Going Zero: A Novel

Phase One

7 Days Before Go Zero

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

THE FULL-LENGTH MIRROR IN THE lobby, there to lend a sense of light and space to the cramped entrance hall, is spotted with age, the corrosive grime picking at the silvering like a scab. Still, it works well enough for the rent-controlled residents—teachers, low-level civil servants, the owner of a bakery, and half a dozen retirees just grateful that the elevator works most of the time. They can pause and check themselves before going out, take one final glance to make sure skirt hems aren’t snagged in stockings, flies are done up, chins bear no toothpaste, hair isn’t hysterical, toilet paper isn’t clinging to shoes before they stumble into the street to be judged by their fellow citizens.

It’s useful for the end of the day, too. As the residents shake off the chill of the windy streets, loosen their coats, and empty their mailboxes, it’s the old mirror that will give them a first look at the damage the day has done.

The woman who has just come in glances at it reflexively. Here’s what the mirror shows: midthirties; black hair in a bob; big glasses that became fashionable again last year; long, wide-fit trousers with sneakers; and, under her good late-spring last-season coat, a stiffly ironed black blouse with a swirling floral print. She looks a lot like what she is—a librarian, or someone’s idea of the same. Bookish in her buttoned-up-ness, but independent-minded in the details: a huge pendant necklace, jangly earrings, a signet on her pinky. Could be on her way to a church bake sale, or to a #Resist event, impossible to say.

She unlocks her mailbox, pulls out a handful of envelopes, presses the little door closed until she hears the snap of the latch, which is when she sees that the mailbox label is slightly askew, so she squares it.

K. DAY

APARTMENT 10

The K is important. Not the full Kaitlyn. Just that single initial to identify her: call it Single Woman Trick 273. Comes right after walking home with your keys (weaponized) in your hand. Write Kaitlyn Day on the mailbox or directory, and you’re asking for trouble; every passing creep now knows there’s a single woman in the building and could start hanging around just to see if she needs saving, mocking, following, fucking, killing.

She sorts the mail over the recycling bin. Junk. Junk. Junk. Bill. Junk. Bill. And then . . . Oh my God. It’s here. It’s actually here.

The envelope has Department of Homeland Security printed on it. There’s even a frigging seal on the back; she thought that kind of thing went out with the Tudors. Inside, however, shitty government-grade paper where she had expected wedding-invite quality. Still, an invitation nonetheless.

Going Zero Beta Test, it reads across the top of the single sheet. That part is bold and underlined.

Dear Ms. Day,

Congratulations! You have been selected as one of ten participants in the Going Zero Beta Test of the Fusion Initiative, a WorldShare partnership with the U.S. government.

Per instructions, the Going Zero Beta Test will begin at 12:00 noon on May 1. At that time, you and nine other randomly selected participants will receive a message at the number on your application telling you to Go Zero!

At 2:00 p.m. the same day, your name, photo, and address will be provided to the joint task force of the Fusion Initiative at Fusion Central in Washington, DC.

While this test is in operation, you are at liberty to take whatever steps you feel necessary, consistent with the laws of the United States, to avoid being detained by the Capture Team dispatched by Fusion Central to find you. Any participants of the Going Zero Beta Test who are still at liberty at 12:00 noon on May 31 will receive a tax-free award of three million U.S. dollars ($3,000,000).

We thank you for your patriotic efforts, and for playing an important part in making your country safer.

Special Notice: Upon penalty of disqualification, you are not permitted to declare, announce, or claim to be a participant in the Going Zero Beta Test until you are cleared, in writing by this office, to do so. Please refer to your application for further details of your nondisclosure agreement (NDA), legal responsibilities, and possible penalties.

Kaitlyn looks up and sees her own reflection in the mirror again. Just an ordinary woman, a dime a dozen. But for the next five weeks, she needs to be exceptional.

Are you ready to be perfect, Kaitlyn Day? she asks herself. For that’s what she’ll need to be now.

Her reflection gives nothing away.

Go upstairs, she tells herself. Check everything. When the order comes to Go Zero, then she must be ready to disappear in the wink of a knowing eye. Erase herself. Vanish.

Who does that? Vanishes? Well, it happens. Hell, she knows that better than most. People can just—poof—be gone.

She needs to rest. This might be one of the last nights she’ll sleep easy in her own bed for a very long while. The reflection in the mirror doesn’t move for a few moments as she considers what lies ahead. Then it moves fast.

