Day Zero

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, preferably.”
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