Sitting with his head in his hands, Samuel Westchester wondered for the first time whether there was even any point in trying. There didn’t seem to be any hope for humanity and with every minute that passed closer to the hour of the broadcast, the sense of failure washed over him like a cold shower. There was a large part of him that just couldn’t be bothered anymore. Pretty soon the companies that powered the electricity running through every building in the city would stop functioning. The people that purified the drinking water and imported food would stop working, taking what they could for themselves and leaving everyone else to do the same. Public transport would stop running, hospitals would stop taking people in and if each individual didn’t have the means to survive themselves on the most basic resources, they would suffer the consequences.
Samuel wondered whether he himself was prepared for such an event. It was no secret that he came from a privileged background. He’d never had to work to put himself through school, never missed a meal and never fallen badly ill because he couldn’t afford healthcare. They were all things that wouldn’t have been possible to him if it weren’t for money, so now without it, the playing field was about to become much more even. He knew it wasn’t going to be those with nothing that suffered, but those who had always had just what they wanted. The class system was about to become increasingly obvious in New York and he was aware he sat much higher up that ladder than most.
“What do you reckon? Will this pass?”
Samuel lifted his head and saw Caitlin was asking him a question, holding her laptop screen out in his direction with the tenth or eleventh draft of the statement they’d written. Sighing, he narrowed his eyes and tried to identify the parts of the speech they had changed this time around, the many different colored fonts they’d used to identify changes all blurring together in front of his eyes.
“We’ve got less emphasis on the repercussions now,” Caitlin explained as he read. “And more focus on the hack itself, identifying how it was impossible to defend against and how fighting back could only result in something even worse. We then go on to state what resources will be affected, including a plea to other multi-national conglomerates to help out, rather than shy away in our time of need.”
“Okay,” Samuel sighed heavily. “What time is it?”
“Twenty past five.”
“Any more updates through from the cyber team? Anything else we need to include?”
Caitlin and the others shook their heads, the back and forth requests with Graham and everyone else that occasionally interrupted with new information or merely a matter of opinion finally coming to an end. Samuel wasn’t very happy with the finished statement, but he didn’t know what more they could add to it. Despite his enthusiasm for this task when it was first handed to him, it hadn’t taken more than ten minutes for him to conclude he was fighting a losing battle. No matter how he tried to put a positive spin on the situation, the outcome was always the same. The country was broke and there was no coming back from it. Life would now be an uphill battle, with many casualties expected along the way. The lucky ones would make it to the end, but there would be no external factors helping to get them there. No one could buy their way through any longer. It was every man for themselves. Succeed, or die.
Chapter 16
“Is this it? Is this the final version?”
Before he even answered Graham’s question, Samuel could tell that the man wasn’t impressed. He sat in front of the laptop peering at the screen, the full piece having taken him no longer than two minutes to read in its entirety. All in all, there wasn’t much. Samuel wasn’t proud of what they had accomplished but he also knew they had done everything they could with the limited resources and constricting details they were aware of. There were only so many ways of telling people they were all doomed and so no matter how you read it, things didn’t sound positive.
“What do you think? Will it work?”
“It’ll have to,” Graham sighed eventually. “We’re just about out of time. It’s nearly six o’clock.”
Everyone in the room looked up at the clock on the wall simultaneously, the moment of reckoning almost upon them. Samuel hoped that what they had come up with was good enough, but sadly he doubted his efforts. Time would tell. The statement was due to be delivered within the next ten minutes; pretty soon the public would have their answers. And apparently, they couldn’t come soon enough.
Outside of the meeting room, things were starting to heat up again. The sun had risen over the city and with it, waves of people had left their homes and seemed filled with a new desire for answers. The reality of what was happening had sunk in with the darkness and slowly people were starting to come to terms with how horrific this could be not just for them and the city, but for the country as a whole. Trident was more than just a local bank on the corner, it was the biggest banking conglomerate in the world and without it, disaster was about to strike.
“They’re starting to surround the building again!” Austin called from his post
