This was the supreme act of violence of this century, done not by a government, not a Church, not a tribe, not an army, but by an individual. Ever since villagers first wielded sharpened sticks in their chief’s name, the State had held a monopoly on supreme violence, but the Hive system ended that. Mycroft called their killings a demonstration of a liberty our era had not realized we possessed, proof of history’s progress if seventeen deaths were enough to shock the world; historically, seventeen deaths is a good day.
