Liang Jian felt like an old PC being force-fed an incompatible operating system. Every nerve ending fired off an error message.
A high-pitched ringing screamed in his ears, a symphony of cicadas holding a rave inside his skull. The air smelled of gunpowder and some kind of cheap perfume. Worst of all, he was pinned to the floor by the weight of at least three large men, and every one of his bones was groaning in protest.
“Target is secure! I repeat, target is secure!”
“Sniper position locked! Bellmont Tower, rooftop! Requesting fire support!”
“Medic! Where the hell is the medic!”
The shouts around him were muffled, as if heard from underwater, but the unmistakable accent—that crisp, urgent cadence of the FBI and CIA from a thousand movies—made Liang Jian’s own DNA tremble.
What is going on? I was in my apartment. The power supply blew, and then what? Did some new ultra-realistic VR game just launch? Is this the tutorial? Is the haptic feedback meant to be this… suffocating?
An agent grabbed his arm, trying to haul him up.
“Sir, you need to get up! We have to move!”
Liang Jian’s consciousness was still stuck in the moment of electrocution, and his body instinctively resisted the pull. He wanted to speak, to ask for customer support, to complain about this abysmal user experience, but all that came out was a strangled gasp.
He was half-dragged, half-lifted to his knees. His gaze cleared, looking past the broad shoulders of the agents, and he finally saw it.
It wasn't his trusty 27-inch monitor.
It was a sea of humanity. An endless, roiling ocean of red hats, frantic signs, and a million upraised smartphones. The faces—white, Black, Hispanic—were all painted with the same mixture of terror, anger, and a bizarre, ecstatic adoration.
The sun was blinding. Flags were waving.
Liang Jian’s brain blue-screened.
As a man of science, a programmer who lived by the laws of logic, nothing in his life could have prepared him for this. His entire worldview, a finely tuned program built over thirty years, was crashing. A fatal exception error.
Who am I?
Where am I?
What the hell am I doing?
A colossal wave of absurdity and powerlessness washed over him. He struggled, trying to break free from the arms that held him, trying to wake up from this insane nightmare.
Finally, all the shock, the confusion, the fear, and the sheer rage at being played by fate coalesced into the only word he could summon. The one word that perfectly encapsulated his entire state of being.
He gathered all his strength and roared at the churning, unfamiliar sea of people.
“FUCK!!!”
The word, amplified by the microphone still live in front of him, blasted across the entire venue.
For a split second, the roaring square fell eerily silent.
Everyone heard it: a raw, hoarse cry, blasted from the speakers.
But in the vast, open space, distorted by echoes and the ambient noise of panic, the short, sharp syllable was twisted. The hard 'k' at the end was swallowed by a scream. The vowel in the middle was stretched, magnified.
To the thousands of adrenaline-fueled supporters below, what they heard was the defiant cry of a hero. The battle roar of a leader who had just faced down death itself.
What they heard was—
“FIGHT!!!”
The silence lasted less than half a second.
A large man in the front row, his face beet-red under a MAGA hat, was the first to react. He thrust a thick arm into the air and bellowed in response.
“FIGHT!!!”
The word was a spark in a powder keg.
“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
A tidal wave of sound erupted from every corner of the square, a unified, unstoppable force. Fear was instantly transmuted into fury and passion. They pumped their fists, chanted the word, their leader’s near-assassination forgotten, replaced by a call to arms.
Liang Jian, still limp in the agents’ grasp, stared dumbfounded at the scene.
He watched the ecstatic, frenzied crowd. He heard the unified, scalp-prickling chant.
He was sure, absolutely positive, that the word he had screamed started with an F and had four letters.