In this article
Fiction of anticipation. The characters, events and timeline that follow are imaginary. This story does not announce an attack and does not describe an event in Montreal. An interruption of services alone does not allow us to infer the cause.
Chronicle of a cyberattack – Montréal, year zero
The days before
He loved that moment in the morning: when the city was just a whisper.
The percolator sizzled softly on the polished concrete counter, the shaving light of a timid sun passed through the bay window of his condo in Griffintown.
Marc-André tapped the screen of his watch. Nothing. He looked up at his wall clock.
He placed his cup half full. A dull, organic anxiety ran through his stomach. He held out his ear. No fan. No radio. No background sound of the neighbor from above who was leaving every morning at 7:02 with his Tesla. Just the silence.
A silence Too deep to be natural.
The interruption
When he went down the street, others were there too, dazed, their phones in hand like mad compasses. Two cars stopped at the red light had not restarted. A father was tapping on the distributor of an underground parking lot. A woman in her pajamas was crying in front of an off-duty ATM.
Marc-André felt his heart slow down. He knew.
Not a breakdown.
An attack. Coordinated. Massive. Silent.
He went home. Plugged in his battery-powered laptop. He tried to connect to one of his private bypass networks. Nothing.
The ports were frozen. The unreachable servers. His personal dashboard, usually filled with network logs and encrypted packets, only returned an empty screen.
As if we had unplugged the internet from the inside.
The tipping
By the third day, everything had turned upside down.
The queues in front of the banks had turned into jostling. The payment terminals no longer recognized any cards. Distributors gave nothing. And even those who had cash realized that No one wanted it anymore. Water, batteries, rice, cigarettes... that’s what mattered.
In the hall of his building, a young father had organized an improvised barter.
“Two canes of tuna against a pack of piles.”
An old man had offered a propane bottle for a solar charger. We shook our heads. No one asked any more questions.
Marc-André observed. He noted. He Documenting the Fall.
Lost Illusions
On the sixth day, a rumor circulated:
“The state will take back control. Convoys are coming.”
But nothing came.
Instead, hastily printed leaflets were glued to street lamps:
“Cooperate. Stay calm. The attack is under control. Systems will be restored soon.”
But Marc-André knew.
The system He was not under control. He had been taken by the throat. And cut off.
Griffintown West
They were eight. Eight residents remained in their building. Marc-André gathered them one evening, by the light of a battery-powered lantern.
He proposed a protocol:
- Night watch in turn
- Mutualization of resources
- Establishing a debt book (paper, sealed in a shoebox)
- Analog network: post-it on the door, voice calls in the stairwell
They accepted. Not by faith, but by necessity.
A 17-year-old boy, Alex, proved valuable. He could fix the radios. A former nurse improvised a medicine cabinet in the bicycle room. A form of order emerged... fragile, but real.
The External Shadows
At the end of the second month, the first unofficial patrols appeared.
Men in construction boots, red armbands, CB radios.
They called themselves “protectors of Zone 6”, regulated movements between boroughs, and imposed taxes on food exchanges.
Marc-André avoided the glances, only came out at the end of the day.
He understood:
The void was never lasting. It was always filled. By power. Or fear.
Reignite the silence
In the fourth month, an AM wave returned.
Weak, fragmented.
A voice read instructions:
« If you hear this, you are still in an unrecovered area. Prepare for a relocation. Head to the coordination centres located in Longueuil, Sherbrooke or Ottawa. Montreal will not be reconnected immediately. »
Marc-André turned off his radio. He had chosen. He would not leave.
He updated his notebook. Recorded the state of the stocks. Drawn a diagram of his residential block. the memory of what they had built.
The Will
In the twelfth month, a small group came to see him. A delegation of what was left of the government. They were talking about rebuilding, resetting, coming back to order. They offered a job, a new life, in Toronto.
He refused.
The next day, he buried a small metal box at the foot of the old oak tree in the nearby park.
Inside:
- A newspaper
- A map of Montreal divided into zones of trust
- A USB key containing logs, evidence, hypotheses
He wrote on the box:
“To those who want to understand. Not just survive.”
What's left
The city was no longer what it had been.
But he was still breathing.
Otherwise. Slower. More intensely.
Marc-André watched the children play on a wasteland that had become a vegetable garden.
Drones never came back.
The birds were singing again.
And the silence, once chilling, had become a language they had all learned to understand.
After Reading: Distinguishing Narrative and Preparation
The duration of the crisis and the institutional collapse belong to fiction. Marc-André’s choices do not constitute instructions: a requested evacuation must be followed, information must be verified and medicines must not become a bargaining chip. Neighbourhood initiatives must remain safe, voluntary and respectful of the relevant services.
To turn this reading into practice, ask yourself where to find official information, how to reach a loved one without your usual means and what reservations would allow you to go through a service interruption. Distinguish what you know, what you assume, and what requires confirmation.
L'AtelierEvaluation of national cyber threats 2025-2026 The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security provides a real-world context for digital threats. It does not validate the script or its timeline. For your home, start with a family plan and the instructions of your municipality.