LET’S GET THE HELL OUT! Cheyenne sent back.

There’s a transmitter! Tempest sent. I can find it! I can disable it!

Then something crashed physically into Angel, and the world went away.

Breece watched the fight break out with fascination. The anti-Stockton protesters, those with Nexus in their brains – most of them, anyway – threw themselves over the fence, charged past the cops, and slammed themselves into the Stockton loyalists, swinging signs like swords, like clubs.

The Stockton loyalists, enraged, fought back.

“That’s enough,” Kate’s voice said into his ear.

“It’s fascinating,” Breece subvocalized in reply.

“We said a test, Breece,” Kate said. “Test successful.”

“Roger that,” Breece subvocalized. He clicked the button in his pocket again. Perhaps a few of the combatants out there looked confused. But more were piling on, throwing themselves into the fight from both sides now, as violence begat more violence.

He nodded, then turned and walked away.

Behind him, sirens began to wail as the melee grew.

Rangan sat alone in the Bunker.

He’d been here by himself quite a lot. Most nights he was the only one here. The other three had lives elsewhere. They didn’t talk about them, at least not with him. They had apartments or homes or something. Boyfriends or girlfriends. Not full time jobs – not from the amount of time they spent here – but other obligations that sometimes took them away for chunks of time during the day, or occasionally for more than one day at a time.

They didn’t say. He’d learned quickly not to ask.

He’d stay here, by himself, scouring the web for news of Kade, or his parents, or hacking on the Mesh code, or playing with Nexus apps, or playing music, messing around with the new DJ apps that existed on top of Nexus, putting together playlists that he could beam straight out from his mind, to the right audio gear or, heck, to anyone running Nexus. He’d let himself dream a little dream that one day he’d be a free man and could do something as trivial and fun as play a set in a club.

As if.

Not today.

You want to make yourself useful? Tempest had asked, before they left for the protest. Check what I told you about the chemreactor hack. I don’t trust it.

What Tempest had told him – what she’d told them all – was that it was highly improbable. That it was highly suspicious that someone could hack so many models all at once. And she was right.

The hack that had gone live on November 10th included the private keys to seventeen different models of high end commercial chemreactor. Seventeen different makes and models of devices that could synthesize complex molecules and molecular brews like Nexus, given their component ingredients and the right recipe.