Zero Day

place?”
Leland shrugged. “We’ll find out when we get there.”
“I don’t know, Leland. This would be the third safe house?” Dario made a face. “I’m suddenly having trust issues. Maybe we should find our own place.”
Kelvin buried his face in his hands. “It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
“You’re sorry the devil made you do it?” Without waiting for an answer from Kelvin, Dario turned to Yona. “Mossad has contacts in Prague.”
Yona didn’t respond. It seemed to her that Dario already knew the answer. He was fishing for something else.
“Can they help us?” Dario asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Because you quit your job, didn’t you? You came here without authorization or funding.”
Wow. Dario knew.
Whenever the streetlights appeared outside the van windows, Yona could see three pairs of eyes staring at her inside the van.
Then they turned their attention to the elephant in the car.
“When Binary Systems worked on MedusaNet, we didn’t know that it was going to be sold to Molyneux,” Leland said. “However, two years later, the British company went under and MedusaNet suddenly had a new owner. You knew about the sale, Kel. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Ten million dollars says he didn’t have to tell anyone,” Dario replied.
Kelvin groaned. “My mother was in her last days on earth. There was no way Binary Systems could pay me that much for three months of work.”
“Was that when you took a month off?” Leland asked. “Mental health sabbatical?”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what I was up to. Aspasia threatened to kill my mother.” When no one replied, Kelvin said more. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? Will that bring back Vivek, Danika, and Jamal?” Leland’s voice was harsh. “You put us, our company, our reputation, our lives on the line. We nearly lost Cayson.”
“I had no idea Aspasia was going to put implants in their heads.”
“You escaped. How?”
“They need me to maintain the network. Well, actually, I led the team that did it.”
Yona was still listening. And recording the whole thing on her phone without anyone’s knowledge. They’d sort out the legal ramifications later. Or they’d thank her for the foresight.
“You got names?” Dario asked.
“In a secret safe. If I have to make a deal, that’s my insurance to get a reduced sentence.”
“Fair enough. Continue.”
“I worked on the system for a month, and then remotely for the next six months.” Kelvin slowed down now, as if measuring his words.
“Didn’t you say three months?” Yona asked.
“The project ran late.”
“As with most software projects,” Leland added. “What were your specs?”
“They wanted MedusaNet upgraded into a military grade network.”
Leland shook his head. “And you did it for ten million dollars. How many lives did you sacrifice?”
“I have no idea. I told you. I did it for the money. When I found out who Molyneux was…” Kevin choked. “Believe me, I tried to undo my work. Failing that, I tried to insert back doors so we could go back in and shut it down.”
“We?” Leland asked.
“We, Binary Systems. USA. FBI. INTERPOL. Mossad. Whoever. The good side.” Kelvin drew a deep breath. “I failed, Leland. I failed.”
“You didn’t fail,” Leland reminded him. “We used the kill switch in Cayson’s implant to knock out MedusaNet.”
“We—my team and I—designed another virus—a Plan B, so to speak, just in case the kill switch didn’t work. It was never planted. I got caught in the middle of installing that.”
“By Molyneux?”
“No. By some dude working on implants. Neon. He was in Ulysses’s cybernetics division, but we had played chess together online. Somehow he found out what I was doing. It must’ve slipped out of my mouth when I was blabbering.”
“And yet he helped you.”
“He wasn’t going to, but it turned out that he was an informant for the Mossad.” Kelvin looked at Yona.
Yona perked up when she heard Mossad mentioned, but Mossad had informants all over the world. She didn’t know anyone by the name Neon, but if Issachar were alive, he would know who worked with informants inside Molyneux’s organization.
“Why don’t you find out who handled Neon?” Leland asked Dario.
Dario nodded. “It would be easier if Yona asked someone.”
“I no longer work there,” Yona said.
“Early retirement. Were you forced?” Dario asked.
“That’s irrelevant to this. Why don’t we hear the rest of what Kelvin has to say?” Yona decided there was no point editing out that part of the conversation from the recorder.
In fact, because she no longer worked for the Mossad gave her more freedom to make her own calls.
Speaking of calls, she wondered if she should contact Reuel. The seasoned Mossad agent, semi-retired, might also know who handled Neon—if they could get his real name.
“What’s Neon’s real name?” Yona asked.
“That’s the thing. He’s dead. He got run over by a truck while he was crossing the street. After that, I knew I wasn’t safe.” Kelvin sighed. “I wish I had never bought Mother the big house.”
“You could have rented,” Dario said. “They have beachfront properties all along the coast.”
“Where were you when I needed a financial advisor?” Kelvin asked. “Too late now, anyhow. I sold the house, tried to return the money to Aspasia, but she wouldn’t take it.”
“When was that?”
“A few months before I saw Aspasia at the convention talking to Cayson.” Kelvin recalled having a good time going from booth to booth and collecting free merchandize. “When I saw her splash something on Cayson’s face and he went down, I was like, what on earth?”
“You ran, but you didn’t get far. Aspasia was after you.”
“And she’s still after me.”
“One wonders why,” Yona finally spoke. She didn’t want to sound ignorant.
“I’m sure she found out that I put the kill switch in MedusaNet. However, I don’t know who put it into Cayson’s head. It can’t be Neon because he’s dead. Maybe his Mossad handler found someone else. Who could have done it?”
“Ulysses?” Dario guessed. “The grandmaster hacker himself.”
Kelvin shook his head. “I’m not sure. The entire time I was in Prague and while I was working remotely, Aspasia never mentioned Ulysses.”
“She did the day she activated Cayson’s implant at the convention,”