7 Days Later: 20 Minutes Before Go Zero

FUSION CENTRAL, WASHINGTON, DC

ON MAY 1, AT TWENTY minutes to noon, Justin Amari, unbreakfasted, rumple-haired, is greeted by a welcome committee outside Fusion Central, a private complex that had sprung up near McPherson Square the year before with odd speed and mystery—Silicon Valley Billionaire Cy Baxter Buys Block of Downtown DC, Spending More Time in City, Reasons Unknown.

Justin spots, among the faces, Cy Baxter’s almost-as-famous-as-he-is right hand, Erika Coogan, cofounder, with Baxter, of Fusion’s parent company, WorldShare. A powerhouse, too, if in her own subtle way.

Nervous? Justin asks her as he approaches.

The question surprises Erika into a grin.

I have faith in Cy, and in what we’re doing here, she says. Her voice is pitched low, just a trace of Texas left. But today, for sure I’m nervous. It’s big. Huge.

Along with other dignitaries, they walk across the lobby of glass and steel, then through a pair of high-security checkpoints, before entering the super-secure area, the no-digital-dust-on-your-shoes, no-cellphones-no-laptops-no-Fitbit-no-recorder-in-your-pen-cap area, whose atrium-like center and active hub, full of dedicated teams on the ground floor overlooked by a system of gantries, has been dubbed The Void.

The scale of it still shocks him. Ice-down-the-spine stuff. A vast hall of screens, within which are rows of desks occupied by the super-smart engineers, data scientists, intelligence agents, programmers, hackers, and myriad analysts from the private and public sectors who are the foot soldiers of the Fusion Initiative. And from a dais on the first floor fit for Captain Kirk, Cy Baxter, vibrating with nervous energy and pride, looks down on his mighty works.

I’m the one who should be nervous, Justin thinks. For one thing, it’s my ass that’s on the line here today.

All the screens—desktop, tablet, cell phone, even the huge ones on the rear wall—are black, sleeping, waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting to be woken.

Justin checks his watch. Fifteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds remaining . . . fifty-eight . . . fifty-seven . . .

When he is waved forward, he walks up to the dais where Cy waits, formally suited for once, sparing today’s crowd his usual adolescent and stubbornly unretired uniform of sneakers, baggy jeans, T-shirt bearing some inspiring quote like WHY THE FUCK NOT?

Also waiting, Justin’s boss, Dr. Burt Walker, CIA deputy director for science and technology, he and Cy up there looking like they’ve just discovered the Theory of Everything. Also with them, less pleased, clearly not so convinced that all this is such a great idea, is Walker’s predecessor (now CEO of some threat analysis start-up), Dr. Sandra Cliffe.

To Justin, Walker looks like he’s trying to spot a ribbon to cut. Wrong era, Burt. No ribbons here. What will initiate the launch of this all-important beta test will be something as inauspicious as the click of a single mouse, which in turn will fire the ten chosen candidates in this secret trial to Go Zero, to get lost. Rapidly, they must disappear off the radar, leaving no trace. But this will not be easy: Cy Baxter and his team of cybersleuths are equipped, as no others in human history have ever been equipped, to find them, and find them rapidly.

Each of the ten participants—or Zeros, as the team knows them—has two hours, and two hours only, to get a head start: to activate their strategy, whatever it may be, after which the pursuit by Fusion will begin in earnest.

A few quick words, Cy says with amplified solemnity—at forty-five, he is boyish still, with a slightly forward-tipping body, weight on his toes as if poised always to take a run—before we begin. First, thank you to our friends at the CIA for this truly historic public-private partnership. His eyes pass over Justin to settle on Drs. Walker and Cliffe, giving each a meaningful nod. I’m also grateful, of course, to all of the investors who have placed their trust in us, some of whom are here today. A nod to the array of suits at the front of his audience. But thanks mostly to all of you, the Fusion team, for your tireless hard work and genius.

The Fusion personnel applaud. Made up of experts in their respective fields, and equipped with immense technological weapons and wide jurisdictional powers, they number nearly a thousand here at headquarters but are augmented by thousands more personnel in the field, Capture Teams sprinkled all over the map and ready to pounce. Cy Baxter has drummed into each of them that it is the speed of these successes, as much as the means by which they will achieve them, that everyone has come to witness.

