Blackout

Twelve

Berkeley was asleep. We pulled off Highway 13 onto the surface streets, using my still mostly accurate mental map of the area to guide us to the intersections and off-ramps that hadn’t been outfitted with blood test units. I was only wrong once, and that one time, the line for the testing station was long enough for me to get into the back and climb under a counter, where I would be safely out of view. Our van’s occupancy beacon was “broken,” courtesy of Alaric and a socket wrench, and they’re not yet legally required for a vehicle to be considered road safe. “Yet” is the operative word—I expect tricks like the one we pulled to be illegal within the next five years. God bless “yet.”

Becks pulled up to the manned booth monitoring traffic as it moved from the highway onto surface streets. I heard the slap of her hand hitting the metal testing panel, and the disinterested voice of the nightshift security officer as he asked where she was heading. As a university town, Berkeley has never been in a position to crack down on traffic as much as, say, Orinda, where the city limits basically seal themselves as soon as the sun sets. In Berkeley, only the individual neighborhoods can go for that kind of expensive paranoia.

Becks’s answer was muffled by the seat and the sounds of traffic coming in through her open window. Whatever she said must have passed muster, because she put the van back into drive and went rolling on after only about a minute and a half.

Don’t even think about going up there until she says it’s safe, said George. This would be a stupid way to die.

I couldn’t answer without the all clear, and so I just glared into the darkness at the back of the van, trusting her to get the point. She did; her laughter filled my head, amusement tinged with a grim understanding of just how bleak our situation could easily become.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Becks called, “We should be out of range of the cameras. You can come out now.”

“It’s about time.” I crawled out from under the counter and back into the front seat, not bothering with my seat belt. “I was starting to get a cramp back there.”

“You would have gotten more than a cramp if one of those guards had seen you.”

“I’m clean.”

Becks slanted a disbelieving look at me. “Do you honestly think no one’s going to be looking for you? After everything that’s happened?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I mean, we haven’t committed any crimes—well, technically, we could probably be charged with breaking and entering at the Memphis CDC, since the Doc was legally dead when she let us in—but I know there are people watching for us.”

“Watching for you,” said Becks, almost gently. “You’re the only remaining blogger from the Ryman campaign. You’ve got a level of credibility with people who aren’t blog readers that the rest of us can only dream about—and here, you’ll be recognized by just about anyone. Hometown boy makes good and then goes bad? You’re the target, Shaun. Not me, not Alaric, and not even Mahir.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine, aren’t you? Take the left on Derby.”

“Forgive me if I’m not that excited about the idea of going to visit your parents.”

“Adoptive parents,” I said automatically.

Becks wasn’t listening. That was probably a good thing. “I used to look up to them, you know? They were heroes. What your father did for his students—he should have received a medal for that.”

“He agrees with you.” I couldn’t keep the sourness out of my voice. I wasn’t trying very hard. Becks grew up with the Masons as celebrity faces for the news, but I grew up with them exploiting me—exploiting George—for the sake of ratings, and a kind of public approval so damn fickle it was almost unreal. And now here I was, creeping back to them under the cover of darkness, ready to beg for their help. Home sweet self-destructive emotionally abusive home.

“I didn’t find out what they were like until I started working for Georgia. She talked about them more than you do. Which is sort of funny, since you talk about almost everything else so much more than she ever did.”

“She loved them,” I said defensively. I didn’t know why I felt the need to defend George’s love of the Masons, but I did. Maybe it was because I stopped loving them so long ago. Maybe it was because, awful as they were, she could never quite bring herself to do the same. “She didn’t want them to be the people that they were.”

“And you did?”

“What? No! No. I just…” I let the sentence drift off, watching Berkeley slide by outside the van window. I’d made this trip in the passenger seat so damn many times; any time we had to go out on location when the weather conditions made it unsafe for George to take the bike, or when parking was going to be at a premium. She insisted on driving after the sun was down, saying her retinal KA gave her an advantage over my puny, uninfected eyes. So I would sit in the passenger seat and watch Berkeley going by, tired, cranky, and utterly content with the world. Maybe it was nostalgia speaking, but I couldn’t remember a single night trip home where I hadn’t been happy to be where I was, riding in the van with Georgia, and both of us alive, and both of us together.

