Deadline

Twenty

I’m not sure any of us slept that night. We were on an Internet blackout while stationary: no uploads, no message forums, nothing that could be traced to prove we were ever here. That also meant no phone calls, since turning on our phones could activate their GPS chips. We’d been scrupulously careful since leaving Weed. We just had to hope we’d been careful enough.

It was the blood tests that worried me. You can’t survive in America without at least one blood test a day, and possibly—probably—more than that. We’d been taking blood tests at toll booths and convenience stores all the way across the country, and if the CDC was somehow tracking clean results, we were screwed.

Oh, the CDC swears they don’t track clean results, only the ones that come back positive for a live infection, but no one knows for sure. Legally, they’re not allowed to track clean results. It’s considered an invasion of privacy. If there’s nothing to indicate that a person is at risk of amplification, you can’t use their tests for anything. Not tracking, and not medical profiling—which is why we have that handy little ruling to depend on. See, the insurance companies would love an excuse to analyze the blood of every person in the country, looking for pre-existing conditions. Ironically, the insurance companies may have the sort of big pockets that can normally shove something like blood test tracking through, but the pharmaceutical companies makthem look like paupers, and the pharmaceutical companies didn’t want to lose their customer base because people couldn’t afford coverage anymore. That’s one more thing we can thank Garcia Pharmaceuticals for.

We left the motel at four-thirty in the morning. The sky was still pitch-black, and the streets were deserted. We planned to arrive at the CDC about fifteen minutes before the janitorial staff, stash the van in the maintenance parking lot, and enter through a side door while the grounds were still mostly deserted. It was a risky approach, but it was no worse than any of the other ideas we’d come up with, and it was way better than some of them. Maggie’s van was generic enough to be ignored, without crossing into the overly generic “plain white van with blacked-out window.” That sort of thing attracts attention by virtue of being designed to be ignored.

Kelly and I were the only ones awake in the van for the first hour of the drive. She sat next to me in the passenger seat—another risky approach, since her death was big news for weeks in the Memphis area. “Local hero doctor dies in the saddle” is the sort of headline that has legs. Newsies like stories like that; they can go back to that well again and again when things get slow, milking them until they go dry. At the same time, Kelly was the one who could steer me down the frontage roads and through the shortcuts only a local would know. The thing that made her a possible danger also made her a major asset.

Then again, hadn’t that been the case all along?

The sun was starting to burn a smoky line along the horizon when we hit the outskirts of Memphis. I clicked the radio on, cranking the volume as the scrambler grabbed the nearest station and blasted Old Republic through the van. “Classic rock!” I shouted to Kelly. I had to shout or she wouldn’t have been able to hear me. “That’s awesome! I hate this shit!”

Judging by the loud swearing now coming from behind me, Becks and Mahir hated it even more. “Turn that crap off!” shouted Becks, smacking me hard on the back of the head.

I grinned as I turned the volume down. “Good morning, sunshine.” Kelly was hiding a smile behind her hand. That was good. The more relaxed we all were going into this, the better our chances of getting out alive. “Sleep well?”

“I should shoot you in the bloody head, dump you on the side of the road, and go back to the motel for another six hours of not being in this van,” said Mahir.

“That’s a yes. Water’s in the cooler. Who needs caffeine pills?”

Everyone needed caffeine pills. Kelly handed them out, three to a person. We all gulped ours, me with Coke, Mahir and Kelly with water, and Becks dry. I didn’t say anything. Some people blast pre-Rising rock music, some people put on lab coats, and some people try to prove they’re the biggest badass around. If it made her feel better, I didn’t have a problem with it.

The maintenance lot was just as easy to access as Kelly said it would be. Only one blood test was required to pass the gate, and it was conducted by an unmanned booth. “Can’t say I think much of their security,” I said. “Portland was a lot harder to get into.”

“Portlad was also open when you went there,” Kelly said. “Trust me. It only gets worse from here.”

Somehow, I didn’t want to argue with her about that.

I parked as close to the building as I dared, maneuvering the van into a space tucked mostly behind a large steel generator cage. Becks was out before I’d even turned off the engine. She turned in a slow circle, pistol out and held low in front of her, where she wouldn’t be slowed by the process of trying to draw. Mahir followed her out, looking less immediately aggressive as he took up his position next to the van. I glanced to Kelly.

“You ready for this?”

“No,” she said, and got out of the van.

I sighed. “Am I ready for this?”

No, said George. But it’s too late to turn back now.

“I guess that’s fair.” I opened the ashtray and dropped the keys inside. If I didn’t make it out of the building, the others wouldn’t need to worry about trying to hotwire the van before they could escape. “Check this out.”

I opened the door and got out.

