The next big story published by Solomon was about a pest killer widely used in the farming industry that was made by United North, a chemical company that Prism Capital owned a 20% stake of. An internal company memorandum published by Solomon revealed concerns expressed by the company's scientists regarding the potential for tissue damage in animals that feed on grain harvested from crops that were treated with the pest killer. There was an immediate run on United North's stock that saw the company lose 70% of its value by the end of the trading day, with many analysts predicting that the company was heading for bankruptcy within days. Prism Capital, United North's single largest shareholder, also suffered losses, though not as much as they would have suffered had David not liquidated a sizeable portion of their United North holdings as part of a wider liquidation of assets that he was quietly carrying out, the proceeds from which was going into his private bank accounts in Switzerland, The Cayman Islands, Dubai and Hong Kong.

With David jumping ship on the Raven, the owl and the rooster agreed that enough had been done to shake him up and that the time had now come for them to move on to Jim Balmer, which meant that the time had come for Ryan to reveal himself. Taking this step carried with it serious legal risks for Ryan but in the rooster's opinion these risks paled in comparison to what the Raven would do to him if it could take action against him without fear of provoking any sort of public reaction. The three of them traveled from Stockholm back to London and made their way to Broadcasting House, the global headquarters of the BBC. The owl and the rooster flew up onto the roof and Ryan went inside alone. Ryan spoke to a receptionist at the entrance and told her that he was the hacker/leaker Solomon and that he wished to do a television interview. The receptionist picked up the phone and dialed an extension, telling the person on the other end of the line that there was a young man here claiming to be Solomon.

"Somebody will be with you now," she said to Ryan politely after putting the phone back on the receiver.

"Okay," Ryan answered nonchalantly.

Hardly a minute later a grey haired man with glasses dressed sharply in a black suit emerged from an elevator and walked purposefully in the direction of Ryan.

"Are you the man who says he's Solomon?" He asked Ryan.

"Yes, that's me."

"I'm Nick Burrows, I'm a producer for the BBC," the man said, extending his hand to be shook, which Ryan did, "why don't we continue this conversation upstairs."

"Okay."

Nick took Ryan up to his office on the third floor and asked him a series of questions to verify if this was indeed Solomon sitting before him. Nick had been following Solomon since his initial breach of MI6; if Ryan said anything that wasn't consistent with Solomon's history, Nick would pick up on it. Nick began by asking Ryan about his childhood and how he got involved in hacking. Ryan told him the story about his father going missing in Iraq and the years that he had spent trolling through government intelligence data for clues as to his whereabouts. Nick remembered the case of those missing oil workers and the frustration that he had experienced as a reporter who was unable to get any information on them. Ryan went through the list of all of the intelligence agencies that he had breached in his search for information about his father, followed by everything that he had done as a member of The Torchbearers before launching Solomon.com. Everything that Ryan had said had thus far checked out and Nick was growing excited about being the first one to get an interview with Solomon, but before he could give the go ahead for the interview he needed Ryan to furnish him with a piece of hard evidence to confirm that he was Solomon. Ryan removed his laptop from his bag, opened it up on the table and quickly typed something on the keyboard. He spun the laptop around so the screen was facing Nick and pushed it toward him.

"That's my back door into the US Military Security Co-Ordination Center," Ryan said.

Nick didn't understand computer code and had to call one of the IT workers to verify that Ryan was telling the truth. The IT worker came into the room and spent a few minutes studying the code after which he was able to confirm for Nick that Ryan was telling the truth. Being the man responsible for breaking the story of the century was fingertips away for Nick and he wasn't prepared to waste any more time. He used the phone in the room to ask for a studio to be made available immediately and made a second call to Stephen Sackur, the BBC's preeminent journalist and host who, like Nick, knew all the ins and outs of Solomon's history. Ryan was escorted by Nick from the boardroom to a make-up room to get his make-up done while Nick went down to the studio to make sure everything was ready, which it was. Nick returned to the make-up room and escorted Ryan down to the studio and introduced him to Stephen. Ryan was seated in a chair across the table from where Stephen would be seated and was fitted with a microphone by one of the studio technicians, and it was in this moment that Ryan became aware of the enormity of his importance. Stephen took his place in the seat across from Ryan with his glasses on and a sheaf of papers on the table in front of him. It was only a matter of moments now until Ryan became world famous.

