Zero Day

by Jan Gangsei

  “Why?”

  “It’s too dangerous, Addie,” Liz said. “Just think about it. You’d have one user with unfettered access to all that data—every single person with a computer, smartphone, you name it. It’s terrifying. What if the program ended up in the hands of a dictator or a tyrant?”

  “So what did you do with it?” Addie said, voice shaking. “Destroy it?”

  “No,” Liz said. “The only copy is on my development computer in my home office. It’s not networked, so no one can access it. But I couldn’t get rid of it—partly out of pride, I guess. But also because it’s only a matter of time before someone else begins to develop the same type of software, and I have to be ready if Nova is going to stay competitive.”

  Addie’s ears began to ring. So that’s why she couldn’t find Shi in any of her mother’s directories. It was on a stand-alone.

  The waiter came and placed two steaming bowls of soup in front of Addie and her mother. The pungent smell of fish made her queasy.

  “I’m sorry, Ad,” Liz said. “Am I boring you with all this work talk? Sometimes I can get off on a tangent, and forget everyone isn’t as interested in programming as me.”

  “No,” Addie said. “I feel like I’m learning a lot.” She tried a small sip of soup. It tasted better than it smelled. “I’m curious about something, though,” she said. “If you never really planned on letting Shi see the light of day, why spend all those years creating it in the first place?”

  “Like I said,” Liz sighed. “It was how I coped. A part of me believed that if I could just make the world more secure, you never would have been taken in the first place.”

  Darrow found himself momentarily speechless as a group of students passed him on their way off the dock. What in the hell was she doing here? Harper waved a hand in front of his face.

  “Um, Darrow?” she said. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  Darrow snapped back to reality. “Not a ghost. Elinor,” he said, a knot forming in his stomach. “I just saw Elinor. I had no idea she was coming back so soon. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “I didn’t think she was coming home until summer break either,” Harper said. “That’s crazy. But no, it’s not what I want to talk to you about. So can we go somewhere else?” she said, stuffing her hands in her pockets and glancing around anxiously.

  “Sure,” Darrow said, even though he wanted nothing more than to go home, shower, and forget this day ever happened. “I’m parked behind the boathouse. Let me grab my things and I’ll meet you at my car.”

  Darrow picked up his stuff, avoiding the post-race recap with his teammates. He found Harper in the parking lot, leaning on his scratched driver’s side door.

  “What happened here?” she said. “You piss someone off?”

  “Long story,” Darrow said. He pushed his key fob and the car doors unlocked with a beep. Darrow climbed in the driver’s seat and Harper slid into the passenger side.

  “So what is it?” Darrow said. He rolled down the window to let in some fresh air and shifted on the hot leather seat, facing Harper.

  “It’s McQueen,” she said in a rush.

  “McQueen?” Darrow repeated, confused. “What about him?”

  Harper took a breath. “So you know how it looked like he had a heart attack? Well, his toxicology report just came back…”

  “Whoa. Wait a minute,” Darrow interrupted. “His toxicology report? How did you get your hands on that?”

  “A source,” Harper said, shortly. “Sorry, can’t say.”

  “Fair enough,” Darrow said. The halls of Cabot were filled with the children of high-level players from all over the world. It wasn’t hard to imagine Harper would find several solid sources among them. And Darrow knew she’d never give them up.

  “Here’s the thing,” Harper said. “According to the toxicology report, McQueen had ten times the normal dosage of Ramipril—that’s an ACE inhibitor, lowers the blood pressure—in his system. More than enough to kill him.”

  Darrow sat there a moment, letting Harper’s words sink in. “What? How does something like that happen?” he said shakily.

  “Autopsy is calling it suicide.”

  “Suicide?” Darrow said. “That doesn’t make sense.” McQueen was the last person on earth Darrow would peg as suicidal. “Exactly,” Harper said. “That’s what my source said, too. And with that kind of overdose, it couldn’t have been accidental.”

