Day One: A Novel by Nate Kenyon

the answer.
    “What are you talking about?” he said finally, carefully. “Because I have to say, you’re sounding a little extreme here, Jim.”
    “Far from it. It’s time to follow all the threads, weave them into a complete picture that everyone can understand. You use technology to tell a story. I want you to tell a story now. The biggest one of your life.”
    A shout and a crash came from the other room. Weller’s gaze flicked to the door. Hawke stood up and opened it; the copier repairman was standing in the middle of the large room, clutching his right hand and cursing. He was big and broad across the shoulders, and a large tag across the breast of his corporate shirt read: Jason Vasco.
    “Goddamn printer,” he said, motioning to the machine by the windows that now lay on its side. Blood dripped onto the freshly vacuumed carpet. “The high-end ones are the worst. This is the third time I’ve been here this week. I thought it was a bad belt giving you trouble, but there’s a corrupt hard drive or something. I swear to God, it was like it bit me.”
    Hawke heard more raised voices from the conference room, as if people were arguing over something important. Bradbury was at his desk again, and as Weller emerged from his office the fat man looked up, his entire body seeming to vibrate with excitement. “There’s a lot of noise,” he said. “We’re logging a massive surge of hits coming from all over the place, but the locations keep jumping around or they’re cloaked. So many targets I can’t track them all. We should be all over this.” Bradbury was clearly frustrated. He motioned to the conference room. “But half our staff didn’t show up today, and everyone else is watching the damn news.…”
    Weller walked over to Bradbury’s computer. He tapped a few keys. “You’re seeing traffic spikes of what, fifteen hundred percent?”
    “Higher.”
    Weller was silent for a moment. “More black hats?”
    “I don’t know. There would have to be hundreds of thousands all working at once; either that or they’re using bots. But this activity is something I’ve never seen bots do before.”
    Weller straightened. Hawke couldn’t tell if he was satisfied with what he had heard or not. Then he walked quickly in the direction of the conference room without another word, and Hawke followed him, wondering where all this was going. “Black hats” was a term for those who were working on the other side of the law, hackers who were looking to disrupt networks and cause problems. Anonymous was filled with them. White hats were network security experts who usually worked on the other side, and the two were often at odds. But in the real world, the line often blurred, with people switching sides in the course of a single day.
    The morning was starting to unravel fast. Hawke felt like a man who had come late to a party and found all the other guests in the middle of something that he couldn’t quite understand. As he followed Weller, he wondered if the man might be about to give them all hell.
    Vasco trailed behind them, cursing softly and gripping a paper towel. The others were still gathered under the TV. Hawke expected Weller to order them all back to work, but he said nothing. A major news anchor had broken into the coverage of the protests; the spotlessly coiffed man spoke in a slightly breathless voice, but the others in the room were talking too loudly for Hawke to hear.
    “What’s going on now?” he said to Young.
    “Everything,” she said, glancing at Weller as if looking for some kind of tacit approval to speak. “Traffic signals malfunctioning, cars running off the road on their own, power surges. People are panicking—”
    Young stopped talking abruptly. Hawke caught something passing between Young and Weller that he didn’t understand. Hawke looked back at the TV. A well-dressed gray-haired woman was being interviewed on-screen, clutching her tiny dog in her arms. A stray bit of hair had