We have serious business ahead. The next thirty days will determine the fate of a ten-year commitment from the CIA to fund this relationship, the fusing of government intelligence with free market ingenuity. He pauses then, and seems to weigh his next words carefully. Everything you see . . . all this—he waves his hand to encompass the atrium and indicate the three floors of basements beneath them full of thrumming servers coddled in air-conditioned racks, the 932 handpicked personnel (each one rigorously background-checked by the CIA) stationed throughout the ops rooms, VR suites, drone bays, research facility, food court, and offices—will be nothing if we fail. For me personally, this project is the most important work I’ll ever be part of. Period.

Applause greets this.

When I was first approached to see if I could imagine a public-private partnership that might lift this country’s security and surveillance powers to a whole new level, to an incomparable level, I looked at the deputy director here . . . and Dr. Cliffe, who may remember my reaction . . . I believe it was . . . right? . . . ‘You must be shitting me!’

Laughter on cue.

But I guess—I guess Orville Wright must have said something similar to his brother, right? Or Oppenheimer when ordered to make a bomb, or Isaac Newton when asked to define which way is up.

More laughter.

He grins, a surprisingly winning smile. You don’t know you can till you can. Right? ‘No way’ always precedes ‘of course.’ But despite our confidence, and all the hard work put in by everybody in this room, we still don’t know, one hundred percent, that we can. Hence this beta test. So let’s all get to it. Light the touch paper and see what we’ve got here.

Extended applause. Cy loves these people and they love him right back, for ample reason.

Justin’s eyes stay on Cy as he wonders, Just how rich is this guy? No one is quite sure. His biography is opaque. Details scarce. Born where exactly? Even over this there is confusion. Cy says Chicago, but no birth certificate has been offered to answer rumors that his Slovakian mother brought this only child to the United States at seven. Recently, when the Ravensburger jigsaw people approached Cy, releasing a thousand-piecer of him—arms akimbo in front of a Bezos rocket ready to set WorldShare security satellites in orbit—folks finally gained a forum, with avid fingers and searching eyes, to do what up till then had been a purely mental challenge: assemble a clear picture of this man.

Justin has studied him from afar, collected the facts. Magazine profiles, invariably flattering, reveal a slow developer, one late to learn which fork to use, the right way to say words like niche (Cy: nitch). IQ of 168, though. A lonesome kid, often bullied, almost good-looking, although his small eyes were slightly asymmetric, his elbows and shins blotted with eczema. Got into computers early, then rode the tech wave. Built the garage start-up into a business valued at twelve billion dollars by the time he was twenty-six, and was off to the races. His thing, initially, revolutionary tech and social networks. Grew WorldShare from a small, friendly information exchange—Wanna hook up? Sure, why not?—into a global friendship ecosystem and from there fanned out fast, in all directions, sinking the profits into riskier ventures as if betting on swift greyhounds.

Wall Street fell in love at first sight with this future-seeing whiz kid, pipelined money into his escapades: cybersecurity, home protection cameras, alarms and public surveillance tools, even communication satellites. Midas-rich after a decade but never one to flaunt it (never photographed at Paris Fashion Week, no Hollywood friends, no giant yacht or private jet), he quietly, without undue publicity, also bet big on a green, wholesome, earthly, and even interplanetary future. Now he funds solar power research, battery life extension, and transparent cryptocurrency for the Federal Reserve, while also digging modular nuclear reactors to finally end the era of oil. What makes some people love Cy, find him so appealing, beyond his brilliance and despite his wealth, is how he truly seems to want to use who he is, and what he possesses, to aid the world when he could just, well, surf. Or rocket into space.

And not just a workaholic, he makes time for his private life: plays bass guitar in an indie four-piece and sweats at his local Palo Alto public tennis court twice a week. He has never been romantically linked with any other woman than Erika Coogan. He told Men’s Health he finds much-needed balance in meditation. He can endure the lotus position for hours, and perform ‘the plank’ exercise for well over fifteen minutes. (When the media disputed this, he livestreamed a twenty-three-minute retort.) He has emerged, ultimately, a cult hero: head and heart in twin good health.

Quite an act to pull off, concedes Justin, that in this unadmiring age a billionaire can acquire and achieve so much and yet engender so little disdain. Further proof, he is forced to conclude, of the abiding benefits of keeping whatever the hell you actually do way, way, way under the radar.

