"It's the arphid cloners," I said. "They're totally easy to make. Just flash the firmware on a ten-dollar Radio Shack reader/writer and you're done. What we do is go around and randomly swap the tags on people, overwriting their Fast Passes and FasTraks with other people's codes. That'll make everyone skew all weird and screwy, and make everyone look guilty. Then: total gridlock."
Van pursed her lips and lowered her shades and I realized she was so angry she couldn't speak.
"Good bye, Marcus," she said, and got to her feet. Before I knew it, she was walking away so fast she was practically running.
"Van!" I called, getting to my feet and chasing after her. "Van! Wait!"
She picked up speed, making me run to catch up with her.
"Van, what the hell," I said, catching her arm. She jerked it away so hard I punched myself in the face.
"You're psycho, Marcus. You're going to put all your little Xnet buddies in danger for their lives, and on top of it, you're going to turn the whole city into terrorism suspects. Can't you stop before you hurt these people?"
I opened and closed my mouth a couple times. "Van, I'm not the problem, they are. I'm not arresting people, jailing them, making them disappear. The Department of Homeland Security are the ones doing that. I'm fighting back to make them stop."
"How, by making it worse?"
"Maybe it has to get worse to get better, Van. Isn't that what you were saying? If everyone was getting pulled over --"