Treason

"To reiterate, due to the volatility of the current market, all cryptocurrency wallets must be closed by March the 1st or else the funds will be seized and you will face prosecution."

For the Prime Minister to issue such a warning was, at the very least, unheard of. His grip tightened around his black notebook, usually a sign that he was about to make his exit. Sure enough, he glanced over at Louise, signalling that he was ready.

Louise darted through the cameras and in through the side door just as the Prime Minister made his way through.

"I need you to talk to Jonathon," the Prime Minister loosened his tie as Louise approached, "I'm going to need the public response reports by Thursday."

Louise nodded and jotted down the deadline into her own black notepad; a staple of No 10's official stationery.

"How do you think it went? I communicated the severity of this clearly enough?"

"Yes sir, absolutely."

The Prime Minister's eyes darted across the room and he nodded towards the office in front, "Where's Gregory?"

"He was in there just before the briefing, I can check if -"

"No, it's fine. He'll see me now." The Prime Minister approached the office door, knocking once before entering.

Gregory was a burly man with unkempt hair, usually sporting a suit that was either too big or too small. Leant by his window, he looked at the Prime Minister and nodded in approval.

Louise closed the door behind her as she watched the two men joke together. The topic of their discussion was a little out of Louise's expertise and so she stood quietly, tracing the spine of her notebook with her thumb.

"It played out perfectly. We got them out in time and they'll be back in again on the 2nd to reap the new prices." Gregory said as decanted his whiskey into two crystal glasses.

The Prime Minister glanced at Louise and nodded at the door, his brow furrowed, "If you would."

"Of course sir." Louise stepped outside and closed the door behind her. The mumble of the conversation inside was barely audible, but Louise could just about make out what the two men were discussing:

"There's going to be public outrage about this, you know that, don't you?" Gregory's voice was the hardest of the two to make out. Raspy and old, his voice cracked, "It's not going to be pretty."

"It's not a fools game Gregory," The Prime Minister's deep voice bellowed, "And it's time they learned the lesson."

"Louise!" A voice shattered Louise's concentration.

She spun around to see Jonathon stood, his dishevelled black notepad in hand.

"Thursday," Louise stated apologetically, "It's needed by Thursday."

"Thursday?" Unable to mask the panic in his voice, Jonathon flicked through his black notepad. "He wants the report by Thursday?"

*

"You know why they're doing it," Tyrice muted the television and turned to Louise. "It's to protect the banks, put money back into GBP and help their rich friends get richer. They can't have the working class at the forefront of a financial revolution."

Louise rolled her eyes, "Honestly Ty, I don't want to hear it."

"I don't get how you can stand it Lou, how you could work for a man like that."

"It's a job, Tyrice, that's all, and I don't want to lose it."

Tyrice turned back to the TV and turned up the volume. The news reporter's voice echoed around the room, "Poverty rates across Great Britain have reached an all-time high and in today's briefing the Prime Minister has announced that there's no more money left to tackle the growing epidemic. Also on tonight's news, the Prime Minister has called to an end of cryptocurrency services in the UK and the Leader of the Opposition has demanded the Prime Minister's resignation..."

*

Louise stared at her hands in her lap, her fingers laced around her notepad. The Prime Minister was in his third meeting of the day, and this one was for his ears only. She sat patiently, counting the stitches on her notepad until she heard a commotion at the door. The Prime Minister exited through the door shortly after, making eye contact with Louise in an effort to instruct her to follow. He was walking with a man that Louise didn't recognise, which wasn't an anomaly since the recent financial crash.

The two men walked ahead of Louise, speaking in a low whisper that Louise couldn't decipher. Whatever they were speaking about, the Prime Minister didn't sound happy.

Louise followed the men into the Prime Minister's office and took her seat at the edge of the room.

The man that the Prime Minister was with pulled out an iPad from his bag and set it up on the Prime Minister's desk. "We've identified these thirty areas as the highest risk. Food banks are closing across the boroughs and the charities can't keep up with the demand."

"I don't know how many times I need to reiterate this, Marcus," Anger bubbled beneath the Prime Minister's voice, "But we can't afford to do anything about this. There's simply no more money left."

"I appreciate that it's difficult, sir, but if we were to look at the allocation -"

"Are you listening to me? There's no more money. End of discussion." The Prime Minister opened up his notepad and scribbled a large zero on the page. He tore out the page and passed it to Marcus. "This is how much we have left. Take that to your supervisor and ask him what he'd like me to do."

"Yes sir," Marcus nodded in defeat and collected his belongings. "I'll speak to the team and get back to you with any solutions."

