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Silver Elite: Chapter 38
The next day, Wren goes to her first briefing.
Wren knows that her search history is tracked, and yet it has not occurred to her to NOT SEARCH SUSPICIOUS THINGS. God, what an idiot.
So it's time for Wren's first mission: hunting down a drug smuggler named Jasper Reed. Wren notices that he is hot. Whether or not a person is hot is something Wren always notices. Presumably her single brain cell can only manage that much.
Wren learns that Cross's team consists of sixteen members, but everyone is in the field except the newbies who are at this briefing.
As their individual assignments are distributed, Cross tells Anson and Noah will be going to her old village, Hamlett. Wren tries to get herself assigned to her old village, but Cross shuts her down and tells her bluntly that her job is to follow orders and not pry into what other people are doing.
So obviously, after the briefing, Wren confronts Cross about this.
First off, this is a stupid thing to do because every time Wren acts overly familiar with Cross she is risking someone figuring out they are fucking, which will get her in trouble. And second off, this is a stupid thing to do because Wren should know that she is in the military and when you are in the military you have to take orders and can't just pitch a fit whenever you don't get your way.
Where does Wren get her enormous sense of entitlement and her complete inability to take orders? Why does she never, despite an entire book's worth of evidence that her tendency to act without thinking is dangerous for herself and for other people, stop and think about what she's doing? We are 71% through the book!
Anyways, Cross tells Wren that Hamlett has been under suspicion for six months, and it has nothing to do with her uncle. Wren starts to leave.
This is the first time ever Wren has wondered what the hell Cross was doing in Hamlett that day. The first time.
As Wren leaves, she runs into Travis Redden, Cross's brother, who is hot, but not as hot as Cross. That's obviously the most important information about him.
Wren reports telepathically to Declan about her mission, and warns them about Hamlett. Declan tells her she is not to warn Tana and Griff about the threat, but he does in a super heavyhanded, dickish way so Wren ignores him.
It is still wild to me that no one in the Uprising has figured out how to talk to Wren. They could just lie and tell her that Tana and Griff are aware! They could assure her that they're handling the matter but the warning has to be delivered at the right time! They could absolutely get better use out of her if they just refrained from antagonizing her, and they should have enough information about her to work out the right approach.
Like, the book is trying to sell us on the Uprising as morally grey and calculating, and actually so far the Uprising has been presented in a worse light than the actual fascists, who the book has gone to some lengths to humanize, but it actually makes no sense that the same people who discard operatives when they aren't useful would not figure out how to manipulate Wren to get best use out of her.
Again, it goes back to the very simple way this book operates. People who are good are nice to Wren, and people who are bad are not nice to Wren.
I have seen criticism of this book as pro-fascist, but while there's definitely some right wing leanings in it--South America being a dystopian drug empire, the weird attitude towards guns in the first couple chapters--ultimately I think the actual problem is that the author treats all the facts of the setting as window dressing. I don't think anyone who wrote or edited this book thought about the implications of a single fucking thing in it, which is how you get a book where we get sad backstories for all the soldiers in the elite Modified killing unit but a rebel organization that is made entirely of assholes.
Next scene. Wren and Kaine are on their mission, getting bored. Wren casually suggests to Kaine that persecuting the Faithful, who are a religious cult who live outside society, is bad, and Kaine is like, it's our job to follow orders. Wren does not dwell on this, even though this would be an actually good place for her to remind herself that no matter how cute Kaine is or how much he flirts with her, he's the enemy.
Like I said: when people are nice to Wren, they are good, even if they are fascists.
Wren and Kaine are investigating an old hospital, which their target is using to move contraband by storing it in the basement.
Wren gets distracted, though, when she finds a room full of Modified people who are strapped to beds.
Fucked up. An interesting piece of world-building, certainly, and in line with the fascist dystopia of it all. Makes more sense than Kaine' s mild asthma somehow getting him out of being a child miner.
These Modified are being kept alive so they can be experimented on, which horrifies Wren.