  If it wasn’t suicide, or an accident…“So what you’re saying…” Darrow began in a low whisper, then stopped and shivered. “Why would someone tell you all of this?”

  “Because not everyone in the family is buying the official version,” Harper said. “They don’t have anything to go on, and they’re afraid to go public with it. But they’re not getting anywhere with the administration, either. They say President Webster’s advisors just want to sweep the whole thing under the rug because either way they spin it, an overdose makes the administration look bad. If McQueen killed himself because he was stressed about the attacks, they’re afraid it hands Cerberus a win; and if he was murdered, well…”

  “Holy shit,” Darrow said, understanding now why he hadn’t heard his mother mention anything about this at home. She confided in Darrow a lot, but not about everything—especially when it involved things that might paint the administration in a bad light.

  A group of students crunched across the gravel in front of Darrow’s car, startling him. He was reminded of how vulnerable and exposed they were sitting out here. D.C. had been under attack. Darrow himself had been threatened in a dark parking garage on Saturday night. And now someone might have tampered with McQueen’s medication. But who? And why? What had McQueen wanted to talk to him about? What about the situation had changed?

  His thoughts raced back to the morning when he’d found the general. He pictured McQueen, sprawled on the floor, fingers clutching Darrow’s shirt. He’d been choking out words, trying to tell him something. But what? Darrow replayed the scene over and over in his head.

  She’s sir…She’s sir…She’s…

  What did that mean? Cheshire? She’s sure. She’s sir…

  All the blood drained from Darrow’s face and he gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white.

  She’s Cerberus.

  Addie, McQueen had said. She’s Cerberus.

  It was early October, six months ago, and a chill had already settled into the air. Addie sat at the computer in her bedroom of the New York farmhouse. She and Michael were home alone on the sprawling estate just south of Penn Yan and the Finger Lakes. The compound, complete with its own private airstrip, had been in Susan Erlander’s family for generations. As Susan was an only child, it was bequeathed to Karl and Michael upon her death. At first, Karl had left it mothballed, too plagued with memories of his dead wife to return. When Addie had joined the family he’d gone back, merely seeking a remote place to hide at first. But as he’d uncovered the antique sofas and chairs, dusted off the tables and pictures, he’d discovered it made the perfect home base. A place to go when they weren’t busy traveling the world for Karl’s many meetings. A place where the many images of Susan’s smiling face were a comfort—and a reminder of why they needed to take action.

  On this particular night, Father was en route to Milan on a business trip. He’d left Addie and Michael behind. There was no longer any fear that Addie would try to run. She had long since accepted her place in the family. Her rightful place. She, Michael, and Karl. Cerberus. The three-headed beast that oversaw a legion of loyal followers, tasked with keeping a watchful eye on the underworld while everyone else slept. Addie alone didn’t have the tattoo—too risky, if anyone saw it.

  Addie’s palms were sticky with sweat. She’d been monitoring the chat room of an obscure terrorist group based in Yemen that Karl had tipped her off about right before he left. They were chattering about something big going down. Tonight. She wasn’t sure if what she was seeing now was true, but s
he hoped like hell it wasn’t. She called for her brother.

  “Hey, Mikey! Come here. Quick.”

  Michael came in from the kitchen, sidestepping the jeans she’d left all over the floor, and stood behind her. Addie pointed at the computer screen.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Addie said shakily.

  Michael read. “Someone’s hacked into the power grid. Why? They looking to cause a major outage?”

  “No,” Addie said. “It’s worse. Look closer. At what they’re targeting.”

  Michael leaned in. “Calvert Cliffs…Three Mile Island…Diablo Canyon…” He stopped and let out a horrified gasp. “Nuclear power stations?”

  “Yeah,” Addie said. “And if I’m reading this right, they’re not just planning to cause outages. They’re going to cause simultaneous meltdowns.”

  “Oh my God,” Michael said. “Meltdowns?”

  Addie nodded, too horrified to speak. “Call Father.”