The Prime Minister turned to face Louise, "Please show him out."

*

When Louise returned to the Prime Minister's office, he was leant back in his chair with papers spread out in front of him. He looked up as she entered the room. "I'm going to get some air, would you file these for me?"

Louise nodded and approached the desk. The files left in front of her were mostly inter-party correspondence and the analytics from public response reports, but there was something interesting about one of the sheets of paper. It was an off-white, almost orange, piece of paper with bold type and a large "confidential" ink stamp in the upper left corner. The sheet seemed to outline the Government's response to the crypto crisis but the language used was suggestive that, because of crypto currency, a lot of working class and poorer people were actually bettering their financial situation — the opposite message to the one the Prime Minister broadcasted just a day earlier.

Louise looked over the paper for a few seconds longer before frantically filing it away, unsure of what it was that she just read. She quietly worked through the rest of the papers, trying to avoid the thought that the Prime Minister might be forcing regular people out of their money. Tyrice's words rang in her head. They can't have the working class at the forefront of a financial revolution.

*

"What's today then?" Tyrice clicked on the kettle, "Are we at war with Bitcoin or the poor?"

"Probably both." Louise pulled her bag closer and pulled out her notepad. She looked back up at Tyrice, "I'm not a supporter, you know that right?"

"I know that," Tyrice rested his hands on her waist and pulled her closer, "I wouldn't have married you if that was the case." He nodded towards the book, "Go on then, what's on the agenda?"

Louise smiled and flipped open her book. She was about to flip to today's date when she noticed something strange about her book. There was a dark smudge in the top corner. She looked again and realised that it was a notation. A notation that she couldn't quite make out in handwriting that definitely wasn't hers. She pulled away from Tyrice and looked at the book again. Now that she was looking properly, none of the handwriting was hers.

"What?" Tyrice peered over the edge of the book. "What is it?"

Louise looked up. "It's not mine."

*

"This," Louise pointed at a long combination of numbers and letters. They'd spent the last few minutes flicking through the book and Louise was perplexed as to how cryptic the notes seemed to be, "What is it?"

"Should you be reading that?" Tyrice was never the model citizen and Louise didn't understand why he would pretend to be now. "It could be the PM's."

"It is the PM's." Louise would recognise her boss' handwriting anywhere. The way he scrawled his letters only reminded her of her worst days at work, the one's where he would hardly speak to her and instead leave demands on post in notes that she was meant to spot from the other side of the room. "But what is this?" She pointed again at the string of characters.

"It looks like a code." Tyrice took the book into his own hand. Slowly, a look of disbelief took over his face. "Wait a minute," he said, flipping through the book. He landed on another page with a similar notation in the upper right corner. It had a string of words that made no sense. "I knew it! I told you they were keeping the assets to themselves."

Louise stared blankly at Tyrice. "Assets?"

"Look," He flipped between the two pages, "This is for a crypto wallet."

"He might have set it up before the ban." Louise looked closer at the book. It was absurd to suggest that the Prime Minister might have his assets in a system that he himself had called for a ban of. She'd heard the way he spoke about cryptocurrency and the dangers it possessed.

"Let's log on, see if there's anything there." Tyrice pulled out his laptop.

"Tyrice -"

"If you're right, if it's empty, then there's no harm, right?"

Louise thought back to papers she had found in the Prime Minister's office just weeks before. Could it be that he was storing the crypto for himself but forbidding British citizens from doing the same? She nodded at Tyrice. He was right, surely there was no harm.

Within moments, Tyrice had stopped typing and was leaning back in his chair. "Guess how much."

Louise stood up pulled the screen towards her, in disbelief that there would be any money still there. But there it was, as clear as daylight; the figure on the screen read =£10,340,032 GBP. "Ten...million." The words barely escaped her as she landed back into her chair.

"A liar, I told you so." Tyrice's voice was full of complacency.

"£20,000." Louise spun her head to look at Tyrice.

"What?"

"He won't miss it. He won't know it's gone and even if he did, who's he going to report it to?"

"Louise, you can't be serious? You'd lose your job — you'd go to prison. That's theft — that's treason!"

Louise's mind flickered back to the Prime Minister's meeting with Marcus and how he had told him that there was no more money left for the children - the starving children who lived in a country that he was in charge of, knowing that he had over £10,000,000 in assets that he would soon make illegal. "We could donate it."

Tyrice's face softened. "Louise, I don't know —"

"Ty," She stared hard at the little black book and then back at her husband, "Do it."