"I will write of this!" she had said triumphantly. "The whole world shall read of this corruption!"

The inspector followed her speech with what she'd then fancied was apathetic coldness. "Okay," he said, and stamped her passport in red.

She now saw that there was a difference between cold and lost, and those who worked under Arstotska were nothing but the latter anymore.

And so, she began her new article, with the press pass that should have spelled out freedom and not rejection on the desk beside her.

The people of Arstotska are held underwater by their disgraceful government, unable to swim or breathe and with nowhere to look but the ocean below. The very place that it is inevitable that they will drown in…