Blackout

GEORGIA: Twenty-five

Shaun didn’t let go of my hand once after he had it—not while we were climbing through the hole in the wall, and not when the explosions started. It was like I was the lifeline he’d been looking for. I wasn’t going to object. I knew he was the lifeline I’d been looking for, and no matter how improbable his presence was, I wasn’t going to let go of him until I absolutely had to.

Concussive booming sounds came from the building behind us as we ran. They followed a definite wave pattern, with a small crumping explosion followed by a cascade of louder, more enthusiastic booms. My little charges had managed to break through into something a lot more combustible—probably the formalin tanks. It’s nice how many common chemicals are just looking for an excuse to explode.

We ran across a vast, manicured lawn, with evergreen trees standing between us and the fence. If there was a scheduled security sweep of the grounds, it had been canceled in favor of dealing with the explosions; no one stopped us or sounded any additional alarms as we fled.

“If this is anything like Portland, emergency services should start responding to the alarms any minute now!” shouted Shaun, glancing back over his shoulder at the others. “Extra confusion is good, but extra eyes won’t be! Keep running!”

“Shaun—” began Becks.

“Talk later! Flee now!”

I didn’t say anything. I was struggling just to keep up. No matter how much this body looked and felt like the one that I remembered, it wasn’t, and it simply wasn’t equipped for this sort of situation. Maybe it would be one day—assuming I survived that long—but right now, it was all I could do not to fall over and wait for someone to come along and shoot me.

Our path took us to a hole in the fence that looked like it was created by using a pair of magnetic current-bridging strips to reroute the electricity before cutting the wire. Mahir went through first, followed by Shaun, who kept my hand even while I was struggling not to snag my lab coat on the fence. Slowing down made me realize how much my lungs hurt, and how much my feet hurt. I didn’t want to risk looking at them, but I was pretty sure they were bleeding.

This wasn’t the time for first aid. We needed to get as far from the CDC as possible. I straightened, catching my breath as best as I could, and let Shaun pull me back into a run.

We got lucky; any zombies in the area had been attracted by the sound of sirens, and left us alone as we ran. We made it out of the grass and onto the broken sidewalk before my toes caught on the curb and I fell, gravity and momentum conspiring against me for one horrible moment. My hand was yanked free of Shaun’s, but not fast enough for me to catch myself. The landing knocked the air out of me—what little air had been left in me—and I wound up prostrate and wheezing, trying to find the strength to get back up again.

“Are you okay?” asked Shaun. He sounded concerned, but calm. Too calm; scary calm, like he wasn’t surprised to see me in the least.

I was still trying to get enough air to answer when the grass rustled, Becks and Mahir jogging up behind us. There was a click—the sound of a pistol safety being released.

“Move and you die,” snarled Becks, tone leaving no room for argument. I froze, stopping everything but my efforts to breathe. “Now who the fuck are you, and what are you doing here?”

“She fell,” said Shaun, sounding wounded. “Dude, what’s your damage?”

“It’s all right, Shaun,” said Mahir, who sounded as calm as Becks was angry. “Let her deal with this. You just stay right there.”

“What’s my damage? What’s my damage?” Becks laughed, a short, brittle sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “I want to know what the hell game she thinks she’s playing. That’s all.”

“I’m not playing a game, Becks,” I said, voice muffled by the fact that I was talking into the pavement. “Can I get up before I try to explain myself?”

“Hold on,” said Shaun. Now he just sounded perplexed. Not being able to see people’s faces was starting to get to me. “I realize things were a little crazy in there before, so I was sort of willing to blow it off and all, but are you telling me you guys can actually see her?”

“What?” I said, lifting my head slightly. Becks didn’t shoot me. That was something.

“We can both see her, Shaun,” said Mahir wearily. He was panting from the run, although not as much as I was. “I don’t know who this woman is, but she’s no ghost, and no hallucination. We can see her perfectly well.”

“And if she doesn’t start talking soon, we can see her bleed,” said Becks. She nudged my leg with her toe, snapping, “Well? Identify yourself.”

