“Utopian!” Dominic seized the nearest of them, Aldrin, by her coat of living static and pointed to Sniper’s rooftop. “Give me a gun!”

Aldrin froze, the others too, feeling the world’s eye on them. Gunpowder, of course, was unaffected by Cato’s invention, as perhaps were new technologies: electron guns, magnetic pistols, inventions which a peaceful Hive should not have had concealed beneath their Griffincloth.

“Don’t,” MASON ordered, cold. His guards had dragged him to shelter behind the Rostra but could not shift him further, the sight of Jehovah’s body filling his iron frame with a frenzy his six guards could barely match. “Not here.”

Dominic turned a fraction of his red-hot hate on Caesar. “You choose them over Him?” He did not wait for a reply, but leapt from the Rostra, clawing his wild way across the backs and shoulders of those too fascinated by the blood to run. Does it surprise you that the bloodhound leaves Jehovah’s side? That he does not stay, like Martin, clutching his Master’s lifeless hand, or sobbing on his knees? You think perhaps that he has given up on his Master, turned to revenge now that fact has stripped hope. Not so. Dominic saw no damage or danger in Jehovah’s assassination, only blasphemy. His mind had never recognized, even imagined, any Power other than Jehovah, so it could not register the concept that his God might die. His fingers, which did not care if they were scraped or broken, made a quick climb of the double porch of the basilica, using bystanders as footholds as he scrambled toward the infidel.

“J.E.D.D. Mason’s real name is Jehovah Epicurus Donatien D’Arouet Mason.” Sniper still faced the floating cameras and, as rumor spread across the Earth like an electric plague, he reached the largest audience a single person had commanded since Emperor Mycroft MASON during the Set-Set Filibuster two hundred years before. “The mother who gave their child a name like that,” it continued, “is the leader of the conspiracy. They call themself Madame D’Arouet these days, but their birth name is Joyce Faust, one of Felix Faust’s ba’sibs. Joyce Faust left Brill’s Institute at nineteen and studied to be a sensayer, but instead of getting licensed they became a Blacklaw, moved to Paris, and founded the brothel where you saw all your leaders meeting in secret yesterday.” At Sniper’s cue the cameras split screened, showing again Ganymede and savage Perry-Kraye toppling through the shattered window at Madame’s. “I’m glad now that I brought my cameras there, since now we can show you the truth. Madame has a network of clients—spies—in every Hive, in Romanova too, thousands of them, many in high positions in the government. Madame controls them using a horde of ba’kids, if you can call them that, children they engineered and trained at their brothel like set-sets, teaching them sensayer techniques and antiquated gendered sex tricks to make them experts at manipulating people using seduction and religion. Danaë Mitsubishi is one of them. Danaë helped make Hotaka Andō Chief Director. President Ganymede was also one of them, but broke away, and has been working secretly as much as they could to free the Humanists from Joyce Faust’s conspirators without them noticing, but they did notice. That’s why Joyce Faust decided to expose O.S. They’d rather destroy the Humanists than lose control of us. And here’s another of their creations!”