Blackout

SHAUN: Thirty-six

The pen in the doctor’s hand—so much like the one Dr. Wynne used to kill Kelly in the Memphis CDC, what felt like the better part of a lifetime ago—was enough to make me go cold. I was immune to Kellis-Amberlee. None of the others could say the same. Especially not George, who made me immune, but didn’t confer the same immunity on her own clone.

Do you think you could survive losing me again? asked her voice, sweet and low and somehow poisonous. She’d never taken that tone with me before. But why shouldn’t she turn on me? I was replacing her, and doing my best to shove her away.

What kind of world were we living in, where the people we trusted to keep us healthy were the ones keeping us sick, and a man couldn’t even depend on his own insanity?

I raised my hands defensively and said, “There’s no reason for us to do anything crazy. Let’s just settle down, okay?” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Becks restraining Alaric, keeping him from moving toward the now-deadly doctor. He wasn’t with us in Memphis. We’d told him what happened, but he didn’t really understand.

“It’s a pen,” said George.

It took me a second to realize that it was the live George who was speaking, not the increasingly malicious voice inside my head. I glanced her way, giving a quick, tight shake of my head. “We’re all going to stay calm,” I said, hoping she’d decide to listen. “Okay?”

George frowned before nodding slowly. “Okay.” She put her own hands up, mirroring my defensive position. “I’m sorry. I spoke too hastily. We’ll consider your proposal.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” asked the doctor. He glared at President Ryman. “I knew this was a terrible plan from the start. We should have arranged for an outbreak in their hometown as soon as the campaign was over. Wynne was soft on them, the old fool. Leaving them alone was his idea, not mine.”

“That sounds less like ‘soft on us’ and more like sensible resource management,” said Becks, pulling the doctor’s attention back to her. I winced, but didn’t try to stop her. She was keeping him from focusing on any one person. That was valuable. I just hoped it wouldn’t get her shot.

“Put down the pen,” said Steve. His tone was clipped, indicating that he, too, knew exactly what it was.

“No, I don’t think so,” said the doctor. “The agreement was simple: I would allow the president to bring his little covey of pet journalists here, and try to sway them to the side of reason. If it failed, they would be mine to dispose of. As I expected, it has failed.”

“Who says she speaks for the rest of us?” The words sounded alien even as they left my mouth. George, please, forgive me, I thought. “I mean, come on, man. It was nice of you to let the science dudes grow me a replacement, but you could have just sent a card. She’s a clone. She’s not a real person. She doesn’t get to be the one who gets the real people dead.”

The man from the CDC paused, an uncertain look crossing his face.

I decided to press what little advantage I had. “I’m not going to pretend we’re happy about this bullshit. I mean, dude, you killed Alaric’s parents. That’s pretty crappy, and it doesn’t make us feel like playing nice. But that doesn’t mean she speaks for the rest of us. You know she’s not a perfect copy of my sister. You built a broken Georgia. Maybe you could’ve done a better job if she hadn’t managed to get away from you—that happens a lot, doesn’t it? Clones, mosquitoes, reporters. You’ve been running the country for like twenty years. Shouldn’t you be better at this by now?”

“That’s quite enough, son,” said President Ryman. Turning to the man from the CDC, he said, “Put the pen down. They’re willing to listen to what we have to say. Isn’t that what we brought them here for? To sway them to the right way of thinking?”

I could see George out of the corner of my eye. She had her face turned toward me, jaw slack in the way that told me she was staring behind the dark lenses of her sunglasses. I was briefly, terribly grateful she’d chosen to keep wearing them. I wouldn’t have been able to keep smiling if I’d been able to see her eyes.

She believes every word you’re saying, whispered my internal George, sounding pleased and disappointed at the same time, like she couldn’t decide which was better. I bet she’s said those same things to herself every day since she woke up. Not good enough. Not Georgia enough. Not real. And now you’ve confirmed it. Think she’ll ever forgive you?

That seemed like a less pressing question at the moment than whether I was ever going to be able to forgive myself. We had to survive before I could find out one way or the other.

