Day Zero

letting the heat seep into his aching muscles. He’d tried to sleep again, but hadn’t gotten much. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the moment of Alex Dempsey’s death – the instant the life had gone out of the man’s eyes replayed over and over again in Olly’s brain.
He wanted to move past it. Needed to move past it. Couldn’t. So instead he stood in the shower and tried to wash it away. Eventually, the water started to cool, and he got out. Someone had brought him new clothes, and he dressed quickly. The shower room was small, badly tiled and smelt of damp. Repurposed lockers had been arranged along one wall, and benches sat in front of them. It reminded Olly of a changing room in some low-rent gym.
As he was lacing up his trainers, Krish came in. “You okay?”
“No.” Olly didn’t look at him.
“Liz shouldn’t have done that, fam. No call for it.”
Olly shook his head. “It’s not that.”
Krish fell silent. Olly could almost hear the questions rattling in his head. He spoke up before Krish could gather his courage. “Why’d you bring me in?”
“What?”
“DedSec. Why you’d bring me in?” Olly looked up at him.
Krish smiled. “You got style, bruv. Like me.”
Olly laughed. Krish was all about style. He DJed for a pirate broadcast, streaming an eclectic mix of breakbeat hardcore, grime, old soul rarities and Asian dub, in between delivering fervent political or anti-corporate screeds. Olly had listened to Krish’s show a few times before he’d hooked up with DedSec.
“Proper resistance, man. That’s what you were. I saw that right off.” Krish puffed his chest out. “And you ain’t never let me down. Except for those other times, I mean.”
Olly shook his head. “It’s like the pigeons were out to get me.” He gestured. “Like I was… what’s her name? In that film. You know the one. With the seagulls.”
“Yeah, but twice?” Krish grinned. “You got some serious bad luck, bruv.”
“Cheers.” Olly looked down at the floor, trying not to think about birds. He decided to change the subject. “Did you know him?”
“Who?”
“Dempsey. Guy that got topped.”
Krish looked away. “Not really. He wasn’t one of us, you know?”
“That’s what Liz said.”
Krish nodded. “He was a thief, yeah? Liked to lift people’s wallets, steal their identities, that sort of thing. Never been big on that myself.” He smiled. “I prefer to make up my own. Less hassle.”
“He was old school. Like Liz.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that, man. She’ll pop your plums like it was nothing.” Krish shivered. “Liz don’t fuck around. That’s why she’s in charge.”
“I thought nobody was in charge.”
“Well, she’s nobody.” Krish banged on a locker. “She’s the original model, you know. DedSec one point oh.”
“So she’s out of date and buggy?”
“Why else would she stick a skeng in your face, you dozy bastard?” Krish shook his head. “She is not to be messed about, ya get me?”
Olly bobbed his head. “Trust me, I am well aware of that.”
“DedSec – it used to be easy, you know?” Krish sat down beside him. “Decrypt some shit, drop some information on the dark web, clap some cash from a bank machine and ’ting. Hacktivism, bruv. Non-violent.”
“Liz didn’t seem like the non-violent type to me.”
“Changing, innit?” Krish scratched his chin. “Now we got people talking about drone warfare and guerrilla resistance shit, you know? Like proper freedom fighters.”
Olly looked at him. “I don’t want to shoot nobody.”
“No choice, bruv. Day’s coming, you know? Everybody sees it.”
Olly nodded and looked away. He and Krish sat in silence for a time. “Sometimes, I see all this shit and think maybe the best thing to do would be to cut the signal, you know?” Olly said, after a time. “Crash everything and begin again.”
“What, like – everything-everything?”
Olly nodded. “Everything, bruv. All of it. Start over from the zero point, right?”
“Lot of people would die.”
“Lot of people going to die anyway.” Olly looked up. “Shit. I don’t know.”
“Lucky we ain’t in charge,” Krish said, and slapped him on the back. “Liz sent me to look for you, by the way. She thinks she found something.”
“Why does she want me?”
“You belong to her now. I don’t make the rules.”
“Cheers,” Olly said, drily. He stood. “Let’s go see what she’s after.”
Olly followed Krish out into the cellar. Things were humming. The shooting had everyone on edge, and they were all trying to look busy and stay out of Liz’s way. Heads bent, fingers tapping at keyboards, virtual or otherwise. Stock information and exchange rates danced across the closest screens. “Payday,” Krish murmured. Olly nodded.
DedSec, or at least the London hive, seemed to get most of its funding through peer-to-peer transactions. ETO accounts were regularly set up for people who didn’t exist, except on paper, or in cyberspace, rather. Generative network software could create composite facial images for bogus social media accounts, bot algorithms could be tweaked to post regularly and semi-coherently. Olly had done some of it himself – he had a handful of sock puppets set up, and often used them as camouflage for his DedSec runs.
The hard currency – the seed money for everything – came from government and corporate accounts. Nothing big, nothing flashy: quiet programs designed to divert fractions of a penny into ghost-accounts on a regular basis. That sort of pittance was hardly noticed by company accounting, and it snowballed quickly, if you knew how to invest it.
If a lot of money was needed very quickly, there were always smash and grabs – a virus attack on corporate systems and a quick snatch of everything you could get in the window the virus opened for you. But that attracted attention. It was easier to hit a local villain in the wallet, and not the digital kind.
Olly had never participated in a raid like that. The thought of waving a gun around in a betting shop after hours, or busting up an illegal counting house, left him feeling cold. It was too much like being an actual