Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

“Get the hell out of the way, damnit! Let me see the screen. Have that soldier focus his camera on that television screen!”

The captain dodged out of the way and the helmet cam focused on what looked to be an infomercial already in progress. Cheerful music accompanied a montage of images showing darknet operatives working together. Smiling young faces, wearing HUD glasses, working with fab lab equipment, fiber optics, agriculture, and alternative energy.

“Bring up the sound!”

The distant infomercial music crackled as it filled the speakers in the big command center. The montage faded out and to everyone’s horror dissolved into a familiar face—Matthew Sobol. He was sitting in a wing chair next to a roaring fireplace and looked healthy. Words appeared at the bottom of the screen:

Matthew A. Sobol, Ph.D.

Chairman and CEO, Daemon Industries, LLC

Sobol nodded to the camera as the music came to a close. “Hi. If you’re watching this video, it means you just tried to take over the world. Now, you all know who I was. But until now, I couldn’t be certain who you were. Thankfully, your recent actions helped to clarify things.” He took a moment to place another log on the fire, and he stabbed at the flames with a poker.

Connelly, Johnston, the Weyburn Labs team, and the entire data strike force watched the video playing in every data center in simulcast.

Sobol looked up again after putting the fire poker away. “I knew it would only be a matter of time until you broke into the darknet. No system is completely secure. Of course, you would scour my code for flaws. So I gave you some good ones.” Sobol smiled amiably. “As we sit here, the companies you attempted to harm are perfectly safe. However, the Daemon is deleting your personal and business wealth, and is, in fact, destroying all the data and backup tapes of the companies you sought to protect.”

He held up his hands reassuringly. “Now, please don’t get agitated and head for the doors because it’s already too late. Your greed caused you to concentrate your investments in a very specific way among a handful of companies—companies that someone just tried to defend with a lame-ass formatstring hack—even while the rest of the corporate world was targeted en masse with the Destroy function. That’s what we call an anomaly , and it has a signature that can be detected. The private individuals who were involved in this activity are now known to the Daemon. And what’s more, most of your wealth, the source of all your power, no longer exists. Money, after all, is just data, and yours has been erased.”

Connelly looked up at the network analyst. “Damnit, if the power’s back on, get on the phone with our people and find out if this is just nonsense!”

The network analyst got busy, but a lot of the other people in the room were looking concerned.

Sobol was already talking again on screen. “What’s more, the Daemon will continue to destroy the resources of these individuals wherever they appear—in whatever form. And a log of your recent actions will be submitted to pertinent law enforcement agencies and the companies you were targeting. And as for the people who helped make all this possible? The assistants, lawyers, brokers, programmers, accountants, and security forces? To those people I say: your employers have no money . So do the smart thing—and just walk away.”

The cavorting corporate Muzak returned, along with manic studio audience applause. Sobol waved. “Thanks for invoking this event, and remember, if you’re not playing the game, it’s playing you . Bye-bye now!”

Credits began to roll at double-fast speed.

“Turn it off!”

The screen went black and Connelly looked up at the nearest network analyst. “Well? Can we confirm if our networks are intact? Have our companies been affected?”

The analyst just cast a look at Connelly, then picked up his coat and hurried for the door.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“We don’t work here anymore. And neither do you.”

Connelly turned to Johnston.

Johnston just shook his head. “That’s ridiculous!”

Suddenly one of the board operators turned on the broadcast and cable news stations again, and there, on almost every channel, was Anji Anderson. She was sitting at a conference table. It looked to be surveillance footage as seen from up near the ceiling—but the individual on-screen was unmistakably Anji Anderson, the famous newscaster.

Connelly stared at the screens in confusion. “What the hell is this?”

The board operator was grabbing his coat, too. “It’s playing on every station. Someone hijacked the emergency uplink we were going to use after the blackout. They somehow got footage from the surveillance system.”

Everyone in the control center looked up at the camera pods mounted on the ceiling.

“Good god . . .”

“I advise that you try to escape as best you can, General. We have no secrets anymore.”

Connelly looked back at the live television monitors. On-screen Anji Anderson was nodding, as what looked to be consultants conferred with her.

“—but the change needs to be sold to the American people with a sudden disruption. Otherwise they’ll resist strongly. It needs to be the penultimate event that marks a demarcation between what came before and what must come after. It’s a psychological transition.”

Anderson nodded. “And the blackout does that?”

“Our studies show that a period of general anarchy as brief as forty-eight hours would make the public willing to accept severe changes in exchange for security.”

Another market consultant held up sample graphics on a foam core board. “We’re calling it Cybergeddon.”

“That’s catchy. . . .”

After the darknet came back online, Sebeck got busy examining darknet video streams from the thousands of operatives swarming over the ranch. He grabbed Price and hopped on a pickup truck loaded down with darknet Fighters brandishing automatic weapons. As they drove the final miles past wrecked military equipment and dead mercenaries, Sebeck watched D-Space video clips of Loki’s mechanical army smashing through the defenses. Swarms of his razorbacks, AutoM8s, and microjets were spreading through Sky Ranch’s network of roads, tearing into every soldier or worker they came across. As the private military’s disorder spread and their radio communications disintegrated, the mercenaries retreated back toward the main ranch house, only to encounter a wave of mercenaries going in the other direction—telling tales of bankruptcy and trying to escape the ranch.

But thousands of darknet operatives were storming the ranch from every direction now, breaking into large complexes and warehouses filled with luxury consumer products, barrels of wine, pharmaceuticals, and racks upon racks of spare machinery and parts. As darknet journalists posted their reports, it became increasingly clear that the residents of Sky Ranch were planning on being here for a while. Perhaps waiting out an unfolding chaos they’d helped to cause in the outside world.