Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots Summary, Characters and Themes

Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots is a dark superhero novel about loyalty, power, surveillance, and the gradual erosion of personal morality. It follows Anna Tromedlov, now known as the Auditor, as she manages the criminal organization of the infamous Leviathan while attempting to destroy the powerful institution known as the Draft. 

The story refuses to separate heroes and villains into simple moral categories, showing how institutions manufacture public narratives while individuals justify increasingly harmful choices. Anna’s devotion to Leviathan gives her purpose, authority, and intimacy, but it also places her freedom at risk as protection turns into control and strategic violence becomes personal. It’s the 2nd book of the Hench series.

Summary

Anna Tromedlov has fully assumed her role as the Auditor, the strategic mind responsible for keeping Leviathan’s organization alive. Although the public believes the hero Supercollider is recovering after the Dovecote disaster, Anna knows the truth: Quantum Entanglement’s attack transformed the supposedly invulnerable hero into a helpless mass of damaged flesh.

The Draft maintains the false story because Supercollider’s condition would expose both its weakness and its willingness to hide the suffering of its heroes. Leviathan, meanwhile, has secretly survived his imprisonment, but his return has not restored the organization’s direction.

Consumed by grief and anger, Leviathan withdraws emotionally and refuses to authorize major operations against the Draft. Anna keeps the organization functioning through research, targeted sabotage, and plans executed by independent villains, yet the absence of clear leadership causes morale to deteriorate.

The crisis becomes impossible to ignore when Tamara suffers a panic attack. Anna confronts Leviathan about abandoning his responsibilities, and their conversation turns into a painful argument about his resentment, her decision to rescue him, and the distance that has formed between them.

Anna soon discovers evidence that the Draft has attempted a secret medical procedure on Supercollider. The operation fails, killing him, but Anna cannot bring herself to tell Leviathan directly.

Instead, she leaves enough evidence for Leviathan to uncover the truth himself. She listens as he realizes that Supercollider is dead and breaks down under the weight of losing the man who was once his closest companion and greatest rival.

Anna then turns the Draft’s secrecy against it by amplifying Aoife’s public search for her missing husband, the surgeon involved in Supercollider’s treatment. Public pressure forces the Draft to acknowledge Supercollider’s death, though it protects itself by blaming Leviathan.

At the clandestine Night Service held for Supercollider, heroes and villains gather around his body despite their divided loyalties. Anna confronts Quantum, observes Leviathan’s grief, and recognizes that Supercollider’s death has changed the emotional foundation of the conflict.

At dawn, Anna and Leviathan finally reconnect through their shared determination to destroy the Draft. Their reconciliation does not erase their earlier anger, but it gives Leviathan enough purpose to return to active leadership.

Supercollider’s death also creates a moral crisis within the organization. Tamara resigns because remaining beside Leviathan would permanently identify her as a villain, and many other employees follow her example.

Anna initially sees these departures as betrayal. Menachem challenges her reaction, reminding her that major upheaval creates opportunities as well as losses and that loyalty cannot be expected from people whose values no longer match the organization’s direction.

Leviathan responds differently. Energized by public hatred and the emotional closure of the funeral, he begins authorizing Anna’s plans and accepts that open conflict with the Draft is now unavoidable.

The Draft’s chief marketing officer, whom Anna privately calls Mom, contacts her with an invitation to visit its headquarters. He presents the meeting as part of a new era of honesty, although Anna immediately recognizes that his friendliness hides calculation and ambition.

At the same time, the Draft introduces the Future, a five-member hero team assembled from young heroes whose former teams have recently been dissolved. Anna agrees to meet Mom only after negotiating a hostage exchange in which Red Sprite remains in Leviathan’s custody while Anna enters Draft headquarters.

Before the visit, Quantum appears secretly in Anna’s apartment. Now calling herself Decoherence, she explains that the Draft offered to restore her status as a hero if she murdered Leviathan.

Decoherence refused the offer, partly because she knew Anna would never stop hunting her. The confession reveals that the Draft continues to treat its heroes as instruments while disguising coercion as opportunity.

