Oh god, Kade sent. Dread came off him in waves. I know who that is.

You do? Rangan sent.

You’ve gotta get out of here, Kade replied. That guy goes by Breece. He’s PLF. He was behind the Houston bombing. And Chicago. And the assassination attempt on Stockton.

Rangan felt everything go cold

Here’s how you can contact me, Kade sent. A net address followed. I have to give this girl her body back. And see if I can talk her into heading someplace safer.

Rangan nodded. Here’s my address, he replied.

“What the hell’s going on?” Cheyenne asked aloud. She was up on one knee now herself. Rangan could feel her arm throbbing with pain across the link. “Who is this? What are you two talking about?”

Rangan looked at her. “Cheyenne,” he said. “Meet my good buddy Kade.” He shook his head. “And now we’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.”

John Stockton watched as the giant wall screen flipped through scenes of the riot on the Mall. There had been other protests, other riots, many of them bad. New York. LA. Detroit. But this… He shook his head.

The sun was setting over DC, now. The fire trucks had arrived. The flames on the Mall and the buildings around it were out. All but a few hundred of the most hard-core rioters had been forced out, and those that remained wouldn’t last long. Capitol Police and DHS had formed a perimeter around the entire Mall. No new protest would be allowed to start there.

Stockton shook his head.

Thousands of arrests.

Hundreds dead.

Dozens of cops dead, and hundreds wounded.

Greg Chase spoke from behind him.

“This hour’s polling numbers are in, Mr President,” his Press Secretary said. “Still rising. Between the Supreme Court legitimizing you and the protesters illegitimizing themselves, it’s been a good day.”

Stockton shook his head again.

“No,” he said. “It hasn’t.”

Carolyn Pryce flipped through riot imagery in her office, then leaned back, and rubbed her eyes.

What a disaster. How had things gone so wrong?

Questions kept rising.

Why hadn’t they deployed sonic cannons to quell the crowd from the very get go?

Why hadn’t they had fire trucks on the scene? Why had it taken so long to put out the flames? Why had the façade of one of the fucking Smithsonian buildings, of all places, been allowed to burn for so long?

Greg Chase’s words kept coming back to her. Something he’d told the President. “The more rope we give the protesters, the better.”

Was that was this was about? Had they let it get so out of hand for politics?

People had died out there.

People died in the assassination attempt on Stockton too, a little voice inside her head told her.

Pryce shook her head. She didn’t want to believe it.

55
Reeling

Thursday 2040.12.06