That night, I went to bed with a sense of satisfaction for the first time in a while. Of course, that was too good to last.
The next morning, I was awoken not by my alarm clock, but by the sound of Safe House's security alarm. The one we'd been told meant 'imminent attack.' Great. Just great. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I pulled on some clothes, and stumbled down the corridor to the rendezvous point in the vehicle bay. It was the same spot we'd entered Safe house just those few weeks ago. Now it looked like it was to be the scene of our departure.
When I got there, the only other person in the vehicle bay was Matthew. He was hunched over a terminal, typing furiously. He looked up as I came in. His face, normally so smug, had panic written across it, and his hair was wild and dishevelled.

"What's going on?" I asked.
"Get into the van. We've been discovered." said Matthew.
I decided against being a pain in the ass, and got in to the nearest vehicle. The van was cramped and claustrophobic; There was space for five people, at a push, and it was also fitted out with various portable versions of our Monitoring systems. The idea was that one of these vehicles could function as a mobile version of Safe House. It looked like that theory was going to be put to the test. A few moments after I got in, Nate arrived, looking strangely unflustered. Could nothing worry this man? He raised an eyebrow at the sight of me.
"Congratulations," he said, "you're actually the first to turn up for something."
I gave him a sour look, but insults from Nate didn't really bother me. If Natasha had said that, well, that would have been different.
"Nate, Simon, boot up the portable system," said Matthew, from the outside.
We got to work, switching everything on, and separating the Van's systems from the Network that Safe House ran. From here on in, we were going to have to work independently. I followed the emergency protocol with a sense of detachment; my hands knew what to do without interference from my head, and so I found myself watching, a faintly bemused spectator to this frantic activity, still trying to comprehend what was actually going on.
"Check for local activity in the network" said Matthew, coming into the van and strapping himself into the driver's seat. Nate typed a few commands, and the monitoring systems clicked on. A few seconds later, and we had information about the local Copyright systems flickering past our eyes at a bewildering rate, so fast I could hardly follow it. I took a deep breath, and tried to pull myself into full alertness.
"There's a hell of a lot going on out there," I said.
"There, look." said Nate. He typed in a few commands, faster than me by some way, I noticed with a stab of wounded pride, and the system began to filter out some of the extraneous commands on the network. Before my eyes, a pattern was forming.
"I see it. Stuff being routed away from Safe House." I said.
"That's what I picked up." said Matthew. "People are being Swapped away, without replacement, for a full five miles around us. And look here." He typed a few commands, and the local Copyright master map showed up on our screens. On it, we could see every person in Dunetech's control, moving around as white dots on a schematic of the area. As the commands we'd seen in the Network had predicted, the city was emptying. There were also a series of red dots moving through the empty streets, slowly converging upon Safe House. A sudden chill went through me.
"Road blocks?" I asked.
"That's right," said Matthew. "it started five minutes ago." He paused for a second, before continuing.

"They're coming to get us."

More people were arriving at the vehicle bay, looks of confused panic on their faces.
"Into the cars! Go, go!" yelled Matthew.
Sarah and Darius got into our van. I felt strangely reassured that she was in with me. Out in the main bay, I could see Natasha barking commands, bullying people into the vehicles. Still trying to get my bearings, I glanced across at Sarah, and saw her hands shake as she buckled herself in. She looked up at me for a second, and our eyes met. I could see the naked terror written in there. In that moment, I felt a connection between us. I did like her, after all, and she was the closest friend I had here, for all the arguments we had. I wanted to smile, to put her at ease somehow, but I couldn't think how, and after a moment I just looked away. I guess I'm just not any good at that kind of thing. I didn't have long to reflect on this latest demonstration of my inadequacy, as Matthew interrupted my thoughts with a little speech.
"For those of you who missed it, the Copyrights have found us. We're running!" he said from the front seat. He was addressing us, and the other cars, through a comm link, and his voice sounded distorted and strangely loud to us. We heard two voices, one real, one artificial.
"There is no need to panic; this is what we have the evacuation protocol for. We will be ten cars full, departing at thirty-second intervals. We will scatter to maximise our chances, and after an hour, we will reform into two wings, one led by me, one led by Natasha. In the intervening time, each van will work on its own to break out of their cordon. Once we are regrouped, we'll hack the Network again, and Swap ourselves a space to hole up in, separately if needs be. Hopefully, those of us who survive can make it to a new Safe House."
Those of us who survive. Fuck. From someone so positive, so upbeat about things as him, those words were like a slap in the face.
Matthew looked like he was about to say more, but he was interrupted by the harsh digital tones of an alert on his command terminal. He peered intently at the screen for a second, and his anxiety seemed to have been ramped up a notch as he resumed his speech. "I have no more words for you; their roadblocks are all in place, and we don't have the time. Natasha's evacuation group will go first. To keep communications to a minimum, we'll make contact at every seventy-three minutes. Maintain comms silence outside that time window. Good luck."