Anna tells Leviathan everything and once again declares her complete loyalty to him. Their emotional reconciliation becomes sexual intimacy, suggesting that their bond has moved beyond employer and employee into something far more consuming.

The closeness is immediately complicated when Leviathan reveals the full capabilities of Anna’s cybernetic eye. The device allows him to see what she sees, hear nearby conversations, track her location, monitor her physical condition, and observe her whenever he decides it is necessary.

Anna attempts to continue working despite the knowledge that her body is no longer private. Leviathan’s surveillance offers physical security, but it also makes her feel trapped inside herself, unable to know when she is being watched.

During the hostage exchange, Anna visits the Draft’s headquarters and meets Mom. His cheerful manner and welcoming office culture conceal a disciplined political intelligence that is at least as dangerous as Leviathan’s open intimidation.

Mom presents Anna with a detailed record of the damage she has caused. He frames her actions as a moral debt and offers her one final opportunity to seek redemption before the consequences become too great to escape.

Anna rejects him because she does not accept the Draft’s authority to define morality. She understands that the organization’s language of redemption is another tool for controlling people and rewriting its own crimes.

After Anna returns, she learns that Decoherence secretly approached Red Sprite to warn her that the Draft regards young heroes as disposable. Anna and Decoherence establish a tense agreement: Anna will help Decoherence contact members of the Future, while Decoherence will avoid interfering unless lives face immediate danger.

A Draft analyst calling himself Black Pill begins undermining Anna’s operations. He also attempts to provoke Leviathan’s jealousy by spreading humiliating information about Anna and presenting their relationship as a weakness.

Meanwhile, Evelyn, a former Draft administrator, provides evidence of how the organization recruits, manipulates, traumatizes, and abandons powered children. Her testimony allows Anna to understand that the Future’s members are not merely enemies but damaged young people whose fears can be exploited.

Anna maps their individual weaknesses. Thundersnow carries overwhelming guilt, Shield lacks confidence in his ability to protect others, Red Sprite hates publicity, and the twins Cartilage and Marrow suffer from deep fears of abandonment and separation.

After Anna presents her strategy, Leviathan sends her a note expressing pride. The gesture initially comforts her until she realizes he watched the entire private meeting through her eye, intensifying her desire to remove the implant herself.

Anna begins dismantling the Future by targeting Shield through Siegeworks, his former team. She engineers a protest designed to create confrontation, but the situation develops into a mob attack.

Baton and Taser are killed, while Shield survives with the belief that he failed to save them. Anna succeeds in damaging him psychologically, but the deaths reveal that she is increasingly willing to treat human beings as pieces in a strategic plan.

Decoherence condemns the operation. Their disagreement exposes the widening moral divide between them, as Decoherence continues to believe that preventing unnecessary death matters while Anna defines success through the destruction of the Draft.

Black Pill intensifies his campaign by organizing a humiliating podcast about Anna’s past and threatening June, Anna’s estranged friend. Anna captures him and places him under house arrest, intending to frighten him without killing him.

Leviathan intervenes and murders Black Pill with extreme brutality. He insists that anyone capable of destabilizing Anna must be eliminated, presenting violence as an expression of protection and devotion.

The Draft responds with an Amnesty Initiative that offers Leviathan’s employees safety, forgiveness, and new identities. The campaign causes a mass departure from the organization and strengthens Mom’s position within the Draft.

Leviathan interprets the departures as a useful test that removes anyone lacking absolute loyalty. Anna is more disturbed because the losses demonstrate that the Draft can weaken them without direct combat.

She next kidnaps Cartilage and Marrow and separates the twins. Rather than torturing them physically, she uses carefully selected truths and praise to convince each brother that he possesses unique abilities and may be more valuable than the other.

By exploiting their dependence on each other, Anna creates suspicion where there was once unity. She also permits Decoherence to warn them about the Draft, ensuring that their loyalty to the institution is weakened from several directions.

