Page 126 of Anarchy Chained: Alpha Thomas

Manchen gathers herself. Straightens her chin. The dirty deeds she’s done are displayed above her head in red letters. The towers take care of the broadcast. And if people are out of range of the towers and have a SkyEye phone or a SpyGlass tablet, those devices will tag them too.

Manchen’s secrets are not as bad as some, but we did find a record of her working as a stripper in college. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Manchen probably made a great stripper when she was young.

“Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people in Cathedral City have been fired from their jobs over this little invasion of privacy.”

“Maybe they deserved to lose their jobs? Ever think of that?”

“Mr. Brooks. If you’re not socially conscious enough to realize this is indeed an invasion of privacy, then I’m afraid you might not belong here among the citizens of Cathedral City.”

“Well,” I say. “We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m not out to invade privacy. That wasn’t our objective. Our objective was to open eyes. And we’ve done that.”

“To the detriment of society.”

“Says you,” I reply.

She shakes her head at me, unable to believe what she’s hearing. “Look,” I say. “Information gives people power. They then use that information to make decisions. Decisions based on fact.”

“Your facts,” she snaps.

“My facts are accurate, Miss Manchen. If anyone has a dispute, we have a hotline. And we remove all mistakes from the database.”

She sighs, clearly done with me. But I’m not done with her. Because she just doesn’t get it.

“People always say they want the truth, right? Well, here it is. The truth is ugly, Miss Manchen. No one cares if you were a stripper in college.” She gasps, unable to believe that I just went there. But why not? It’s on fucking display everywhere she goes. She can’t turn it off. The only way for people not to see her dirty deeds now is to take the glasses off.

But it’s all too new. They won’t take them off. Not yet. Not until they’ve had their fill. Not until they feel comfortable with their neighbors, and friends, and bosses again. But one day they might.

“Life is nothing but one long string of mistakes,” I say. More to the camera than to the reporter. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “Everyone does. But they shouldn’t have to be reminded of them.”

“You can’t see your tag unless you look in the mirror wearing the glasses. Don’t wear them in the bathroom, Miss Manchen. No big deal. So you made some mistakes. There’s five million people watching this program right now. If they’re wearing glasses they’re seeing all kinds of shitty things I’ve done. It allows them to form an opinion about me.”

“My opinion of you is very low,” she spits out. “And I’d bet most of the audience agrees with me.”

I shrug. “So what? I can live with that. And my best advice for everyone watching is to learn to live with their mistakes too. One day, Miss Manchen… one day we’ll all wake up and decide we’re done with the glasses. We’re done with the truth. And we’ll put them away. We’ll learn to trust each other again. And that’s why I did this. There’s no trust in this city right now because it’s filled with liars, and criminals, and deadbeats who think they’re cheating the system. But they’re not now, are they? We know who the liars and cheats are. We get to decide who we’ll forgive and who we won’t.”

“It’s virtual vigilantism,” she sneers.

“People are a force of nature. You can’t control them, even when you think you can, you don’t control them. Because the collective is made up of individuals and everyone gets a say in the matter. SkyEye and ToyBox aren’t about judging people, Miss Manchen. It’s about forgiving people. Including yourself. And then moving on. Bad guys are real, yes. But the good guys are out there too. And isn’t it great that now we can tell the difference?”

I take my SpyGlasses off and hand them to Sadie. Then I reach out to the camera and switch it off.

Sadie climbs into my lap and plants a kiss on my lips. “That was perfect.”

I have a crooked smile for her. I don’t give one rat’s ass if people like what we did. But four hundred seventy-two people on the Cathedral City payroll were fired this week.

“It’s a very good start,” I say. “But enough of this bullshit. We’re tired. We want to take you to bed.”

She winks at me. Us. Because Sullivan is still here. And that side of me is one kinky motherfucker. I wouldn’t get rid of him for anything now.

He might’ve started out as chaos. And yeah, I thought being chained to that anarchist bastard was a punishment. A sickness.

But I’m getting used to his chaos.

And I have discovered… I don’t mind watching.

An evil laugh bursts out of our mouth as Sadie takes our hand and leads us towards the bedroom.

We’re ready, I decide. We’re ready for the revenge to be over. We’re ready for things to sort themselves out down in Cathedral City. And we’re ready for Sadie Scott to make us happy.

Because happy, ya know? Happy is the only thing that counts.

Yes, we’re a bad guy. The SpyGlass tag above our head proves that to anyone who’s interested.

But we’re thinking about getting out of the supervillain business.

Anarchy might have to live on without us.