His cousin had created a sanctuary where people could let down their guard, where difficult conversations could happen over shared indulgences, and where loyalty was built one interaction at a time.
Perhaps the next council meeting should be held in this lounge…
Oh, so that was Kalugal's plan. Clever bastard. He knew exactly which bait Kian would take.
"The humidor is through here," Kalugal said, leading them to a temperature-controlled closet that would have made any cigar aficionado weep with envy. "Please, select whatever appeals to you."
Kian chose a robusto that smelled of earth and promise, while the others made their selections with varying degrees of expertise. Din, surprisingly, showed considerable knowledge, helping Ell-rom navigate the options with patient explanations about wrapper types and flavor profiles.
Soon, they were seated on the comfortable chairs, the ritual of cutting and lighting their cigars providing a familiar rhythm. The first draws filled the air with aromatic smoke that the ventilation system whisked away just slowly enough to let them appreciate the scent.
"Now this," Max said, leaning back with a contented sigh, "is civilized."
"My thoughts exactly," Kalugal agreed, savoring his own cigar with obvious pleasure. "I invite my men to join me here after a long day in the office. They seem to appreciate both the gesture and the quality of the spirits."
Kian took a sip of the whiskey Kalugal had poured him—something Scottish, old, and expensive—and felt some of the day's tension begin to ease.
Leaning back in the comfortable armchair, he took another sip from the superb whiskey before turning to his cousin. "You mentioned noticing an increased presence of Doomers in Egypt. Max reports the same from Iran."
"What did you find?" Kalugal asked Max.
"They're embedded deeper than we feared, and there are a lot of them. They are not just engaged in influence operations like they used to be in the past, but actual integration with the Revolutionary Guard. They had intel on our movements that suggests either exceptional intelligence gathering or inside information."
"Or both," Kian said.
Kalugal's expression darkened. "That mirrors what I observed in Egypt. The Brotherhood's presence there isn't just growing—it's metastasizing. They're not content with influence anymore. They're building actual power structures, bases of operation. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are planning to take over when the time is right."
"Sleeper cells?" Dalhu asked.
"Nothing sleepy about them," Kalugal said. "There are so many of them in Cairo that I suspect they are getting ready to take control of key institutions. The religious establishment, the military, and naturally, the intelligence services. They're playing a long game, and you are falling behind, cousin."
The words hung heavy in the smoke-tinged air. Kian took another draw from his cigar, using the moment to organize his thoughts. The situation was worsening by the day, approaching the irreversible, and he was low on options.
"You are not telling me anything I don't already know." He finished the whiskey in his glass and put it on the side table next to his armchair. "Your father outsmarted me, and I find myself playing catch-up. I need to come up with a more aggressive approach. I've been thinking about forming a specialized taskforce of gifted females who could exert influence on key figures in the government. I hate using Navuh's tactics, but what choice do I have? By taking the higher moral ground, I might be dooming the whole of humanity to slavery under the Brotherhood's banner." He closed his eyes briefly. "Everything my mother has worked for, all the rights she restored for women, it will all crumble."
Kalugal sighed dramatically. "As I've said many times before, cousin, humans are too dumb to appreciate what they have and too easily manipulated. They fall for the same play time and again, believing the blatant lies, the propaganda, while the elites are robbing them blind and sending them into the meat grinder."
"You're not helping," Kian grumbled. "I need solutions, not commiseration."
Kalugal puffed on his cigar. "Your idea of a female spy force is not particularly original, but that only means that I think it might work. Beautiful, immortal women who can thrall are a formidable asset. They could counteract the Brotherhood's manipulations. The problem is how many would be willing to do that? Furthermore, the females you have in mind are mostly mated to Guardians. Do you really think their mates would be okay with them going into these kinds of situations alone? And if they go with them, you will lose most of your senior Guardians."
Kian cursed, earning a surprised look from Ell-rom, who was still learning the intricacies of spoken Earth language.
"Have you thought about the paranormals in Safe Haven?" Max asked. "Some of them have useful abilities, and they've been trained for precisely that kind of work."
Kian considered this, rolling the idea around in his mind like the whiskey on his tongue. "Most of them aren't particularly powerful," he said after a moment. "But there might be potential there. Come to think of it, Eleanor and Emmett themselves are a formidable duo with both being compellers. The problem is that they wouldn't want to leave Safe Haven. The place is Emmett's life's work. He's built something meaningful there, and I can't see him abandoning it for shadow games in foreign capitals."
"Then we're back to square one," Max said. "We need resources we don't have to fight an enemy that metastasizes rapidly."
The admission hung in the air like the smoke from their cigars. Kian felt the weight of it, the familiar burden of leadership made heavier by the miserable acknowledgment of inadequacy. He was used to finding solutions, to protecting his people through strength and strategy.
But what could he do when the enemy had more pieces on the chessboard?
"I'm in over my head," he said quietly, the words costing him more than he cared to admit. "We all are. Navuh is using his greatest advantage over us, which is the sheer number of peons he can move, and his second advantage, which is playing a game where they are writing the rules."
Kalugal leaned forward, concern replacing his usual calculated charm. "I've never heard you talk like this, cousin."
"Because I've never felt like this," Kian said honestly. "We've always been the shadows protecting humanity from the darkness. Our greatest weapon was our technological know-how, which allowed us to fuel progress, but that's not enough anymore, and I don't know what to do with the limited resourceswe have." He took another sip of whiskey, letting the burn ground him. "We need a damn miracle."