Anna then discovers that Greg, an old friend who joined the Draft, had carelessly given Black Pill private information about her life. Although Greg did not fully understand how the information would be used, his carelessness contributed to the threats against June and the public humiliation Anna endured.

Leviathan captures Greg and demands that Anna impose a permanent consequence. Wearing strength-enhancing gauntlets, Anna embraces Greg and crushes him to death.

The killing devastates her because it is intimate, deliberate, and personally chosen. She cannot decide whether she acted from her own anger or because Leviathan’s constant presence had shaped her judgment.

Desperate to prove that her decisions still belong to her, Anna secretly asks Decoherence to help remove the surveillance equipment from her skull. They visit an underground medical specialist known as a Butcher, but the device is too deeply connected to Anna’s eye and nervous system to be removed safely.

Leviathan detects the medical radiation produced during the examination and arrives in a fury. He nearly fights Decoherence, each of them claiming to be protecting Anna while ignoring her right to control her own body.

Anna forces them both to release her and confronts Leviathan directly. She tells him that protection cannot justify taking away her privacy, dignity, or agency.

Leviathan agrees to modify the system so Anna can tell when he is watching and to restrict his access. Their negotiation improves the immediate situation but also reveals his underlying fear that, without constant control, Anna may eventually choose to leave him.

Mom is appointed the Draft’s first official chief executive officer and uses Greg’s death to end the Amnesty Initiative. He declares total war against Leviathan, transforming the private conflict into an organized institutional campaign.

The Future attacks Leviathan’s compound, apparently catching the organization at a vulnerable moment. Leviathan reveals that he expected the assault and asks Anna to trust a strategy he has kept secret even from her.

He defeats the young heroes but deliberately allows them to survive. His restraint is not mercy alone; he intends to turn them against the Draft by showing that their supposed enemy values their lives more than their own institution does.

Decoherence enters Anna’s bunker and offers to take her away from Leviathan. Anna admits that she killed Greg and says that she no longer believes rescue or redemption can restore the person she once was.

She refuses to leave and sends Decoherence to protect the injured members of the Future. The decision confirms that Anna has chosen Leviathan, even while recognizing the damage their relationship has caused.

Leviathan convinces Thundersnow that the Draft lied about Supercollider’s death. He brings the surviving members of the Future to Anna so she can provide proof of the institution’s deception.

Anna shows them footage of Decoherence destroying Supercollider. The recording proves that Leviathan did not kill him and exposes the Draft’s false account, but it also requires Anna to betray Decoherence, the person who repeatedly tried to protect her freedom.

By the end, Anna has achieved a major strategic victory while sacrificing another personal bond. She remains beside Leviathan, fully aware that she has chosen loyalty, power, and war over any uncomplicated path toward redemption.

Characters

Anna Tromedlov, the Auditor

Anna is the central consciousness of Villain, and her transformation into the Auditor defines the moral direction of the book. She is intelligent, observant, organized, and exceptionally skilled at identifying the fears, desires, and contradictions that influence human behavior.

Her greatest strength is her ability to understand systems rather than isolated events. She sees the Draft’s public relations machinery, recruitment practices, political ambitions, and treatment of heroes as connected parts of an institution designed to preserve its own authority.

Anna’s analytical intelligence gradually becomes a moral danger. She can describe people with remarkable accuracy, yet this understanding allows her to injure them more efficiently, as shown by her manipulation of Shield, Cartilage, and Marrow.

Her devotion to Leviathan gives her a sense of belonging that she lacked in ordinary life. She does not merely work for him; she builds her identity around being useful to him, defending him, and helping him defeat the Draft.

That loyalty becomes increasingly difficult to separate from dependency. Even when Leviathan violates her privacy, commits violence in her name, or pressures her toward irreversible choices, Anna continues to interpret their bond as the most meaningful relationship in her life.

Greg’s death represents the clearest point in her moral decline. She does not kill a faceless enemy during an operation but personally crushes an old friend while embracing him, turning intimacy into the method of execution.