We must have made an odd sight as we made our way across the parking lot. Kelly took the lead for once, her white lab coat glowing like a banner in the dimness of the early-morning light. Becks walked close behind, covering her. She was wearing camouflage-print cargo pants, running shoes, and an olive-drab jacket with Kevlar panels sewn into the lining. She actually had her hair up, pulled back in a tight bun that would look lousy on camera but was less likely to get in her eyes than her usual waves. Mahir walked almost alongside Becks, his white running shoes the only thing keeping him from looking like a visiting professor from Oxford, and I brought up the rear in my usual steel-reinforced jeans, cotton shirt, and tweed jacket. Not exactly the sort of group that normally goes parading into the Memphis CDC before the sun is all the way up.

The first door was locked with an actual, manual lock, the sort that requires a key to open. “No blood test to get in?” asked Becks, incredulous.

“Not at this stage,” said Kelly, digging in her purse. “If you’re going to amplify on the property, we’d much rather you did it in the clear zone between the parking lot and the labs. That way we can catch or kill you at our leisure, and you don’t eat the staff.” She produced a key.

“Practical,” said Mahir.

Kelly unlocked the door and we entered the CDC, Becks now taking point while I stayed at the rear. Our effective noncombatants would walk between the two of us for as much of the trip as possible. Our little formation wouldn’t stop a sniper, but it might give us a chance to react before they both went down.

Taking civilians into a fire zone, said George. What would your mother say?

“That I should keep the cameras rolling,” I muttered, and kept following Kelly.

That first door led to a narrow hallway, which opened after about ten feet into a wide concrete corridor that looked like it had been sliced from a pre-Rising bomb shelter. Turbines hummed in the distance. There were no windows and no natural light; instead, huge fluorescents glowed steadily overhead, protected by grids of steel mesh. Kelly kept walking, forcing the rest of us, even Becks, to hurry if we wanted to keep up.

“What is this?” asked Mahir, looking warily around.

“Isolation zone. If we lock down, this area goes airtight, and the negative-pressure venting system kicks in. It can be flooded with formalin from the central control center, or manually from any of the booths along the walls. In case of an outbreak, the doors to the main building open and the security system starts trying to herd the infected here, where they can be kept until we decide what to do with them.”

“Ever hear of just shooting the damn things?” asked Becks.

“We have to get our test subjects somewhere.” The statement was matter-of-fact; this was, for Kelly, another part of what it meant to work for the CDC. “We all sign body release waivers when we accept our employment offers. As soon as you amplify, you become company property.”

“Because that’s not creepy.” I scanned the walls. “I don’t see any cameras.” What I did see was a series of sniper slits in the walls, probably leading to a second airtight corridor where the gunmen could be locked until their job was done and their blood tests were clean. This was a storage room. It was also a kill chute, and we needed to remember that. “Is there one of those nifty escape tunnels here, too?”

“Underground. It lets out on the other side of the property.” Kelly stopped at a door with a keypad and retinal scanner next to it. She started hitting buttons, narrating her actions, probably to keep one of us from getting trigger-happy and putting a bullet through her head. “I’m giving the system the visiting technician security code, along with the security code for Dr. Wynne’s lab, and telling it I have three guests with me. This level of security doesn’t distinguish between entry points. It’s a known hole, but we keep it open in case we need to bring people in the back way.”

“To avoid the media?” asked Mahir mildly.

Kelly reddened but kept tapping for several more seconds before she pulled her hand away. A panel opened in the wall, exposing four blood test units. “We all need to test clean before we can proceed.” She slapped her hand down on the first panel, starting her retinal scan at the same time. It was a good maneuver: It cut off any further questioning, and we had plenty of questions. Starting, at least for me, with “How the fuck are we planning on getting out of here?”

“Too late to back out now,” muttered Becks, and initiated her own blood test. Mahir and I shrugged and did the same. Becks was right; too late now.

The tests came back clean—no surprise, given that we’d only just arrived—and the door swung open, revealing a long white corridor that looked a lot more like what I expected from the CDC. Only about half the lights were on, filling the corners with shadows. A sign on the nearest door read “All the comforts of home,” I said, following Mahir into the hall. I was the last one through; the door closed behind me, locks engaging with a hydraulic hiss that reminded me chillingly of Portland. The hairs along my arms and the back of my neck stood on end as I realized that we were well and truly locked in now.

“The lab is this way,” said Kelly, turning to the left and starting to walk with a confidence I’d never seen from her before. We were on her home ground. Only the best and brightest actually go from medical school into careers with the CDC; she must have worked for years for the right to call these hallways hers.

This has to be killing her, said George quietly.