  Mikey pulled his phone from his back pocket, dialed and waited. “I can’t reach him,” he said, his voice high with anxiety. “He must not have service. I don’t know when we’ll be able to get through.” He dropped the phone on the desk. “What about…” Mikey trailed off. No one was allowed to contact Cerberus’s followers besides Karl unless he gave explicit permission. Only he knew the true scope of the network—and the identities of all its members.

  “You know I don’t have the access codes—or the time,” Addie said. “This is happening now.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Addie thought about trying to alert the authorities. But the clock was ticking, and she realized by the time she reached the right person, it might be too late. They might not even believe her—whoever had hacked the grid was covering their tracks well, using dummy pages to make it appear that operations were normal.

  “We have to stop it ourselves,” Addie said. But she knew that “we” meant Addie. Mikey was by no means useless with a computer, but Addie had left him in the dust years ago. Unfortunately, Father never let him forget it. But there was no time to think about that now.

  Addie cracked her neck and started to type. Sweat formed on her brow. Whoever had hacked into the grid had also set up a wall of security to keep anyone from shutting their operation down. Addie couldn’t get in with any of her usual methods. She kept sucking in short breaths, but couldn’t seem to fill her lungs.

  “Whoever did this is good,” she said. “I’m not getting in.”

  “You can do it, Lilla. I know you can. Like you did that time Father took us to Paris, remember?” Michael said. He’d been pacing back and forth behind her, leaving a groove in the carpet. “Father said that hack was nearly impossible.”

  Addie cracked her knuckles. She remembered the SQL injection she’d used to get into that jihadist site. It was worth a try. Frantically watching the clock, she typed. The screen switched over—she was in. But there were still lines of complicated code to sort through, and time was ticking away.

  There was a buzzing in her ears. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said, the words coming out flat and toneless. Ninety-nine reactors scattered across thirty states, and they were poised to melt down in minutes. Addie tried not to consider what would happen if she failed: immediate death for hundreds of thousands; radiation poisoning and slow, agonizing deaths for millions more.

  Hands shaking, she tried a simple system reset. It immediately failed. Not that she had expected anything different. It was going to take too long to rewrite the code. But she had to keep looking for a solution. Suddenly, her screen flashed. It was an alert. The core temperature at Turkey Point was rising rapidly, five minutes ahead of schedule.

  Addie blinked back tears. Turkey Point was just south of Miami, Florida, one of the most highly populated areas near any nuclear plant. In desperation, Addie inserted a quick line of code into the script running in front of her—a virus she and Father had designed together but hadn’t tested yet. Something that would disrupt a system and allow her to take control.

  She held her breath as the screen flashed again. Addie let out a small cry as she continued typing.

  “What is it?” Michael gasped. There were red marks all over his face from where he’d been clutching it. “Is it too late?”

  “No,” she said, breathlessly. “I’m in. The core temperature at Turkey Point is dropping. I’m resetting the grid.”

  She kept typing frantically until, several minutes later, she was done. She stood and faced Michael.

  “I knew you could do it, Lilla,” he said.

  She choked back a sob, then collapsed into his arms, crying with relief.

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  When Addie and Liz returned to the West Wing after dress shopping, Liz broke away to meet with her chief of staff about an upcoming “Twitter town hall” with the First Lady. It amazed Addie how quickly the White House had returned to normal, how quickly the entire country seemed to have reverted to the status quo, now that Cerberus had apparently been stopped in its tracks. The president’s press office was riding a wave of sudden popularity, touting how swiftly the administration had shut down the attacks and brought Addie’s kidnappers to justice. Their naiveté blew Addie’s mind; it was a constant reminder of why her mission wasn’t complete. Not yet.

  She rode the elevator to the residence, where she was greeted with silence. It was almost 6 P.M. Mackenzie was in her playroom with the nanny; the staff was in the kitchen preparing for dinner. Addie stepped into the foyer, waving good-bye to the Secret Service agent manning the elevator.