Anna remains self-aware enough to fear what she is becoming. Her attempt to remove the surveillance device and her confrontation with Leviathan demonstrate that she still values autonomy, even after accepting responsibility for manipulation and murder.

Her final betrayal of Decoherence confirms that Anna is no longer seeking a return to innocence. She chooses the cause she has built with Leviathan, accepting that her victories will continue to carry personal and moral costs.

Leviathan

Leviathan is both a feared supervillain and a deeply wounded man whose grief controls his behavior. In Villain, his emotional collapse after Supercollider’s condition and death reveals how much of his identity was built around their rivalry, history, and mutual recognition.

At the beginning, Leviathan’s withdrawal leaves his organization without direction. His refusal to lead is not simple laziness but an expression of grief, resentment, humiliation, and the loss of the person who understood him as an equal.

His return to leadership restores discipline and strategic force. He becomes decisive, patient, and capable of anticipating the Draft’s attacks, particularly when he prepares for the Future’s assault and defeats the young heroes without killing them.

Leviathan’s relationship with Anna combines genuine affection with possessiveness. He admires her intelligence, relies on her judgment, and feels pride in her achievements, but he also treats access to her body and private experiences as something his concern for her entitles him to possess.

The cybernetic eye embodies this contradiction. Leviathan views surveillance as protection, while Anna experiences it as the removal of bodily independence, making his love both comforting and invasive.

His violence follows the same pattern. He kills Black Pill because the analyst threatens Anna, yet he does not consider whether Anna wants that death carried out in her name.

Leviathan fears abandonment more than he admits. His desire to monitor Anna, his demand for loyalty after the Amnesty Initiative, and his response to her attempt to remove the implant all reveal anxiety that people will leave once they are given a genuine choice.

Despite his cruelty, he is not without restraint or strategic compassion. By sparing the Future, he recognizes that the young heroes are victims of the Draft and that defeating the institution may require giving them the chance to understand how they have been used.

Quantum Entanglement and Decoherence

Quantum Entanglement begins as the person responsible for Supercollider’s catastrophic condition, but her later identity as Decoherence reflects a profound break with the heroic system that once defined her. She carries responsibility for terrible harm while also becoming one of the clearest opponents of the Draft’s treatment of vulnerable people.

Her decision to reject the Draft’s offer is a major act of independence. The institution promises to restore her heroic identity if she murders Leviathan, but she understands that this apparent redemption would simply make her useful to the Draft again.

Decoherence’s relationship with Anna is built on fear, respect, distrust, and a strange form of loyalty. She knows Anna is capable of pursuing her without mercy, yet she repeatedly attempts to protect Anna from Leviathan’s control and from Anna’s own destructive choices.

Her concern is not sentimental or naive. Decoherence understands that Anna has committed serious crimes, but she still believes that moral responsibility requires preserving the possibility of choice.

She becomes a counterweight to Anna because she insists that intentions do not erase consequences. Her condemnation of the Siegeworks operation shows that opposing the Draft does not justify creating preventable deaths.

Decoherence’s greatest tragedy is that her attempts to warn and rescue others make her vulnerable to betrayal. Anna uses evidence of her role in Supercollider’s death to expose the Draft, sacrificing Decoherence’s trust for strategic advantage.

Supercollider

Supercollider is physically absent from most of the active conflict, yet his condition and death shape nearly every major decision. As a celebrated hero believed to be nearly invulnerable, his destruction exposes the limits of heroic power and the dishonesty of the institution that promoted him.

The Draft does not treat Supercollider primarily as a suffering person. It conceals his condition, constructs a false story about his recovery, and attempts a secret procedure because acknowledging the truth would damage its public authority.

His relationship with Leviathan gives his death emotional importance beyond political strategy. They were opponents, but their rivalry contained a level of recognition that neither man could easily find elsewhere.

Supercollider’s death ends that relationship without resolution. Leviathan loses not simply an enemy but a central figure in his personal history, leaving him with grief that cannot be expressed through victory or revenge.

Even after his death, Supercollider remains a contested symbol. The Draft uses him to accuse Leviathan, Leviathan uses the truth about his death to undermine the Draft, and Anna uses the footage of his destruction to break the Future’s loyalty.

