CHAPTER FIVE

BACH

 

 

Dom’s broadcast had Reno’s FiWi overrun with data requests.

Less than fifteen minutes after Dom signing off, over 300,000 unique users had clicked on the parking garage video. Over 50,000 users had clicked on the virtual tour Bach had made of Baran’s executive suite of a prison cell, which was more of a remote mansion with a pool, putting course, and equestrian arena than a cement cell with bars.

Dom had insisted on putting up his own rap sheet along with Baran’s. He’d also made public the list and profiles of his first eight victims along with images of his wife and daughters and their autopsies. It had been a difficult choice for Dom to make, but it was having the desired effect. Viewers—women especially—were outraged.

Within forty-five minutes the fan pages started appearing along with PhotoShopped images of every variety. Predictably, all of the pages and images were polarized in their calls to action. A group of women had apparently homed in on the fact that Dom had been wearing a periwinkle and cream leather band in his video and volunteered to channel Dom’s wife during sexual intercourse. Another group decried Dom’s vigilantism and had scheduled a candlelight vigil to pray that he turn himself in. Other groups intended to march on city hall to demand McGee be prosecuted for the murders shown in the video. But by far the most popular sites were the ones analyzing the posted videos and attempting to verify authenticity based on technical analysis. The top site of all these was, unsurprisingly, broadcasting out of The Aqueduct, where analysts were posting their independent analyses of each of the videos on an aggregate website.

On the flip side of all of this was the world of Patrick McGee desperately trying to cover his ass. Patrick was already cracking the whip on creating videos explaining how the video in the pirated broadcast was an absolute fraud created solely through cinematic effects.

The amount of information flowing all at once was far beyond any human capability to analyze, but Phi’s computer categorized and prioritized each search for Bach, allowing him to see the most pivotal data requests made by people on Dom’s watch list first. Reactions like Damian Adler signaling those loyal to him to be ready for a shift. The shift. Adler sensed the end of McGee on the horizon and was coiling like a snake to wait for the perfect moment to strike.

McGee would definitely fall by the end of this, but not by the undergods’ hands. They were setting the stage, yes, but McGee had made his bed long ago and he was about to lie in it. He just didn’t know it yet.

It was moments like this where Bach had hope for his future and his own plan of vengeance. Some day, some way he may just pull it off.

But for the moment juggling all the data flooding the system was a full-time job, so Bach settled in and got to work.