than them, but he seemed much larger, almost too wide to fit comfortably between the car and the wall. Muscle and fat had combined to lend him a threatening bulk. He held out a hand, and Wesley grinned as he took it. It was like meeting a celebrity.
‘Glad you could come,’ he said, voice so familiar from his videos.
‘This is Wesley,’ said Justin.
The man nodded as if he already knew. ‘Call me Tru.’
‘I watch all your videos,’ Wesley blurted, growing hot with embarrassment.
‘Thanks, man. These guys told me about you. Good work on that Kat girl. I had to take my video about her down or they were going to suspend my account. Censorship. Glad you guys could keep the torch burning.’
Wesley couldn’t help but glow with the praise.
Luke ran his hand lightly along the roof of the car, and then rubbed the dirt between his fingers. ‘This is a piece of shit.’
‘It’s inconspicuous,’ said Tru, turning away from Wesley. ‘More importantly, it can’t be traced back to any of us.’
Luke moved around the car, checking the tyres and the lights. He didn’t know anything about cars, but it was a convincing performance. Justin hung back near the door. For all their swagger coming over here, they were both on edge now. Both uncertain how to behave. That meant there had to be something big at stake.
‘Relax,’ said Tru, patting him on the shoulder. Wesley realised his entire body was rigid. ‘Your friends here think you can help us out, so I wanted to meet you.’
‘I’m not really good for anything,’ said Wesley, automatically. He winced. Two minutes and he had already said the wrong thing.
Tru perched on the edge of the bonnet, and his face changed, softened, as if he had switched to a different persona. ‘That’s the kind of thinking we need to fight against. Why do you put yourself down like that?’
Wesley had never thought of it like that. He had always just thought there was no point in lying to himself.
‘When you think like that you make yourself weak,’ continued Tru. ‘You can’t reach an optimal state if you think you don’t deserve it, and that means you can’t go out and take what’s rightly yours. That’s why they make you think that way.’
‘Who?’ asked Wesley quietly.
The corner of Tru’s mouth twitched into a smile. ‘Females.’
It was a statement of fact, as if the answer should have been obvious. Wesley nodded, and nothing more. It was safer to stay quiet and let him talk.
‘I showed you the target last night,’ said Tru.
Wesley glanced into the empty spaces of the garage, wondering if he would see a shadow lurking there. ‘Tinker?’
Behind him, Luke thumped the roof of the car. ‘Bitch!’
‘You seen her videos? Anti-men propaganda. As if we needed more proof that feminists are coming for our balls.’ Tru’s voice rose with every word, and it rang around the garage’s walls. ‘Look at what happens when you take away a man’s rightful place: displaced, depressed, suicidal. You’re not useless. They’ve made you feel that way because they want men like us gone.’
Men like us. He already thought of Wesley as somebody like him.
‘We’re going to do something to get Niko Denton’s attention,’ said Tru.
The garage was beginning to grow hot, the air stifling. Sweat prickled around Wesley’s collar, and he swallowed hard. Tru must have noticed his reaction, because his eyes narrowed before he spoke again.
‘There’s this comic convention running near here all next week. Tinker’s speaking there,’ continued Tru. ‘There’ll be too much security for us to do anything inside, but there’s plenty we can do with a car before she ever makes it into the building.’
The image of the car ploughing through a crowd of people flashed across Wesley’s mind. There would be no online campaign. This was something else completely. He turned to the others, wondering if they already knew about this.
Luke smirked. ‘Think of it like a prank. No big deal.’
‘We’re actually going to attack her?’
Tru studied him for a moment. ‘If we were . . . would you have a problem with that?’
‘I don’t know, I mean, uh—’ Wesley stammered.
Tru pushed past him and threw open the front passenger door of the car. ‘Get inside.’
Wesley tried to pull away, but Luke grabbed his neck and wrestled him down, shoving him into the seat and slamming the door shut. While Tru rounded the car, Wesley tugged on the door release. Luke laughed as he used his weight to hold it shut. The car