Because

DON

follows him.

Life is definitely lagging behind her expectations. Is something that doesn’t enter her mind. She’s not crazy, after all, and doesn’t have any expectations for her life. It reminds her once in a while of the old days. On rainy Sundays in Rochdale, back when she’d look out through the metal bars on the window into the yard. This isn’t how she pictured her life as an anarchist. Playing out so predictably. Consisting for the most part of them just hanging around somewhere. At the hackers’ place, on the mattresses, on the sofa in front of the fire. Talking bollocks. And eating noodles. And it is

Boring.

It is

No longer exciting to cut chips out of corpses, to pull their hoods over their faces and wear disguises. No longer exciting to walk through the city, the four of them, in combat gear and watch people jump out of their way. No longer so great to shoot drones out of the sky or to shoot at all. The excitement of having superpowers is gone, though it was there. When they had stuck maps and photos on the wall, run threads between pins, created search fields. Figured out weaknesses, drawn up observation plans. And now. Everything is too slow. Slowly Don walks behind Walter, feeling bored. She’s just a young person walking behind some old sack, who is already punishing himself by the way he looks, with his spitefulness and his stupidity.

A muffled, loud noise rouses Don.

A few meters away from her, people are standing around filming.

They are filming

WALTER

Who is on the ground. He can’t say how the accident happened. Nobody asks, either. There sits a dented self-driving delivery vehicle. There lies Walter, and here’s how things stand: he has no idea why he is on the ground. He’s not in pain. It’s comfortable. He sees the people standing around him. He sees the cameras. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t belong to them. He’s not afraid. He’s never been so pleasantly absent as he is at that moment. He doesn’t think of god; he knows there’s no god. That’s never been so clear to him. He doesn’t lament having spent years with this god lie, which he told others. He doesn’t regret a thing. He looks at his legs on the other side of the street. Somebody should really pick up his poor legs. They’ll freeze all by themselves.

Where is the ambulance?

“Well.”

MI5 PIET

“No ambulance is coming. Walter. Petty criminal, sex addict, unemployable creature. Ambulances aren’t sent for people like you anymore.”

Come on!

Thinks

THOME