Overnight, a calm emerges. An eerie silence settles over the streets, with those brave few outside putting their heads down as they quickly and quietly scurry along. Even the troopers step out with apprehension, looking into every shadow, glancing quickly into every side street and every alley before moving on, half their minds on their firearms, half on the safety and the security of the station waiting for them at the end of their patrols. If you stand in the right place, at the intersection of once-busy streets, you can hear the wind whistling as it rushes between buildings emptied overnight. Still, the working man finds his attention dominated by concerns closer to home. Valeri passes a few names and a few places to his unknown contact; at times he thinks himself sending information into a void. This time, the names and the places he sends make their way through a network of contacts and find the right hands. In the streets, the unemployed and the unemployable keep on hurling stones, Garrett Walker in with the rest of the rabble voicing their discontent. He returns home after days away, only to learn his daughters have spirited away into the service of the mob rampaging through those very streets, and he determines to take action. Soon the whole family flees, in taking to the streets Garrett’s daughters killed by a police lorry barging into their crowd. As their broken bodies lie on the pavement, he kneels in a pool of crimson blood and says, “I can’t believe it.” It’s a seminal moment in Garret’s life, and under the influence of a blinding rage he turns away from the path of retreat in favour of giving himself over to the dark essence. In this he irrevocably commits himself as a vessel through which the dark essence can grant itself expression, and begins as a working man his final step towards mastery of his own future.
A strike’s risky in this trouble. Though many are underway already, each has been disorganized, erratic, lacking in the discipline needed to make something out of nothing. He takes to the street and makes his way with the others to the mill, out of the chaos this new strike arising like the sudden intensification of an already-burning firestorm. With the other day labourers Valeri marches, at exactly the moment he’s in the midst of a halting, disjointed rhythm between one step and the next an explosion tears through the street, sending Valeri to the pavement. It’s the first attack, the first of many. In the din, Valeri soon picks himself up, his whole body a blurry, pulsating mass of pain. But he musters the strength to make for cover, only stopping in the relative safety of a blown-out storefront to look back on the carnage. Marching with Bibles in hand, Darren Wright and the other parishioners put down in the middle of the street not far from the place where unarmed demonstrators were shot dead. One by one, they take turns preaching the forbidden gospel to one another. Around them, the police are erratic, withdrawing when they can no longer control the situation. When Darren’s turn to preach comes, he stands at the head of the congregation, about to deliver the forbidden gospel in his own way when he sees down the road the last of the police lorries turn and drive away. “I can’t believe it.” Though the deliverance of the revolution from evil is not yet fully formed, a redemption of blood is offered to all who would take it; men like Darren don’t hesitate, in this moment of truth.
As disorder spreads and people die in the streets, he rushes home to be with his loved ones. The only way, he knows, to be sure they’re safe is to keep them safe himself. The urban landscape spreads itself below him, sprawling as far as he can see, a thick smog concealing the horizon, bleeding into the sky. As it draws nearer, the smog seems to fade into a dull haze, obscuring behind every building in a sea of translucent grey. In the working man’s home, among row after drab row of tasteless, prefabricated apartment blocks and narrow, potholed streets, there’s a respite, however fleeting, from the deafening silence of the streets. At the polytechnic, Sean Morrison and the other students have stopped rioting and taken control, their school a shambles but theirs nevertheless. The student council has asserted control, but once the police come for them there’s little any of them will be able to do to hold what they’ve seized. From the rooftop of the polytechnic’s main building Sean and the others fly the flag of the failed rising fifteen years ago, then look out across the city and view the columns of smoke rising in the distance as the fires of liberation burn. When Sean sees the police lorries withdraw, leaving the students in firm control of the polytechnic. “I can’t believe it.” In their quest to assert a revolutionary knowledge, still Sean and the other students are not yet fully awaken, but given to the fight they’re almost there.
But among endless rows of ramshackle buildings stabbing at the sky like the serrated edge of a blade, the working man waits and watches with a mounting anticipation as his world, seemingly frozen in place, in fact spirals out of control so rapidly it’s always been. At the hospital, Hannah, Whitney, and the others are inundated with casualties, the dead and dying lying alongside one another in the halls, the A&E floor painted with streaks and pools of blood both drying and dried. A man dies in front of Hannah; she turns and tends to another’s wounds, only to watch him die, too. There’s screaming and shouting and crying, mixed in with the wailing of sirens and the rattling of distant thunder. Hannah can’t take a breath; she takes a pill to keep herself alert. A woman comes in carrying the limp body of a small child. Hannah turns her away. Hannah’s turned many away. Hannah’s still to turn many away. But others have it as bad.
Still confined to quarters, the crew of the cruiser Borealis come up with their own stories of what’s happening, each slightly different from the next. Some think the crew will be deployed as marines to the streets directly, to assist the army in pacifying the unrest. Others believe the crew will be kept confined to quarters for months, even put in the brig if necessary, the officers fearing desertion. Still others believe the ship will be deployed away, to Canada or the United States on a visit, just to keep His Majesty’s Ship safe and out of the crisis. But Dmitri doesn’t think on what might happen; he plans, in the way he does. “We have to be prepared for the possibility of war,” he says, one night after lights out. He’s in his bunk, the other five in his room listening intently. “We’ve been watching as the country gets poorer and poorer. We can’t watch much longer. We shouldn’t follow the orders of the men who are killing our own people.” Another sailor pipes in, saying, “are you proposing mutiny?” Dmitri says, “no,” then pauses thoughtfully before adding, “not yet.” There’s more, but this exchange is what’s important, the first step in the crew making the transition from serving one banner to serving another.
After these early attacks, the rebel stops, having administered the slightest touch to introduce a new chaos. Across the city, the rebel plots his next move. It’s only been a short while since his release; like an addict released from treatment, his first act is to link up with the others, the small group of them forming the core of what would come to be an all-powerful force. In a small, dark basement they meet, and quickly consensus emerges from the fusion of divergent opinions. Some want to take to the streets immediately, to join the rabble with whatever arms they can muster and attack, no matter the outcome. Some want to discard armaments and embrace the peaceful struggle, sure as they are that their enemies will give in when confronted with an overwhelming show of popular strength. All are wrong. The rebel knows force must be applied with deliberate intent, methodically, precisely, at the right time and in the right place. If Valeri is to see himself through, he’ll have to wait for his time to rise. Until his time is come, he’ll have to resist the compulsive, overwhelming urge to attack, now.