Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (58 page)

M
onday 2041.01.20

Rangan tensed as he saw the barricades come into sight ahead. Concrete barriers. Armored vehicles. Riot-armored police.

Giant screens to taunt them with the inauguration.

The barriers ended E Street. Ended it at 2
^nd
. They could file into the broad square that 2
^nd
Street had effectively been turned into. But no farther.

Rangan had chosen this spot, near the very front of the march, intentionally, to give him advance warning of anything that might come. Cheyenne was a block or two back, Angel back behind her, and Tempest the furthest back.

Now he felt the huge weight of the crowd behind him. And he had a sudden impression of the crowd continuing to press forward, angrily smashing him up against that barrier until the life was crushed out of him.

Steady,
Cheyenne sent him, with a trace of humor.

Rangan tried to smile back along the link. The constant bombardment of anger and flashes of riots and gunfire and tear gas and flames around the world had him rattled.

This wasn’t what they’d come prepared to fight. They’d come ready for a single homogenous blast of artificial anger. But this? This influx of real rage, organic, bottoms up, in so many shapes and colors?

Breece wasn’t going to have to do a damn thing. This was going to explode all on its own.

I’m worried,
he sent to all the C3.

We can do this,
Cheyenne sent back.

The network effect’s the same,
Angel sent.
We just need their attention.

They marched. Signs waved. The chants grew louder and angrier. People started moving faster. Rangan saw hands raise scarves and surgical masks. He saw goggles come down over eyes. He saw people reach into backpacks.

And suddenly the crowd was a living thing. He caught flashes of violence in far away places: in Russia, in Kenya, in China. Anger, gunshots, fires.

Neural inputs, pulsing into this mob mind.

Bodies pressed against him from behind, faster, giving him no choice but to move forward with them, rushing now. Hot emotions were pounding against him, pushing away thought. People were losing themselves, forgetting where they were, forgetting who they were, intelligence dropping to the lowest common denominator of the mob as they surged at the barricades.

Rangan felt fear rush through him. The crowd was going to smash up against those barricades, the pressure of the thousands of people behind him was going to crush him up against them, squeeze the life right out of him…

Is that a stage?
Angel sent.

He blinked at her voice in his mind.

A stage. There was a stage, set behind the barricades.

And on it.

Holy frack,
Tempest sent.

The giant screens came to life. The face of the man on the stage appeared in front of them all.

Senator Stanley Kim stood there, tall and straight, in his signature black suit and blue tie, and held his arms out wide to the crowd.

Rangan gasped. The crowd’s rush slowed as shock snapped people back to the here and now. The crowd was filling the wide space on 2
^nd
street, where the barrier was placed, hundreds of thousands of people filing in behind him. And he was just a dozen people back from the barricade. Just thirty or forty feet back from the stage on which Stan Kim stood, looking at them all, his arms still held out, as if to greet them, as if to forestall them.

Stan Kim looked just as he had the night he’d given his speech saying he wouldn’t concede the race. Saying that he’d won the Presidency.

More and more people filed in. Rangan felt anger turn to surprise, turn to confusion, turn to something almost like hope.

Well,
Angel sent.
He’s got people’s attention. Think we can slip him some Nexus?

“My fellow Americans!” Senator Stanley Kim said then, his voice powerfully amplified over the crowd. “We need a revolution!”

“
W
e need a revolution
!” the senator from California roared over the crowd.

Rangan felt the crowd roar back with excitement. A giant cheer went up. People clapped, whistled, yelled.

Minds cheered the senator on.

Stan Kim leaned forward, pointed at the crowd, panned his outstretched hand around to take them all in.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” he yelled.

The crowd went wild again, cheering, clapping, waving signs.

“Well you’ve come to the right place!” Stan Kim said.

“America is the land of
permanent
revolution!” the senator said, his eyes scanning the crowd. “We fought a bloody war more than two and a half centuries ago. We spilled blood, right here!” He thrust a finger down at the ground, beneath the stage.

“Why?” Kim asked. “Because we had no choice! Because it was our only way! So we could institute government
of
the people,
by
the people
,
and
for
the people. Government where we revolt
constantly
, every two years!”

Rangan caught his breath. He heard some cheers, but fewer now. He felt the crowd grow confused in his mind.

“You want a revolution?” Stan Kim yelled.

The crowd cheered again. Yells of agreement rose up.

Stan Kim nodded. “In two years,” he yelled, “every member of the House behind me,” he waved back towards the Capitol, “and a third of the Senate come up for re-election.”

He paused. Rangan was nodding, hoping beyond hope, feeling the crowd teeter.