Mom

Mom is the Draft’s most polished and politically dangerous representative. His constant cheerfulness, welcoming language, and emphasis on redemption allow him to present control as kindness and institutional ambition as responsible leadership.

Unlike openly aggressive figures, Mom rarely needs to threaten Anna directly. He shows her a ledger of harm and offers her a final chance at redemption, placing himself in the position of moral judge while ignoring the Draft’s own abuses.

His talent lies in controlling public meaning. He turns Supercollider’s death into an accusation against Leviathan, transforms the Amnesty Initiative into a weapon against enemy morale, and uses Greg’s death to justify total war.

Mom also understands that institutions survive through narrative rather than force alone. He creates the appearance of openness, forgiveness, and progress while continuing to recruit damaged young heroes and treat them as replaceable assets.

His rise to chief executive officer confirms that the Draft values political strategy as much as superhuman power. He becomes the institutional counterpart to Anna, since both characters study people, manipulate information, and plan several moves ahead.

The difference is that Mom presents his actions as moral necessity. His pleasant manner makes him especially threatening because he can authorize cruelty without appearing emotionally disturbed by it.

Tamara

Tamara represents the ordinary human cost of remaining inside Leviathan’s organization. Her panic attack reveals the pressure created by uncertainty, violence, secrecy, and the growing expectation that every employee must accept the identity of a villain.

Her resignation is an act of self-preservation rather than simple disloyalty. She understands that continuing to serve Leviathan after Supercollider’s death and the declaration of war will permanently shape how others see her and how she sees herself.

Anna initially responds with resentment because Tamara’s departure challenges Anna’s belief that loyalty should override fear and moral disagreement. Tamara therefore exposes the difference between employment and devotion.

Her choice also foreshadows the mass departures caused by the Amnesty Initiative. Not everyone in Leviathan’s organization is willing to sacrifice social identity, security, and personal ethics for his cause.

Menachem

Menachem provides Anna with a more measured interpretation of organizational change. When employees leave, he refuses to treat the departures only as betrayal and reminds Anna that disruption creates openings for rebuilding.

His perspective distinguishes him from both Anna’s emotional absolutism and Leviathan’s obsession with loyalty. He understands that people respond to uncertainty according to their own needs and that an organization cannot expect unquestioning commitment from everyone.

Menachem functions as a stabilizing presence because he can address Anna without flattering her or escalating her anger. His advice encourages her to think strategically at a moment when she is inclined to take every departure personally.

Although he occupies less space than the central characters, he demonstrates that intelligence within Leviathan’s organization does not always require cruelty. His practical understanding of change offers an alternative to the harsher methods favored by Anna and Leviathan.

Aoife

Aoife enters the conflict through her public search for her missing husband, the surgeon connected to Supercollider’s failed treatment. Her personal fear becomes politically significant when Anna amplifies it to force the Draft into acknowledging Supercollider’s death.

Aoife is not initially acting as a strategist or political opponent. She wants information about someone she loves, but the Draft’s secrecy turns her private distress into evidence of institutional misconduct.

Anna’s use of Aoife’s search demonstrates how personal suffering can be converted into a weapon. The tactic produces necessary truth, yet it also raises questions about whether Anna values Aoife’s pain for itself or primarily for its strategic usefulness.

Aoife therefore represents the civilians harmed when powerful organizations conceal their actions. Her search cuts through the Draft’s carefully managed narrative because grief and uncertainty cannot be fully controlled by public relations.

Red Sprite

Red Sprite is a member of the Future whose discomfort with publicity makes her poorly suited to the Draft’s image-driven culture. Her value to the organization is tied not only to her powers but also to her ability to serve as part of a marketable heroic team.

During Anna’s visit to Draft headquarters, Red Sprite becomes the exchanged hostage, placing her directly within Leviathan’s control. This arrangement shows how both organizations treat individuals as strategic guarantees.