  When the door slid shut, Addie entered the Center Hall. But instead of returning to her room like normal, she went the other way, straight for her mother’s study. She paused at the door and caught her breath, hesitating. For years, Addie had been plagued by the idea of her own mother forgetting about her. But it was a lot easier to believe it when Liz was a distant figure on the news. Now that she’d seen the lines on her mother’s face, felt the way Liz trembled when her slender fingers wrapped around Addie’s, she knew it wasn’t true. Her mother had never gotten over Addie’s disappearance. And she’d created Shi to try to save her. She might have been too late, but at least she had tried. How could Addie steal it from her, knowing what she knew now?

  Except she wasn’t stealing it. She was making sure Liz’s technology was put to use. So no other child had to face what Addie and Michael had faced. So that attacks like the nuclear meltdown she’d stopped at the very last minute never had a chance of happening again. Millions of lives meant more than Addie’s guilty conscience.

  She pushed open the door and slipped inside. It was still the cluttered mess she remembered, the desk with a computer and papers in toppling stacks. And there was the second computer, by itself on a side desk. Addie couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that earlier. Of course her mother would keep important development work on a stand-alone. She was way too careful to leave her work accessible to hackers. She didn’t make herself vulnerable to things like zero-day flaws. Liz Webster’s only flaw was her love for her daughter, Addie realized as guilt stabbed again at her heart. And she’d never realize what had happened until it was too late.

  Addie exhaled, sat in front of the computer, and powered it up. It didn’t take long to find Shi. In fact, after all her searching, it almost felt too easy. Addie pulled the blank thumb drive from her pocket—she’d been carrying it around for days, just in case—and jammed it into the USB port.

  She dragged the Shi icon to the drive, taking short breaths, trying to keep herself from hyperventilating as the program transferred. She sat still as a stone, acutely aware of every sound in the hallway outside.

  She checked the progress bar: fifty percent complete. She clenched and unclenched her fists, wishing this thing would just. Hurry. Up.

  Status: 64%

  Addie heard voices echoing from somewhere else in the residence. Someone was getting off the elevator. Her mo
ther? Addie began to sweat. She heard the elevator door ding.

  75%

  85%

  Footsteps, headed her way.

  92%

  Addie swallowed a scream as the tapping of feet grew closer. And closer.

  97%

  Almost to the door.

  100%

  Addie yanked the drive out and jammed it into her pocket just as someone spoke.

  “There you are.”

  Addie spun around.

  A girl was standing at the door. She was a few inches taller than Addie, with golden-brown hair cut in an asymmetrical bob. Her oversized sweater hung off one shoulder, showing off a hot-pink bra strap, and her calculating gray eyes took Addie in, lingering on her face.

  “Ellie,” Addie breathed. “Oh my God, no one told me you were—”

  She broke off as her sister collided with her, wrapping Addie in a tight hug. Elinor was slight, like Addie, but she felt more jagged somehow—all angles, no curves.

  “I can’t believe it’s really you,” Elinor said into her shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “Yeah, you too,” Addie said, pulling back and looking at her sister. “Are you back for good?”

  Elinor flopped into a chair and began picking at her chipped fingernail polish, the same shade of pink as her bra. “No,” she said. “I’m just here for a few days. Got a weekend pass. Part of my ‘rehabilitation.’” She made air quotes with her fingers and rolled her eyes. “Have to make sure I can be trusted not to do something stupid on my own. Down a bottle of pills or slash my own wrists or something.”

  “Oh,” Addie said, at a loss for words. “Ellie,” she began awkwardly, “I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about everything that happened after…you know. It can’t have been easy.”

  Ellie just looked at her. “Seriously, Addie? You were freaking kidnapped and you’re saying sorry to me?”

  “No, I just mean—about the pills, and…” Addie trailed off. This was going all wrong.

  Ellie reached up to brush a lock of hair from her face. Addie noticed her hand shaking.