Day Zero

by James Swallow

  The place had been reinforced and extended over the years, growing from a single space to a warren of brick tunnels and small rooms. There was even access to the river somewhere, though Olly had never seen it.

  Camp beds and couches dotted what space wasn’t taken up by a jury-rigged set up of computer screens and equipment. Power cabling ran across the floor like jungle vines and hung in electrical taped bunches from the walls and ceiling. It ran across the central space and down along short corridors into the half dozen smaller rooms that jutted in all directions like the spokes of a wheel. Most of these rooms were crash-pads, but one was the showers, and another, the armoury, with its whirring 3D printers and racks of pre-printed caseless ammunition.

  Televisions locked on the 24-hour news channels flashed mute images from the corners, and music played softly in the background. The air smelled wet and electric and it made Olly’s skin tingle.

  Bagley’s voice thrummed from his Optik. Home again, home again, jiggety-jog. Welcome back. Safe as houses now.

  Olly looked around. There were a few others here, but no one he knew. They weren’t a friendly lot, on the whole. Hackers and deadheads mostly, eyes glued to screens and fingers stuck to keyboards. They fought the good fight from the safety of their sofas.

  A few were like Olly – pranksters and wannabe folk heroes who’d wandered into the wrong alley. Others had been looting cryptocurrency accounts or scamming benefit grants for years before the idea of the Resistance had even been a gleam in somebody’s eye. And then there were the hard cases.

  There were more and more of them around every day. Men with prison tats and scars on their knuckles. Women who carried shooters in their handbags. That one old bat who could walk you through an emergency tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen and some hand sanitizer. Not Olly’s sort of people at all.

  Most of the newsfeeds were keyed on the TOAN conference. But one showed a familiar scene – somebody’s shaky cam recording of the shooting at Lister House. And there was Olly, scrambling to his feet, blood on his hands, running.

  They don’t have your face. Your prints and DNA are a different matter, of course.

  “That don’t make me feel better,” Olly said. “Where’s Krish? I need to hand this off and then find some place to lay low.”

  “Too bloody right,” a familiar voice said. Olly turned. Krish strode towards him, a sour look on his face. It was a comfort, in its way. Krish always looked like that. He was tall and lanky, and dressed like he’d wandered away an unlicensed rave and wasn’t happy about it. “Where the fuck where you, fam? I was expecting you ten minutes ago. I thought you’d been nicked. There’s police everywhere. We’re on lockdown.”

  “Where the fuck was I? You watched the news?” Olly snapped. He tossed the package to Krish and gestured to the televisions. Heads were turning now, as the others listened. A good blow-up was better than canned entertainment any day.

  “Of course. Some fool got shot over at…” Krish trailed off as he looked Olly up and down. Stopped. Looked at him again. “Is that blood on your trainers?”

  “It ain’t mine,” Olly said.

  “What happened?” Krish demanded. “What have you done?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.” The voice was unfamiliar – a woman’s voice, and behind him. Before he could turn around, it was followed by the distinctive sound – the click of a pistol being readied.

  Sarah Lincoln tapped the flashing alert and brought up a news story. She’d keyed her Optik to bring all mentions of her name to her attention in a daily digest. She scanned the afternoon newsfeed with a mixture of satisfaction and annoyance. As she’d hoped, she’d gotten top billing despite only being a glorified bystander – but nothing at all was mentioned of her face-off with Albion. She sucked on her bottom lip and dismissed the alert. Slightly annoyed, she leaned back in her chair and looked out the window.

  Whitechapel was part of her fiefdom these days, such as it was. Tower Hamlets had been gerrymandered and reshuffled to within an inch of its life over the past decade, and the constituencies renamed for the second time in twenty years. The district had once belonged to what was now Tower Hamlets North, and its reapportioning was still something of a sore spot. She smiled. Not that it wasn’t something of a poisoned chalice.

  Whitechapel was within spitting distance of the heart of London, but it was nonetheless one of the most deprived areas of the city. Even the planned revitalization of the Whitechapel Terminus had been brought to a stumbling halt by ham-fisted austerity measures.