George sniffled before saying, in a small voice, “If I’m not going to be a part of this decision, can I please go lie down? My head hurts. I don’t understand what’s going on.” She sounded utterly pathetic. I had to bite back a sigh of relief.

Georgia’s migraines were the one thing that ever got the Masons to let her out of public appearances when we were kids. Her eyes meant that sometimes, migraines just happened, and the best thing for her to do was lie in a nice dark place and wait for them to go away. I used to wonder why the Masons never noticed that she always seemed to have a migraine when we were supposed to go to the government orphanage where she was adopted—lucky her, she was found within driving distance of Berkeley. The Masons had to go all the way to Southern California to get me.

As far as I knew, she never once visited that orphanage. And if she was claiming a migraine now, she was faking it. She was playing along.

Slowly, the man from the CDC said, “If he feels we built him a, as he says, ‘broken George,’ he won’t mind if I shoot her right now. We can always make him a better one.”

I froze, every nerve I had screaming two contradictory commands—save her, save her, don’t let her die again warring with no, you can’t, you’ll all die if you try, and you can choose that for you, but you can’t choose it for Becks and Alaric. I had to let him pull the trigger. I couldn’t let him. As soon as he started to tense his fingers I’d jump for him, and whatever came after that would be anybody’s guess. I knew that, even as the sanest part of me was telling me it was the worst thing I could possibly do. Becks and Alaric knew it, too. They glanced my way, uncertainty in their eyes. I was the boss. I was the one they counted on to keep them safe. And that wasn’t going to stop me from getting them both killed.

Rescue came from an unexpected quarter. Steve cleared his throat before saying, with professional calm, “If your hand so much as twitches, sir, I will be forced to shoot you. Intentionally beginning an outbreak in the presence of the president is considered an act of treason. Intent to commit an act of treason authorizes me to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent that act from being carried out.”

“Now,” said President Ryman again. “Your point is made. He didn’t stop you. They’ll listen to us. Put the pen down.”

“Fine.” Looking disgusted, the man from the CDC slid the pen back into the pocket of his lab coat. “You say the clone has no part in your decision making process. Prove it. Agree to distribute the news on our behalf.”

“Please, can I go lie down?” whispered George.

I knew she was faking. The pain in her voice was still enough to make me want to put my arms around her and never let go, men from the CDC and Secret Service agents and government conspiracies be damned.

“You treat all your science projects this badly?” asked Becks.

“Of course not,” said President Ryman. “Rick, take her somewhere. Calm her down, give her a glass of water, whatever it takes to settle her. We’ll decide what’s to be done with her when we finish sorting things out here.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” said Rick. He moved quickly, taking George’s elbow before I could formulate a protest. “Come with me. I’ll see if we can’t find you something to make you feel a little better.” If it had been anyone other than Rick, I would have stepped in. I wouldn’t have had a choice. But it was Rick, and he used to be one of us, and so I didn’t say anything. Steve followed after him, a hulking, defensive presence. He’d keep her safe if Rick couldn’t.

George sniffled and let herself be led away. She didn’t look back at me. Not once.

See? whispered the George in my mind. She believed every word you said.

“Shut up,” I muttered, and grimaced, waiting to see what effect that would have on the already questionably stable nameless doctor from the CDC.

He didn’t appear to have heard me. Instead, he watched as Rick led George away, waiting until they were out of sight before turning back to me. “My apologies if I seemed somewhat aggressive before,” he said finally. “Had things gone as originally planned, this is the point where we would be presenting her to you—not this clone, perhaps, but one that was not, as you put it, ‘defective.’ She would be a gift, given in good faith, to show you that working with us is the right thing to do.”

I wanted to tell him that if he’d reached the point where giving other people away like party favors was “the right thing to do,” he was too crazy for me to want to work with him—and I know from crazy. I wanted to tell him they shouldn’t have worked so hard to make a person when they cloned my sister, because an empty shell and excuses about brain damage would have been an awful lot easier for them to control. I didn’t say any of those things. I guess I never went all the way crazy after all.