“Please can I get up first?” I asked. “It’ll be easier for us to understand each other if I’m not talking into the street.”

There was a pause as some consultation I couldn’t see took place behind me. Finally, Becks said, “Fine. Get up. But if you so much as twitch funny, you’re going back down, for keeps. Understand?”

“I understand.” I pushed myself to my hands and knees, wincing as gravel and chunks of pavement bit into my hands. It was worse when I actually stood, pressing my bloody feet down on the ground.

Shaun took a half step forward, reaching out to help me with my balance. Becks switched her aim to him.

“Don’t,” she said, very softly. “Don’t make me.”

He stepped back, putting his hands up. “Okay, Becks, don’t worry. I’ll stay right here.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you all,” I said. My hair was sticking to my forehead in sweaty, matted clumps, and the wind was cold on my cheeks. I hurt, I was possibly going to get shot in the next few seconds, and I’d never been so happy to be alive. I glanced at Shaun, reassuring myself that he was really there and really real, before looking back to Becks and Mahir. “I understand you’re probably confused and upset right now. I was, too, when all this started. But I swear, it’s me.”

“There is no ‘me,’ ” snarled Becks. Her eyes narrowed. “What the fuck kind of stunt is this? Plastic surgery? Natural lookalike so we wouldn’t be able to find the scars?”

“Cloning and experimental memory-transfer techniques,” I said. That was enough to stun Becks into a momentary silence.

Not Mahir. He drew his own gun, aiming it at my chest. “What’s your name?”

“Georgia Carolyn Mason.”

“What’s your license number?”

“Alpha-foxtrot-bravo, zero seven five eight nine three.” I rattled off the number without hesitation, glad it wasn’t one of the things stored in the fuzzy area of my memory. “I was issued my provisional B-class license on my sixteenth birthday. That license number was bravo-zulu-echo, one nine three two seven one. It was retired when I tested for my A-class license. I did that when I turned nineteen.”

“What’s my name?”

“Mahir Suresh Gowda. Your license was issued by the Indian consulate in London, so it’s about ninety digits long and comes with diplomatic immunity and what are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be on a different continent, objectively observing our problems?”

He snorted. “Well, my boss went and got herself killed, so it seemed I was needed on a more local level.”

Becks recovered from her brief silence, asking, “If you’re George, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

I touched the skin below my left eye, grimacing. “Freaky, isn’t it? Again, cloning. The scientists who grew me couldn’t induce a specific reservoir condition. When they tried, they caused spontaneous amplification in the clones unlucky enough to be their test subjects. I guess it got pretty expensive, so they stopped trying before they got to me.”

“Makes you a pretty lousy copy,” said Becks coldly.

“I know.” I dropped my hand back to my side. “I’m the show model, to prove that they can make a realistic copy of a person. I wasn’t supposed to get out. The clone they were planning to send to you was surgically altered to look like she had retinal KA.”

“The clone they were planning?” asked Mahir.

I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. “She was in the lab where I planted the initial explosives. You wouldn’t have wanted her anyway. She was programmed to betray you.”

“And you weren’t?” demanded Becks.

“If I have been, I don’t know about it,” I said.

“This is impossible,” said Mahir.

“This is insane,” said Becks.

“This wasn’t my idea,” I countered.

Shaun cleared his throat. “This is starting to make my head hurt, and that’s probably not a good sign. Does somebody want to explain to me exactly how the CDC managed to bring George back from the dead?”

“They didn’t,” said Becks. “This woman is not Georgia.”

“Yes, I am,” I protested. “I know it’s unbelievable, but it’s true.”

Mahir frowned. I knew that look. It was the look he got when something presented him with a really interesting problem to solve. “We’ll not come to any conclusive decisions standing out here,” he said. “Miss, if you’ll allow us to search you for weapons—”

“And scan her for tracking devices,” interjected Becks.

“Yes, of course. Search you for weapons and scan you for tracking devices, and if you come up clean, we can take you back to the hotel where we’re currently quartered and try to sort this out.”