Finally, slowly, I said, “George knew who the Masons were—what the Masons were—as well as I did. But she wished they were different. I think she thought that if she could just bring home a big enough story, find a big enough truth, that maybe they’d get past Phillip—their son, the one who died—and finally start loving us.”

“And you didn’t think that?”

“They were never going to start loving us. That’s why we had to love each other as much as we did.”

“Oh.”

Becks was quiet after that, and I was glad. I wanted to make this last little part of the trip in silence.

The GPS didn’t take us down the streets I would have chosen—it was going by distance, not by a local’s knowledge of road conditions and traffic lights—but that was good, too, in its way. I needed this trip to be a little different. I spent too much time living in the past, and I didn’t need to encourage the part of me that would be happy to stay there forever. The businesses clustered around Shattuck and Ashby gave way to the outlying buildings of the U.C. Berkeley campus, and finally to the low, tight-packed shapes of the residential neighborhoods. Becks pulled up in front of a familiar house, the windows shuttered, the porch light dark.

“Now what?” she asked.

“This.” I dug a hand into my pocket, pulling out the sensor disk I’d been carrying since we left Dr. Abbey’s lab. It wasn’t mine, ironically; my identity key to the Masons’ house was lost when Oakland burned. This one had been Georgia’s, and had been a part of her little black box—the only thing I’d taken the time to save before the bombs came down. I slipped the chain on over my neck, pressing the disk to my skin and flipping it into the “on” position. It beeped, twice, acknowledging that it had managed to locate a matching signal in the immediate vicinity.

A light above the Masons’ garage door flashed on, blinking twice in response to the disk’s location pulse. Without any further fanfare, the door began spooling smoothly upward.

“Go on in,” I said, in response to Becks’s surprised expression. “The house was programmed years ago to let this van inside with multiple passengers. It was an expensive enough upgrade that there’s no way they’ve taken the time to have it pulled out of the security programming.”

Unless they were really, really angry with you when you refused to give them my files, said George. They could have done it out of spite.

“ ‘Could’ doesn’t mean ‘would,’ ” I said.

Becks shot another glance my way, frowning, and started the engine again. “Please try not to talk to dead people while we’re here? I don’t want you getting shot because you look like you’re getting the amplification crazies.”

“Amplification doesn’t make you talk to yourself.”

“And you don’t get better once you’re infected. There’s a first time for everything.”

“Fair enough.” The garage door slid closed again once we were inside. I unfastened my belt. “Come on. We’ll need to pass security if we want to get into the house.”

“I figured.”

I hadn’t expected the Masons to make any updates to the security system, and I hadn’t been wrong: The two testing stations were still in place, each of them equipped with the standard wall plate for blood sampling and the more expensive display screens for verbal confirmation. Becks and I stepped into position. A red light clicked on above the door leading into the house.

“Please identify yourself,” said the bland, computerized voice of the house system.

“Shaun Phillip Mason and guest,” I said.

“Rebecca Atherton, guest,” said Becks. Her words were almost precisely overlaid by Georgia’s, as she said, Georgia Carolyn Mason.

The light above the door blinked several times as the house checked my voice against its records. I was allowed to bring guests home—had been since I was sixteen—but I hadn’t done it very often. Part of me was even ludicrously afraid the house would somehow pick up on George’s phantom voice and refuse to let us in until it had figured out how to test her for viral amplification.

The light blinked just long enough for me to get nervous before the house said, “Voice print and guest authorization confirmed. Please read the phrase on your display screen.”

Words appeared on my screen. “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse,” I read. The words blinked out.

On the other side of the door, Becks recited, “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.” The light above the door began blinking again. She cast me a nervous glance, which I answered with an equally nervous smile. The feel of George’s phantom fingers wrapping around my own didn’t help as much as I might have hoped. Every time she touched me, it was just a reminder of how little time I had left before I wound up going utterly insane.

The light over the door changed from red to yellow.

“Please place your right hands on the testing pads,” requested the house. I did as I was told, slapping my palm flat against the cool metal. It chilled half a second later, and something bit into my index finger, a brief sting followed almost instantly by the cool hiss of soothing foam. The light above the door began to flash, alternating red and yellow.

