Day Zero

rainwater or runoff, all of it smelling vaguely of the river.
Taking it all in, Olly wondered if this was what people meant when they said “urban decay”. He stored his bike in a concealed rack behind a broken section of wall. There were two others already there, both better than his. Somebody was home, then.
He went into what had been an office. Forgotten filing cabinets, covered in black mould and rust stains, sat like lonely sentries in the corners, and a shabby desk, now mostly rotten, occupied the centre of the room. Over the desk was a broken light fixture, and inside it was a hidden fibre-optic sensor. Condensation proof, like every other bit of kit installed in the building. Had to be, otherwise it’d spark out every few days.
He called up another app on his Optik, and waved it over his head. A tiny flash of green told him they hadn’t changed the locks. There was a muffled click, and he felt the floor shift under his feet. He knelt and reached down, feeling at the mouldy carpet squares that littered the floor. When he found the access panel, he pushed down on it with all of his weight, and scrambled back as the concealed hatch rose slowly on its pneumatic hinges.
The hatch was barely big enough for one person. A set of metal steps wound down into a dimly lit space below the garage. The property had a cellar of sorts, and it had still been there when DedSec had bought the property.
It wasn’t a cellar anymore, though. Now it was a den for all kinds of troublemakers.
He took the stairs carefully, the LED lighting providing him just enough illumination to put one foot in front of the other. As he descended, the hatch sealed itself with a hiss of air. There was a reinforced door with a keypad lock at the bottom, and he quickly punched in the current code. It changed weekly, and sometimes daily, depending.
He closed the door behind him and looked around. The cellar wasn’t much, but it was home. Olly had a flat, but he didn’t stay there often. It was depressing. Here wasn’t much better, but at least the hob worked and there was stuff happening.
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