"Well, something's finally happening," I said to Sarah, as our van rumbled out of the compound. She just stared back at me, shaking, terrified. Dammit, I had actually genuinely meant to put Sarah at her ease, this time, but no, good old idiot boy Simon had to make another pointless wisecrack. Darius put a hand on her shoulder, reassuring, supportive. All the things I'm not.
"It'll be ok," he said, as she turned to look at him. "we know how to get through this, as long as we keep it together. Now are you going to be all right?" He put his hands on her shoulders and starred deep into her eyes for a second, until she nodded, nervous still but back in control. It took all my self-control not to punch the creep.
But then our van started to accelerate out of the compound, and that moment of jealousy was forgotten as we took in the bizarre sight that greeted us. Instead of the normal tracery of light and activity that surrounded Safe House, there was emptiness all around. No streetlights, no signs, no lights on in houses, nothing. There was something breathtaking about it, and if at that moment we hadn't been stuck in a cramped combat vehicle, racing at a hundred miles an hour towards what might well be certain death, I'd have probably really appreciated the sight. After all, for once in this huge city, for miles around, we were entirely alone. But of course, we had more pressing things to worry about.
Up ahead were the remnants of one roadblock. It lay in ruins, smashed by one of the vans that had gone ahead of us. I could see, too, that the vehicle hadn't made it. It was on its side, a couple of hundred yards up past the roadblock, battered and on fire. Around it, I could see dark figures holding weapons. Someone got out of the van- I couldn't see who- and was shot. As I watched, their whole body went stiff, and then sickeningly limp, half in, half out of the van. As we sped towards them, they seemed to notice us,and one of them raised his rifle. For a second, nothing happened, but all of a sudden, I felt a buzzing in my head; a strange, high-pitched whine that reverberated through my skull and set my fillings buzzing in my jaw.
"Matthew, they're using Electronics!" Nate yelled.
He was right; there was no mistaking that feeling in my brain for anything else. The pain in my head started to grow, and I shut my eyes as terrifying black shapes started to swirl in front of my eyes. Sarah's face started to melt, and all around me a thousand voices began to yell.

Electronics, it should be explained, are the Copyrights' crowd control mechanism of choice, and they rely on a few essential facts of human physiology, and on the technology that allows this whole insane monitoring of society. In order for a person to be tracked by the Copyrights, first they have to be Wired. This happens at birth, and consists of the introduction of a small piece of self-propagating hardware that meshes itself with the human brain and acts as a very sophisticated information repositry and two-way transmitter. It is this system that allows a person's memories to be copied and processed according to the algorithms of the Social Index. It is also how new memories can be implanted in someone's head when they are Swapped. Electronics send radio signals on the local frequency that the Wire uses to communicate with the Network, by broadcasting large streams of random data to an area, which induces all kinds of strange cerebral events in any Wired person unfortunate enough to pick this signal up. The effect is a bit like holding a magnet to a television screen, and is extremely disorientating to the subject. It is also the ultimate in clean control, as it causes no permanent damage; switch it off, and the hallucination, the terrible buzzing, the babbling voices and the demons at the edge of your sight all just go away, leaving you with no more than a mere headache. That and the nightmares. Sciattica had used Electronics on us at Swansea, and it had made me jump from a first floor window. This was going to be bad, and no mistake.

I felt the van sway as it raced towards the remnants of the roadblock. I guess Matthew was hearing the voices too. I rocked back and forth, echoing our vehicle's erratic path, shaking my head like a crazed dog. Somewhere, from far away, I could hear Sarah screaming. I opened my eyes, and saw her surrounded by fire. Faces seemed to loom out of the flames at her, and all of a sudden, I felt a prickling heat all over my skin, above me, below me, behind me. And all the time the voices, louder and louder. They were all babbling at breakneck speed, a dizzying cacophony of gibberish, rising and falling like some demented tide of locusts. There was one, louder than the others. It seemed to be saying the same thing; some phrase. Get a grip, I told myself, clutching my head. What is that voice?
It was Matthew.
"Nate, activate the countermeasures!" he was yelling.

Behind the wall of Electronics-induced chaos, I heard something else, a high pitched whine like a dog whistle, and gradually it seemed to modulate and then suddenly there was a second buzzing in my head, just out of sync with the first. For a second, things got even worse, but then gradually the two sounds merged into one, and then stopped altogether. The voices started to clear, and the strange shapes in my vision faded away. Nate must have blocked them somehow. I stole a glance at him, and he was hunched over his terminal, typing furiously. I remembered that Operations had been working on a device to block Electronics. I guess they'd succeded.
"Grab on to something!" Matthew yelled from the driver's seat. I stared out front to see something metallic blocking the road ahead. Another barricade! Matthew stepped on the gas, as the rest of us, dazed and still trying to clear our heads, braced ourselves for impact. As the barricade seemed to accelerate towards us I closed my eyes and turned away.

And then with an almighty crash, a screech of metal and a bone-jarring jolt forward in our seats we were through. I felt an ache in my shoulder where my belt had held me in place, and I looked up again to see the blackness of the night stretching out ahead of us. Away in the distance, I could see the lights of the city were still on. We were coming to the end of the blackout zone. I looked back, taking in that inky void we had just left, and suddenly, a light flared from some way away, lighting up the landscape like day, like a lightning strike. This one lingered, however, and rising high into the sky we could see a great plume of fire and smoke, reaching up as far as the eye could see, and churning and rumbling with frightful power.

"Holy shit! What is that?" I yelled.
"You mean what was that, don't you?" Nate replied, fear in his voice for the first time.
"Eh?" I asked, still a little groggy, I suppose.
It was Matthew who answered. His smooth, confident voice was somehow smaller, broken. "That was Safe House."

We were all quiet for a little while as he drove us on into the night.