Instead, I did what I do best, and went on the attack. “If you wanted us to get this far, why did your men try to kill us in Seattle?” I asked. “I mean, not exactly ‘hi, let’s be besties’ behavior, you know?”

“That was an unfortunate misunderstanding,” said the doctor.

“A surprising number of your misunderstandings involve bullets and body counts,” said Alaric. He was glowering. If I were the man from the CDC, I would’ve been considering a fatal accident for Alaric as a simple matter of self-preservation.

“There are automated security protocols that go into effect whenever we have reason to suspect industrial espionage—and it does happen, especially in a place like the CDC. Our discoveries are often quite lucrative. The theft of subject 7c was enough to activate those protocols.”

“Subject 7c?” I asked blankly.

“Georgia,” said Becks.

Once again, I weighed the merits of punching someone, and regretfully decided I couldn’t afford the fallout. “Do those automated security protocols usually include pre-bugging our shoes? Because your dudes only found us by following the bugs we already had on us.”

The doctor looked uncomfortable. “It is sometimes necessary to protect our investments through extra-legal channels. We had an… agreement… with certain elements of the local underground that, were they approached about an infiltration of our facility, they would ensure we could apprehend those responsible.”

“And by doing it after a crime was committed, you avoided getting in trouble for working with the ‘local underground,’ ” said Alaric, with grudging respect. “Slick. Stupid, but slick. Why bother screwing around? Why not just stop them from getting inside in the first place?”

For once, I had the answer the Newsie didn’t. “Because a few break-ins keep everybody believing the CDC is at risk, and we never look too hard at the budget for security upgrades and growing new people in big tanks. All of which loops us back around to the thing we’re not talking about here. Why did you clone Georgia? There are way cheaper ways to convince us that you’re the good guys. And yeah, I know, I said ‘leverage’ earlier, and I meant it, only again, way cheaper ways to do it. You could have threatened my parents, my team…”

“But we couldn’t get to your team if we couldn’t get to you, and we knew that was a risk as far back as the campaign trail,” said the doctor calmly. President Ryman looked away. “She wasn’t the only one we were prepared to resurrect, although her death meant she was the best candidate. We were able to extract her brain almost immediately, and get to work while the Kellis-Amberlee virus was still working in her system. It’s a fascinating behavior, considering how little of the brain the virus actually requires—” He must have seen the storm warnings in our faces, because he changed topics in the middle of the stream, saying, “She was to be leverage, as you’ve indicated, but she was also going to help us be sure you were getting the information we needed you to have.”

“Manipulate the old media during the Rising, manipulate the new media to keep the world from finding out how much of this you engineered,” said Becks. “How did you get the rest of the world to go along with it?”

“I’m not Tate,” said the doctor acidly. “I don’t need to convince you that I’m in the right. I’m here to present you with a choice. Work for us. Help us to shape the next twenty years. Or never leave this building again. It’s up to you.”

I looked at Becks and Alaric. They looked back at me. None of us said anything. I don’t think any of us knew what to say.

Finally, Alaric asked, “You promise the mosquitoes are going to die on their own?”

“You have my word as a scientist.”

I somehow managed not to snort.

Alaric continued. “And none of us are being charged with any crimes?”

“The reverse. Once we’ve worked things out to our mutual satisfaction, we’ll announce that you’ve been added to the list of bloggers with White House press access. The only reason you weren’t added before was out of respect for your loss.” The doctor smiled. The expression seemed alien on his face. “I think you’ll find that we can be very reasonable when you follow the rules and behave like rational people.”

“And George?” I asked.

“You can keep her, if you can keep her in line and out of sight.”

“My sister?” asked Alaric.

“Will be returned to your custody as soon as possible. She was fortunate to escape Florida.”

Becks didn’t say anything. Her family was more likely to be supporting the CDC than at risk from their actions.

“Well?” asked the doctor.

I opened my mouth, not quite sure what was going to come out of it.

“We’ll do it,” I said.

“Good,” said the doctor. “I hoped you’d see sense. Welcome to the CDC.”