Page 112 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

He stole our fucking anarchy sign! Sullivan says.

That asshole was setting Case up last spring. All that bullshit about the banks and the power plant. The water treatment center. The coffee shops. All of it is…

He’s corrupted the Spyware, I suddenly realize. The flashing lights in the police station. The way all the monitors and lights started to blink out Lincoln’s unauthorized program to make people violent. He did all of it and he used us the entire time.

“We have control of everything,” Randy yells. “Every SkyEye phone. Every SpyGlass tablet. Everything in this city will be ours!”

He’s going to make the whole city crazy with violence. Just like the riots he most certainly started last spring. I picture what this will mean. Total chaos—no. Total anarchy.

I still have the images of all those people in my head. How they turned on each other. How they tried to kill each other. How they walked around like zombies and…

“All thanks to the Alphas!” Randy continues. “Lincoln Wade made our little light show possible. Case Reider delivered it into the hands of every citizen of this city. And Thomas Brooks…” He cackles. “Well, he gave us the ability to do all this without any government interference. Welcome to the winning team, Mr. Brooks.”

The crowd goes insane with cheers. “Prodigy, Prodigy, Prodigy,” they scream, arms in the air, bats and tire irons pumping with the beat.

I think we just lost, Sullivan says.

I try to remain positive. I do. I try to talk myself up. I’m the mastermind here. I’m the brain. I’m the plotter of plots. I’m the most evil genius on this planet. And I’m teamed up with two more, with powers and intellect almost as equal.

But they have no idea. None. They have no clue this is what’s happening. So even if they’re coming for us, even if my friends have a plan… it won’t work.

Sullivan’s right. We just lost this game we’ve been playing. Fifteen years of planning can’t prepare them for what’s coming. Because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Lincoln, Case, and Sheila will show up. They’ll come with false bravado that we, and we alone, are the most badass motherfuckers this town has ever seen… and they’ll be wrong.

Because this was never our plan. This was never what we intended to do with all our carefully curated resources. With all our evil ideas.

This is some real bad supervillain shit right here.

I miss the rest of the speech, too busy imagining all the ways this day can end. All the ways we will lose. All the ways this city will go down.

I have nothing left. There is no brilliant mad scientist idea that can stop them now. I sent the codes last night and in just a few minutes, the program will start.