Decoherence’s warning encourages Red Sprite to question whether the Draft genuinely protects young heroes. Her hatred of publicity makes her especially capable of recognizing the difference between heroic work and the performance of heroism demanded by the institution.

Red Sprite’s vulnerability does not come from weakness but from being trapped in a system that turns personal identity into public property. She represents young heroes who may believe in helping others but reject the institutional machinery built around their abilities.

Thundersnow

Thundersnow is defined by guilt, making him particularly vulnerable to organizations and leaders who offer simple explanations for painful events. Anna identifies this guilt as a pressure point that can be used to weaken his confidence in the Draft.

During the assault on Leviathan’s compound, Thundersnow enters the conflict believing the Draft’s account of Supercollider’s death. His understanding of heroism depends on the assumption that Leviathan is responsible and that attacking him is morally justified.

Leviathan unsettles that certainty by revealing that the Draft lied. Because guilt already shapes Thundersnow’s judgment, the discovery that he may have acted on false information becomes psychologically devastating.

His character shows how institutions exploit conscience. The Draft does not need him to understand the truth; it needs him to feel responsible enough to obey.

Shield

Shield’s identity is built around his ability to protect others, but his insecurity makes that role emotionally fragile. Anna recognizes that attacking his physical strength would be less effective than destroying his belief that he can keep people safe.

The manipulated protest involving Siegeworks becomes the instrument of his collapse. Baton and Taser die during the violence, leaving Shield to interpret their deaths as proof of his personal failure.

Anna’s operation is especially cruel because it turns Shield’s best quality against him. His concern for others becomes the source of guilt that incapacitates him.

Shield also illustrates the cost of measuring a young hero entirely by results. He cannot control every person or prevent every death, yet the culture around him encourages the belief that any failure proves he is unworthy of his role.

Cartilage

Cartilage is one of the twins whose emotional security depends on his bond with Marrow. Their closeness gives them strength, but it also provides Anna with a precise method of psychological attack.

Rather than lying to Cartilage, Anna selects truths that encourage him to see himself as uniquely powerful. Her praise appears affirming, yet it is designed to make him question whether his brother limits his potential.

Cartilage’s vulnerability comes from abandonment trauma and the fear that separation would leave him incomplete. Anna exploits this fear by offering the possibility that independence could make him more important.

His treatment demonstrates how positive language can become a form of manipulation. Praise is not automatically compassionate when it is used to isolate someone from the person they trust most.

Marrow

Marrow shares Cartilage’s abandonment trauma, but Anna addresses him as an individual so that each brother believes he has been privately recognized. By separating them, she removes the immediate reassurance that normally protects them from fear.

Anna encourages Marrow to imagine that his abilities may exceed those of his twin. The manipulation damages their shared identity by introducing competition into a relationship built on mutual dependence.

Decoherence’s warning about the Draft adds another layer of uncertainty. Marrow is forced to question both his brother and the institution that claims to guide him.

His character reveals the vulnerability of children who have already experienced abandonment. Once trust has been damaged, even truthful statements can be arranged to create suspicion and emotional division.

Evelyn

Evelyn is a former Draft administrator whose testimony provides essential evidence about the organization’s internal practices. Her disillusionment suggests that she once believed in the system or at least accepted its claims before seeing how powered children were actually treated.

She explains that the Draft manipulates, traumatizes, and discards young heroes. Her information allows Anna to understand the Future’s emotional injuries and design individualized attacks.

Evelyn’s role contains a moral contradiction. By exposing institutional abuse, she helps reveal the truth, but her testimony is then used by Anna to exploit the same victims more effectively.

She demonstrates that information does not carry an ethical purpose on its own. Evidence of suffering can support liberation, revenge, reform, or further manipulation depending on who controls it.

Black Pill

Black Pill is a Draft analyst who tries to weaken Anna by attacking her reputation, emotional stability, and personal relationships. He relies on humiliation and indirect pressure rather than confronting her through physical force.

His podcast about Anna’s past turns private pain into public entertainment. His threat against June shows that he understands Anna’s remaining emotional attachments and intends to use them as leverage.

