Zero Day

by Jan Gangsei

  The reporter spoke into her microphone, shouting over the chaos. “We’re here live at the Arlington Cemetery Metro, where just minutes ago a hijacked Blue Line train pulled into the station.”

  She paused and gestured behind her.

  “This is what we’ve learned,” she said. “The train’s operating system was hacked after departing Foggy Bottom a half hour ago, leaving the conductor with no control. The hijackers were apparently able to remotely operate the train. They stopped it in a tunnel between Foggy Bottom and this station, at which point they detonated several canisters of what is now believed to be harmless gas.” She held her hand to her ear, squinting. “And I’ve just received word that Cerberus is again claiming responsibility, and has provided the media with copies of e-mails and texts allegedly detailing how they planned this attack, right under the noses of the very people tasked with protecting this country. We’ll have more as the situation develops.”

  Addie clicked over to YouTube. Already, dozens of people had posted shaky cell phone videos of the attack—passengers huddled together in fear as the canisters exploded on the train, terrified people running from the Arlington Cemetery station, children crying. Addie had to close the window. It was too much. In her mind’s eye, she couldn’t shake another all-too-familiar series of images: terrified faces covered in blood, mangled remains of small children. She heard the screams, the wails of the sirens. The stretchers carrying lifeless bodies. The smoke twisting from the underground wreckage, reaching out like ghostly fingers clawing at the daylight. He had made her watch it on video—so many times, the scene had been seared into her memory. Sometimes she even dreamed it was her face covered in blood, her screams piercing the morning calm.

  Addie rubbed her temples, pushing the thoughts from her mind, and opened a new window. She typed her own name into the search engine. A string of news articles came back. She clicked the top link. A pretty generic news story about her return, along with the expected questions about where she’d been, who had taken her. She clicked more, making sure to leave no trace of her activity in the browser’s history. She was good at covering her tracks. The only person she couldn’t fool was him. He always knew when she had searched for something forbidden.

  She scanned reports about the ongoing investigation. According to “inside sources,” the FBI was actively questioning members of an unnamed domestic terror group. So far, the leads had turned up nothing.

  Addie clicked on the comment section, raising an eyebrow as she read:

  * * *

  She’s an imposter. Just look at her! Looks nothing like the real Addie.

  Reply

  * * *

  Obviously the White House is hiding something. How does a kid disappear without a trace for eight years and then show up out of nowhere?

  Reply

  * * *

  The real Adele Webster died eight years ago. The one you see in the White House today is an expensive clone, created in a secret lab in the Mojave Desert. Don’t be fooled! #conspiracytheory

  Reply

  * * *

  You mean to tell me one day “Elinor” ships off to boarding school and right after that “Addie” turns up, just in time to get the president’s approval ratings out of the toilet? Right. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid, sheeple.

  Reply

  Elinor. Addie tried to imagine what her sister must be like now. Even though she’d seen photographs around the house of a smiling teenager with blunt-cut, highlighted brown hair, the only image Addie could conjure up of Ellie was the little girl with serious gray eyes who had watched quietly from the corner while Addie and Darrow played. Addie ached to know her sister was okay. But her mother had been clear—even she and the president weren’t supposed to contact Elinor until she came home.

  Addie exhaled, reminding herself that she had work to do. She launched another site, an obscure cooking blog that never saw any traffic, save for the random bored housewife that stumbled upon it by accident in search of a new meatloaf recipe. Addie scanned the page for the symbol. She found it hidden in two zeros in the bottom right corner, and clicked. The screen went black, except for a single blinking cursor. Addie’s heart rate accelerated, beating in time with the flashing rectangle. She quickly typed in a string of letters, followed by an encryption key.

  A new screen popped up, blue with another blinking cursor. Addie entered her code name and waited. Within moments, a line of text appeared.

  You missed your rendezvous. What happened?

  Addie wiped her palms on her jeans and answered.

