It’s hard not to be a little disgusted at how readily you can pull her around by the hair. It’s not even a muscle. Anyone with an instinct of preservation would cut it off. That she can’t only attests to the stillbirth that is her species.

You find an intact chair at the far end of what you remember, not without fondness, as the situation room. Most of everything else is too riddled to be of any use, whether dead or merely inanimate. She calls you: traitor collaborator sycophant toadie quisling bootlicker sellout backstabber weasel turncoat and just plain bitch. You crack her nose against the backrest, maneuver the camera across from her. Bit of a hassle: Director of Photography, can’t look at the lead’s face. But you manage.

She gazes at the lens, with what must be the sweetest look of incomprehension, as you fiddle with the compatibility settings. Bless our overseas benefactors’ infrastructure. Someone’s making a lot of money off this and it’s not you, not yet. Just as you figure out the broadcasting system, she wises up, turns away, covers her face like she’s about to claw it off. Probably has tried before.

“Look at the camera.”

“Fuck you.” Her voice is concrete-hard only because it’s damming the waterworks. Snakes fan out the back of her neck. You push her head down by the nape and snatch the closest serpent, the one that lunges in earnest. Its breath is acid, its scales familiar jade, it refuses to limpen in your fist even as its sisters freeze upright. This is a holdup: put your fangs in the air and your comrades in the bodybag.

“Please,” voice cracking into a repellent falsetto. “Émilie didn’t do anything.”

Quaint to think that you once imagined you were developing a personal relationship to the individual members of her mane. You’d never considered that they have names.

You fish a knife from your belt.

“Mama, please.” Not the first time she calls you that.

You stretch ‘Émilie’ out and stick the knife under its neck. It gives you the defiant look her owner daren’t.

“Look at the camera,” you say. One long bloodbead nuzzles down your steel.

With a shattered sob, she looks. You turn away, just in case the lens reflects her, count to five: petrification is instant, they say, but you’ve only ever seen the results. Smooth scales writhe furiously under your fingers. A dozen horizontal mutualist decentralized splinter cells turn to stone in front of the incoming transmission. Finally! A precision weapon of mass destruction.

“Please cut it off,” she says.

“Huh?”

Stammering: “If you cut them all off, I won’t, I can’t, I don’t want to be able to do that anymore.”

“That’s good to know.” You gather up her hair, pull her off the chair. Later, someday, your new government will have to try her for her role in this genocide. But first, it has to be a genocide.