"Welcome to this special live interview, I'm Stephen Sackur. For years governments and the world's elite have been bedeviled by the embarrassing revelations about them that have been published online by the computer hacker known only as Solomon. In the studio here with me is Solomon himself; Ryan Keely, welcome."

"Thank you for having me."

"So you are Solomon?"

"I am, yes."

"Why did you choose that name for your online handle?"

"Because in the Bible Solomon is the arbiter of truth."

"Is that how you see yourself? As the arbiter of truth?"

"Well I am revealing the truth."

"That's not the same as being an arbiter of truth, for example as journalists we are bound by a code of ethics that prevents us from simply publishing information as is."

"Maybe that's why people have lost so much faith in the media and in journalists."

"Your critics refer to you as, among other things, a transparency radical, would you agree with that characterization?"

"No, because I don't think that there is anything radical about providing people with the truth about what people in positions of power are really getting up to."

"You've been characterized as a radical because you apparently don't see the need to ever exercise any caution with your releases."

"If I were to start diluting the truth it would defeat the purpose of my mission."

"Are there any circumstances under which you would either publish information with redactions or refuse outright to publish information? For example if there was a possibility of loss of life."

"That would depend on whether the value of people knowing the truth outweighed the severity of the loss of life."

"And how do you make that judgment?"

"I haven't yet been placed in the position of having to make that judgment, but if ever I am I can assure you that I will be extremely diligent about assessing the risks involved."

"Forgive me, Mr Keely, but you have been in that position before, you have on numerous occasions published data that you acquired by hacking into intelligence networks without any redactions to that data."

"Nothing I have ever published has resulted in loss of life."

"That's not strictly true, when you published the Bogota leaks it ignited mass protests not only in Colombia but across Latin America in which people did die."

"I think you're the first person to ever criticize the decision to leak that information, I exposed billions of dollars worth of corruption and those protests produced sweeping political change across the region."

"But people did die."

"Well, you can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs."

"I find it interesting that you would be so casual about people dying."

"Interesting how?"

"Well, you are somebody who lives primarily in a digital world, I'm wondering if that's had the effect of impairing your ability to make judgments about the real world consequences of your actions."

"I am not casual about the real world consequences of anything."

"And yet you did belong to a group of hackers called The Torchbearers who made a game out of breaking into security agencies and intelligence networks; why would you join such a group if you take the real world consequences of your actions seriously?"

"I was looking for information on my father's whereabouts, I thought there might be hackers out there that had the answers I was looking for, so I set about interacting with them."

"Your father was an oil worker who went missing in Iraq; were you able to find out what happened to him?"

"He was killed."

"Were you able to find out by whom and why?"

"No, I wasn't."

"So what you're saying is that the mythology that's been constructed around you is largely false, that when you get down to it you're just a boy who wanted to find his father."

"Yes, and as for the mythology around me, people are free to make whatever presumptions they wish."

"Why have you chosen to reveal yourself now? What is it about this moment in time in particular that made you decide that it was the right time to tell the world who you are?"

"I've decided to reveal my identity because I feel it's better for my security if people know who I am."

"How have you arrived at the conclusion that you're safer if people know who you are? You've broken all sorts of hacking and national security laws; now that everybody knows who you are isn't it more likely that you are going to be arrested?"

"I have only twice been public about the national security agencies that I've hacked into: when I first broke into MI6 and later when I broke into MILNET as part of The Torchbearers, in both cases the statute of limitations has lapsed, so there's no reason for me to fear any legal ramifications."

"You may have taken steps to insulate yourself legally but I'm sure that you are well aware that if they deem you a threat they will find a way to neutralize you."