  Couldn’t break away in time. Sorry.

  That is unfortunate. We will have to make an alternate plan. What is the progress with Shi?

  Assessing situation. Gaining trust. Will take time to locate.

  Her heart pounded. There was a pause. The cursor blinked ominously. Finally, another line of text appeared.

  Can we still meet our target date?

  Addie sucked in a breath. Just weeks away. She was surrounded by people watching her every move. But Addie was smarter than them.

  She had to be.

  Yes. April 15. On target.

  Very good. April 15. Never forget.…

  Never forget.

  How could she?

  Addie had learned her lesson. She knew better—probably better than anyone—the consequences of guarding your front gate while leaving your back door unlocked.

  “You gonna finish those?” Harper Cutting tucked her blue-tipped blond hair behind her ear and gave Darrow a friendly poke when he didn’t reply. “Everything okay, D?” she asked, helping herself to the thick-cut fries Darrow piled onto his plate every day at lunch. Of course, the Cabot cafeteria offered a wide selection of healthy choices, but Darrow and Harper were both fried-food devotees and usually made a beeline for the grill.

  They were sharing a small table in the corner underneath the wide arched window. Despite the Cabot Friends School’s reputation as educator of D.C.’s elite, the cafeteria was modest and austere, much more in keeping with the school’s Quaker roots. Round wooden tables adorned the high-ceilinged room, the students clustered around them laughing and chatting. The last things Darrow felt like doing.

  “I’m…not sure, to be honest,” he said.

  Harper dipped a fry in ketchup and popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully before responding. “I know the feeling,” she said. “Want to talk about it?”

  Darrow rubbed the back of his neck. He and Harper had been best friends since sixth grade. And even though Darrow had a lot of friends, Harper was the only one he could really talk to. About anything. She was the only one he could trust with the truth about who he was and the things he’d done. Harper understood. She had her own secrets.

  “I saw Addie last night,” he said.

  Harper glanced up sharply. “And?”

  “And,” he said, “it was just…screwed up. We went to their Virginia place. Addie, she’s…kind of quiet and everything. But if you didn’t know what had happened to her, you’d think nothing had happened to her.”

  “That’s probably just her way of coping,” Harper said gently. “I’m sure she just wants to feel like a normal person.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing,” Darrow said. “It’s like she wants everyone to think she’s got it together. But right before dinner I found her hiding in the woods outside the house. All freaked-out, saying she’d heard voices downstairs and she got scared and ran. She begged me not to tell her parents.”

  “Jesus,” Harper said. “Did you?”

  “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Good. I mean, unless you think she’s, like, a danger to herself, I would leave it. God knows I wouldn’t want my parents hearing about everything I did. They’d probably pull me out and send me to a real Christian school. None of this Quaker ‘friends’ bullshit.”

  Darrow snorted. Harper’s father, who’d made a fortune running a telecom start-up, had then turned around and used his billions to secure the junior Sen
ate seat from South Carolina six years ago. Once there, he’d quickly become the unofficial spokesperson for the far right. Blonde, beautiful, and doe-eyed, Harper was every inch the perfect Southern belle, and her sweet smile was stamped all over her father’s campaign materials. If the senator ever found out his daughter had a secret belly button ring, a tattoo on her lower back, and a girlfriend, his head would probably explode. Darrow was the only person Harper was out to, and he’d guard that secret with his life.

  Two more guys and a girl pushed their trays onto the table and sat down with Darrow and Harper. The rest of their usual crew: Connor, Luke, and Keagan. Like pretty much everyone else here, they were the children of Someone Important: Connor, the son of two high-powered lobbyists; Luke, whose mother was the South African ambassador to the U.S.; and Keagan, offspring of the head of the World Bank. It sometimes gave Darrow a headache, being surrounded by so much importance. Even though he was technically the kid of someone important, too, he didn’t really see himself that way. His mother had come from nothing, his father from even less.

