"Hard to say. We got kind of sidetracked by some dumbass who couldn't keep his mouth shut in a crowded place." Bethan was pacing slowly now, looking thoughtful. "One girl, Rose, she suggested keeping tabs on each other through IRC, whatever that is; we spent a lot of time trying to work out what's a secure way of contacting each other. That's part of where you can help; I figure if anyone can make sure we're not being electronically monitored, it's you. Besides that, though... it's hard to plan when we don't know what we're up against and we can't speak freely. What I think, and Rose seemed to agree with me, is that we need to work on the basis that we're dealing with something for which there's a lot of precedent. In Russia or Syria or China, it's been dissidents; in McCarthy's America, Communists; in Lima now, it's people with powers. That Scottish guy reckoned this whole thing's a government fuck-up, and I think that's really where I part ways with them. No way is all this an accident."
She was thinking aloud, really, but also just trying to fill Debra in. No sense trying to get help from someone who didn't know what was going on.