  Deprived though it was, Whitechapel was also the administrative heart of Tower Hamlets. Everything went through the district, and Sarah had duly set herself up in offices overlooking the site of the former Royal London Hospital.

  The site had been earmarked for a proposed town hall, but, as with the Terminus, construction had ground to a halt a few years ago when the economy had plunged off the proverbial cliff. Now it was now nothing more than an eyesore. The abandoned scaffolding and faded signage of the site reminded her that what seemed a sure thing one moment was counted as a mistake the next.

  A lesson every politician had to learn, if they wanted to remain a politician. And Sarah Lincoln desperately, determinedly, wanted to remain a politician. Even if that meant bowing to pressure and signing off on the Albion deal.

  Her gaze fell to the stack of newly printed papers on her desk. She preferred hard copy, when feasible. Easier to read, easier to get rid of. She leaned forward and started scanning the pages. She made notes in the margins as she worked, to remind herself of questions she needed to ask later.

  Every transaction had some grit to it, no matter how smooth the deal seemed. The Albion deal had more grit than most. She’d met Nigel Cass, the current head of Albion and the son of its founder, a grand total of twice. She’d come away unimpressed both times. He always came across as a thug playing at being charming. A mercenary looking to buy himself a war.

  She knew something about war, despite having never experienced it herself. Her parents had been part of a Christian minority in Somalia. They’d fled to escape persecution during the civil war, and come to London looking for a new start. What they’d found was a different sort of conflict – not as violent, perhaps, but no less dangerous.

  Thankfully, they’d had some money, and her father had made more. He’d worked hard, and taught his daughter to do the same. Her mother had taught her different sorts of tricks. The right way to sit, to breathe, to look interested. Her father had given her a work ethic, and her mother had given her the skills she needed to make best use of it.

  Sometimes, looking out the window, she thought of her parents’ stories about the civil war. About how quickly everything fell apart. When things started to go wrong, you had to move fast to keep from being overwhelmed by the chaos. Resignation killed as surely as a bullet. She did not intend to resign herself to the current state of affairs.

  She made a note to repeat her request for a tour of the temporary Albion facility in Limehouse Basin. She’d made the same request three times since her last meeting with Cass, and had been studiously ignored every time. She tapped her papers with a biro, thinking. She activated her Optik. “Hannah?”

  Hannah stuck her head in the door. Sarah sat back. “Anything yet on why our paramilitary friends were snooping about the scene of the shooting?”

  “Not yet. Everyone is being very close-mouthed of late.”

  “Mmm. Probably worried about botching the deal.” Sarah leaned even further back and studied the old water stains on the ceiling tiles. If Albion were getting nervous, so much the better. Cass was desperate to get the deal done. And desperate men were often amenable to compromise. “Send another request for a tour of their local facilities. Emphasize that the press will be excluded.” She paused. “Has Winston called yet?”

  “Twice in the past hour.”

  Sarah smiled. “Good. When he calls again, tell him to book us a table somewhere nice – but local. Neutral ground, p
referably.”

  Hannah frowned. “You want to have lunch with him? In public?”

  “I need to gauge his mood. I want to see if he’ll back my request for the tour. I know he’s been itching to get in there himself. If we pooled influence, we might actually get somewhere.” Sarah balanced the biro on her index finger, before tossing it up and catching it. “And make an appointment to go to Bethnal Green station. I want to give my statement in person, and see how the investigation is going.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Sarah set her pen down and turned back to the window. “Call it curiosity.”

  4: Redqueen

  Liz Burton watched the man calling himself Alex Dempsey die for the third time in as many minutes. He turned, twisted and fell, a red crater opening in his chest. Twist and fall, twist and fall. Again and again. Every time he hit the ground, she replayed the scene, hoping, praying that it might turn out different. That this time, he might not fall.