“Isn’t this fun?” I asked, with forced levity.

Becks glared. She was still glaring when the light stopped flashing.

The door hissed open. “Welcome home, Shaun,” said the house. “We hope you’ll have a pleasant visit, Rebecca.”

“Um, thanks,” said Becks, looking to me for what she should do next. I shrugged, smiled, and stepped through the open door.

The kitchen hadn’t changed since Georgia and I lived with the Masons. The floor was still covered in the same off-brown linoleum, and the walls were still papered in the same cheerful yellow floral print. Papers and clippings from the U.C. Berkeley student newspaper—printed on actual paper, although it was hemp, not wood pulp—covered the refrigerator. The urge to open it, grab a snack, and go up to my room was as strong as it was unexpected. Walking into that kitchen was like walking backward through time, into a part of my life where the biggest thing I had to worry about was whether the new T-shirt designs in my shop would sell well enough to justify their printing cost.

A part of my life where Georgia was alive, and not just a voice in my head and a ghostly hand on my arm.

“Shaun?” said Becks, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I shook off the past, shoving it away from me as hard as I could. “Come on.” I gestured for her to follow as I stepped out of the kitchen and into the front hallway, intending to wait in the living room until the Masons woke up and came downstairs for breakfast. It was a good plan. It was a plan intended to leave them off balance and catch them during the one time of day when they were as close to unarmed as possible.

It was a plan that died as soon as we turned the hall corner and found ourselves facing my adoptive mother, Stacy Mason. She was wearing a robe over sensible cotton pajamas, and holding a revolver. It was aimed straight at my chest. I stopped. Becks stopped. None of us said a word.

Correction: None of us said a word that anyone but me could hear. Hi, Mom, said George, her voice falling into the silence like a stone. I managed somehow not to flinch.

Finally, Mom lowered her pistol, saying calmly, “You must be hungry. Why don’t you kids go back into the kitchen, and I’ll see if I can’t whip us up some pancakes or something?”

“That’s okay, Mom,” I said. “We didn’t come here for breakfast.”

“I know,” she said, voice utterly calm—the voice that used to greet me when I came home late from school, or got another detention for fighting with the kids who picked on George because of her eyes. “I raised you better than that. At the same time, whatever you did come for can wait until we’ve all had a chance to sit down and eat like civilized people. All right?”

I know when I’m beat. “Okay, Mom.” I hesitated before adding, “You know you can’t upload any footage of us being here, right?”

“I invented the rules to this game, Shaun,” said Mom. “Now go wash your hands.”

“Yes, Mom,” I said. Georgia echoed the words inaudibly, her voice half a beat out of synch with mine. “Come on, Becks.”

Looking uncertain, Becks turned to follow me back to the kitchen. We had barely crossed the threshold when Mom called, “Oh, and Shaun?”

I tensed, not turning. “Yeah?”

“Welcome home.”

Somehow, that didn’t reduce the tension. “Thanks, Mom,” I said, and kept walking.

Now that we were back in the kitchen, I could really look at it, rather than letting the overwhelming impression of coming home wash over me. Everything was old-fashioned to the point of parody, with frilled gingham curtains hiding the security mesh worked into the windows and fixtures originally installed sometime in the 1940s. It was all part of the homey atmosphere the Masons worked so hard to project—the homey atmosphere that had required, once upon a time, that they go shopping for adorable orphans to complement the rest of their décor. The worst part was the way I could see Becks buying into it, the tightness slipping from her shoulders and the lines around her mouth relaxing. Stacy and Michael Mason were heroes of the Rising. They were two of the best-loved faces of the media movements that came after it; between them, they defined what it was to be an Irwin, what it was to be a Newsie… what it was to be a blogger.

Maybe it’s insane that a news movement that started as the chosen medium of politicos and techno-nerds and geeks of all stripes wound up with a college professor and a former dental hygienist as its primary poster children, but that’s the thing about reality. It doesn’t need to make sense. They were in the right places at the right times, they had the right level of heroic dedication and personal tragedy, and maybe most important, when their backs were against the wall—when their son was dead and the world was changed forever, and the things they’d been doing during the Rising to keep themselves from thinking about those two unchangeable facts weren’t an option anymore—they decided to become stars in the highest-rated reality show anyone had ever seen. The news.

