Zero Day

in the streets. All day and all night.
Those were probably just—
Someone glanced her way.
Yona froze.
There was no way for her to backtrack. The alley might be small, but it was between two tall walls. There was literally no place to hide.
Suddenly someone groaned. Then another. They spoke in Czech. Something about getting another drink. They laughed.
Then the couple appeared in the dim light, staggering and singing out of tune.
The shadows ahead shook their heads and kept walking.
Thank You, God.
Yona followed the couple out onto the street and sidewalk. From the corner of her eye, she saw the three figures step toward a door. Under the streetlights, two of them pushed through the heavy wooden door.
They disappeared.
Yona’s eyes widened as she looked at her watch. That was the same location she was heading. An abandoned building. Nobody lived there—except maybe Kelvin.
Who were those people?
She waited a few more seconds before she made her move.
She wished she hadn’t come alone.

Chapter 3
Having covered her nose and mouth with a black mask which she had brought with her, Yona climbed the stairs in the musty stairwell, the Sig Sauer she had picked up from a local contact in her right hand. Personally, she preferred a Glock, but that was all Issachar’s friend had available. He wanted Kelvin dead as much as Yona did, so the Sig was free.
Yona’s intel said Kelvin was on the fourth floor of this abandoned building. She wished the rain had continued to fall because the natural noise-cancellation would have masked her presence.
She felt exposed, but the musty stairwell was her fastest way up. Her intel also said there was an elevator somewhere, but it was on the other end of the building. Besides, she had no time to test if the elevator even worked in this once-office complex that had seen better days some fifty-odd years before.
A piece of cement broke off from the edge of a step under Yona’s combat boots. She held her breath and froze.
She couldn’t hear anything else but the silent sound of something foreboding, as though she was walking into a trap.
What trap, exactly?
What did she care?
This mission of hers had effectively ended her illustrious career at the Mossad. No retirement check, no bonus, no advancement, no commendation. It was all over the moment she quit her job and flew to Europe to hunt down Kelvin.
And here he was, holed up in this condemned building.
On the third floor, she heard something.
Fist on flesh? Fist on bone?
Accompanied by a muffled groan.
Was someone being tortured? Kelvin torturing someone else?
The truth remained that Yona still had a hard time believing that Kelvin sold out Issachar. To whom, exactly? To Molyneux and her now defunct organization? To her successor? To the owners of MedusaNet?
What good was a dead Issachar to those terrorists?
He would be worth his weight in diamonds if he had been alive.
Yona sniffled.
Stepping across the dark floor, and then up the final flight of stairs, Yona wondered if she was in the right mental state of mind to be here.
Maybe that was why even Issachar’s best friend in Prague had warned her to grieve first before taking vengeance.
“How long must I grieve?” Yona remembered asking.
“At least six months. Three years, if needed.” Reuel had always been wise, but he knew his deceased friend’s protégé was impatient. “But if you must go now, let me help you.”
And help her, he did.
Yona arrived in Prague a week before on a tourist visa, with tickets to whatever classical concerts were happening this month. She even stayed through an entire Antoine Dvořák concerto performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, even though she preferred Béla Bartók, although not as much as her parents. They would have loved to be in the city at this time.
However, this wasn’t a family vacation.
This was a mission of vengeance.
Before she left the hotel, Reuel had warned her again not to do it.
“You’re emotional right now because you’re sad that Issachar is dead.”
Reuel’s words peppered her mind as she climbed the last flight of stairs.
How dare he recite Deuteronomy 32:35 to her? Now she couldn’t get it out of her head.
To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
“Child, vengeance belongs to the Lord,” Reuel reminded her.
Yona hated being called a child.
She was thirty-four years old. What was Reuel thinking, insulting her like that?
A smell of decayed fish assaulted her nose. What on earth?
She realized then that her mask was useless. However, it hid her face from anyone who could identify her and send word to Mossad about her unofficial visit to Prague to meet with Reuel, who had been tracking Kelvin for her, even as he protested all along the way.
In her head now, Yona could hear Reuel read another Bible verse. The same verse over and over. Yona didn’t like how he used Romans 12:19 against her.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Yona knew she had to be reminded not to take matters into her own hands, but to give that prerogative to God.
It was God’s Word to her, was it not? Delivered through Reuel as the eighty-eight-year-old man implored and begged her to call off her pursuit of the hacker.
But Issachar…
She blinked.
Maybe Reuel was right. She wasn’t in the right emotional state to be meting out vengeance and vigilante justice—
No.
Kelvin must die.
Tonight.
She head a woman’s voice coming from a room down the hallway. The door was partially hanging off the frame. There was something like flashlights inside.
The voice sounded familiar.
Very familiar.
She had heard it before on a mission with Issachar.
Before she could make a guess, something brushed past her calf. She was surrounded by darkness, so she couldn’t tell what it was. It felt like a feather duster or maybe something else just as soft.
Or she was merely imagining things.
Then she heard a quiet meow, the sound going away from her.
A cat in the night.


Chapter 4
One