  The day had been going well. Things were tickety-boo on her end. Irons in the fire, and all that. The harvested data of half a dozen potential recruits slid across her display in a wash of mundanity. A disenfranchised anarcho-socialist with radical views and an attitude problem. A sad-eyed bouncer who read Voltaire and liked to punch fascists. A paranoid genius who could build an RFID implant out of spit and wire when he wasn’t yelling about the Royals being reptoids. Even a former Spetsnaz officer in search of moral clarity.

  DedSec would welcome them all. Sooner or later, everyone with a conscience or an axe to grind would be a member of the Resistance. That was how Liz saw it. A grab-bag army of the unheard and the unwashed. Enough, even, to bring down Hobbes’ leviathan.

  But she wasn’t thinking about any of that now. Right now, she was thinking of killing someone. Which was why she was currently pressing the barrel of her Px4 to the back of the new boy’s head. Not hard; just enough to let him know it was there. “Olly, right?” she said, her voice mild. “Turn around.”

  “Liz,” Krish began. He sounded scared. Krish liked to play gangster, but violence – real violence – freaked him out. Most of the others in the room were the same. Of them all, only Liz had ever fired a real weapon. And she was angry enough to do so again.

  Her gaze flicked to the younger man. “Do shut up, Krish. I want to have a chat with our new recruit. Turn around, Olly.”

  Olly turned slowly, hands raised. He was younger than she’d thought. Practically a kid. Lean and narrow, like he’d missed more than a few meals. Dressed for comfort, no obvious tattoos or scars. Just another chav, playing hard man.

  Just looking at him made her feel old. She was pushing forty, and though she kept herself in shape, there were some days she could feel the weight of all that experience pressing down on her, like the hand of God. Today was one of those days.

  She looked Olly up and down and snorted. “How old are you?” she asked derisively.

  An unimpressive specimen, I admit. But that is no reason to shoot him, Elizabeth.

  “When I want your opinion, Bagley, I’ll ask for it.” The AI annoyed her. The faux-friendliness of its personality grated on her for reasons she found hard to articulate. She was too old to trust something based on the cTOS network.

  Touchy today, aren’t we?

  “Quiet,” she said, harshly. “I just saw a friend of mine get gunned down on the street.” Even as she said it, she wondered about it. Alex hadn’t been a friend, not exactly. Something more, something less. It wasn’t the sort of thing she’d ever thought to quantify – and now it was too late.

  Alex hadn’t been DedSec material, not really. A petty thief, who’d never had a political thought in his life. The sort of person who thought of protests as good for business – which they were, when your business was picking pockets and identity theft.

  But he’d had good ears, and a good memory. He listened and passed on what he’d heard, when she asked. All it cost was the price of a drink, maybe a meal. There were worse people to have dinner with. Alex could be – had been – funny when he wanted to be.

  No more jokes, though. Nothing left but a bit more anger to add to the pile. She twitched the Px4, making Olly’s eyes widen. “You were there. I want to know why.”

  “I didn’t do it!”

  Liz smiled thinly. “If I thought you had, I’d have already shot you.” She glanced at Kris. “Is this tit the one you sent on the Albion pick-up?”

  Kris nodded. “He’s good, Liz.”

  Liz turned her attentions back to Olly, calling up her Optik display. She scrolled through a crawl of information, most of it redacted in an efficient, if ham-fisted, fashion. She wondered if he’d done it himself. “Oliver Soames. Early twenties, favourite flavour of ice cream is rum and raisin. You once dressed in drag for a mate’s stag do…”

  Olly flushed. “We was all doing it,” he protested. Muted laughter rose from the others. Liz silenced them with a gesture. She was the oldest one here, the de facto authority. The others were scared shitless of her, and she played on it for all she was worth. Hacktivists and code crackers were about as biddable as cats. The old ones were stubborn, the young ones self-righteous, and some of them were just plain psychopaths.

  Liz considered herself a little of all three. That was why she was left to babysit Tower Hamlets, and keep things ticking along on an even keel. Sometimes that meant talking soft, sometimes it meant she had to flash a shooter.

  A gun was a good way to get everyone’s attention, and convince them you were serious, all in one go. But now that she had it, no reason to keep swinging about. She lowered the semi-automatic, and peered at Olly. “So what happened? And make it quick.”