I dried my hands on the blue towel next to the kitchen sink before stepping aside to let Becks at the faucet. “Remember why we’re here,” I said, voice a little sharper than it needed to be. “This isn’t a social call.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…” Becks stuck her hands under the running water, using that small domestic activity to buy herself a few seconds. Finally, she said, “I thought she’d be taller. It’s a cliché, I know, but I really did. I should know better—I’ve seen pictures of her next to you—but somehow, I still thought she’d be…” She stopped, and then finished, lamely, “Taller.”

“I get that a lot.” Along with requests for autographs, and occasional offers of money if I could somehow get my hands on naked pictures. My college journalism courses were hell. George had it a little better—I guess Irwins feel more entitled to demand the gory details, while Newsies just look for something they can hang you with.

“I wanted to be your mother when I grew up.” Becks said it like it was somehow shameful, the sort of admission that could only be dragged out of her by a kitchen with yellow wallpaper and stupid curtains. Mom would have been proud of her environmental design. Hell, for all I knew, she already was. For all I knew, she was watching us from upstairs; they’d had this place bugged since before I could walk. “She was so… brave, and strong, and she always knew what she was doing. Not like me. I was just sleepwalking through the things my parents wanted me to do, until the day I finally got up the nerve to run.”

We never did that, said George. Her voice echoed oddly, coming half from right beside me, half from the inside of my head. It was the house. I’d spent too much of my life in this house with her; she was haunting it as much as she was haunting me.

God, was that what it was like for the Masons after Phillip died? Did they see him every time they turned around, a bright-eyed little ghost that never refused to take a nap, never drew on the walls with his crayons, never screamed because he couldn’t have another cookie? No wonder they adopted us. We weren’t just another way of bringing in the ratings. We were a living attempt at exorcism.

“We never ran,” I said softly.

Becks shot me a startled look that softened into understanding. We were raised by journalists; we grew up to be journalists. That wasn’t the whole story, but it was enough to make a nice headline. We were raised by people who hurt everyone around them in their single-minded pursuit of the story. No one could look at the number of bodies in our wake and not believe that Georgia and I were two apples that didn’t fall far from the transplanted tree.

“Shaun?” The voice was jovial and dry at the same time, the voice of every college professor who ever told a slightly off-color joke and laughed with his undergrads, proving he was “part of the gang” without giving up an inch of his authority. It was the voice of my childhood, the man I watched George beat herself to death trying to become.

Sometimes you can go home again. That’s what hurts most of all. “Hi, Dad,” I said, turning to face him.

Dad smiled as he studied my face, his calculating expression making him look so much like George that it hurt, even though the two of them weren’t biologically related. “The prodigal son comes rolling home. And who is this charming young lady?” His smile turned more sincere as he aimed it at Becks, the consummate showman finding an audience he could charm. “Please tell me our son didn’t bring you here thinking you were going someplace pleasant.”

“Hi,” said Becks, smiling glossily. I resisted the urge to groan. “I’m Rebecca Atherton. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m a real fan of your work.”

“Rebecca Atherton, from After the End Times?” Dad glanced my way for a split second, like he was making sure I saw how intimately he knew our site. “The pleasure is mine. Your report on the events of Eakly, Oklahoma, during the Ryman campaign was positively chilling. You have an eye for the news, Miss Atherton.”

“Okay, you’re laying it on a little thick,” I said, unable to contain myself any longer. “Can you stop trying to spin Becks for thirty seconds and let us tell you why we’re here?”

“Now, Shaun. Your mother was looking forward to having a nice family breakfast, just the four of us.” Dad’s smile faded. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to disappoint her.”

“I gave up on trying not to disappoint her a long time ago.” I glared at him.

He glared back. Something about that expression made him look as out-of-date as the kitchen, and somehow, between one second and the next, I started to see him, not just the man I remembered from my childhood. He was wearing pajama pants and a belted gray cotton robe, preserving the illusion of collegial dignity, but his already-thinning red Irish hair was almost gone, leaving an expanse of gleaming forehead in its wake. His eyes were tired behind the lenses of his glasses. I’d never really thought of him as tired before.

