Ramez Naam - Apex

Breece shook his head.

“Sorry, Kate,” Breece whispered. He closed his eyes, and took a slow breath. Her face filled his vision. Her eyes. Her hair. God, he missed her. It hurt so fucking bad. There was no going back after this.

Dammit.

He had a job to do.

Breece opened his eyes. The crowd was still there. Teetering. About to follow instructions and leave, submit to this tyranny, go back to being sheep, now and forever.

Fuck. That.

Breece pressed the button.

The hate hit Rangan.

It was so much worse than he’d imagined, so much more intense than he’d seen in Angel’s memories.

He was going to get up there to one of those cops and shove that motherfucker’s goddamn head…

He was already pushing forward, shoving his way through the crowd. Only the people in front of him had stopped him from reaching the cops already. Sweet Jesus. He forced himself to close his eyes, hit the big red button on the console in his mental space to fire up the active interference.

The rage dimmed from white hot to pulsating red.

Oh fucking hell.

The console in his mind was going crazy. One of the controls should have shown a bearing to the signal. Instead the bearing was pivoting, madly, pointing one direction, then spinning to point another, then moving again to point another. And the signal strength was off the wall high.

Fuck, he realized. It’s everywhere.

There’s hundreds of them,someone sent over their tight link. Tempest, he thought.

…oh fuck…

…completely out-classed…

…weren’t ready for this…

Then Angel’s level-headed thoughts came through.

We have to converge , she sent. Individually, we’re getting swamped. Together, our effective signal will be stronger.

Rangan opened his eyes. Converge. Jesus. They were intentionally as spread out as they could be. And oh fucking hell.

It was something out of a nightmare.

Ahead of him, some protesters were standing around in shock, while hundreds of others were moving in a human wave at the nearest row of riot police, the ones standing in a line in front of the museum. As he watched, the riot cops fired a volley of tear gas and rubber bullets at the oncoming flood. Then the enraged mob was on them, and riot police were holding up their transparent shields, swinging electrified truncheons down on rioters, and being dragged down.

A tear gas canister flew towards him and Rangan ducked. Another landed feet from him, already giving off thick yellow clouds. The air was suddenly filled with the whizzing of rubber bullets, with the horrid pepper smell of tear gas. He coughed hard. His eyes stung and watered up immediately. He crouched down, ripped off his backpack, pulled out goggles and mask and pulled them over his head.

He looked back up in time to see a Molotov cocktail land in the back ranks of the riot cops, lighting one on fire. Then another sailed even further, striking the Museum of National History itself.

Alan motherfucking Turing. Where were the goddamn fire trucks?

He coughed again. His eyes were still watering, still burning from the tear gas he’d gotten in them in just those few seconds. The goggles were fogging up already.

Rangan!He heard Angel calling for him.

I’m here! he sent back. Gather up. Where?

7 thStreet,Angel replied. The south side of the Mall.

Rangan stood back up, spun to get his bearings. An enraged protester ran into him, bounced off, looked suddenly puzzled, less enraged, then got far enough away that the rage took over again. Rangan turned, watching him, then spun again. He had to go east, and south. Just a block or two each. He watched angry young protesters in goggles and bandanas light Molotovs and hurl them towards police and vehicles, watched rubber bullets slam into one of them. Watched a cop bring an electrified truncheon down on one rioter, only to have two more club him from behind with wooden fragments of signs or stages, bearing the police officer to the ground.

Just a couple blocks. Just ten or twenty thousand people between him and there.

Kade surfed from mindstream to mindstream, frantically. It was chaos. It was nuts. The whole crowd had erupted into mob mentality, into complete insanity.

No.

Even through the limited data coming across the mindstream feeds he could tell it wasn’t just a mob. Wasn’t just emergent anger.

This mob had been created.

Goddammit, he thought. I could just log in, debug what’s going on!

But he couldn’t, not any more.

The back doors were gone.

He was on the other side of the planet.

And all he could do was watch.

Breece stuck his palm in the rioter’s face and shoved, then kicked him in the groin for good measure. The man doubled over in pain.

He frowned. His tactical contacts were informing him of transmission difficulties. Several areas where either transmitters were malfunctioning… or someone was jamming him.

And now some of them were moving.

He narrowed his eyes, reached into a pocket to be sure the gun was there, and moved to pick off one of these mobile “malfunctions”.

Rangan pushed and shoved. He dodged cops and fights. The air was thick with smoke now, yellow from the tear gas canisters blending with black from the burn of Molotovs. Some Molotovs had made it to their targets. Others had a way of falling short, falling into the crowd. Between those and the tear gas, he could no longer see the sky, just clouds of thick smoke, everywhere he turned.

He was halfway to 7 th when an impenetrable press of bodies forced him to turn towards one of the major stages. A jam band had been playing here the first time he’d come, their minds interlinked with Nexus. A hundred people had been dancing, totally blissed out, their egos dissolved, all hippy union with each other and the band.

Now rage seethed from all around it, as they hoisted a burning, life-size Stockton puppet from its neck. At the nearest corner of the stage, a man had a fuel cell pulled up, was using it to fill glass bottles with whatever it burned, had amassed quite a collection. Another man next to him stuffed one with a rag, stood tall with it in his hand, pointed up, way up. Rangan followed the man’s finger for an instant, saw one of the aerostats, and abruptly covered his face, brought his gaze back down.

Oh no, Rangan thought. Oh fucking no.

The thrower had the Molotov lit now, had it cocked way back for a good throw up at the hovering Homeland Security blimp.

Something struck the thrower from above. Projectile or projectiles, Rangan would never be sure. But they toppled him backwards, driving the man’s upper body straight down. Rangan saw it happen in slow motion, started to turn but it was too late; the lit Molotov was suddenly crashing backwards, down into the pile of filled and half-filled fuel bottles.

“Geeeeeeeeet doooooooooown!”

He tried to yell, but it came out in slow motion.

The explosion was a searing shock of heat, then a roar that knocked him from his feet. The world was spinning again. There was a ringing in his ears, and above that there were screams.

Rangan tried to look around, found someone atop him, shoved his way free, onto one knee on the ground. There was smoke everywhere. People were down. The stage was listing over, one corner of it gone, the rest on fire. A man was upright, stumbling around, aflame. Others were on their knees or on the ground, burning. His own eyes were on fire. He coughed, his lungs burning. He brought his hands to his face, searching for his goggles, for his mask. They weren’t there. He turned, looking for them on the ground. Instead he saw a line of riot police advancing.