Zero Day Read online

  Zero Day

  Binary Hackers Book 2

  Jan Thompson

  Zero Day (Binary Hackers Book 2)

  Copyright © 2020 Jan Edttii Lim Thompson

  Author Website: JanThompson.com

  Book News: JanThompson.com/newsletter

  Published by Georgia Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, persons, places, events, and things either are the product of the author’s active imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Scripture quotations are from the public domain King James Version of the Holy Bible.

  eBook Cover Design: Georgia Press LLC

  Paperback Cover Design: Georgia Press & Deranged Doctor Design

  First eBook Edition: April 2020

  eBook ISBN 978-1-944188-59-7

  First Paperback Edition: May 2020

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-944188-62-7

  To my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save me from my sins and rose again from the grave to give me eternal life.

  For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

  I Timothy 6:10

  Contents

  Books by Jan Thompson

  About the Binary Hackers Series

  About ZERO DAY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Key Bible Verses in ZERO DAY

  The Next Book is ZERO BASE

  Acknowledgments

  Books by Jan Thompson

  Binary Hackers

  Protector Sweethearts

  Savannah Sweethearts

  Vacation Sweethearts

  Seaside Chapel

  About Jan Thompson

  Books by Jan Thompson

  Binary Hackers (3-6 Books)

  JanThompson.com/binary

  Protector Sweethearts (9 Books)

  JanThompson.com/protector

  Savannah Sweethearts (11 Books)

  JanThompson.com/savannah

  Vacation Sweethearts (7 Books)

  JanThompson.com/vacation

  Seaside Chapel (9-12 Books)

  JanThompson.com/seaside

  Keep up with Jan Thompson’s book news:

  JanThompson.com/newsletter

  About the Binary Hackers Series

  Inspirational Romantic Technothrillers

  From USA Today bestselling author Jan Thompson comes a collection of inspirational near-future cyberthrillers combining technothriller and romance, starting with the Binary Hackers series that feature computer specialists living at the edge of cyberspace, where they have to juggle being law-abiding truth-telling Christians while carrying out their assignments by any and all means possible.

  If you’re looking for clean futuristic romantic suspense thrillers that don’t compromise the Christian faith, these books are for you.

  The Binary Hackers series is set in the same story world as Jan’s other books, and characters from the other series may make cameo appearances in Binary Hackers.

  Reading order:

  Book 1: Zero Sum

  Book 2: Zero Day

  Book 3: Zero Base

  (More Books to Come)

  Binary Hackers

  JanThompson.com/binary

  Get book news from Jan Thompson:

  JanThompson.com/newsletter

  About ZERO DAY

  Binary Hackers Book 2

  A maligned hacker.

  A Mossad agent.

  A mutual enemy.

  No longer of any use to the governments who once coveted his cybercriminal mind, disgraced hacker Kelvin Gallagher finds himself languishing in Prague while waiting for his enemies to find him and end his sufferings. Along comes a Mossad agent, once a friend, but now determined to take him home in a body bag…

  Zero Day is book 2 in my Binary Hackers series of inspirational near-future cyberthrillers combining technothriller and romance. If you’re looking for clean suspense without compromising faith, these books are for you.

  I started writing Zero Day when I wondered what would happen to a hacker who straddles the fence between wanting to do what is right while doing all the wrong things. Whereas in Zero Sum (book 1), I explore the problems with cybernetic implants, Zero Day (book 2) takes us behind the scenes to the other side, to the people who made those implants for a nefarious purpose, and to the moral battles in their minds.

  We met Kelvin in the first pages of Zero Sum, shortly before he was whisked away to parts unknown. In Zero Day, we pick up his story some months afterwards.

  The prisoner awaits…

  Down and out and waiting to die, mercenary hacker Kelvin Gallagher regrets betraying his homeland. Rejected by everyone, Kelvin has no choice but dig deeper into the dark hole into which he has fallen.

  He remembers his ex-employers at Binary Systems, Inc., who have given him a job when nobody else dared. Are Cayson Yang and Leland Yang-Joule more moral than he is? He thinks not. Aren’t they all working for money?

  Yeah, life is worth more than money. Kelvin knows that, but it’s too late. Way too late as he sits in a rat-infested rundown building in Old Prague, fearful and in anguish.

  The executioner comes…

  As an act of revenge, former Mossad agent Yona Epstein tracks down the American traitor who led her mentor to the slaughterhouse. It makes Yona angry that Kelvin used to be a friend, back when they worked together in a project.