I nodded, not wanting to say anything out loud. George and I grew up not trusting anything anyone said to us. We always knew there were things people didn’t say when the cameras were running. For Kelly, the CDC’s betrayal had to feel like the end of the world. I was incredibly sorry for her… and at the same time, I was privately glad to know that she had to be hurting like hell. The CDC was her life, and the CDC was part of the reason my sister died. I could feel bad for Kelly. I couldn’t forgive her for being naive enough to believe the things she’d been willing to believe for the sake of her career.

At least she’d judged the janitorial schedules correctly. We walked the length of one hall and then another before we reached Dr. Wynne’s lab, and we didn’t see a single soul. I didn’t see any cameras, either, and I was watching for them. Their security was incredibly well-concealed. That was a little worrisome. They’d been nowhere near this good in Portland, and in my experience, when the security cameras go invisible, that means they have something they really need to hide.

“Here,” whispered Kelly, stopping at an unlabeled door with a blood test panel next to it. She started to raise her hand, and then hesitated, expression turning unsure. “We’re going to have to go through one at a time,” she said, slowly.

I winced. Becks scowled. Going one at a time meant that either one of us walked in ahead of Kelly—which would mean walking blind into unfamiliar territory—or we sent her through alone, which could split the party permanently. I didn’t want us on opposite sides of a door when the CDC shock troops swept in and gunned us all down.

And I didn’t have a choice. We’d followed Kelly’s research across the world, and we’d followed her directions into the guts of the Memphis CDC. If we called it off now, a lot of people had died for nothing. “Go ahead, Doc,” I said. She shot me a surprised look. “We’ll be right behind you. Don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere.”

Kelly nodded and slapped her hand down on the panel. A moment later, the light over the door flashed green and she stepped through, vanishing.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Becks, stepping up to start her own test.

“I never have before,” I said. “I figure, why start now? I wouldn’t want to ruin a good thing.”

The light went green before she uld say anything. That was probably for the best. She still glared as she stepped through the door, and flipped me off as it slid shut again behind her.

Mahir sighed as he pressed his hand against the panel. “I do wish you wouldn’t taunt her while we’re in the field.”

“She wouldn’t know what to do with me if I didn’t.”

“I suppose not,” said Mahir, and stepped through the newly open door, leaving me alone in the hall.

Not entirely alone. Your turn, said George.

“Yours, too,” I said, and pressed my hand down.

The lab on the other side of the door was standard-issue CDC: equipment I didn’t understand, refrigerator full of things I didn’t want to know about, desk heaped with paperwork that was probably several weeks overdue. A dry-erase board, covered in what looked like meaningless gibberish, took up most of one wall. Kelly was staring at it, transfixed.

“He’s figured out the settlement problem,” she said, as much to herself as to the rest of herself. “I don’t know how, but he’s figured out the settlement problem in the immune response. This whole thing, it’s so simple, it’s so…”

“It’s elegant,” said Mahir.

Kelly smiled. “Yes, it is.”

“Good for it,” I said, stepping up behind her. “Want to explain it to the rest of us?”

“Oh! Well, this here—” She waved a hand at a segment of the board and began to talk, medical jargon flowing from her lips too fast for me to follow. That didn’t matter. I didn’t need to follow it live; I never go anywhere without half a dozen active cameras running, and I could review the recording at my leisure. Assuming we all got out of here in one piece. Since we couldn’t transmit, I couldn’t make backups. If we died inside the CDC, it was all for nothing.

I pushed that grim thought aside. Kelly was still talking, and at least Mahir seemed to understand whatever the hell she was saying. He interjected periodically, asking questions and restating things that had been particularly confusing when she said them.

“I love having a smart guy around,” I said to Becks, sotto voce.

“Me, too,” she said, and grinned, all that familiar field excitement filling her face. Irwins are never more alive than when they’re five minutes away from getting slaughtered.

Kelly finished her explanation fifteen seconds before we heard the door unseal itself. It was barely louder than a whisper, but we were all so on edge that it felt like we could have heard a pin drop a mile away. I signaled to Becks, who nodded, and the two of us moved smoothly into position, flanking the doors while Mahir pulled Kelly back, out of immediate view. The door slid open and a tall man in a white lab coat stepped through, attention fixed on the clipboard he was carrying.

The door slid closed again, and Becks and I moved o stand shoulder to shoulder, pistols raised until their muzzles barely pressed against the back of the man in the lab coat. He froze. Smart guy.

“Hello, Dr. Wynne,” I said amiably. “We figured you might like to know how things have been going, so we swung by to say hello.”

“Shaun?”

“Last time I checked.” I took a half step forward, digging the muzzle of my gun in a little harder. “How about you? How’s it been going for you?”

