The fifty-five governors were coming into the room.

“Grendel,” I said, using Wilson’s call sign, “we need to shut this down right now.”

“I’m on the phone with the chief of security—”

I lost whatever else he was going to say, because suddenly a big man stepped out of the crowd and removed a folded sheet of cardboard that he spread wide as he raised it over his head. In big black letters, it read:

TRAITORS TO THE AMERICAN WAY

And below that were the letters NFF.

New Founding Fathers.

But then another man held up a sign:

NO GOVERNMENT = REAL FREEDOM

All around the room, people—men and women—were raising signs. Some were slogans, but most had an acronym, a logo, or the actual name of some group. There were at least a dozen different extremist militia groups, including a few that had figured prominently in last year’s BLM riots, but there were also Black Lives Matter signs, Blue Lives Matter, the Second Amendment Coalition, and others, including one claiming to be Antifa. The hall had suddenly become a microcosm of American political hot-button contention. White, Black, and brown people were suddenly waving their placards and shouting while onstage the governors stood in uncertain clusters, glancing at security, jabbering with one another, and a few trying to calm the protesters. In the crowd, I could see everyone with a cell phone taking pics.

There was not one part of this that made sense.

All the protesters had used essentially the same tricks—sneaking signs in—and they were spaced too evenly, too thoroughly throughout the audience. The signs had a cliché nature to them, as if they were movie props intended to sell the theme of the moment.

Which, of course, they had to be.

And another few pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. This wasn’t misdirection to draw focus from Going Viral. I think this was plan A all along. Make sure the public got all those signs—and more to the point—each of those groups on cell camera videos. Give it just enough time for those pics and vids to land on Twitter and the other social media platforms. Then start a riot in this convention center. The big play? Maybe capture or, likelier, kill as many governors as possible. There were groups planning that late last year but doing it piecemeal. Kuga never did things small. Fifty-five governors, a big split between red and blue states. People seeded into the crowd who were likely legitimate, though politically manipulated members of those groups; and maybe a goodly number of Fixers playing roles. Let the whole country see that Americans were willing to up the ante and go big in the worst possible way. Put it in a pot and stir until you have a new civil war.