Free Follow Me by Angela Clarke

Twitter updates. Had something she posted gone viral? An angry red spot denoting eleven missed calls pulsed on her phone icon. ‘19% battery – guys, you could’ve plugged it in.’
    ‘Just show us the Twitter,’ Moast said.
    Five thousand six hundred and fifty-seven notifications – must be a glitch. She searched for Apollyon’s account. The thumbnail image of the body was easier to bear. Wait…that can’t be right: ‘He has over 10,000 followers already?’
    They huddled round the phone like smokers round a match. ‘Is that unusual?’ Nas asked.
    ‘Yes, unless he’s famous or gone viral. This morning he had no followers, what happened?’ She pulled the newspaper from under Moast’s arm. ‘I’m sure I didn’t.’ She speed-read her copy. Virtually word for word hers. ‘I didn’t mention @Apollyon at all…how’d all these people find out about him?’
    ‘You keep saying “he”,’ Nas said.
    ‘Yeah, yeah, gender neutrality, et cetera, et cetera. Slip of the tongue.’ She hit notifications. The screen blurred: there were tens of them. Hundreds. Thousands.
    ‘PC Cudmore is insinuating you know who this Apollyon is?’ Moast peered over her phone.
    ‘You idiots.’ She looked up.
    ‘What?’
    It was right there, the same tweet from the Jubilee Police, retweeted, shared over and over:
    We can neither confirm nor deny that @Apollyon is the #Murderer or the #TrollHunter as mentioned in @ReadyFreddieGo’s article.
    ‘You tweeted it! Here: see, this is a message from the Jubilee Police. You tagged @Apollyon, and me, and hashtagged murderer and troll hunter. You just told the world @Apollyon is the one who posted the gruesome photo online. It means everyone knows he’s the one I referred to as the troll hunter. It means you just called him The Hashtag Murderer. Whoever wrote this tweet has told the world this guy exists. It’s gone mental. The cat’s out of the bag. The genie’s out of the bloody bottle. Who wrote this?’
    Moast looked flustered. ‘Sergeant?’
    ‘We outsource our PR accounts. There was a social media advisor at that training course, Jackie Whitley,’ Nas said. ‘She’s something big in PR, described herself as a thought leader. I remember that. They run all station campaigns and accounts, sir.’ Nas bit her bottom lip.
    ‘Nobody cares about this kind of nonsense. It’s not important,’ Moast said.
    ‘Not important? Mate, you’re trending.’ Freddie couldn’t believe they’d be so stupid. ‘It’s showing up as one of the most talked about things on Twitter right now.’
    ‘A load of stupid kids pissing around online…’ Moast tapped his fingers on the table.
    ‘Try fifteen million users in the UK. You don’t get it. This is big. Look here – this is Mari Blagg from the
Guardian
, this is Charlie Webdale from the Indy. This is going to be all over the nationals – they want to talk to me.’ Freddie couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.
Sorry, dead dude.
    ‘Press? Why do they want to talk to you – it’s my case. I should contact them. Send a message to all the journalists saying I will host a press conference.’ Moast’s chest puffed up. ‘I’m investigating the Hashtag Murderer.’
    The word murderer reverberated through Freddie. An unease flowered in her stomach and spread through her body. ‘You haven’t only told the world that @Apollyon is the hashtag Murderer,’ she swallowed.
    Nas heard the apprehension in her voice. She placed a hand on Moast’s arm, a gentle silencer. ‘Freddie – what is it?’
    ‘You’ve also told @Apollyon the world knows he’s the hashtag Murderer.’ She could be wrong. @Apollyon might not care – but then why post the photo? Why the dark connotation of his name? They obviously wanted to be noticed. She took in Moast’s puffed chest – why the bravado?
Reach. Klout. Impact
. People fed off that. Notoriety. People acted up for attention. The performance was part of the game; she shivered. What would