  Olly swallowed and cut his eyes to Krish, who nodded. “I was – I’d just made the pick-up and I was cutting through Lister House…”

  “Why?”

  I told him to. It would have cut his travel time by –

  She kept her eyes on Olly. “Fine. You cut through and…?”

  “He – he ran out in front of me. Crashed right into me!”

  “Crashed – he was running?”

  “I – I don’t know.” Olly gesticulated. “I got up, we had words and then – boom. He was down.” She could read the fear and horror in his eyes. It mirrored her own. Whatever part he might have played, she was sure he hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  “His name was Alex,” she said, softly. She slid the Px4 back into its concealed holster at the small of her back, and looked at Krish. “That drive – the Albion info?”

  Krish nodded. “Should be.”

  “Good. Scan it and start disseminating it to the usual suspects. Bagley, analyse the images of the incident.” She looked around. “I want to know everything there is to know about the moment Alex died. I want the velocity of the shot, I want the make and model of the weapon. Everything.”

  I have already begun.

  She looked at Olly. “I want you to tell me every move you made today. From the moment you took your morning shit, to just now. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Downstairs.”

  Olly blinked. “I thought we were downstairs.”

  Liz laughed. “This is just the fucking lobby, kiddo. Now come on.”

  Olly looked at Krish. The other man raised his hands in surrender. Liz outranked him. Olly knew she’d been a crackerjack hacker, back in the bad old days – they’d called her “Redqueen”, though he didn’t know why. Maybe she just liked the sound of it.

  What he did know was that she’d never so much as spoken two words to him since Krish had brought him in. She was older than him, her thick, braided hair gone the colour of gunmetal, and her frame shaved and sculpted by age. She wore battered motorcycle trousers, combat boots and a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a band that hadn’t been popular in a decade. Her arms were lean and muscled, with a pagan crawl of ink on the biceps. There were scars as well – not just on her arms, but on her face too – and her eyes were pale and sharp.


  She scared the shit out of him. Not just because of the gun – though that was a large part of it – but because of her whole look and what it meant. She wasn’t playing quiet. She was a fucking freedom fighter and didn’t care who knew it.

  He’d only started breathing again when she’d lowered her gun. Now he was expected to follow her down… where? “We’re already under the building,” he protested. “Any lower we’ll be in the river.”

  Liz laughed. “Think so? Then where does that door lead?” She pointed to the far wall and Olly turned. He’d never noticed a door there. Perhaps because it was hidden behind a diagonal of cheap shelving, full of hard drives and cabling. Or maybe because it didn’t actually look like a door, so much as a piece of riveted steel, set flush to the wall.

  Liz led him past the shelving and he spied a thumbprint scanner installed in the wall. It was small, and easy to miss. Not concealed, but no obvious either. Liz slid her thumb into the slot. There was a hollow hum, and a brief flash of green. Then the sound of tumblers turning. The door swung inwards. A set of stone steps went down. Unlike the rest of the place, the walls were clean, smelling of anti-mould spray.

  Liz saw the look on his face. “Limehouse’s roots go deep. Smugglers used – still use – the Cut for transport. There are hidey-holes all along the canal. Most aren’t much bigger than an allotment shed, but with some sweat and elbow grease, you can make anything liveable. Down we go.”

  Olly swallowed and followed her down. Fibre-optic cabling ran along the brickwork, descending in bunches. Motion sensors and other security devices littered the walls. They turned green as Liz passed them, and then flicked red again. “I’m getting the feeling I don’t know nothing about nothing,” he said.

  “That’s the first smart thing you’ve said.”

  “Why are you showing me all of this?”

  “I’m not showing you anything you wouldn’t have seen eventually.” At the bottom of the steps was another door – heavier than the first. Reinforced steel hinges. Bullet-proof too, Olly wagered. Maybe bomb proof, even. DedSec weren’t playing around. This one had a retinal scanner installed in the centre of the door. Liz leaned close and the door opened with a hiss of escaping air. “Welcome to the cellar, Olly. The real one.”