He blasted out his agreement, blasted it out through his thoughts, blasted it out across the mesh to any listeners he had.

“You know what those women and men can do?” Stan Kim asked the crowd.

“They can kiss my ass!” Rangan heard someone say.

People laughed.

Stan Kim smiled. “They can repeal the Chandler Act. They can launch hearings into lies and criminal abuses of power. They can make sure people go to jail.”

The senator paused. There was scattered cheering.

Rangan cheered as loud as he could, beamed out his agreement even harder.

Stan Kim opened his mouth again. “They can
impeach John Stockton!
” he roared.

The crowd came alive with cheering, with yelling, with hoots, with applause. Rangan felt minds turn.

“And in four years we elect a new President!” Stan Kim said. “Revolution after revolution after revolution!”

The crowd was with him now, cheering again.

“I know you’re angry!” Kim said.

Cheers.

“I know you want the revolution today!” he yelled.

Roaring.

“But the battle is not the war!” Kim said. “We need patience!”

The crowd drew a deep breath.

“Some of you want to rip down these barricades. You want to light fires and tear things up. Well, look around you,” Kim said. “Take a good long look at these men and women in uniform.”

Rangan looked. He saw thousands of them. He was close enough to see faces, just on the other side of the barrier, behind clear visors and tall metal shields. He saw cold hard expressions.

Beneath that he saw fear.

“If you raise your fists today,” Stan Kim said. “These men and women are going to do what they’re
sworn
to do. They’re going to protect the Capitol, and protect public order. They’re going to strike back.” Kim shook his head.

Boos rose up from the crowd.

Stan Kim raised his hands for silence.

“Listen to me. If that happens, people are going to
die
. On both sides.” He paused. “Hundreds of people died on the National Mall on December 6
^th
. I don’t want another day like that on my conscience. I hope you don’t want it on
yours
.”

The crowd was silent, breathing.

“And if that happens,” Kim went on. “Then your cause,
my
cause, o
ur
cause
,
isn’t going to be helped. It’s going to be set back. It’s going to be associated with violence. With destruction.”

Kim paused. Then he pointed back at the Capitol, and raised his voice.

“When the real violence has been done by the man in the White House and those who work for him!”

Cheers rose up again.

Kim looked out at them.

“We didn’t get what we deserved last month,” he said. “But that day will come! So stand proud! Wave those signs high!”

People cheered, less passionately, perhaps, but they cheered. Signs waved.

“Make your voices heard!” Stan Kim yelled.

People cheered again.

“Louder!” Stan Kim yelled.

This time they gave it to him.

“Show the world what you want, America! Make John Stockton afraid!”

The crowd went wild at that.

“Raise your voices today and not your fists!”

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.

K
ate 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.]

B
reece 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.

R
angan 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]

Countersignals burst out from code in his mind, using the Nexus nodes in his brain as transmitters, coordinating with hundreds of nearby peers on the mesh, shaping the countersignal to maximize destructive interference, to cancel out the hate broadcast over as wide an area as possible.

Rangan stumbled. His mind cleared. The crowd slammed into him from behind, forcing him forward. All around him he felt confusion, but still hate. His firewalls were keeping Breece’s broadcast from touching him, were suppressing Breece’s broadcast at least partially around him.

But the firewalls didn’t touch the secondary effects. People were growing enraged. Their own anger was being rekindled, and blaring out loud and clear.

So was fear.

He looked right and left, struggling to break free of the crowd. From the minds nearest him, where his active countermeasures were doing the most to cancel out Breece’s signal, he felt panic.

He felt men and women suddenly realizing they were being pressed forward by the hundreds of thousands behind them.

Whether they liked it or not.

BZZZZZZZZZZZT.

Rangan’s insides turned to jelly. He groaned as the sonic disruptor resonated in his chest, his jaw, his belly. He would have fallen but the crowd held him up.

Then the press in front of him was gone. He stumbled forward, fell to one knee, sweet Jesus he was going to get run over, and then somehow he was back up, and in front of him the barriers were bowled over, protesters were pushing back riot police. Tear gas was hanging in the air. There were screams ahead and behind. There was pain and confusion in his mind, even without Breece’s broadcast.

And there were the stairs to the stage, just ahead of him.

And enraged protesters hauling up those stairs.

Towards a totally alone Stan Kim.

R
angan charged forward
, hauled up the stairs.

HELP!
he sent in a broadband across the mesh.
The stage! Stan Kim!

There were three protesters ahead of him. He threw himself at the first, trying to tackle the man around the waist.