18 Minutes Before Go Zero

89 MARLBOROUGH STREET, APARTMENT OF KAITLYN DAY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

THE CLOCK SEEMS TO HAVE stopped. Time crawls, collapses, and just when she’s sure that something is wrong, that there is a wrinkle in its weave, the second hand ticks forward again. She curls up at the far end of the sofa, a blanket over her knees and a book in hand, a book she can’t even remember picking up, long ignored on the overpiled coffee table, slippery with magazines twisted over one another like strata after an earthquake—the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker.

But she isn’t reading, she’s debating: This is a bad idea, this is a brilliant idea, this is insane. This is her best chance, her last chance, roiling like waves, crashing and receding.

Forget. Remember. The thoughts break and shatter over her too quick to latch on to.

Backpack

Sleeping bag

Hiking boots

6 T-shirts

1 extra pair of jeans

Anna Karenina

Breathe, woman, she tells herself. Breathe slowly. Remember who you are. I am Kaitlyn Day, she whispers, like a mantra. Thirty-five years old, birthday September 21, Social Security number 029–12–2325. These familiar facts are a healing oil, a balm, a prayer wheel, a tether to hold on to, and finally she can feel the air filling her lungs, reaching her blood.

Road maps

Pup tent

Gas stove

Cooking pot

Face mask

Phone K

Phone J

Compass

Canned food

Cutlery

Trail mix

Can opener

Tampons

Soap

Toothpaste

Flashlight

Batteries

Water bottle

Kaitlyn Elizabeth Day. Born and raised in Boston. Parents gone. Two brothers—lost touch with both. They like sports, she likes books. They got jobs in construction, she became a librarian. They shout at the TV, she writes to senators. They have no imagination, Kaitlyn has too much. In fact, Kaitlyn has way, way too much imagination. Sometimes so much that her brain spins too hard and has to be regulated with little white pills.

She has a plan. And it has to work. It has to. It’s gonna be fun, she tells herself. It’s also gonna be terrifying.

2 Minutes Before Go Zero

FUSION CENTRAL, WASHINGTON, DC

"LET ME FINISH WITH A thought. One last thought." Cy Baxter pauses to survey his audience. How good he is at this, thinks Justin, how controlled. A little awkward but endearingly so, the remnants of a friendless childhood still apparent, too much time coding, unresponsive to the distant playground squeals, and then a few years later, already with a hundred grand in the bank but no date for the prom.

Today is not just about a proof-of-concept trial or even an opportunity to show our partners—he turns to nod at the two esteemed CIA PhDs sharing the stage—what we can do when we pool our resources and work together . . . though it is, and we will. Today is really to welcome in a partnership years in the making, drawing together the combined resources of law enforcement, the military, and the security industry—NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS—integrating them for the first time with the hacker and social media communities, all coordinated by the brilliant intellects of the crew here at WorldShare.

A smattering of applause here from the corporate sector.

There they are, Fusion’s parent company! . . . And all combining to form a bleeding-edge, three-hundred-sixty-degree intelligence data-sharing matrix unlike anything the world has ever seen. So pretty cool. Here he glances again at his CIA paymasters with a friendly collegial grin that shows just how unbelievably smoothly this has gone thus far. So in conclusion, our almost ridiculous aim has been pretty simple: make things a whole lot tougher for the bad guys and a whole lot easier for the good guys, using the best technology we have to do it. Of course we care about privacy. Half of what we do here at Worldshare is protect people’s privacy. But if you’ve done nothing wrong, which covers ninety-nine percent of us, then you may be more prepared to sacrifice a little of that sacred right in exchange for greater security, peace, law, and order. Let me tell you who cares about privacy protections the most: wrongdoers. They need them, to hide. September eleventh forced us to rethink the delicate balance between private security and public safety. Back then, we had all the data we needed to prevent that catastrophe but we lacked the will and the means to aggregate that intelligence. Today, in this building, we draw together as never before both the will and the means. As if running for office, he concludes with something slightly unexpected: May God bless America and our troops! And now . . . let’s roll.

With this, he points to a digital representation of a large analog clock projected onto the wall behind him, the final seconds before noon expiring with the sweep of a second hand climbing to join, like a clap, the hands of minute and hour.

On the stroke of noon Cy speaks the vitalizing words Go Zero, and synchronous with this a single mouse is clicked somewhere in the bowels of the building and a message sent to ten cell phones across America: a small two-word phrase that almost rhymes. The hiders now have two hours before the seekers set out to find them.

