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'Wouldn't the other two marshals who survived the fight be able to tell everyone if Jercash hadn't actually been the one to kill Carson?' asked Hector.

'In theory, sure,' said Garovel. 'But eh. I feel like there are any number of ways that Jercash could manipulate things. Could be that he's just controlling the flow of information out of the country better than the Vanguard is, right now. Or it could be that the support he gets from his followers is stealthy enough that even Kane and Grant weren't able to determine the whole truth of things. To them, it might've seemed like Jercash was the only one doing anything.'

'Hmm.'

'Like if Jercash was getting support from, oh say, a genius integrator, for example.'

'He already has Morgunov, doesn't he?'

'Oh, that's definitely a possibility, too. A likelihood, in fact. But I just meant that he could have a second integrator all his own. One that nobody even knows about yet. Integrators are a pretty sneaky bunch, after all.'

Garovel was basically talking about someone around Abbas' level, Hector knew. Maybe even higher.

And yeah. Someone like that helping out an already powerful monster like Jercash would make for a horrifying complement.

The more he heard about the war, the more terrifying it seemed to become. The potential consequences of it. The idea that the Vanguard might just lose the whole war--or more specifically, that Abolish would win it.

Frankly, after everything he'd seen and heard regarding the Vanguard's treatment of the Rainlords, Hector didn't have a whole lot of affection for it as an organization. He was sure that certain people within it, like Harper Norez, were great and deserving of admiration, but as far as the continental war was concerned, Hector wasn't so much rooting for the Vanguard as he was against Abolish.