Day Zero

like a light going out, only not quite. A brief moment of horrible realization, followed by a slackness as everything in the human machine stuttered to a halt. He’d never seen anyone die before. And he was certain he didn’t want to see it again.
The garage was shuttered and dark. Cast iron window frames, now boarded over, glared blindly at the street. Loading doors on the opposite side opened onto the Limehouse Cut, though he couldn’t remember anyone ever opening them.
The building hadn’t always been a garage. Olly’s feed filled with local colour as he approached it. It had started as a sailmaker and chandler’s stores – whatever those were – before transitioning into various sorts of warehouse, and finally, a garage.
It had been vacant since before Olly had been in short pants, though it still had a faded sign declaring itself a MOT centre. Oil stains marked the broken, weed-choked parking area in front of the bay doors and the iron fencing was plastered with signs offering a cheap sale, if one contacted the estate agent.
Olly knew for a fact that the agent had also gone out of business. Nor were they the only ones. The housing market had tanked a few years ago and never quite recovered. Even so, every few months, some firm or other would come sniffing around, looking to knock everything down and build luxury flats, the way they had with the neighbouring derelict shops and units. They always went away disappointed. DedSec made certain of it.
He slipped through a gap in the chained gate, and squeezed his bike through. Bits of unidentifiable rusted machinery littered the lot, like the detritus of a losing battle. Some of it was rigged with motion sensors keyed to send a silent alert to the Optiks of every DedSec member in the area. Closed-loop recording devices would be tracking his every step. Not that they would see much, in his case.
There were drones whizzing by overhead, but the garage had a concealed baffle-unit attached to the spine of the roof. The device inserted regular three second interruptions into the feed of any recording device in range, making the garage – and anyone coming in and out – as good as invisible.
Of course, if someone were watching from one of the cars across the street, it wouldn’t matter. But Olly wasn’t getting any pings from unknown Optiks, so he was reasonably confident in not being spotted. That didn’t mean he wanted to linger outside any longer than necessary.
The shutters were always locked, unless someone needed to hide a car in a hurry. He wheeled his bike around to the side entrance, waving to the concealed security cameras, and pressed his Optik to the front of the lock. A hidden sensor trilled, and the lock released with a click. Olly pushed the door closed behind him once he’d gotten his bike inside. The lock, and the alarm system attached to it, rearmed themselves. If you didn’t have the right app installed on your Optik, the alarm went off and a reinforced security shutter slid into place behind the plain old wooden door.
If someone were determined to get in, it wouldn’t really keep them out. But it would buy everyone inside a few extra minutes to escape. That was DedSec standard operating procedure in a nutshell – observe, harass, delay – run away to fight another day.
Olly had never been a big fan of running away. Even as a kid, he’d tried to slug it out with the bigger boys. It never worked out well, but that’d only made him try harder the next time. He’d gotten beaten up a lot, but he’d learned how to roll with it. And how to hit back without getting caught.
That was what the stunt with the shelf-stacking robots had been – hitting back. Or at least that was what he told himself. It was an old British tradition, wasn’t it? Stealing from the rich, and all. Proper Robin Hood, he was. Only instead of a bow and arrows, he’d used a cloned Optik and a cracker-app. He’d been proud of himself and wetting his pants all at the same time. Waiting for the police to knock on his door. But it hadn’t been the police.
DedSec had come calling, and Olly had gone with them without too much hesitation. He liked to think he’d impressed them, but he knew they were pulling in anyone with the necessary skills. DedSec weren’t the only hacktivist hive in London, but they were the best organized. That was the claim, at least. Sometimes, Olly thought it was anything but. You never knew who you’d be talking to one day to the next, and sometimes you got asked to do contradictory shit. There was no one to complain, even if he’d been brave enough to do so.
Screw-ups didn’t get to complain, and Olly was a screw-up. He’d fucked up twice – once more, and he was out in the cold. Maybe banged up in Pentonville, if his handlers were feeling vindictive. The first time had been an honest mistake – he’d handed a package to the wrong person. The second time, he’d almost gotten himself and few others arrested.
Olly touched his jacket, and felt the envelope. No screw-up this time though. Despite the universe’s best efforts. He took a deep breath, inhaling dust and the smell of mildew. The interior of the building was just as dodgy as the exterior. The roof was mostly glass, set into an iron frame that was being eaten up by rust and bird shit.
Walkways ran along the upper reaches of the interior, largely inaccessible from the ground floor. Heavy winches and loading hooks hung from a track along the underside of the roof. Rusted out generators and other bits of obsolete industrial equipment sat abandoned along the walls. Patches of green mould ran along the brickwork in the corners closest to the river and the loading doors. The broken floor was dotted by pools of