In the same instant that I move my finger, a man from the crowd rugby-tackles The Leader and he hits the floor. My bullet tears through the screen behind them.

To my right, Ven’s window finally shatters. Two guards rush on stage to pull the rugby-tackler off and more follow them to create a wall between The Leader and the audience.

I reposition my gun, but I can’t get a clear shot at The Leader.

One of the guards jerks backwards, followed by the presenter. I look round in surprise. Ven is taking shot after shot; he’s not bothered by who he hits in order to get to The Leader. I see a flash of black suit as The Leader is hauled off stage by the guards.

‘Bastard’s getting away,’ Ven says. ‘Jesus! We’ll never catch him now.’

In the distance I hear an explosion.

Some of the crowd seem frozen, unable to take in what’s going on, but others are surging towards the exits. People are being trampled underfoot. Why are they running away? Didn’t they hear what the recording said? There’s a small knot of people crowding around the stage, shouting. They look angry, but everyone else just looks terrified.

There’s another explosion, this time much closer. I hope this means the teams sent to cause havoc at the power plants and the water suppliers have succeeded. I take my binoculars from my pocket and scan the crowd. A guard at one of the gates is bellowing at the people as they try to leave. A kid, shoved forward by the movement of those behind him, bangs into another guard and without hesitating the guard hits him round the head with a pistol. The boy’s father grabs the guard by the collar and the mother punches him. The people around them shout and gesticulate too. I scan across the square. All over, the guards are treating families as if they’re all proven revolutionaries and at least some of the crowd are reacting angrily.

The crowd are shaken up and appalled by the horrible images from the screen. The worst thing the guards can do is to treat them roughly, because they can’t help responding in the way their adrenaline-filled bodies tell them to – fighting back.

‘Why aren’t they doing anything?’ Ven asks.

‘They are. Some of them are,’ Kay says.

Shouts reach us through the broken windows.

‘How can you treat children like that?’

‘My brother’s in a factory!’

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

But they’re in the minority. I realise that most of the public are simply terrified. I don’t think we’ve generated nearly enough anger. It’s all gone horribly wrong.

Nevertheless, a pocket of the crowd has descended on a Leadership car. It seems unlikely that The Leader could be in there, but it serves as a representation of the whole government.

A man with thick sinewy arms starts banging on the window. ‘Get The Leader out here now!’

People surround the car and start rocking it.

A man flings himself across the bonnet of the car. For a moment I think that he’s trying to shield whoever is inside, but then I see the red splatter on the white shirt of the woman next to him and I realise that he’s been shot. The woman’s mouth opens in a scream that I can’t hear above the shouting and shrieking around the square. The others circling the car realise what’s happened and start to back away. Some people are still trying to get to the car and the result is a horrible crush of bodies. I see arms grabbing at anything, trying to stay upright, and I see several people lose their footing and get trampled underfoot.

And that’s when the guards open fire.

This is not what is supposed to happen.

I swing my binoculars, but I can find no sign of The Leader.

‘He’s gone,’ I say. ‘What are we going to do now? How will we find him?’

‘Less talking, more shooting,’ Ven says. He’s picking off guards one by one.

‘We have to go,’ Kay says. ‘They’re going to come for the shooters. They will be looking all places.’

Ven reloads and lifts his gun to the window again.

‘Kay’s right, come on,’ I say.

‘I’m going to finish what I started.’

‘If you stay, you’ll get caught. You’re more use to the revolution alive than dead,’ I say.

‘It doesn’t really matter. I’m staying.’

There’s a roaring in the sky and people’s flags and paper cups are sent blowing across the grass. A helicopter has appeared overhead.

A bullet hits the window between myself and Ven and shatters it.

‘Blake!’ Kay drags me backwards by the elbow towards the door. ‘Ven, now,’ she shouts.

‘There are officials all over the grass,’ he says, without pausing in his shooting. ‘I’m not missing this opportunity.’

Kay pulls me across the office.

‘Ven, come on! Please,’ I say.

‘I SAID NO!’

Kay pushes me out of the door.

‘We shouldn’t just leave him,’ I say, but I let Kay drag me along anyway.

We get one floor down before we hear footsteps on the stairs.

‘Hide,’ Kay says. We duck through a door. Kay slips down the corridor and through another door, but I turn around and crouch low so that I can watch the guards coming up the stairs, through the glass window in the door. They stream past. There are six of them.

Before I know what I’m doing I’ve pushed the door open and I’m following them back up the stairs. Shoot them, shoot them, my brain is saying, but there will only be time to shoot one or two before the others turn around and shoot back.

I’m almost on their heels when one of them throws open the door of the office Ven is in. Someone must have seen him taking shots. They know exactly where to find him.

I see straight away that Ven is in the middle of reloading again.

‘Hands in the air!’ one of them yells.

Ven doesn’t move.

‘Hands up or I’ll kill you!’

Ven looks up. He clocks me. Slowly he shakes his head. He’s telling me to go. They still haven’t noticed me right behind them. I could creep away now.

The guard takes the head shake as defiance and lifts his gun.

Ven stares right into him. Doesn’t he even care?

‘Don’t shoot!’ I shout.

All six guards swing around to face me. The one with the raised gun frowns at my sudden appearance. ‘You going to give me a good reason why not?’

I speak without thinking, saying the first thing my desperate brain comes up with. ‘I’m The Leader’s son.’

‘Of course you are. That’s why you’re taking potshots at your daddy.’

I draw myself up. ‘However things may stand between myself and my father, I think you’d better check things out with him first before shooting me or my friend.’

He thinks about it. I’ve seriously annoyed him. He’s clearly unconvinced, but he doesn’t want to get himself into trouble.

‘Put your gun on the ground.’

I do as he says.

‘Cuff him,’ he says to another guard who does so, pinning my arms tight behind me.

‘Let’s get back to the enforcement centre.’ He sneers at me. ‘Just remember; as soon as someone tells me I can shoot you, it’s done.’ He turns back to Ven. ‘And you—’

But Ven has disappeared.

‘What the efwurd?’ The guard starts kicking over desks and chairs, but Ven is nowhere to be seen.

‘He’s gone out the window,’ one of the guards says.

‘Well, get down there and find him!’ He strides back to me.

I don’t get to hear what happens next because he presses a stun baton to my neck.