Rangan opened his eyes. Converge. Jesus. They were intentionally as spread out as they could be. And oh fucking hell.

It was something out of a nightmare.

Ahead of him, some protesters were standing around in shock, while hundreds of others were moving in a human wave at the nearest row of riot police, the ones standing in a line in front of the museum. As he watched, the riot cops fired a volley of tear gas and rubber bullets at the oncoming flood. Then the enraged mob was on them, and riot police were holding up their transparent shields, swinging electrified truncheons down on rioters, and being dragged down.

A tear gas canister flew towards him and Rangan ducked. Another landed feet from him, already giving off thick yellow clouds. The air was suddenly filled with the whizzing of rubber bullets, with the horrid pepper smell of tear gas. He coughed hard. His eyes stung and watered up immediately. He crouched down, ripped off his backpack, pulled out goggles and mask and pulled them over his head.

He looked back up in time to see a Molotov cocktail land in the back ranks of the riot cops, lighting one on fire. Then another sailed even further, striking the Museum of National History itself.

Alan motherfucking Turing. Where were the goddamn fire trucks?

He coughed again. His eyes were still watering, still burning from the tear gas he’d gotten in them in just those few seconds. The goggles were fogging up already.

Rangan! He heard Angel calling for him.

I’m here! He sent back. Gather up. Where?

7th Street, Angel replied. The south side of the Mall.

Rangan stood back up, spun to get his bearings. An enraged protester ran into him, bounced off, looked suddenly puzzled, less enraged, then got far enough away that the rage took over again. Rangan turned, watching him, then spun again. He had to go east, and south. Just a block or two each. He watched angry young protesters in goggles and bandanas light Molotovs and hurl them towards police and vehicles, watched rubber bullets slam into one of them. Watched a cop bring an electrified truncheon down on one rioter, only to have two more club him from behind with wooden fragments of signs or stages, bearing the police officer to the ground.

Just a couple blocks. Just ten or twenty thousand people between him and there.

Kade surfed from mindstream to mindstream, frantically. It was chaos. It was nuts. The whole crowd had erupted into mob mentality, into complete insanity.

No.

Even through the limited data coming across the mindstream feeds he could tell it wasn’t just a mob. Wasn’t just emergent anger.

This mob had been created.

Goddammit, he thought. I could just log in, debug what’s going on!

But he couldn’t, not any more.

The back doors were gone.

He was on the other side of the planet.