Amber & Ice

Chapter 24: Controlled Chaos

Ariadne didn’t come to their Democracy for Beginners lecture the next day. She sent Athena an apologetic, but extremely brief, message letting her know that she wouldn’t be able to make it, as she and Orion were busy apologising to each other.

Dyo hadn’t made it to a lecture in a few days either. He had been weird since he left Bree’s and Athena had only seen him twice. He said that he was trying to get to the bottom of the leak, but Athena thought there was more to it that he just didn’t feel like telling her.

Cress, at least, was a constant. As were Dora and Demi. So the four of them went to the lecture together. Cress was gushing non stop about her evening with Castor. He had apparently been telling her all about his work for the Freedom Institute and how they decide which campaigns to support and how best to use their profits to help the public. Castor Grant, Cress asserted, was a modern-day saint. As was his boss, Jason Leighton. Castor thought he might be able to introduce her to Mr Leighton at some point soon, providing her with an excellent contact for the start of her career in World voting. “Just imagine it: I might be able to apply for a World specialism with a personal recommendation from Mr Leighton!”

“That’s great, Cress,” Athena told her with as much false sincerity as she could muster. She was uneasy about Cress spending time with Castor, as she was being dragged even deeper into their flawed system. But there would be no use in telling Cress that; she would never believe her and it would only cause problems between them.

Demi was less impressed by Cress’ ‘personal recommendation’ but then, since Demi’s parents were the Leighton equivalent in their city in Wales, she wouldn’t need a letter like that. And she had already met the CEO of the Freedom Institute as a child, as he was an old friend of her parents.

Athena regarded her friend sceptically, wondering for the first time whether Demi knew more about the flaws in their system than she let on. She was well placed to, at any rate. But would she really let Cress prattle on with such enthusiasm if she knew the truth? Then again, Athena knew, and she wasn’t doing anything to correct Cress.

She sighed and took out her pen. Cress was forced to stop gushing when Ajax began to speak.

“Today, I am going to focus on one of the ‘leaders’ of the Dark Years: Bruce the Brutal. Bruce was young and idealistic when he took control of the United Kingdom (as it was still known at that point). He was full of passion and ideas and ascended to great public support, with promises of a proper legal system, a return to education and, with time, stability, jobs and food. However, after a few months, our ‘legal system’ relied purely on his whims, education featured his version of history and the only people with stability, food and jobs were his important supporters. The masses who had helped him take power were now forgotten; mere inconveniences to his comfortable rule. Instead of falling, the death toll rose. But, after months of broken promises and worsening conditions, so did the people.”

Before Ajax could tell them - in his customary gruesome detail - what happened to Bruce the Brutal, whispers spread through the lecture hall.

“The feed!” Cress exclaimed. “It’s gone down!”

Throughout the room, everyone was saying the same thing.

Athena, who all but turned off her glasses during lectures, checked for herself, amazed. The feed never went down. Never. The very idea of it was impossible.

Ajax must have realised that he had no hope of regaining his audience while such an unprecedented disaster was taking place. Instead, he took his own glasses off and started to fiddle with the mechanism in the frame.

“What’s going on?” Dora asked. Without the customary — light blinking by her eye, she looked startlingly different.

“It must be the same people who were behind the explosion!” Cress said, her mouth wide. “Castor warned me that they might try something else; that their result sabotage would be only the beginning. Now they have targeted the very fabric of our society!”

Athena was shocked. She didn’t think Bree’s group could be behind it. It didn’t sound like the sort of thing they would do. Then again, she had been out of the loop for the past few days; who knew what they had been planning. And she had already seen Ismene’s work first hand. Could she take down the entire feed? She could definitely hack into surveillance videos… Perhaps Bree was getting desperate.

Athena felt herself growing anxious; should she tell someone about the group? If this was them, they had gone to far.

But then she remembered that she wasn’t the only one in the room who knew about Bree and looked up to find him looking straight back at her.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she told the others, getting up and walking down the aisle towards Ajax.

“What’s going on?” she whispered to him when she got there.

“I have no idea,” he told her with such sincerity that she believed him.

“It’s definitely not Bree then?”

“No, she wouldn’t have a clue how to do something like this. I don’t think she would, anyway. It wouldn’t help her. No, this has ‘set up’ written all over it. I think someone else is trying to make us look like the bad guys.”

Athena looked back towards Cress: “Castor warned me that they might try something else.” A coincidence, or a cleverly played set-up?

“I agree. But why would they bring down the feeds? There will be chaos.”

“Controlled chaos, I think. Give it a few minutes and they will be back up. Probably with some kind of message claiming an outside attack on the system…”

Sure enough, as soon as Ajax finished speaking, glasses all around the room lit up, blinking red with the same message.

We apologise for the temporary loss of the feeds. Our system was attacked by an external virus, but we now have it under control and do not anticipate further disruption. Have a nice day.

“This is bad. I need to speak to Nestor.” Ajax sighed. “It’s not as though anyone here is going to listen to me now, at any rate.“Alright first years,” he called out to the lecture hall. “Today’s lecture will be rescheduled. You are all free to go home and panic about the imminent end of the world.”