“Be that as it may, I’m assuming you wouldn’t have come out of whatever hidey-hole you’ve been tucked away in without something you considered a very good reason, and that means you need us.” Dad kept glaring as he spoke, choosing each word with exquisite care. That was something else he had in common with George. Both of them knew how to use words to wound. “If you want us to cooperate with whatever mad scheme has brought you back here, you will sit down, and you will eat breakfast with your parents like a civilized human being.”

“Right.” I shook my head. “And if you get some ratings out of the deal, well, that won’t suck for you, will it?”

“Perhaps not,” he allowed.

“Oh, good, we’re all together.” Mom appeared behind him, hair brushed, and a light layer of foundation on her cheeks. Not enough to show on camera—oh, no, never that—but enough to take fifteen years off her age. Her hair was the same silvery ash blonde it had always been.

How many times have you had to dye your hair in the last year? I wondered, and felt immediately bad about even harboring the thought. I didn’t like the Masons. I didn’t trust them. But at the end of the day, they were the only family I had left—and I needed them.

“Hands are clean,” I said, holding them up for inspection. Becks mirrored the motion, letting me take the lead. I was so grateful I could have kissed her.

“Good. Now go set the table.” Mom kissed Dad on the cheek—a glancing peck she normally reserved for public photo ops—and pushed past us into the kitchen. “Eggs and soy ham will be ready in ten minutes.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I opened the nearest cabinet and took down four plates, passing them to Becks. Getting the glasses and silverware out of their respective places only took a few seconds more. “Come on, Becks.”

“Coming,” she said, and followed me out of the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, Dad tagged along behind her, looking studiously casual, but almost certainly making sure we didn’t make a break for it before he’d had a chance to grill us on what, exactly, we had come for.

The lights were on in the empty dining room. I stopped in the doorway, a lump forming in my throat. The dining room table was clear. The dining room table was never clear, not even when someone was coming to interview one or more of us; it was a constant bone of contention between the two generations in the household, with Mom and Dad insisting the dining room was meant for eating, and George and I insisting it was a crime to let a perfectly good table go to waste for twenty hours of any given day. We fought over it at least once a month. We…

But that was the past. I shook it off, blinking away the tears that threatened to blur my vision, and felt Georgia’s hand on my shoulder, steadying me.

The house is haunted, she said softly, but so are you, and your haunting is stronger than theirs. You can do this.

“Shaun?” asked Becks. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, answering them both with a single word. I stepped into the dining room and started putting glasses down on the table. “Sorry. Just memories.”

“We have a lot of memories invested in this house—in this family,” said Dad, moving around the table to keep us in view. “It’s good to see you, son.”

“Can we not?” This time, the tears were too close to blink away. I swiped my arm across my eyes in a quick, jerky motion. “Don’t bullshit me, okay? Please. The last time we saw each other, you were threatening to take me to court over Georgia’s will, and I’m pretty sure I told you to go fuck yourselves. So can we not play happy families for Becks’s benefit? She knows better.”

Dad’s smile faded slowly. Finally, he said, “Maybe it’s not only for her benefit. Did you consider that? Maybe we missed you.”

“And maybe you’re trying to get the best footage you can before I run out of here again,” I said. Suddenly weary, I pulled out one of the dining room chairs and collapsed into it. “You missed me. Fine. I missed you, too. That doesn’t change who we are.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” Dad turned to Becks, a seemingly genuine expression of apology on his face. “Would you like to wait in the kitchen while we have this conversation? I’m sure it’s not very comfortable for you.”

“I’ve come this far with your son. I think I’ll stick with him a little longer.” Becks took the seat next to mine, folding her hands in her lap as she directed a calm, level stare at my adoptive father.

He blinked, glancing between the two of us before clearly coming to the wrong conclusion. A smile crept back onto his face. “Ah. I see.”

No, you don’t, I wanted to scream. I didn’t. Instead, I said, “We’re here because we need your help. We didn’t have any place else to go.”