  “I hate you both,” Connor said with a dazzling grin. “Coach has me off anything that’s even come close to a deep fryer.” He was tall and sandy-haired, and had a long, angular face with oversized features that would have looked misplaced on anyone else. But Connor’s confidence radiated from him like the sun, and nothing about him seemed awkward or unintentional. Darrow had never seen Connor in anything but seasonally appropriate sports gear—fall meant Redskins, winter the Caps, and spring the Nats. Today he wore a CABOT TRACK AND FIELD sweatshirt in anticipation of the meet that afternoon.

  “Fine line between hate and love,” Harper said, picking up another fry. She leaned in to waft it in Connor’s face before seductively popping it into her own mouth. Harper and Connor flirted so shamelessly that people often assumed they were together—a rumor Harper did nothing to dispel.

  Keagan shot a quick glance at Darrow as Luke reached into his bag, pulled out an AP Chemistry textbook, and began scribbling furiously in a notebook.

  “So,” Keagan began, anxiously twisting a lock of bright red hair around her finger. Darrow knew what was coming. Keagan was one of the nicest people he knew, but she had a wicked addiction to gossip of every kind. She was an avid follower of the “Addie Webster mystery,” as tabloids and gossip Web sites liked to call it. And though she usually had enough sense not to bring it up around Darrow, he knew she wouldn’t be able to help herself today. “Have you seen Addie yet?” she asked in one breathless gush.

  “Yeah, last night,” Darrow said, mouth pressed in a line.

  “Okay,” Keagan said. “Okay, good. So it’s really her. Is she, um, doing all right? Is it true what they’re saying online about—”

  “You know as much as I do,” Darrow cut in, his voice sharper than he meant it to be.

  “Keagan,” Luke said, barely looking up from his chemistry. “Let up. Pretty bloody obvious Darrow doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Don’t put words in his mouth,” Keagan snapped back. “Darrow, you don’t have to tell me anything, I just thought you might want to, because—well, you were the last person to see her before she was taken and that can’t have been easy, so I just wanted to say I’m here for you. If you want to talk.”

  Darrow shot Harper a pleading look. She nodded slightly, grabbed her tray, and stood.

  “Sorry to break up the lovefest, but I’ve got to go set up for this afternoon’s podcast,” she said. “Darrow, can you come with? I need someone to help with the sound check.”

  Darrow stood and joined her, saying good-bye to the rest of the table before dropping their trays on a conveyer belt on their way out.

  “Thanks,” Darrow said.

  “No worries,” Harper said. “I’ve got your back.”

  They walked through the hallway toward Harper’s “recording studio,” i.e. a retrofitted janitor’s closet, at the end. Despite its humble origins, Harper’s two-year-old podcast had gained a following far beyond the walls of Cabot. With her unique access to the capital’s leaders and a finger on the pulse of current issues, Harper’s show covered everything from happenings at Cabot to the latest political storm brewing on Capitol Hill. Her loyal followers included even the most influential political bloggers, who occasionally scooped CNN based on something they learned from Harper’s show. Her dream was to become a Pulitzer prize–winning investigative reporter, and she’d already been accepted into Northwestern’s undergrad journalism program.

  As Darrow and Harper made their way toward the senior hallway, a security guard in a dark blue uniform turned the corner, nodding at them as they passed. Thanks to the recent attacks, there were guards on every floor of Cabot now. Darrow knew it was an extra precaution to ensure that the children of the city’s Important People were kept safe. But between the lockdown here and at the White House, Darrow wasn’t sure whether he felt secure, or like a prisoner.

  “So, have you heard anything from Elinor?” Harper asked. “How’s she taking Addie’s return?”

  “Hard to say. She barely talks to me anymore. But she texted last night,” Darrow said. “Wanted to know if I’d seen Addie.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I had,” he answered.

  “That’s all?”

  “What else was I going to say?” Darrow said defensively.

