Aybek Nabiyov lights another Molotov cocktail, and hurls it up at the dictator’s palace in Almaty. Dozens of men and women around him are hurling them now. The dictator’s secret police are broken. The Americans have not come out of their bases.

The lit Molotovs fly up gorgeously, almost serenely, spinning end over end, the lit rags stuffed into the mouths of the fuel-filled glass bottles moving like fireflies on this dark cold, starless night.

Then they smash against the palace the dictator built with the billions he stole.

The palace is burning.

“For Lunara,” Aybek says, tears on his face. For the woman he loved. The woman he would have married. The woman who’s dead because of the dictator.

Talgat reaches out a hand, and Aybek takes it. He can feel the solidarity of his brothers, his brothers in arms. Their anger has not been for nothing.

The dictator has fled.

Kazakhstan will be theirs again.

Around the whole world he feels that solidarity, a million minds crying out in righteous anger. Ten million. Who even knew how many?

But enough.

Men and women are crying out for justice. Crying out together. Crying out in unison.

The world will belong to the people once more.

Carolyn Pryce watched the screens, transfixed.

It was blowing up. Everywhere. Maybe Shanghai had started it. Maybe something else. But now… Every shooting, every explosion, every brutality someone on Nexus captured went viral. They ricocheted around the globe. They fed more violence, enraging protesters, driving police to more extreme measures.

It was a feedback loop. White noise. The whole thing going to a screeching caterwaul that was going to break the windows of civilization.

“Iran’s off the net,” NSA said. “So are Yemen, Syria, Qatar. Trying to stop the spread.” He paused. “Kazakhstan just went dark.”

“Too late for Kazakhstan,” CIA replied, looking up from a console. “President Bayzhonov’s fled the country.”

“Jesus,” Pryce said. “Our troops?”

“Confined to base,” Admiral McWilliams said, shaking his head. “This was civilian action, not rebel.”

“Fuck,” she muttered. “North Korea?”

“Nexus never took hold,” NSA said. “We think.”

Pryce’s phone buzzed at her then, three sharp buzzes in succession, the highest priority signal there was.

She pulled it out of her pocket, expecting an urgent message from Kaori, maybe even something from the President.

Instead she saw something else.

[ERD_SECRETS: URGENT: China didn’t kill Barnes. PLF did, w/ help of hacker now spreading Nexus, destabilizing both US and China.]

Pryce stared at it.

What the hell?

She jabbed a message back.

[How do you know? Who are you? What proof?]

“Holy shit!” CIA said. “Imaging, give me real-time of latitude thirty-one point two zero two two, longitude one twenty-one point four three five three.”

Pryce looked up from her phone and stared at the man from CIA.