to decide what it means later.

---