More cheering. Rangan saw a few sullen, angry faces, but there were many more cheers, there was more hope.

“Then keep memory alive!” Stan Kim yelled. “Keep the outrage alive! And in two years we’ll have that revolution!”

The crowd cheered for him.

Rangan shook his head in awe and admiration.

Kate stared at the message.

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

She looked back to the wallscreen, to the multiple feeds of data her filters were painting there.

The scene of the DC protest was triumphant, not violent. Breece hadn’t assaulted them. He’d listened to her warning.

She wouldn’t sell him out.

But China was going crazy. And reports were streaming in about US troop mobilizations, about aircraft launching from carriers.

When Breece’s noon mission completed…

Kate shook her head. Panicky people made bad decisions when surprised.

She had to give this person something, had to get a message to their higher ups

She typed a message back.

[ERD_SECRETS: We’re PLF. The files we leaked are from Barnes’s personal data. That’s how I know. Events in China and the world are your proof. You must relay this upwards. China did not take offensive action against the US.]

Breece frowned at the screen. He stretched out his hand towards the terminal.

“Good speech,” the Nigerian said.

“Talk’s cheap,” Breece replied. He jammed a finger down on a key.

Rangan shook his head in awe and admiration.

The crowd around him was cheering, waving signs. He felt passion and energy. There was disappointment. There was resentment. But it was isolated. People were looking around furtively, finding themselves in the minority. The bulk of the protesters here were fired up about doing exactly what this march had been billed to do – peacefully raising their voices right here, letting the world know they weren’t going away.

It was incredible. Stan Kim had no Nexus. No fancy code. No nothing. The man had just talked to them.

Old school.

Then the hate hit.

[MULTIPLEX SIGNAL DETECTED]

It crashed over him like a wave, dragged him down into its red depths, so much darker, deeper, more violent than before. There were screams around him. Screams of rage. He felt the whole crowd surge forward, mad, a rabid beast.

[MESH NETWORK CALIBRATION UNDERWAY]

His eyes flew open and he found himself running, snarling, shoving, pushing, viciously trying to get through the press of arms and bodies ahead, so he could get to that goddamn barrier, tear it the fuck down, get to those pigs on the other side, rip their motherfucking arms off and use them to club the…

[FIREWALL CONFIG UPDATED]

Code sliced through the chaos. Digital filters blockaded specific signal patterns identified by peer-to-peer comparison across the Mesh. The filters reduced the identified broadcast to data, to mere bits, canceled out those bits at the firewall around his mind.

[AREA COUNTERMEASURES ACTIVATED]