Zero Days

Jack finds a diner. She researches Sunsmile on her laptop using the diner’s Wi-Fi. She finds a photo of someone’s security badge as well as information about a woman who works at Sunsmile but is home with a sick child. She makes herself a relatively convincing badge using this woman, Keeley Winston’s, identity. Using a fake social media account, she gets Keeley’s phone number from a friend.

Jack changes clothes and heads toward Sunsmile’s offices. She gets a message from Hel, who is elated to hear that Jack is following a lead and asks if she is at the insurance company now. Jack confirms her location, despite Hel’s use of “an uncharacteristic number of exclamation marks” (206). She bluffs her way through security and heads to the elevators, which are key card protected. Jack gets a sling out of her bag and puts it on her right arm, carrying the bag in her left. She tries the elevators again, and a man offers to use his card for her, just as she hoped.

Jack makes her way to Keeley’s desk and dials Keeley’s home number. She pretends to be “Kate” from IT, needing access to Keeley’s computer. When Jack suggests Keeley might have to come to the office to log in, Keeley jumps at the chance to give her login credentials and avoid the trip. Jack logs in and finds Gabe’s policy, although the phone number attached to the record isn’t his. Then, she spots a voice file of a phone call from three days before Gabe was killed, and she plays it. The more she listens, the surer she is that it is neither Gabe nor Jeff. Replaying the call, Jack realizes who the voice is. It is Cole.

In the lobby, Jack sees a group of security guards huddled around a screen, and someone is questioning the guard who buzzed her through. Just then, a patrol car pulls up. Jack turns back into the building and ducks into an office. Hearing guards outside, she pretends to be angry on the phone. When a guard sticks his head in, she is purposely rude and then turns in her chair and yells at the receiver. She hopes this treatment will convince him that she’s supposed to be there, and when she turns back, he’s gone. Back in the hallway, Jack runs until she reaches an emergency door attached to the fire alarm. She breaks the glass and pushes the emergency button. The alarm sounds. People begin rushing outside from every door and Jack walks out, blending in with the crowd.

Jack runs to the local train station, in terrible pain now, and tries to figure out how the police found her. Suddenly, she sees officers at the station entrance and makes her way down the platform, trying to figure out what to do. She puts on her hoodie in hopes it will disguise her, but an officer calls after her when she begins to jog to a waiting train. She hops on at the last moment and sees the officer looking around and talking on his radio just outside.

As the train pulls away, Jack is relieved, but then she feels blood trickling from her wound. Finding the bathroom, she peels away the dressing and sees that the gash looks much worse than it did yesterday. She cleans and redresses it, feeling the heat through layers of gauze. Jack has a new message from Hel, but something feels off: Jack considers the emojis Hel used yesterday even though she never uses emojis and how Cole had been the one to supposedly tell Hel about how to contact Jack safely. She realizes she was probably messaging Cole all along. She texts back, asking for the name of the big blue teddy bear Hel loved as a child, something Hel would never forget. This person claims not to remember, confirming it isn’t Hel. Jack texts back that she knows it’s Cole and that he took out the insurance policy.

She calls the number she got from the Sunsmile database, and Cole answers. Cole says he doesn’t know who killed Gabe, but he knows why they did it. He asks if she knows what a “zero-day exploit” is, and she describes it as “a way to hack into a device […] that the software developer doesn’t know about—hence the zero days. That’s how long the developer has had to fix it” (234). These exploits can be worth a fortune if they provide access to users’ personal information, and Cole says that Gabe found a big one. He went to Cole for advice, and Cole says he told Gabe to report it to the software developer. But Gabe sold it on the dark web instead. Evidently, the buyer didn’t feel like paying, so they murdered Gabe and stole his hard drive.

When she hangs up with Cole, Jack turns to see a woman who has come out of the bathroom. There’s no telling how much she overheard, but it was enough to make someone curious. Jack tries to Google Gabe’s murder and finds a BBC article from just hours earlier with her picture and description. Seeing everything in print sends Jack into a tailspin, and she wonders if the woman is already calling the police to report her.

Jack considers her options: Get off at the next stop, which is a big one and likely to have police; wait for the stop after that, a much smaller stop that would be safer; or turn herself in. Suddenly, the train stops at a red signal. Jack almost jumps to the ground, but the train begins to move again. She jumps anyway.

When she lands, the pain in Jack’s side is “screaming.” She calls Hel, who calls her back on a new burner phone. Hel hasn’t heard from Cole, and Jack says not to trust him if he gets in touch. Jack tells Hel about the insurance policy and her conversation with Cole. Feverish and exhausted, Jack isn’t thinking clearly.

Hel accepts that Gabe found a security flaw and went to Cole for advice. However, Hel cannot believe that Gabe tried to sell his findings. Jack agrees. Hel also wonders why Cole took out an insurance policy on Gabe unless he was sure Gabe was in danger. Jack and Hel surmise that Cole perhaps created the security flaw in the first place. The criminals who paid him to do it then killed Gabe when he found it and refused to keep quiet. Feeling sick, Jack hangs up because her phone battery is down to 15% and she has no way to charge it.