At no point during this moment does it occur to Wren that she might be giving herself away by getting distracted by the Mods during the mission, by the way. Another place where it just doesn't make sense. Wren should always be thinking about that!
Wren updates Adrienne after the mission, and Adrienne tells her they need her to keep an eye out, because they can't find the inciter who showed up at Jim's execution, and obviously it can't be Wren, because the Uprising requires operatives to report all their family member's gifts and Jim didn't report Wren's.
Wren actually misses Jim here, which is a welcome change of pace.
Are these parallels between the Uprising and the Empire deliberate, I wonder. Because earlier in the book we learned all children had to be registered by the government. And how does the Uprising actually enforce this rule? Doesn't seem like they could.
In a better book that could be an interesting thing, having a rebellion that mirrors the evil it is trying to defeat, but I think having it mirror the bureaucracy of evil is a weird choice because, like...how does this underground network have the resources to create this level of bureaucracy? And it's also weird for Adrienne to tell Wren this information after all the comments she has made where she tells Wren she is just a cog in their machine. I wouldn't expect her to volunteer any info, but I guess the author had to work it in somehow.
As the chapter ends, Wren learns that Cross has requested back up, so she gets to join the Hamlett mission after all. Yay.
Can't wait to see what happens to Tana and Griff--I'm betting one of them will die.
I take a seat next to Kaine and scroll through the new source I received last night. Which was another disappointing discovery—I don’t have the kind of clearance I thought I would. When I searched “Julian Ash” last night, I received the same access denied alert. When I searched for myself, however, I discovered that my name is no longer in the system. Same for Kaine and the other Elite recruits. We’ve been wiped from the database. It’s like we don’t exist anymore.
Wren knows that her search history is tracked, and yet it has not occurred to her to NOT SEARCH SUSPICIOUS THINGS. God, what an idiot.
So it's time for Wren's first mission: hunting down a drug smuggler named Jasper Reed. Wren notices that he is hot. Whether or not a person is hot is something Wren always notices. Presumably her single brain cell can only manage that much.
Wren learns that Cross's team consists of sixteen members, but everyone is in the field except the newbies who are at this briefing.
As their individual assignments are distributed, Cross tells Anson and Noah will be going to her old village, Hamlett. Wren tries to get herself assigned to her old village, but Cross shuts her down and tells her bluntly that her job is to follow orders and not pry into what other people are doing.
So obviously, after the briefing, Wren confronts Cross about this.
First off, this is a stupid thing to do because every time Wren acts overly familiar with Cross she is risking someone figuring out they are fucking, which will get her in trouble. And second off, this is a stupid thing to do because Wren should know that she is in the military and when you are in the military you have to take orders and can't just pitch a fit whenever you don't get your way.
Where does Wren get her enormous sense of entitlement and her complete inability to take orders? Why does she never, despite an entire book's worth of evidence that her tendency to act without thinking is dangerous for herself and for other people, stop and think about what she's doing? We are 71% through the book!
Anyways, Cross tells Wren that Hamlett has been under suspicion for six months, and it has nothing to do with her uncle. Wren starts to leave.
My mind starts racing. That’s long before Jim was executed. Long before I killed a white coyote with a shot that caught the Command’s attention…Suddenly it dawns on me. That’s why Cross was there that night. He wasn’t celebrating Liberty Day. He was on Elite business.
The knowledge that there’d been eyes on us for six months makes me sick to my stomach. Griff uses the tunnels to smuggle Mods out of the labor camps. Tana works at the inn and provides intel to the network. They’re both in deep with the Uprising.
This is the first time ever Wren has wondered what the hell Cross was doing in Hamlett that day. The first time.
As Wren leaves, she runs into Travis Redden, Cross's brother, who is hot, but not as hot as Cross. That's obviously the most important information about him.
Wren reports telepathically to Declan about her mission, and warns them about Hamlett. Declan tells her she is not to warn Tana and Griff about the threat, but he does in a super heavyhanded, dickish way so Wren ignores him.
