“Which is why we sit tight, until it gets dark. Then we take the underground and head back to the cellar.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I wonder why they want it.”
“That’s what we want to find out, right?” Olly pulled out the Optik and studied it. “It doesn’t look special.” He frowned at it for a moment, and then turned it on. “I can maybe brute-force a synchronization with my Optik, but that’ll require a hard reboot…”
“Which might erase whatever data we’re looking for,” Liz said. She reached out and put her hand over the device. “Leave it for now. We’ll clone it first before we do anything.”
Olly nodded and put the device away. “That was too close for comfort back there. The way you went after them… I just froze.” He fell silent as their coffees arrived. “I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment. “Didn’t even think to use the bloody stun gun.”
“Probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, unless you hit them in the right spot. Albion uniforms are insulated.” Liz smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it. You did good, for your first time out.”
Olly shook his head. “Doesn’t feel like it.”
“It takes some getting used to. Trust me. Next time, you won’t freeze.”
“Next time?”
“There’s always a next time, Olly. That’s the way this works now.” Liz stretched, and could hear her own joints popping. Riding on drones and getting in punch ups was hard on a girl’s body. She grunted and rotated her shoulders. “I might be getting too old for it, though.”
“How old are you anyway?”
She gave him a sideways look. “What sort of question is that to ask a lady?”
“I’m not asking a lady, am I?”
Liz snorted. “Cheeky git.” She tipped her head back, looking at the ceiling.
Olly cleared his throat. She could tell that something was on his mind. “Earlier, when you said you were a black hat cracker…” he began, hesitantly.
Liz lifted her cup. “What about it?”
“Were you being serious? You weren’t just taking the piss?”
She paused, then took a drink. “No, I wasn’t taking the piss.”
“And now you’re… a freedom fighter? Bad guy to good guy, just like that?”
Liz looked out the window, watching the street. “I don’t think I was a bad guy, per se…” she began, slowly.
“But you stole money.”
“And you stole food.”
“Yeah, but for other people,” Olly said. “Who’d you give the money to?”
Liz smiled. “Fair play.”
“So why’d you join DedSec, then?”
Liz was silent. Then, “What does London mean to you, Olly?”
Olly frowned. “You what?”
“Simple question. Is it your home? Are you just passing through? What?” Liz looked at him. “What does this city mean to you? What are you willing to do, to save it?”
Olly shook his head. “I don’t – I’ve never thought about it. I’m doing what I’m doing, yeah?” It was the answer she’d been expecting, but it still disappointed her. She sighed and looked away.
“That’s what I thought.”
Annoyed now, Olly said, “Well what does it mean to you, then?”
“Everything,” Liz said flatly. “I was born here. I grew up here.”
“You don’t sound like you grew up in East London…”
“There’s more to city than East London, Olly.” She sighed. “I was born in Catford. My parents were antifascists. They met while beating the piss out of National Front members in ’77. They served in the emergency government of the People’s Republic of Lewisham Clock-Tower.”
Olly frowned. “I have no idea what that is.”
“Most people don’t.” Liz smiled. “My parents loved London, Olly. Loved it enough to fight for it, with bricks and boots. And they taught me to love it too. But you can’t win a fight with bricks and boots these days.” She looked around the café. “All that stuff back in the cellar? I helped build that, you know. Back in the day, I was the one crunching numbers and cracking encryption programs. I was the one setting up bots to farm gold in MMORPGs, and more bots to turn that gold into cryptocurrency – money we used to set up everything. Because I knew all of this was coming.”
“All what was coming?”
“Blume. Albion. All of it.” Liz looked at him. “We’re paying for the sins of previous generations – for their decisions, for their lack of forethought – and for our own mistakes too. It’s all compounded into one big cancerous mess, resting right in society’s gut. The longer it goes on, the sicker we all get.”
“Maybe you should have warned some people.”
Liz leaned back. “I did. I was on every forum, message board and chat app. I sounded the alarm around the clock and nobody listened – not until it was too late.” She paused. “No, some people listened. Some saw what I saw, and we found each other. Just like my parents and their friends did, back in the day.”
“DedSec,” Olly said, softly.
“DedSec,” Liz agreed. She paused. “Look around.”
Olly did. Liz did as well. Information rippled across her display as the facial recognition software went to work. There weren’t many patrons in the café, but there were enough to make interesting reading. She fixed on one. “The geezer in the corner,” Liz murmured. “Tell me about him.”
Olly turned. Liz knew what he saw. The old man was worn down, frayed looking, with thin hairs clinging to his spotted pate. His suit had been fashionable once, maybe. Now it looked a bit silly on his shrunken frame. But his hands were big. She watched Olly scroll through the data. “Ian Parker. Just got out of Maidstone. A thirty-year stretch. Category C. Firearm offences, wounding with intent, conspiracy… Bloody hell, he’s a proper old school gangster.”
“Good. What else?”
“Uhm…” Olly continued to scroll. “Got a granddaughter in Hackney. She – huh.”
“What?”
“She works for Blume. In their research and development division.”
“What’s their relationship like?”
“How would I know?”
“Study the data,” Liz said, softly. “What does it tell you?”
She watched as Olly combed through social media feeds, posts to Invite, online journals, calendar apps – nothing was hidden from DedSec. If