“That’s the sort of thing a mother always loves to hear from her only living child,” said Mom, stepping into the dining room. She was carrying a tray loaded down with quiche, slices of steaming artificial ham, and even a pile of waffles. It would have been more impressive if I hadn’t known she’d pulled every bit of it out of the freezer. But it was food, and it was hot, and it smelled like my childhood—the parts of it that happened before I knew just what the score in our happy little family really was.

“At least I’m honest.” I leaned over as soon as she put the tray on the table, driving my fork into the top waffle on the stack. She smiled indulgently, picking up the serving spoon and using it to deposit a slice of quiche on my plate. “Isn’t that a virtue around here?”

“Sometimes. Rebecca? What can I get you?”

“It all looks fantastic, Ms. Mason. I’d like some of everything, if that isn’t too much trouble.”

“Nonsense. Why would I have cooked if I didn’t want you to eat?” Mom made a flapping gesture with her free hand, indicating one of the empty seats. “Michael, sit down. Shaun’s big pronouncement can wait until you have something in you.”

“Yes, dear,” he said, and sat. He winked at me, clearly trying to look conspiratorial, like we were the same because Mom was making us both eat. I ignored it, spearing a slice of “ham” with my fork rather than trying to come up with a less violent response. Anything I said would have ended with my screaming at someone—or maybe just screaming. The room, the hour, the false domesticity, it was rubbing at my nerves even more than I’d been afraid it would.

I may be a haunted house, but that doesn’t mean I was emotionally equipped to sit in someone else’s haunting, eating breakfast and pretending everything was normal.

It took about ten minutes to eat our breakfasts. While we ate, silence reigned, broken only by the clank of silverware against ceramic and the occasional sound of someone chewing a bit too loud. I kept catching glimpses of George. She was sitting in one of the otherwise empty seats, no plate in front of her, watching mournfully as the rest of us ate. She disappeared if I looked at her directly, and I was glad. If I’d been forced to sit in this house, with these people, looking at her ghost, I think I would have finally gone all the way insane.

At last, Dad pushed his plate away, patting his lips with his napkin, and turned a calm gaze on me. Becks was all but ignored; she’d had her opportunity to be a part of this little drama, to either side with the Masons or establish herself as a third party, and she’d chosen to stick with me. That meant she was basically a nonentity as far as he was concerned.

“Well, Shaun?” he asked. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“We need your help,” I said again, not sure where else to start.

“With what, dear?” asked Mom, tilting her head inquisitively to the side. Light glinted off her diamond earring. My mother never slept in diamond earrings. That was a miniaturized camera. It had to be. She was recording us.

That wasn’t unexpected. “Becks and I need to get to Florida without being stopped by the border patrols,” I said, not bothering to sugarcoat the words. “I know you know people who can get you past the hazard lines. I need to know them, too.”

“Why don’t you go looking for your own contacts?” asked Dad. “You’ve never asked us to do your research for you before.”

“Because there isn’t time, and because any contacts I could find that easily wouldn’t be as good as the ones you’ve been working on for years.” I shrugged. “I’m smart enough to know a plan is only as good as the tools you use to carry it out.”

“How were you planning to deal with the mosquitoes?” asked Mom. “Florida’s a death sentence right now.”

“Bug spray,” said Becks. “Mosquito netting. The things they’ve been using to stay alive in regions with malaria problems for generations.”

“Kellis-Amberlee is a bit nastier than malaria, young lady,” said Dad.

“Guess that ‘Miss Atherton’ routine couldn’t last, huh?” I took another slice of fake ham. “We have a plan for handling the bugs. What we don’t have is a way to get to Florida without getting arrested.”

“What you’re asking for, Shaun… this isn’t some little trinket. This is the name of a trusted ally, one who might never work with us again after we sell you his or her identity.” Mom’s eyes narrowed, that familiar calculating gleam lighting them from within. “What are you prepared to give us in exchange?”

“Georgia’s files.”

A momentary silence fell over the room, the Masons staring at me in startled surprise, Becks sitting by my side, and all of us waiting to see what would happen next. Then, finally, Dad began to smile. For the first time since we’d arrived, it actually looked sincere.

“Well, why didn’t you say so? Let’s go upstairs. You kids are going to need a map.”