It is still wild to me that no one in the Uprising has figured out how to talk to Wren. They could just lie and tell her that Tana and Griff are aware! They could assure her that they're handling the matter but the warning has to be delivered at the right time! They could absolutely get better use out of her if they just refrained from antagonizing her, and they should have enough information about her to work out the right approach.
Like, the book is trying to sell us on the Uprising as morally grey and calculating, and actually so far the Uprising has been presented in a worse light than the actual fascists, who the book has gone to some lengths to humanize, but it actually makes no sense that the same people who discard operatives when they aren't useful would not figure out how to manipulate Wren to get best use out of her.
Again, it goes back to the very simple way this book operates. People who are good are nice to Wren, and people who are bad are not nice to Wren.
I have seen criticism of this book as pro-fascist, but while there's definitely some right wing leanings in it--South America being a dystopian drug empire, the weird attitude towards guns in the first couple chapters--ultimately I think the actual problem is that the author treats all the facts of the setting as window dressing. I don't think anyone who wrote or edited this book thought about the implications of a single fucking thing in it, which is how you get a book where we get sad backstories for all the soldiers in the elite Modified killing unit but a rebel organization that is made entirely of assholes.
Next scene. Wren and Kaine are on their mission, getting bored. Wren casually suggests to Kaine that persecuting the Faithful, who are a religious cult who live outside society, is bad, and Kaine is like, it's our job to follow orders. Wren does not dwell on this, even though this would be an actually good place for her to remind herself that no matter how cute Kaine is or how much he flirts with her, he's the enemy.
Like I said: when people are nice to Wren, they are good, even if they are fascists.
Wren and Kaine are investigating an old hospital, which their target is using to move contraband by storing it in the basement.
Wren gets distracted, though, when she finds a room full of Modified people who are strapped to beds.
Each patient seems more dazed and disjointed than the last.This is what happens when someone is Modified but "their mind isn't strong enough" per the book. That's kind of a fucked up way to put it, but hey, it's a metaphor for mental illness. Which I know, because in the next paragraph Wren compares it to being mentally ill and then realizes it's weird that all these Mods are kept alive here, when, and I quote, "Mental illness isn't well-tolerated on the Continent,". Wait, are all mentally ill people just executed in this society?
“Darlington.” Ford’s voice now.
I spin toward the doorway. “What is this?” I ask the lieutenant.
I’m surprised to see sadness flicker in his eyes.
“What is this?” I repeat. “Why are they here?”
“They’re fragmented.”
Fucked up. An interesting piece of world-building, certainly, and in line with the fascist dystopia of it all. Makes more sense than Kaine' s mild asthma somehow getting him out of being a child miner.
These Modified are being kept alive so they can be experimented on, which horrifies Wren.
At no point during this moment does it occur to Wren that she might be giving herself away by getting distracted by the Mods during the mission, by the way. Another place where it just doesn't make sense. Wren should always be thinking about that!
Wren updates Adrienne after the mission, and Adrienne tells her they need her to keep an eye out, because they can't find the inciter who showed up at Jim's execution, and obviously it can't be Wren, because the Uprising requires operatives to report all their family member's gifts and Jim didn't report Wren's.
Wren actually misses Jim here, which is a welcome change of pace.
Are these parallels between the Uprising and the Empire deliberate, I wonder. Because earlier in the book we learned all children had to be registered by the government. And how does the Uprising actually enforce this rule? Doesn't seem like they could.
In a better book that could be an interesting thing, having a rebellion that mirrors the evil it is trying to defeat, but I think having it mirror the bureaucracy of evil is a weird choice because, like...how does this underground network have the resources to create this level of bureaucracy? And it's also weird for Adrienne to tell Wren this information after all the comments she has made where she tells Wren she is just a cog in their machine. I wouldn't expect her to volunteer any info, but I guess the author had to work it in somehow.
As the chapter ends, Wren learns that Cross has requested back up, so she gets to join the Hamlett mission after all. Yay.
Can't wait to see what happens to Tana and Griff--I'm betting one of them will die.