“If he’s really PLF,” Angel said. “Then you should be a hero. Maybe he’d rather scare you away than kill you.”

Tempest snorted. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

64
Growing

Tuesday 2040.12.18

“No, mother!” Yuguo said again. “I’m not leaving!”

He pulled his arm free of her.

His mother, plump, round-faced, dressed in a long grey coat over a green winter dress, looked at him with tears in her eyes.

“They’ll arrest you!” She pleaded, both arms outstretched. “They’ll haul you away, my only child! For what? For nothing!”

She spun around, taking in the protest, the hundreds of students collected around them, the signs that cried “BO JINTAO IS A CRIMINAL” and “FREE SUN LIU!” and “DEMOCRACY NOW!” and “LET A BILLION FLOWERS BLOOM”.

Yuguo could feel his friends in his mind, feel their thoughts, feel their mixed concern, scorn, and impatience.

“No one knows you’re here!” she cried at him. “They’ve blacked you out!”

Yuguo stood taller. “That’s why we have to fight.”

“Please,” she begged. To his horror, his mother fell to her knees. “Please, Yuguo. Don’t throw your life away. This isn’t worth the risk!” She was crying now.

“Oh mother,” he said, reaching out to her, putting his arms around her, dropping to his knees next to her in the mud that had been grass. “Someone has to risk it. Or we’ll all stay prisoners.”

His mother left, eventually, without him. She’d been trying to call him for days, she said. Her phone wouldn’t connect to his. Nor would his to anyone or anything outside the area of the protest. They were sandboxed, filtered from the world.

But they were growing. They had been a dozen that first morning. The boys from the chemistry department, plus the three who’d started the protest: Lifen and her two friends – Meirong and Yuanjun. Those three had been shocked at the presence of Nexus, but Lifen had boldly hoisted the vial and sucked it down, and then her friends had followed.

Yuguo thought she was the prettiest, smartest, bravest woman he’d ever met.

After that, Wei, bold, imprudent, incautious Wei, had gone about the grassy square, talking to other students, yelling to passersby, enticing all to join them.

And tempting a few here and there with the forbidden fruit of Nexus.

He’d been turned down and turned down and turned down.

And then someone else had said yes, and crouched down in the middle of a circle of them, and downed a silvery vial, and gone through his own transformation, and become one of them.

They had gained mass in dribs and drabs after that, as news of their existence had spread by word of mouth, as the twin oddities of protest and this exotic compound had enticed.