I let out a breath I’d only been half aware of holding. “I have a gun in the pocket on the right-hand side of my lab coat. It’s loaded, but the safety’s on.”

Becks stepped forward, sticking her hand into my pocket with more force than was strictly necessary. She pulled out my gun and stepped back, stowing it in her belt. I felt instantly less clothed. “Got anything else?”

“Not that I’m aware of. If there are tracking devices on me, I don’t know they’re there. They’re probably subcutaneous.” I shook my head. “The EIS would have removed any of those that they found, but that doesn’t mean they found them all.”

Becks sneered. “We’ll just see. You picked the wrong team to try infiltrating, lady, and as soon as we find out who you really are, I’m going to kick the ever-loving crap out of you.”

I smiled slightly, relief fading into a mellower look of generalized exhaustion. “See, that sort of thing, right there, is why I missed you guys so much.” I glanced at Shaun. “Becks is with you, instead of working with the betas now? Good call.”

“Becks is in charge of the Irwins,” he said. Then he frowned. “Shouldn’t you already know that, if they’ve sent you here to infiltrate us?” His tone was turning belligerent. He was starting to get angry. That was bad.

“They didn’t send me, Shaun. I escaped,” I said. “The one they wanted you to find would have a better cover story.”

“This is all academic,” said Mahir. “Whether or not she’s really Georgia—”

“She’s not,” said Becks.

“—she’s here, and we’re going to have to contend with her, one way or another.”

“At least we won’t have any issues with the law if we need to shoot her.” Shaun looked at me coldly. “She’s already dead.”

Seeing that look on his face hurt more than almost anything else in the world. “I’m not dead anymore, Shaun. I swear to you, it’s me. Please believe me.”

He suddenly lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders and turning me to fully face him. Becks started to moved toward us. Mahir grabbed her upper arm, stopping her. I barely noticed. I was too busy staring into the eyes of the man in front of me, the eyes I’d been waiting to see since the moment I woke up. They were looking at me with such anger. I’d seen that look on his face before, but never directed at me.

“Who are you?” he demanded, voice pitched low. The pain in it hurt almost as much as the anger in his eyes. My poor, poor Shaun…

“I’m Georgia,” I whispered. “I’m not anyone else, and that means that I’m her.”

He looked older, like he’d lived through more than just a year without me. His eyes searched my face, finally settling on my hairline. “Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he asked.

“The doctors responsible for my care didn’t give me the opportunity. I would have, if they’d let me.” I would have given myself retinal Kellis-Amberlee, just so I’d feel less like a stranger in my own skin. I would have done a lot of things.

“Can you prove to me that you are who you say you are?” He didn’t let go of my shoulders. “Is there anything, anything you can do that will make me believe in you?”

He wanted to believe; I could see it in his eyes, a deep ache buried under the pain. That was why he couldn’t let himself do it. There’s no such thing as miracles, and when the dead rise, they don’t look in your eyes and say their names. Maybe in some other world, but not this one.

I took a slow breath, casting another glance toward Becks and Mahir. Then I looked back to him and said, “There’s only one thing we never wrote down. You know what it was.”

“Do you?”

“I do, but, Shaun, I don’t know if—”

“Prove it, right now, or I swear to you, I will shoot you myself.”

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” I said, and leaned in and kissed him. His hands tightened on my shoulders, his whole body stiffening against mine as he realized what I was doing.

And then he started kissing me back.

That was the one thing we never wrote down—the one thing we couldn’t write down, because no file or server is ever totally secure, and it would have gotten out. No one would have cared that we weren’t biologically related, or that we’d gone in for genetic testing when we turned sixteen, just to be absolutely sure. No one would have cared that we didn’t trust anyone else enough to let them be there while we slept. No. The media loves a scandal, and we’d been raised as siblings in the public eye. It would have destroyed our ratings, and then the Masons would have destroyed us, for blackening the family name.

There were a few people who’d guessed over the years. I’m pretty sure that Buffy knew. But we never, never wrote it down.