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"That's why I'm choosing to reveal myself; if they were to figure out who I am it would be much easier for them to neutralize me if nobody knows who I am."

"Did you consider the possibility that they won't care that everybody knows who you are?"

"I did, which is why I've put a failsafe in place."

"What is your failsafe?"

"If anything suspicious happens to me it will trigger a large data dump that will cause a lot of problems for a lot of people, so I'm quite confident they won't try anything."

"What you just described is precisely the reason why you are viewed as being so dangerous; you are effectively holding the world's leaders ransom and are warning them that if you are not left to do as you please then you will retaliate by striking at them directly with their secrets."

"I am not holding anybody ransom, I am simply letting it be known that I am not without protection."

"Why should people trust you to be in possession of such information? Possessing this information bestows upon you enormous power that you could cause a lot of damage with if you chose to abuse it."

"I can be trusted because all of the information that I have released has revealed a concerted effort to keep the truth from people, not because it's in their best interest not to know the truth but because the truth is that our leaders are far more corrupt and self-interested than we imagined."

"That trust potentially represents a danger in itself; in a recent poll conducted by the Center for Media Studies, 64% of the people polled said that they trust you more than they do the news media, so you could conceivably publish false information about somebody and because that information has come from you people would believe it and that person's life could potentially be completely ruined."

"I am not in the business of fake news, people's trust in me is my only currency, if I betray their trust I lose my currency and I can no longer hold the powerful accountable."

"There are some that have suggested that your primary motivation is not to hold people accountable and they point to the millions of dollars in donations that you've received through your website."

"I use the money that is sent to me to support myself, I only use very little because I live a very simple life; the rest of the money is used to help sources who send me information who are worried that their lives are in danger; the money is used to help get them to safety, and if you go to the website you'll see a full breakdown of our finances."

"I know you've said that you would never do anything to violate the public's trust, but can you understand why there are so many people who are deeply troubled by you and what you represent?"

"I can understand it, but the reality is that most of the criticism that I get is from people who are afraid of me and want to negatively influence people's opinions of me as a preemptive measure, it's their attempt at waging an information war against me, what they don't realize is that in information warfare there is no more powerful weapon than the truth."

"Is there anybody in particular who has used these tactics of information warfare against you?"

"Mostly conservative organizations; commentators on conservative news outlets are constantly referring to me as the greatest threat to national security at present."

"Does that perhaps make you more inclined to target conservatives with your leaks?"

"I'm not politically motivated, I publish information based solely on its importance to the public."

"Yes, but your last two high profile leaks targeted Prism Capital, whose CEO, David Huntsman, has been the largest contributor to Jim Balmer's presidential campaign; given that, isn't it in fact the case that you are politically biased?"

"That is the other accusation that is always leveled against me, that I'm biased against conservatives, but it's not true; the Latin governments that fell as a result of the protests that were sparked by the Bogotá releases were all socialist governments, and that Italian politician who was helping human traffickers was a member of the Green Party, which is a far left party, so my record shows that I am in no way politically biased. The reason why conservatives spend so much time trying to convince people that I am politically biased is to insulate their candidate Jim Balmer against any political damage he might suffer in the event of me releasing incriminating information about him."

"Does Jim Balmer have reason to be afraid that you're about to reveal some problematic information about him?"

"As a matter of fact he does."

"And what information would that be?"

"Tomorrow morning I will be posting documents and communications on the site that expose a scheme that Jim Balmer was involved in as a member of the House Armed Services Committee to secretly sell weapons to the Iranians to be used in an offensive against pro-democracy rebels in Syria, a military operation that was being led by Lt Gen Raiz Al-Sayed, the man known as the Butcher of Baghdad. I have evidence that Jim Balmer received a big pay off from the arms manufacturer who supplied those weapons and that he knew full well where they were going and what they were going to be used for."

"I'll be looking forward to seeing that, as I'm sure all of our viewers will be too; Ryan Keely, thank you for speaking with the BBC."

"Thank you, Stephen."

