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 thousands 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 all that that entailed. 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 HardTalk 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 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 leak of highly classified information Ryan Keely 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 asked him 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 in increasingly dire language 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, because these were people that he had something of a history with, 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.