He squeezed my shoulders so hard it hurt. I didn’t pull away, and after a few seconds, his hands relaxed and he pulled me to him, returning the kiss with a frightening hunger. I grabbed his elbows and pulled him closer still, until it felt like we were pressed so closely together that there was no room for anything to come between us. Not even death. We were home.

I didn’t pull away until my lungs started burning. His hands dropped from my shoulders and he opened his eyes, staring at me. I stared back. Slowly, he reached out with one shaking hand and brushed my bangs away from my forehead.

“Georgia?” he whispered.

I nodded.

“How—?”

Mahir cleared his throat. “Unbelievable as I find all this—and believe me, I do find it unbelievable—this is, perhaps, not the best place to go into it. CDC security will find the hole we created sooner or later, and we’ve been standing here long enough that I feel it will be sooner. If everyone agrees, we should remove this reunion to a safer location.”

“I still say we shoot her,” said Becks.

I glanced at her, frowning. “Has she always been this bloodthirsty?”

Shaun kept staring at me. It was like there was nothing else in the world. Somehow, I understood the feeling. “I may have taught her a few things.”

“If we’re going to move, we should move,” said Mahir. There was a core of cold efficiency in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before. “Shaun, you’re unfit to lead the remainder of this mission. Becks, I outrank you. Georgia…” He faltered, realizing what he’d just said. “Miss, whoever you are, you are not currently a part of our structure. As that makes me the senior staff member here, I hereby command the rest of you to move.”

I smiled at him. I couldn’t help it. “Thanks, Mahir. I missed you, too.”

Shaun grabbed my hand, starting to walk. I went with him, only wincing a little as my battered feet hit the ground. Mahir and Becks followed us, Becks never putting her pistol away. I didn’t care. She wasn’t going to shoot me now; not without getting the story of who I was and what I was doing with them. She was a Newsie for too long to throw away a lead like that once the heat of the moment had passed.

We didn’t talk as we made our way across a decrepit parking lot to an even more neglected-looking garage. There was nothing we could say that wouldn’t confuse matters further. Shaun and Becks produced flashlights from their pockets, clicking them on and using them to light the way into the darkness of the parking garage. I stopped when I saw what their beams had illuminated, a grin spreading, unbidden, across my face.

“You still have the van,” I breathed. “I was afraid that after… well, after what happened, that the decontamination would have been too expensive.” And that he wouldn’t have wanted to keep it after he killed me in it.

“I had to replace all the upholstery, but I wasn’t willing to lose the frame,” said Shaun. “We spent too much time there for me to give it up that easily.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. Becks took one look at my face before she snorted, snapped, “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” and went storming over to the van.

“She’s not always like this,” said Shaun.

“I’ve got a feeling she will be for the next few days,” I said, and let him lead me to the van.

All four of us had to submit to a blood test before the locks would disengage. I held my breath until mine came back clean and the doors unlocked. Becks opened the back and pulled out what looked like a modified metal detector wand. “Spread,” she ordered me.

I knew better than to argue with an Irwin who had that look on her face. I pulled away from Shaun, who let go of my hand with obvious reluctance, and assumed the position used by air travelers since the birth of the TSA. She ran the wand along my arms, legs, torso, and back, scowling a little more each time it failed to beep. Then she passed it to Mahir, who repeated the process. I had to admire their thoroughness, even though I knew that a false positive—or worse, an accurate one—would probably result in my getting shot in the head.

Finally, Mahir lowered the wand. “She’s clean,” he said. Becks scowled.

Shaun, on the other hand, grinned like he’d just been told that he was now uncontested king of the entire universe. He tossed Becks the keys. She caught them automatically. “You’re driving,” he informed her. “I’m riding in back with George.”

She muttered something before getting into the driver’s seat. I didn’t need to hear it to know that it wasn’t complimentary. I also didn’t have the energy to worry about it just then. Shaun helped me into the back of the van, where he sat down on the floor, opening his arms to me. I climbed into them willingly, nestling myself as closely against him as anatomy and the space around us would allow, and closed my eyes.

I fell asleep listening to the sound of his heart beating. I have never slept that well in my life, and I may never sleep that well again.