  Harper raised an eyebrow. “So are you going to tell Addie about you and her sister?”

  Darrow shrugged, uncomfortably aware of Harper’s pointed expression. He could still picture the cold, hard look Elinor had given him when he’d confronted her about the pills and threatened to tell her parents if she didn’t stop. The way she’d just narrowed her gray eyes at him and walked away. The last thing he’d expected was for her to turn around and down a handful of pills later that night, landing herself in the hospital with a tube down her throat. Darrow vacillated between feeling guilty and thankful that at least now Ellie was getting help.

  Harper stopped at her locker. “Let me grab my stuff,” she said, turning and reaching for the handle. Then her hand suddenly dropped and she pulled something from her pocket. She stood there a moment, back to Darrow, shoulders hunched and head tilted down.

  “Harper?” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  Her back straightened and she faced him, bottom lip quivering. She closed her eyes and held out her phone; there was a text message from a blocked number.

  “Not again,” Darrow said.

  Harper just nodded. Darrow took the phone and read:

  You don’t see me, but I see you

  And all the secret things you do

  Mind your step and watch your back

  You never know when I’ll attack

  General James McQueen sat at his desk in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a view of the West Wing visible through the window behind him. He stared at his computer, the outline of his strong cheekbones, square jaw, and eight-dollar buzz cut reflected in the screen. Jiggling the mouse, he toggled between the half-dozen windows open in front of him, each displaying evidence Cerberus had sent to media outlets around the world—text messages, e-mails, discussion board postings—detailing how they’d overtly planned and carried out the attacks on the Republican fund-raiser and the Metro train. Everything had been laid out plain as day, time-stamped and dated in the weeks leading up to the assaults. It was a regular shitstorm.

  Of course, the press was eating it right up. Fingers were pointing in every direction; the right was claiming the administration was weak on security, while the administration was quick to blame the intelligence community. But McQueen knew better. The NSA, CIA, DIA could only do so much. Their hands had been tied the day President Webster took office and made good on his campaign promise to severely curtail the nation’s electronic surveillance policies. You couldn’t catch what you didn’t monitor: a fact that Cerberus was gleefully pointing out to anyone who would listen.

  An alarm on McQueen’s phone s
ounded: 8 A.M. McQueen paused what he was doing and pulled a bottle from his desk, dumping two pills out and tossing them into the back of his throat. He took a swig of water, swallowed hard, and shook his head. Damn arrhythmia. After tours in hostile zones all over the world, a piece of grenade lodged in his thigh, and two knees with zero cartilage left, the last thing McQueen ever figured would end his military career was the flu. But it had. Five years earlier, a freak bout of myocarditis after contracting the H1N1 virus had weakened his heart, forcing him to retire just before he pinned on his third star, and leaving him to pop pills twice a day for the rest of his life.

  But maybe it was for the best. Out in the civilian world, the former Special Forces intelligence officer had quickly established himself as an international expert on cybercrime. It wasn’t just that McQueen had a knack for coding and all things technical. He also possessed an uncanny ability to read other people, to ferret out their hidden motivations. In the early days of his military career, McQueen had personally recruited several key assets, knowing exactly when to use charm, when to rely on coercion. Now the battlefield had changed, with modern wars waged anonymously via keyboard strokes and drone strikes.

  But McQueen understood something most of his younger colleagues didn’t. The key to winning the battle wasn’t just to out-code, outwit, or terrorize your opponent—it was to get inside the head of the other guy. Figure out what made him act. And stop him before he did.

  McQueen turned his attention back to his computer and clicked open a timeline. Cerberus had been on his radar for about six years: a loosely structured organization that had grown to approximately two hundred anonymous members worldwide. Members didn’t appear to know each other in real life, and communicated only with code names, using a series of ever-changing secure message boards. While McQueen had never been able to identify any of the members, he knew the code name of the group’s leader—a man or woman going by the name of Dantes.