  When Yona uncovers Kelvin’s hideout in Europe, she realizes she isn’t the only one who wants Kelvin dead. That makes her pause.

  To kill or not to kill…

  When Kelvin explains to Yona his version of the cybercrime nightmare of his own making, several events don’t match up with what Yona has been told by her associates.

  Is Kelvin innocent after all? Should Yona delay the execution until she finds out what is going on? Or proceed based on the information she already has? She trusts her sources, doesn’t she?

  Before Yona can decide on how to deal with Kelvin, enemies close in as their past catches up to them.

  Zero Day (Binary Hackers Book 2)

  JanThompson.com/zeroday

  Binary Hackers

  JanThompson.com/binary

  Book News from Jan Thompson:

  JanThompson.com/newsletter

  Chapter 1

  Tuna and shrimp for dinner tonight wouldn’t have smelled this bad to Kelvin Gallagher if it hadn’t been from a can he shared with Mordecai the stray cat who came to his fourth floor hideout every couple of nights to kill rats for him.

  This hadn’t been how Kelvin envisioned his last days on earth, sitting on death row in a condemned building in Old Town Prague, waiting for God to take him to Heaven where he expected to feast at the table with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

  Meanwhile, cat food.
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  Kelvin gagged.

  He pushed the can away, and as if on cue, His Royal Catness appeared through the crack in the broken wooden slats in the window, trotting toward the heavenly smell.

  “Have it all.” Again. “Don’t worry about me. I need to lose weight, anyway.”

  It was dusk outside. It felt like dusk. But he dared not peek out of the window, as if doing so would hasten his own demise.

  Someone would see him.

  The elderly grandmother two doors down was the only person who knew he was hiding in this building, only because she had fed him dried pork and leftover pickled vegetables every now and then. And because she allowed him to take a quick shower in her house once a week to conserve water.

  Tereza’s heart of gold could get her killed.

  I must leave. But where do I go?

  No passport. No work visa. No money.

  He was now an illegal alien in the Czech Republic, dumped here by rogue Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation agents who had wrestled him out of Aspasia’s hands. They had no use for him any more since MedusaNet was all but shut down. So they dropped him off in Prague to protect themselves from liability.

  Yeah, liability.

  Those former FSB agents were more like mercenaries, thinking they would earn a whole lot more American dollars freelancing than if they had worked as salaried employees of the Russian government.

  Ironically, they hadn’t left him here in the pursuit of money. They had left him here for assassins to find him—if Aspasia didn’t find him first.

  Kelvin berated himself repeatedly for not asking those people for at least a fake passport and some koruny české or maybe even euro banknotes.

  “I’m all alone. I have to get out of this myself.” Kelvin wrapped his arms around his bended knees and leaned back against the wall, paint peeling off here and there. “Where are you, God? I need a miracle. I need a miracle.”

  Why didn’t God stop him from leaving Atlanta eight months before? If he had remained in town, his employers at Binary Systems would have found them.

  What choice did he have, honestly? There he was that fateful day in September, walking around the convention floor, snacking and picking up free merchandise, when out of the corner of his eye he spotted Aspasia walking toward the YottaFlops booth that he and his employer, Cayson Yang, had set up.

  He wanted to warn Cayson, but he saw the woman spray some sort of liquid in Cayson’s face. Then he watched his boss go down just before she stabbed the side of his head with some sort of device.

  Which he later found out to have activated the cybernetic implant in Cayson’s head.

  She looked up from the floor and stared straight at Kelvin.

  Kelvin remembered dropping the 3D-printed bobblehead doll of himself, and running for his life. It didn’t help that he had worn a bright yellow tee shirt.

  Aspasia caught up with him in no time, with those FSB agents not too far behind her.

  And here I am.

  Well, yeah, by way of Moscow, but that was the part Kelvin didn’t want to think about.

  “Meow.”

  Looking past the cat, Kelvin saw the empty can on the old wooden floor.

  “That’s all I got, buddy.” Kelvin shuffled his way to his makeshift bed at a corner of the room.

  His bed was a pile of old, torn blankets he had salvaged from the neighborhood dumpsters. On top of it was a plastic bag he had stuffed with rags. He puffed it up and put his head on it.

  Mordecai came over and sat on the blanket with him. He cleaned his gray fur, speckled with white.

