You know, re-reading that got me thinking again about the other thing that really got me about Satya’s comic. It’s just a thing about Vishkar, but it’s what really stuck with me and made me hate their damn guts. It’s this:
The only time in the whole thing that they show Satya their true colors.
For context, this is after they had her break into the slumlord of the area they want to control (Calado) instead’s building to try and find information that could destroy her. There were guards inside, but Satya refused to kill them.
Ostensibly, the reason they blew up the whole building was this: There wasn’t any information that could ruin Calado, so they needed to destroy her in another way.
But throughout the entire comic, Vishkar (and Sanjay) take great pains to convince Satya that they are in the right here, that they are helping the people there (they actually want to hurt them, of course).
Satya was taken by Vishkar when she was very young. She was raised and schooled by them, and kept as isolated as they could possibly manage. Satya is a genius, and they want to control that skill, but they knew that she would never cooperate if she knew their true intentions.
Every step they took in the comic, things were always kept from Satya, or twisted, or she was outright lied to. Every Vishkar member she spoke to was assuring her they were doing the right thing, that she was saving people. That it was just that people didn’t understand yet, so she had to keep working and saving them. This careful illusion to control her is always shown to be the utmost priority to them. Except there.
It would have been beyond easy for them to whisk her away before doing the dirty work and killing all those people she just saved. And not doing so actually went against the extremely careful lengths they’ve gone to to keep her in the dark, especially since the falling building caused all that damage to the people and buildings below!
Making sure Satya thinks they’re doing the right thing isn’t the most important thing to Vishkar. The most important thing is actually making sure that she feels like she can’t ever disobey, no matter what she thinks of them. Even above trying to get her willing cooperation, they want her to feel powerless to do anything else.
Later on, after the fire, they would clean her up and reassure that it was for the best, the “price of rebirth”, once everything was settled. But not in that moment. They let her spare all those people, and then killed them right in front of her eyes. Satya may “not kill if she doesn’t have to”, but those people will be killed anyway. That’s the message they wanted to give her. That her refusal to murder for them meant nothing.
That no matter what she does, things will always end how Vishkar wants them to.
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