Anna’s decision to place him under house arrest indicates that she initially wants control rather than execution. Leviathan’s intervention removes that distinction and transforms Black Pill’s punishment into a demonstration of absolute protection.

Black Pill is malicious, but his death also exposes the danger of Leviathan acting as the final judge of anyone who disturbs Anna. Once protection becomes a justification for killing, Anna’s conflicts automatically become matters of life and death.

Greg

Greg is one of the most personally significant casualties because his betrayal is rooted in carelessness rather than calculated hatred. He gives Black Pill private information without fully considering how it might be used against Anna.

His mistake causes serious harm, but the punishment demanded by Leviathan is far greater than the original act. Anna is forced to decide whether a former friend’s negligence deserves an irreversible response.

The method of Greg’s death makes the scene especially disturbing. Anna embraces him while using enhanced strength to crush his body, combining affection, betrayal, grief, and violence in a single action.

Greg’s death destroys Anna’s confidence in the independence of her own decisions. Because Leviathan can monitor her and has demanded a permanent consequence, she cannot determine where her anger ends and his influence begins.

June

June is Anna’s estranged friend and one of the few connections remaining from her earlier life. Her importance lies partly in the fact that Anna still cares what happens to her, even after committing herself to Leviathan’s cause.

Black Pill threatens June because he understands that emotional attachments can destabilize Anna. The threat confirms that Anna’s past has not disappeared simply because she has adopted the identity of the Auditor.

June represents an ordinary relationship not defined by superhuman conflict, institutional warfare, or strategic usefulness. Anna’s separation from her therefore reflects the narrowing of her emotional world.

The more completely Anna belongs to Leviathan, the fewer relationships she can maintain outside his influence. June’s vulnerability shows that anyone Anna loves can become either a target or a justification for violence.

Baton

Baton is a former member of Siegeworks whose death becomes part of Anna’s plan against Shield. Although Baton receives limited individual development, the circumstances of the death emphasize the human cost hidden inside strategic calculations.

Anna does not necessarily intend every detail of the mob violence, but she creates the conditions that make it possible. Baton’s death therefore challenges any attempt to separate manipulation from responsibility.

For Shield, Baton is not an acceptable loss in a campaign. The death becomes evidence of personal failure, exactly as Anna intended.

Baton represents people whose lives are reduced to their usefulness within someone else’s psychological operation. The limited attention given to the character strengthens this point, since death can become a statistic when viewed from a strategist’s distance.

Taser

Like Baton, Taser dies during the mob attack engineered around Siegeworks. The death is used to break Shield’s belief in himself and weaken the Future as a team.

Taser’s fate reveals how easily a public protest can be redirected into violence when fear, anger, and manipulation are deliberately intensified. Once the confrontation begins, individuals lose control over the larger crowd.

Anna treats the outcome as part of a successful operation even while recognizing its moral cost. Decoherence’s condemnation forces her to confront the fact that strategic effectiveness does not make the deaths acceptable.

Taser therefore becomes part of the moral boundary Anna crosses. The willingness to accept such deaths marks her movement from defensive resistance toward calculated cruelty.

Themes

Loyalty, Devotion, and the Loss of Self

Loyalty gives Anna purpose, confidence, and a place within a world that once treated her as insignificant. Her service to Leviathan allows her intelligence to become a form of power, but the relationship gradually requires her to surrender moral independence, personal relationships, and control over her own body.

In Villain, devotion is dangerous because it can make domination feel meaningful. Anna repeatedly interprets Leviathan’s possessiveness as proof that she matters to him, even when his actions restrict her freedom or pressure her into violence.

Leviathan also treats loyalty as an absolute measure of worth. Employees who leave through the Amnesty Initiative are dismissed as impure, while those who remain are expected to accept the dangers of total war without hesitation.

This definition of loyalty leaves little room for disagreement. Tamara’s resignation becomes betrayal, Decoherence’s attempts to protect Anna become interference, and Greg’s carelessness becomes a crime requiring death.

