Fifty-SevenSix hours later, as the first messages of condolence begin pouring in from around the world, Machuzak arrives at the gate. Quarantine is behind him. The protestors do not mourn and their numbers this dawn are large, mood at the boil. A small, well-dressed coterie of Christians proclaims to the cameras that the CFRC experiments herald this year’s End of Days, and they intend to prove it. Greenpeace pugnaciously taunts the militia, whom the Scientologists are simultaneously attempting to recruit with copies of L. Ron Hubbard’s Way to Happiness.
At the exact moment Machuzak steps in, one of the crowd picks up a rock. Nathaniel grabs her wrist—too late. Tear-gas canisters are flying, tumbling; they roll sputtering along the ground and in the next instant everyone is scattering pell
