Wilkes stared at Degan across the desk. The old battleship portrait hung where it always had been, dark and imperious.

'You let her go.' He spoke through gritted teeth.

'Yes.' Degan replied blankly.

Wilkes simmered in his seat. In the corner of the room sat Ruth inside her carry-cage, and Degan could see her big eyes peering through the slits in the plastic casing.

'Well,' said Wilkes, 'I suppose that's understandable, given the circumstances.'

Degan sat up. He had not been expecting Wilkes to go easy on him. It would not have been a surprise if the man had handed Degan over to the Arrowheads, and whatever foul punishment they kept in store for male traitors. Wilkes must really want him back, and badly.

'New kid isn't working out, then?'

Degan leant forward and took a sip from a glass of brandy. Wilkes seethed.

'That's hardly the problem. We need you, and I can't speak from your position. All I want to know is, when the time comes, you will not stand between Bluenorth and Millie Slate.'

Ruth whimpered in her cage. Degan shrugged.

'What is Bluenorth? Seems to me it all started a long time before I got here. Compounds out in the Amazon, and now in the hands of Nova Femen. It seems there is a lot you aren't telling me, Wilkes, so why should I tell you anything?'

Wilkes froze. He looked down at his hands and swallowed hard. For the first time since knowing him, Degan thought Wilkes might actually be experiencing an emotion other than arrogance.

'You weren't in Aruba.'

'No.' Degan said without remorse. 'You know where I was. You've been there yourself.'

'I have never been there.'

'DON'T LIE TO ME!'

Degan was on his feet, hands on the desk leaning over at Wilkes. The man just sat there with the same look of betrayal plastered over his stubbornly youthful looks.

'I am not lying to you,' he said carefully, 'the compound in the Amazon is a relic of a time before I came to Bluenorth.'

'A time before... you ARE Bluenorth!'

'I am now.' Wilkes poured himself a brandy and drank deeply. 'When it began it was a private contract. My construction crews were hired under the table to build a compound. We didn't ask why at any stage, right up until it was done. My diversified portfolio suddenly became very simplified when I looked into what they were doing.'

'And so you thought hey, that sounds like fun?'

'I thought, that needs to stop, and the opposite needs to happen.'

Degan's mouth hung open in mid-shout. He closed it, frowning.

'You mean...'

'Yes.' said Wilkes. 'Bluenorth was originally the alter-ego of Nova Femen. They wanted to bring about a kind of gynarchy, and do to you and me what we have so successfully done to them.'

Degan sat back down, head spinning. Ruth fidgeted about inside her cage.

'So all this... everything... its just revenge?'

'Not at all. I wanted to do this, as does every man deep in his heart, for decades. Nova Femen made me realise the urgency of it, that it has to be done now, and done well. You made me understand that it was possible.'

Degan scratched his head. Everything seemed upside down. Wilkes let him process it for a while.

'You should know, Natasha's dead.'

Degan lifted his head up, not comprehending initially. Then the penny dropped. He had almost forgotten who that was.

'Oh...' He mumbled, mind drifting back to the cell he had left her in, 'yeah, thanks.'

'A good way to draw a line under that one.' Wilkes hitched a smile up. 'You came back to us, whether you want to realise it or not, because you know you belong with us, Degan. Our Republic is new and will take some building, but with the both of us, and what we have built, we can make it work.'

Degan nodded, hating himself, and not sure why. Perhaps Millie had gotten inside his head. Perhaps Natasha had.

'What will happen now?' He asked.

'The Vice President is set to take office, and will issue a decree in response to Hobart's assassination. He will officially declare the Compound System to be law in the United States, and we expect many other countries to follow suit.'

'Right.'

He was supposed to feel happy, ecstatic even. They had done it. There was no going back now, everything would change. Degan had the world he had asked for.

'I need to go.'

He got to his feet and walked out. A group of worried-looking advisers and businessmen rushed into Wilkes office as soon as Degan had left.

Degan wandered the compound for a while. He saw the Guards' break room, where they were throwing darts at a woman pinned to the wall; he saw the yard, where an older woman in a burlesque dress was being hung from a gallows while a line of chorus-dancers were flogged; he saw the cages, endless, endless cages filled with endless women, and realised how right Wilkes was. They were building a new Republic.

He walked down the narrow gangway on the fifth level, passing by rows upon rows of caged women. They all shrank away from him as he passed, scampering into the backs of their cages. He did a double-take, then stepped back a few feet and looked into one of the cages on the middle row.

Leng, naked, Vaglocked and weeping uncontrollably, sat up at the back of the cage. Degan walked up to the cage and tapped on the mesh. She raised her head, took one look at him and then sobbed even harder.

'Come to taunt me?' She squeezed out the words between sobs. Her leg was bandaged around the thigh, a bloody mark buried there.

'No,' said Degan, 'did she do that to you?'

Leng looked at her leg and then nodded, breaking into more sobs.

'Well, I guess this is you now.' He shrugged. 'I'll come visit when I can.'

As he walked away Leng shouted after him.

'She will come back! Millie will come and find me, and free all of us! You must believe me!'

Degan stopped, slowly turned on his heel, and sighed.

'That was always your problem. You women always thought one exception was enough. Millie doesn't want to save you, Leng. She wants to save herself, and my child.'

As he looked around he saw astonishment on the faces of every woman within earshot. They began to whisper to one another, exchange looks. Leng just stared at him, tears rolling down her cheeks.

'You are just going to keep women locked away, forever, just toys for your amusement while men have the world?'

'Yes,' said Degan, 'welcome to Our New Republic.'