Ryan felt throughout the interview that it was going really well and that now that people knew who he was he would have to deal with a certain amount of celebrity. He wasn't prepared for what was waiting for him when he left the BBC's offices. In the time that Ryan had been doing the interview, supporters of Solomon had been gathering outside of Broadcasting House in the hopes of getting to see him with their own eyes. There were hundreds of them, wearing paraphernalia like Guy Fawkes masks and crowns, holding up signs that read 'IN SOLOMON WE TRUST', 'THE TRUTH WILL NOT BE HIDDEN', 'DEFEND FREE SPEECH' and various other slogans that supporters of Solomon were fond of. The crowd erupted when they saw him, responding with an outpouring of emotion usually reserved for global pop stars.

Watching on from the roof of the building, the owl and the rooster saw Ryan achieve instant superstardom and they hoped that he would be able to cope with it. The owl and the rooster had decided, with the Behemoth having been released and the change that it had produced being so palpable, that they needed to join up with the Goose and give their energies to the blue egg. It was going to be up to Ryan to deal with his newfound celebrity on his own, they could only hope that he didn't meet the same fate as so many before him that had revealed truths that were meant to remain forever in the dark.

Ryan's first public appearance since revealing himself on the BBC was at a London Press Club event in the conference room of The Windsor Hotel. Ryan was the keynote speaker at the event and used his speech to reassure those in attendance that his goal wasn't to put an end to journalism but rather to work with journalists to ensure that the secrets that he revealed reached as many people as possible. He next appeared in Norway, at the Oslo Freedom Forum, where the main topic was the relationship between democracy and access to information. Ryan gave another well received speech at the forum in which he argued that the greatest threat to people's ability to access information was not governments, it was the growing phenomenon of the privatization and corporatization of journalism, and Ryan offered numerous examples of stories that he had published on Solomon that news outlets had failed to publish because the contents of those stories were problematic for the corporate higher-ups at those outlets.

It was important that Ryan was making these appearances and using his large public profile to project a positive image of himself as someone who was only interested in people knowing the truth, because the campaign against him was in full force. After publishing the story about Jim Balmer being involved in shady arms deals, the reaction from the right was immediate and extreme. Across all right wing media platforms there was a ceaseless stream of condemnation that was directed at Ryan, with pundits repeating the same lines of attack against him in what was obviously a coordinated assault:

"This is a political hit job!"

"The criminal in all of this is Ryan Keely, not Jim Balmer!"

"This boy is a serious threat to national security!"

"He is aiding America's enemies!"

"He is emboldening America's enemies!"

"He's got blood on his hands!"

These were the talking points that the consumers of right wing media were bombarded with on an hourly basis, while in the rest of the media questions were being asked about whether the arms sale violated any arms control treaties and if Jim Balmer was in legal jeopardy. A week before the leak Jim Balmer had swept the Super Tuesday primaries and was now confirmed as the Republican nominee for president, which only increased the paranoia on the right that Ryan was a liberal and a supporter of Tom Groff who was out to destroy Jim's chances of becoming president, and nobody gave voice to that paranoia like Chris Dixon did. He opened up his first show after the leak with an angry monologue in which he spelled out in the starkest terms the threat that Ryan represented to the country:

"My fellow Americans, we are under attack! Not from Al-Qaeda, or ISIS, but from a Canadian boy who has declared war on our election, on our ability to determine for ourselves who gets to govern this great land. With his leaks of highly classified information Ryan Keely has revealed two things: One, that he doesn't care about our nation's security, and two, that he hates conservatives and is going to do everything in his power to stop Jim Balmer from getting to the White House. Let us be clear about something: this boy is no hero, he is a foreigner who is engaged in asymmetric warfare against our country. He is a terrorist! Plain and simple! And that's what he should be treated as! He should be treated as an enemy combatant, and all of these countries in Europe that are providing him safe haven should be treated as state sponsors of terror! Why has Interpol not picked this guy up yet?! Why hasn't Solomon been recognized as a terrorist organization and had its operations shut down?! Where is the DOJ?! Where is the State Department?! Where is the CIA?! Why are the institutions that are supposed to be protecting Americans not doing anything to respond to what is the greatest threat to national security that is out there right now?! You guys need to do your jobs and do whatever it is that you need to do to protect this country, because if you don't then somebody else will, some patriot who loves their country and wants to do what's right is going to take it upon themselves to put an end to this threat, and when they do we are going to have a tragedy on our hands, the tragedy of a patriot being unjustly punished by the law for doing what they needed to do to protect their country because the government wouldn't. I just hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, I know whose side I'll be on."