  “When I leave this place, I’ll take you with me, okay?” Kelvin tapped his head. The cat purred. “That is, if I physically leave. If I die, then I can’t keep my word, you know.”

  The gray cat settled down at an edge of Kelvin’s blanket and began to clean his paws.

  Kelvin felt thirsty. He stared at the crack in the ceiling. He worried that the ceiling would cave in, though ironically it would usher in a faster death for him.

  Was death the only way out?

  He wasn’t sure.

  He tried to pray, but no words came to his mind or mouth. He had been a churchgoer back in Atlanta, in his younger carefree days when he wanted to do everything right in the eyes of God.

  No eventuality like this ever crossed his mind.

  No, his goal was to buy his mother a house on the beach on Tybee Island, provide her with a personal chef and housekeeper. She could spend her days reading books on the balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

  That had been his goal.

  Until her lung cancer worsened, and Kelvin needed money quickly before time ran out. She never went into remission, and three months after the chemotherapy, she asked to be taken off treatment so that she could die in peace at home.

  That had been when Aspasia showed up, offering Kelvin a job behind the job. All he had to do was plant backdoors into their network they were constructing for Birmingham Bytes, a British company with international clients.

  Kelvin dusted off his hacking skills and joined the covert team. It was a win-win. He could moonlight the project and still keep his day job as a system administrator at Binary Systems.

  He would walk away with a cool ten million dollars.

  Easy money.

  Yeah.

  The cat snuggled next to him, and Kelvin closed his eyes.

  He saw his mother laughing and smiling, walking at the ocean’s edge on Tybee Island against a backdrop of the five-million-dollar oceanfront home he had bought for her. He still had another five million to splurge on her.

  He remembered how his mother kissed him on the forehead in their last days together, just as she had done all his life whenever he had been a good boy. Little did she know that he had sold his soul to buy her the mansion.

  And two months later, she passed away.

  The beachfront house, paid in cash through an overseas company, became vacant after Mother died. Kelvin didn’t want to stay there.

  Soon thereafter, Birmingham Bytes went out of business and its assets were sold to pay off their debts. Little did anyone know that MedusaNet would be sold to Molyneux, a terrorist at large who had stolen from everybody from MI-6 to the CIA and everyone in between.

  The other shoe dropped when Kelvin learned that the network he had been hired to test and protect was none other than MedusaNet.

  He had no choice but to do what Aspasia wanted. She threatened to kill his mother. Even though she was dying of cancer, Kelvin wanted to give her the best end-of-life care ever.

  After Aspasia let him go home for his mother’s funeral, he sold the beach house, breaking even, and tried to return the money to Aspasia. She wouldn’t take it.

  She simply wouldn’t take it back.

  If he had…

  If only…

  Nah.

  Hindsight could not save him now. “I reaped what I sowed.”

  Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

  Galatians 6:7 couldn’t help him now. The deed had been done.

  In fact, Aspasia had threatened him with death if he went to the authorities.

  There was no way Kelvin could go to the police at all. He would end up implicating himself. That company, Birmingham Bytes, no longer existed. It had served its purpose, and now was absorbed into the MedusaNet systems.

  Too late.

  “Everything is too late.” Kelvin sighed as rain fell on the roof.

  He opened his eyes and jumped out of bed. He gathered up a few cups and a can, opened the window slightly and placed the chipped cups and dented cans on the window sill. Rainwater dripped into the cups.

  “Thank you, God, for water.” Kelvin stuck his head out, and washed his hair in the rain.

  The night was dark and he could not see beyond the dim moonlight. He prayed that nobody saw his face out here.

  Outside his windows were rows of tiled roofs—red during the day—stre
tching all the way to the Vltava River, or at least the street in front of it.

  The rain beat down noisily, and he could not hear the city tonight. The music festival had just started a day or two ago. Sometimes during the day, he could hear music and the crowd, though he could not see Charles Bridge from here, five blocks away.

  There was music, festivities, food…

  Kelvin’s stomach rumbled. He reached out for one of the dirty cups. There was already half an inch of water in there. He poured it into another cup. And did so with the other cups until he had one cup of water.

  “Diet dinner.” He chuckled.

  Chapter 2

  Two days after she quit from the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service, Mossad assassin Yona Epstein found herself in Prague, gliding up a flight of stone stairs, hugging the shadows of darkness under cracked windows blaring a cacophony of classical and pop.