Anna’s final choices show how completely devotion has reorganized her identity. She rejects Decoherence’s offer of escape and exposes her role in Supercollider’s death because Leviathan’s victory has become more important than preserving another relationship.

The book does not suggest that loyalty is inherently corrupt. It instead shows that loyalty becomes destructive when it demands the disappearance of personal judgment and when leaving is treated as proof that love, friendship, or service was never genuine.

Surveillance, Privacy, and Bodily Autonomy

Anna’s cybernetic eye transforms surveillance from an external political tool into an intimate violation. Leviathan can see through her vision, hear nearby conversations, follow her location, and monitor physical responses, making her own body a source of information she cannot fully control.

The device offers real protection. Leviathan can detect danger, respond to medical emergencies, and locate Anna when she is threatened, which makes the arrangement difficult for her to reject without feeling ungrateful.

Protection, however, does not erase the need for consent. Anna’s distress comes from knowing that Leviathan decides when access is necessary, leaving her unable to determine whether any moment is truly private.

His surveillance changes her behavior even when he may not be watching. She begins examining her expressions, thoughts, physical reactions, and conversations as though she were constantly performing for an unseen observer.

The failed attempt to remove the device represents Anna’s effort to recover ownership of herself. Decoherence and the Butcher cannot safely separate the technology from her nervous system, showing how deeply control has become embedded in her physical existence.

Anna’s confrontation with Leviathan establishes an essential distinction between care and possession. Their compromise improves transparency, but his fear that she might leave reveals why he wanted unrestricted access: surveillance was not only about safety but also about preventing emotional uncertainty.

Institutional Control and Manufactured Heroism

The Draft maintains power by deciding who counts as a hero, which events become public truth, and what forms of violence are presented as necessary. Its authority depends less on moral consistency than on controlling stories, reputations, and access to legitimacy.

Supercollider’s suffering is hidden because the image of an invulnerable hero is more useful than the reality of an injured man. When he dies, the Draft does not admit its failed operation but constructs a narrative that places responsibility on Leviathan.

Mom represents the polished language of institutional control. He speaks about openness, amnesty, redemption, and the future, yet each positive concept becomes a method of preserving the Draft’s political position.

The Future demonstrates how heroic identity is manufactured. Young people from disbanded teams are assembled into a new public unit without receiving the emotional support needed to process guilt, insecurity, abandonment, or distrust.

Evelyn’s testimony confirms that this treatment is systematic. Powered children are shaped into useful symbols, exposed to trauma, and discarded when they cease to serve the organization’s needs.

The Draft’s greatest weapon is its ability to make obedience appear virtuous. Heroes believe they are protecting society while acting on incomplete or false information, and disagreement can be framed as moral failure rather than evidence that the institution itself is corrupt.

Moral Responsibility and the Rejection of Redemption

Anna rejects the Draft’s offer of redemption because she understands that the institution wants to define both her guilt and the conditions under which she may be forgiven. Accepting its judgment would mean recognizing the Draft as a legitimate moral authority despite its history of deception and abuse.

Her refusal is intellectually understandable, but it gradually becomes an excuse to abandon moral limits altogether. Once Anna decides that redemption is false, she begins acting as though no judgment matters beyond loyalty and strategic success.

The deaths of Baton and Taser demonstrate the danger of this position. Anna may not personally strike them, but she deliberately creates the conditions that lead to violence and then uses their deaths to destroy Shield emotionally.

Greg’s killing makes responsibility even more direct. Anna chooses the method, applies the force, and feels his body collapse, leaving no institution or distant operative to absorb the blame.

Decoherence offers a competing view. She accepts that people can cause irreversible harm while still insisting that present choices matter and that preventing further suffering remains worthwhile.

Anna ultimately refuses rescue because she believes her crimes have placed her beyond redemption. This conclusion gives her a form of honesty, but it also protects her from the difficult work of changing.

By treating redemption as impossible, she removes any obligation to become different. The story ends with Anna fully responsible for her choices, neither falsely innocent nor willing to believe that guilt must lead to transformation.