"That's pretty much what the governor's man said, too. After that, they tossed me back. I guess I wasn't a juicy enough catch for them. So, will that be all, then?"
The one on the left leaned in a bit. "Not exactly. You did have me there for a bit, but I know for a fact that you--."
Lonnie bolted. He ducked into the crowd and started making his erratic way towards the capitol building steps, with the citizen security force in pursuit. He lost his footing a few times trying to weave past knots of protesters, yelling, "Make way! Make way!" as he went. Panting, and afraid for his safety, he hurtled through the middle of a gaggle of teenage girls passing around someone's iPad, accidentally launching it in an arc directly in his line of travel. Frantic calls to catch it roused a contingent of potential rescuers to converge in front of him, blocking his way and sending him to the ground in a noisy pile-up. And yet, in the midst of all this, whoever had managed to catch the errant iPad raised his arm skyward and waved the treasure triumphantly.
When Lonnie finally extricated himself from the tangle and got to his feet, the security team ringed him in a lot closer than they had before, and escorted him to a small group of very anxious looking people, every one of whom he recognized, from the briefing he'd gotten in the Governor's office, as a leader of one of the assembled groups. The information they'd assembled about these people was pretty extensive, so he guessed there was some sort of on-going surveillance of the organizations targeted by the governor's new policies. Although she didn't identify herself, he knew that the woman who stepped forward and crossed her arms was Gail Kerr, the diminutive firebrand leader of the teachers' union whose speech he'd cheered earlier.
"Judging by the fact that you tried to get away," she said, "I figure there's something you'd rather we not know about you. So I'll be as direct as possible. What's your name?"
He studied her for a few seconds before answering, and decided to assume she had a keen mind to go with those piercing grey eyes. "Alondo Leighton. And yours?"
"Don't distract me," she said coolly. "We're here to find out what you're up to, not to socialize. I'm told you've had an audience with someone in the governor's court. Who and why?"
Lonny scanned the faces of the people arrayed before him. Manipulating masses was always simpler when you have the attention of the influencers, and they seemed to have done him the favor of cutting short his plan to nudge random followers towards destruction by giving him a way to apply that leverage more effectively. "Like I told your goons, the big man's lackey threatened my family for any dirt I could supply about the leadership out here. I told him--."
She cut him off. "And why would they think you'd know?"
"How the hell should I know? They--."
"You're lying," she said flatly.
"All right, all right," he said. "So I did some research."
Kerr shook her head and winced. "Not about that. You're lying about why you were in the governor's offices. Nobody threatened you or your family. Nice try, though. I think it's far more likely that you had something to sell them. They already know everything worth knowing about me, and a good deal about my associates as well. The cut-rate security company running their surveillance net is amateur at best, so we know exactly whom they're watching. We also know that the governor has no compunctions about threatening people. So whatever it was that you had to offer was a whole other ball of wax."
Lonnie looked at her blankly. "Was that supposed to be a question?"
"No, but you certainly acted like it was. You're just dying to spill that secret of yours, aren't you? What did they offer in exchange? Money? Power?"
His expression hardened. "Recognition."
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