Day Zero

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