Zero Hour

89 MARLBOROUGH STREET, APARTMENT OF KAITLYN DAY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

BRRRRRRR BRRRRRRR BRRRRRRR BRRRRRRR

As she scrabbles for her phone, she knocks it to the floor and it skitters under the sofa, where a dried-out, un-sprung mousetrap waits, tense with force, craving for months a visitor. But, after coming perilously close to a nasty surprise, her searching fingers merely brush the contraption aside to close on the vibrating phone. With shaking thumb, she opens the text message. Reads:

GO ZERO

She immediately flips over the phone, takes out the battery.

Showtime.

SEVEN MINUTES LATER SHE’S ON the street, swimming in the current of humanity. Need to hotfoot it now. Only two hours to get lost. She’s buried her features under a Red Sox baseball cap, large sunglasses, and an N95 face mask. She’s done her homework, knows all about facial recognition cameras and how to outwit them. She’s also wearing so many clothes that she might even elude anyone (or any bot) on the lookout for a thin bookish type.

Furthermore, she’s read up on gait recognition technology, knows she needs to not walk like herself but can’t walk erratically, either, which would in itself set off computational suspicions. What she must do—and is right now trying to do, which is requiring serious concentration—is to walk like somebody else consistently, to create a distinct persona and give that persona its own gait, a unique style of comportment she can also maintain. She cannot have, in the first hour, some computer somewhere pinging with an alert that there is a suspicious woman on a Boston street right now walking like three different people, either because she’s a drunk or is trying to fool them. Hence, she is trying to walk like a singular invention, Ms. X, someone her age perhaps, but more confident than she is, happier, less burdened, with more of a skip in her step and roll to her hip. Down the street she moves in the manner of this Ms. X, but this is harder in practice than she thought it would be, as she kicks out her ankles, swings her free arm, arches her back, and steps like a runway model in an immediately exhausting ordeal of fabrication.

What is she doing anyway? This elaborate game of hide-and-seek? Kaitlyn’s a librarian. A librarian, for Pete’s sake, about whom—in two hours from now—they will already know more than even she knows—far more. Habits and patterns she’s not even conscious of. Blood type (Does anyone know their own?). Star sign (okay, Virgo). Relationships (not much to learn here). Bank account number, bank balance (nothing to write home about). Children (zero, that’s an easy one). Mental health (fragile, records available). Fuck, she thinks as her knees knock. Walk, Ms. X. Stay in character. PS: Walk faster.

Capture Window: 29 Days, 22 Hours, 21 Minutes Remaining

FUSION CENTRAL, WASHINGTON, DC

ONE HOUR AND THIRTY-NINE MINUTES after Go Zero, the Fusion teams are at their posts, waiting before their rows of darkened screens, obedient to the order not to tap even a space bar until the ascribed two hours of lead time have elapsed. Only twenty-one minutes remain before the most high-stakes challenge of their professional lives begins. Tick, tick, tick . . .

Dr. Sandra Cliffe waits among them. At sixty-eight, a feisty veteran of many battles. Seen it all and seen off many rivals. Way back in the 1990s, Sandra had been the first to successfully encourage the CIA to pursue partnerships with the private sector. Even personally designed a proposal to procure technology at the development stage from the tech giants. They gave her the CIA Director’s Award for that, the Defense Intelligence Agency Director’s Award, the CIA Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the National Reconnaissance Officer’s Award for Distinguished Service, and the National Security Agency Distinguished Service Medal. She resigned in 2005, satisfied with her contribution. For nearly a decade afterward she resisted public office, until the new (friendlier) president made her a member of the National Science Board and the National Science Foundation in 2014. The next president (more hostile) ignored this position, before his successor (friendly) reaffirmed it, and so it is in this capacity she has been dispatched here today to put Oval Office eyes on the Fusion Initiative in general, and on her successor at the agency, Dr. Bertram Burt Walker, a George W. Bush appointee, in particular.

Sandra Cliffe’s big worry is this: Back when she first encouraged the CIA to work with the private sector, there was no question that the assets the agency procured were to be owned and operated by the CIA, the DIA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and/or the wider governmental community. They were specifically not to be either co-owned or entirely operated by an unelected entrepreneur who had sworn no oath to anyone other than his shareholders. As a result, she is suspicious of this project and will not cry a river if this beta test falls flat on its way-too-expensive face.

When she turns to look at Burt Walker, he