Going Zero

In a near-future America, Fusion, a secret partnership between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and WorldShare, a global social media and cybersecurity company, prepares for a high-stakes beta test. If successful, the test will secure a 10-year, 90-billion-dollar government contract. The arrangement, brokered by CIA Deputy Director Dr. Burt Walker and WorldShare cofounder Cy Baxter, gives Fusion access to government intelligence data while granting the CIA undisclosed access to WorldShare's private information on over two billion users. The terms have been kept secret from Congress. Ten randomly selected participants, called Zeros, will receive an alert to "Go Zero," after which they must evade Fusion's surveillance apparatus for 30 days. Anyone still at liberty at the end wins three million dollars.

Seven days before the test, a woman believed to be Kaitlyn Day, a Boston librarian in her mid-thirties, receives her official selection letter. She lives alone in a rent-controlled apartment filled with books, has bipolar disorder, and has been off her medication for months. She begins preparing to vanish. On May 1 at noon, Cy declares "Go Zero" from Fusion Central, an enormous surveillance operations center in Washington, DC, known as the Void and staffed by nearly a thousand experts. Also present are his long-term romantic partner and WorldShare cofounder Erika Coogan; Deputy Director Walker; Walker's predecessor Dr. Sandra Cliffe, who distrusts the idea of entrusting intelligence capabilities to a private entrepreneur; and Justin Amari, Walker's special assistant. Cy delivers a speech framing Fusion as a historic union of government intelligence and private-sector innovation.

When the alert sounds, the woman posing as Kaitlyn removes her phone battery and heads into the streets of Boston disguised in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a face mask, deliberately altering her gait to confuse recognition technology. She makes a calculated move that appears foolish: She uses her ATM card, exposing her face to the camera. Cy dismisses her as an amateur, but his team is stunned when she escapes through a bodega's back exit, hails a cab, and vanishes into the Park Street subway station. Before Go Zero, she had planted decoy phones on friends and acquaintances, creating a diversionary data cloud across multiple cities, with one phone registered under a Boston subway card in the name "Cy Baxter." Sonia Duvall, a sharp young analyst, uncovers these details, earning Cy's praise.

Over the course of the month, Fusion captures the other nine Zeros, demonstrating its formidable capabilities. A single mother is tracked through her father's car. A retired navy veteran is identified by gait recognition. A construction worker hiding behind a fake wall is detected by ground-penetrating radar. A former Hong Kong student activist is located through sonic surveillance that turns a coffee cup into a microphone. A police lieutenant is betrayed by a former criminal whose cooperation Fusion's algorithms predicted. A reputation repair specialist is caught via Weeping Angel, a secret program that keeps television microphones active through a fake power-off setting, turning TVs into listening devices. A privacy tech entrepreneur is traced through his music streaming habits. A cybersecurity expert is captured when a vengeful former acquaintance at Fusion remotely hijacks her car. A bounty hunter hiding among unhoused people in Kansas City is found through convenience store surveillance.

Meanwhile, the woman posing as Kaitlyn endures extraordinary hardship. She camps in New York's Moose River Plains, falls into an abandoned mine shaft, and spends three days trapped with a sprained ankle before being rescued. She flees a hospital before Fusion's field team arrives to apprehend her. She escapes to Canada by sailboat, drives a pre-positioned car, and exploits the no-fly zone around a commercial airport to neutralize pursuing drones and helicopters. Cy recklessly orders a drone into restricted airspace, and Canadian air traffic control destroys it, an incident that alarms Erika and signals Cy's growing instability.

Tensions rise within Fusion. During a CIA delegation visit, Justin aggressively challenges Fusion's surveillance overreach, and the CIA demands that Weeping Angel be shut down for domestic use. Cy pushes back, arguing that protection outweighs civil liberties. Erika struggles to manage Cy's increasingly erratic behavior. The backstory of their shared motivation emerges: Erika's brother Michael Coogan, Cy's college roommate, was killed in a mass shooting, and the pair built Fusion believing it could prevent such tragedies.

With nine Zeros captured and only "Kaitlyn Day" remaining, Cy flies to a cabin in Pennsylvania's Sproul State Forest, where the last burner phone has been activated. Inside, he finds the real Kaitlyn Day sitting calmly. The novel's central twist unfolds: The woman who has been evading Fusion is Samantha Crewe, a 31-year-old nurse practitioner who impersonated Kaitlyn from the very beginning. The two friends devised the scheme together, motivated by Sam's desperate search for her husband, Warren Crewe, a former Harvard economics professor who disappeared three years earlier while doing covert intelligence work in the Middle East. The CIA fabricated evidence of a trip to Bangkok to cover up Warren's disappearance.

Kaitlyn gives Cy a thumb drive containing a video from Sam, who offers a deal: Use Fusion's power to find Warren, and she will surrender. Sam also threatens to expose damaging information about Virginia Global Technologies, Cy's secret shell company through which he has been illegally selling surveillance technology to Russia and China. Cy is deeply shaken.

Events accelerate. Erika discovers that Justin is Warren's close friend and the mole who briefed Sam on Fusion's strategies before Go Zero. She also discovers Cy having an affair with Sonia, fracturing their personal and professional relationship. Erika does not report Justin. Cy, independently discovering the Justin-Warren connection, secretly hacks into the combined classified databases of the National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), copying the entire archive. He then frames Justin and Sam as cyberterrorists, briefing senior officials with fabricated evidence. Full law enforcement mobilizes against them. Meanwhile, Justin and Sam, who have been monitoring Cy's laptop through spyware installed via the thumb drive, download their own copy of the stolen database.

Sam pursues her own leads, visiting former CIA analyst Anne Kulczyk, who admits that Warren was an unofficial agent collecting intelligence on Iran and that the CIA fabricated the Bangkok cover story. Anne directs Sam to Dawud Khuzani, Warren's former Iranian contact and now a defector in Washington, who confirms Warren is likely held at a secret military prison near Isfahan, Iran. Erika intercepts Sam afterward, warns her about Cy's frame-up, and urges her to destroy the stolen data and hide.

Sam insists Justin erase everything, arguing the data endangers their lives. He reluctantly complies but has secretly sent a final backup to a remote server, accessible via a link named "Tomyris." When Fusion locates their hideout, Justin and Sam flee toward a music festival, planning to surrender among witnesses. Instead, Justin forces Sam out of the vehicle in a highway tunnel and drives toward a police roadblock with his phone raised, livestreaming. Despite shouting that he surrenders, police shoot and kill him. With his dying act, he sends Sam the "Tomyris" link.

At Fusion Central, the 30-day clock reaches zero with Sam still uncaptured. Walker and Erika appear in Cy's doorway, signaling his reckoning.

The epilogue summarizes the aftermath. Justin's killing becomes a major scandal, but Cy faces Senate questioning and is ultimately cleared. Erika, using Fusion's capabilities, helps confirm Warren's location at the Iranian prison. Political pressure forces a prisoner swap, and Warren returns to the United States. Sam, granted immunity in exchange for silence about Cy's crimes, briefly returns to her old life. But after reuniting with Warren, who insists that Justin's death and Cy's exoneration cannot stand, Sam activates the "Tomyris" link, releasing the entire stolen classified database into the world. She then slips out at dawn with a backpack, going zero once more.