The first zero-day attack didn’t happen with a bang—it crept into the world like an unwelcome thought. By the time the headlines broke, the thieves were already on the move, commandeering electric fleets in coordinated precision across half a dozen major cities. Self-driving cars, the pride of the automotive revolution, were being rerouted, unlocked, and driven away by hackers who never left their keyboards.

Evan Berg, a senior risk analyst for GEICO, had warned about this possibility for months, but his memos were ignored. Insurance companies had been blindsided by their own confidence. Policies for autonomous vehicles were written with the assumption of mechanical failure or human misuse—not malicious code.

“Not covered,” the claims department told an exasperated Tesla owner in Seattle. She stared at the fine print that specifically excluded “acts of hacking resulting in vehicle theft.” Her Model Y had vanished from her driveway in the middle of the night. The app now showed her car cruising somewhere on the outskirts of Vancouver. No one was coming to help.

Elon Musk’s latest livestream tried to spin the crisis. “This is a minor setback,” he said with his signature smirk, “and frankly, not unexpected for such a revolutionary technology.” But even as he spoke, a leaked video of a self-driving Cybertruck speeding down a freeway with a group of laughing teens in the back went viral.

It wasn’t just individuals losing their cars. An entire fleet of delivery trucks owned by a startup in Atlanta disappeared overnight. The hackers weren’t just stealing—they were selling. Vehicles were popping up in Eastern Europe and South Asia within days, their sophisticated tracking systems erased, their identities rewritten like a fake passport.

By the third day, insurance companies started canceling policies en masse. "This is an act of cyberterrorism," GEICO's official statement read. "Standard automotive policies are not designed to cover digital breaches of this nature." The fine print had always been there; no one bothered to read it.

Evan sat in his dimly lit office, staring at his email inbox as it filled with panicked queries from his superiors. The irony wasn’t lost on him: they wanted answers now, but six months ago, they didn’t even want to hear his questions.

“Evan,” his manager barked from the doorway, “How do we fix this?”

He leaned back in his chair, contemplating the impossible task of repairing the system when the foundation itself was flawed. “We don’t,” he replied. “The system isn’t broken. It’s just exposed.”

Outside, a hacked Model X idled in the company parking lot. Its owner, unaware of the breach, walked toward it with his arms full of groceries. The doors opened automatically as if welcoming him home.

But the driver’s seat was empty.