"It’s something that kept coming up as she told me her story," Eunice said. "As the jackpot got seriously going, after the first wave of pandemics, without EU membership to buffer anything, England started looking a lot like a competitive control area. She did what she knew how to do, which by then was run a CCA. But as she kept building it back up, every time another change driver impacted, she found herself using Russians. They knew how to work a CCA. They’d been there before the jackpot hit the fan. Way before. So I found myself pointing out that what I was trained to do, and what she’d had to largely train herself to do, had wound up being the core of the klept. It worked, for semi-saving part of the world’s ass right then, but only by freezing it into a permanently sorry position. Which Mr. Netherton here, for instance, grew up in. Authoritarian societies are inherently corrupt, and corrupt societies are inherently unstable. Rule of thieves brings collapse, eventually, because they can’t stop stealing. With an Ainsley in place, though, you can get that shit stabilized. She sees anyone making what looks like a viable stab at destabilization, whether they think they are or not, she takes them out. And this is a known thing, that she’ll do that, she’ll do this to you if she feels like it, and with what passes for society’s blessing."