"God damn it, Stephanie! Where have you been?" The words, black on a white screen, seemed calm enough. But Stephanie had never known Cochise to speak like this, not ever.

"Huh?" She typed back innocuously.

Then--and only then--did she realize that he'd called her "Stephanie," not "Insider." And the room was filled with people; the list of participants ran far off the screen.

She stared blankly. What the hell? Has he lost his mind?

"All hell has broken loose!" he typed back furiously. "It probably hasn't been on the news yet, but it will be! I have very little time, I have a thousand things I have to do. My daughter will be here, maintaining contact."

"What? What's happened?"

"There's been a revolt. On Isla de la Muerta. The prisoners are armed now, and I'm damn sure they don't plan to stay out there in the forest."

"What?" she echoed dumbly. "How do you know?"

"Because," he replied, still typing so fast that his text was ripe with typos, "my real name is Harry Littlebird, and I'm the fucking chief ranger at the Preserve!"

Stephanie continued to stare at the screen. "Oh, no, they'll all be killed..."

"Probably. Doesn't matter. They'll have made a statement, and it's already echoing around the country."

"What do you mean?"

"Riots," Conch cut in. "The word is getting out, riots are breaking out or about to break out all over. Harry told us about this about an hour ago and it's been wildfire on the Net ever since. This was the match, this was the match needed to set things off."

"Melanie Abbot," Harry typed.

"Who?"

"Melanie Abbot. Remember the name. By tomorrow she might be dead. But she's the one that started things."

"She won't be dead," a two-year veteran of the chatroom who called himself "Popeye" put in, "if I can help it. We're underway here already."

"Underway?"

"I've had some close contact with Popeye, Stephanie," Veteran said. "I'm flying out to meet him in person, in just a few minutes. This is Conch's hour. The revolution has begun."

I don't believe this, Stephanie said silently. After all these years? We're finally there? She watched the screen; a virtual flood of statements was coming, far too fast to read them all. In Key West, people were arming for war. One of their members--who had revealed himself to be a state legislator for Hawaii--was at that moment trying to get a special session of the legislature convened, where he planned to introduce a resolution stating that Hawaii no longer recognized the Federal government as legitimate. Phones were ringing off the hook everywhere, lines were swamped as the nest of discontents who'd come together over the past ten years--and especially over the past five, since the leadership of channel and the now-multiple web sites associated with it had been taken over by David O'Neill.

"Okay, I understand," Stephanie typed back hurriedly. "What can I do here? Obviously the medical programs aren't of first importance right now."

"This is going to spread way beyond Isla de la Muerta," Veteran told her. "It already has, in fact. Anything, absolutely anything, you can get us concerning government plans to react would be more than helpful."

"I'll get to work on it immediately."

"There's something else you should know, Stephanie," Prof put in.

"What's that?"

"For us, this is all or nothing. The government is going to know, very shortly, where the coordination for all these riots and such is coming from--which is right here. Our screen names aren't going to help us now, these servers are going to be torn apart to get our identities. That's why we're dropping the online monikers. That won't be their first priority, but if the riots and such are put down, they'll be on us immediately, and I'm sure the charges will be something like treason."

"In others words, we win or we die."

"Many of us, yes. If it comes to that I'm sure some of us can go into hiding. But that'll have to be each person's individual choice. If you want out--if anybody wants out--now's the time to go."

Stephanie laughed at the screen. "Prof, I've put almost ten years, heart and soul, into this group. According to the agreement I had with Jackson, he's supposed to set me free soon. Do you imagine that the end of my personal nightmare means I stop caring about what's happening to all these other people. No chance, Prof. I'm in this to the end. I'll do everything I can to support this."

"I kind of thought you'd feel that way. BTW, I'm Dr. Andrew Steiner, geneticist, Duke University."

"Very good to meet you, Dr. Steiner," she typed back. "But all this is going to have to wait. Even before I start trying to pick Jackson's brain about what the government is going to do, I have another priority."

"What's that?"

"The gladiators. Mindy and the others. They need to know about this."

"Yes, I think they do," Prof agreed.

"I am already dialing the phone."