Chris delivered his monologue with a picture of Ryan in the corner of the screen with a set of crosshairs on his forehead. The monologue was seen by many as an incitement to kill Ryan, and FOX News was once again on the receiving end of calls to reign in Chris Dixon, but as his show was by far the highest rated show on cable news no action was taken against him. Fyodor Milichenko was one of the guests on Chris's show that night, and when asked what he thought about Ryan Keely he gave an uncharacteristically pithy answer:

"Chris, I think it is disgusting that somebody would endanger a country's security for the sake of their own popularity."

Because of Fyodor's frequent appearances on Chris Dixon's show his popularity in right wing circles had soared and he had become a full blown right winger himself. He renounced his belief in communism, saying that he had come to see free enterprise as the best way for people to give expression to their values, which was better than forcing values upon them from the top down. Now that Ryan had revealed himself, the Raven had marshaled his forces and instructed them to do everything in their power to eliminate him as a threat. The owl had told Ryan to expect such an attack and the rooster advised him not to resort to the kind of hyperbole that they would inevitably resort to and to remain true to himself. Ryan continued doing interviews and speaking at various conferences. When asked by journalists during interviews about the accusations of political bias and terrorism that were being leveled against him, Ryan responded that such hyperbole was typical of conservative media and that it was beyond hypocritical of them to accuse him of political bias while doing everything possible to avoid the issue of Jim Balmer's involvement in a shady arms deal. When speaking at conferences Ryan continued to warn about the threat to freedom and democracy posed by media corporations, like FOX News, that were acting in service of a political agenda with no regard for responsible, fact-based journalism, going on to promise that so long as he was able to he would continue to expose the truths they wanted to keep hidden.

Increasingly, Ryan was doing precisely what the rooster had warned him not do. He was making Solomon about him and not the mission, making his speeches at conferences more and more about how he was not afraid of facing anything that they threw at him head on for the sake of protecting people's ability to access the truth, because in a world where everything was for sale, including the truth, he was the last line of defense. Without the owl and the rooster keeping him grounded, the fame of being Solomon went to his head. The requests that he received for interviews and the invitations that he received to speak at forums and conferences were all flattering, and the adoration that he received from his supporters made him feel a level of importance that he'd never felt when he'd been working anonymously. Ryan had little experience with social situations and wasn't prepared for the relationship with the public that was demanded of him by his fame. There were fans that came up to him and invited him to spend time with them. Not feeling socially comfortable enough, Ryan turned down all of these requests, until a young woman came up to him in Brussels after he had spoken at an event organized by the European Preservation Society and told him that she had been one of the members of The Torchbearers and that a number of other members of The Torchbearers were in Brussels and were getting together at a bar and they would love it if he would join them. Ryan gave serious thought to her invitation before he agreed to join them, deciding that he could trust these people because he had history with them, even though that history was entirely digital in nature.

Ryan's only experience of drinking alcohol involved very light consumption of the substance during his travels. Being in a bar and being expected to drink as much as those around him was a new experience for him, an experience which proved more than he could handle. He woke up the next morning in a strange apartment with no recollection of how he'd gotten there. The apartment was empty, so Ryan left as soon as he'd gotten himself together. He walked out into the Belgian mid-morning sunshine and made his way back to his hotel, believing that the previous night was a learning experience that he needed to remember in the future to avoid getting into the same situation. He boarded a train for Copenhagen intending to go on with his life as usual. Two days later the woman that had invited him to the bar was on television saying that Ryan Keely had raped her in an apartment in Brussels.