“I—ah. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“We didn’t think you would be,” said Mahir, stepping into Dr. Wynne’s line of sight. Kelly hung back, face still hidden in the shadows. “I saw you at the funeral, but I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.”

“Mahir Gowda, replacement head of the Factual News Division at the After the End Times,” said Dr. Wynne, not missing a beat. “I’ve been keeping up with the site. I must admit, I didn’t expect to see you, either. Ever.”

“We’re full of surprises tonight,” said Becks, and nudged him forward with her gun. “Move away from the door. Center of the room, hands at your sides. Please don’t make any sudden moves. I’d really hate to have to shoot you.”

“It’s true, she would,” I said. “We told her she’d have to mop up any messes she made while we were here, and Becks hates cleaning.”

Dr. Wynne shook his head as he followed her instructions, walking to the middle of the floor before turning to face me. “Shaun, what are you doing here? You shouldn’t have come.”

“There was too much that didn’t add up. We needed you to check our math.”

Ask him about the strains.

“I’m getting to that,” I muttered.

“What?” asked Dr. Wynne.

“Nothing.” I flashed him a glossy photo-op smile. “Doc? You want to say hello?”

“Happily.” Kelly stepped out of the shadows, heels clicking against the floor. Dr. Wynne went white. “Hello, sir. How have you been?”

“I… you…” He stopped for a moment, composing himself, and said, “Shaun told me you died in Oakland.”

“The dead have a tendency to come back these days, remember?” She looked at the whiteboard. “You solved the immune response issue. I recognize some of these figures. Every time I posited them, you said I was off base. But it looks like it worked.”

“Kelly, how did you—”

She turned back to us, giving me a small nod.

That was my cue. I offered Dr. Wynne another smile, and said, “We’ve been doing some digging, and we didn’t have a way of reang you that wouldn’t send up too many red flags, especially since the Doc wanted to be involved. We figured you’d want to know what we’d managed to find.”

“And the guns were what? Just a precaution?”

“Pretty much.” I lowered my gun. “You can’t be too careful these days.”

“You let me think Dr. Connolly was dead.”

“That’s true,” I said agreeably. “Mahir?”

“On it.” Mahir produced a handheld reader from inside his coat and walked around to offer it to Dr. Wynne. “The information you’ll want to see is presently up on the screen. Read carefully. The implications can be rather unpleasant.”

“When I sent Dr. Connolly to you, I expected you to disappear immediately,” said Dr. Wynne, running one big hand through his thinning hair as he looked at the screen. “It would have been the smart thing to do. If you’d dropped off the grid as soon as she got there, you could have been safe.”

“You know we’ve never worked that way,” I said, surprised by the apologetic note creeping into my tone. I really was sorry. If we were wrong, and he only wanted to protect us—

Shaun, said George. Shaun, stop a second. You need to stop.

Dr. Wynne nodded as he scrolled through the material we’d collected. “This is some very good work. How difficult was this to find?”

“Not terribly,” said Mahir, before I could speak. He looked at Dr. Wynne neutrally, and added, “It’s amazing how much of this was out there, floating around, and simply needed to be put together in the correct order.”

Shaun—

“Wait a second, George,” I said softly, watching Dr. Wynne’s expression. He was frowning with concentration, studying the data. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Was any of it commissioned?” Dr. Wynne glanced up. “Is there anything here that you needed a lab or special access to find?”

All Dr. Abbey’s research was conducted in a lab, and I didn’t know how much of it was available to the general public. We’d released some of it in the process of getting the rest of the data, but not everything, and not in a collected format. I opened my mouth to tell him that… and stopped, frowning.

George spoke into the silence: He lost track of Kelly as soon as the building blew and destroyed her ID—the ID he gave her. He never questioned her death. He must have known. Shaun—

“I know,” I whispered. And I did know, suddenly, and without room for argument: Dr. Wynne ordered the destruction of Oakland. Dr. Wynne killed Dave.

“Know what, son?” he asked.

“Nothing.” I swallowed my revulsion, forcing my face to stay neutral. “Is Kelly the last living member of her research team?”

Dr. Wynne hesitated before nodding. “Yes. That’s why I knew I needed to get her out of here. I was worried that something might happen to her if she stayed.”

“So you sent her to us?” He would have known her arrival would bring us all in from the field; he couldn’t send her out with false data—she’d know; she’d been on the research team too long for him to slip that by her—and the real stuff was more than enough to keep us stationary for hours. We were all home when Kelly got there. Even if we hadn’t been, I would have called anyone who was out on assignment and demanded they come in. Let her get there. Wait a few hours. And then unleash the hounds, knowing we’d all be in one place.

“I knew I could trust you.”

“Huh. Okay.” I raised my gun again, aiming it at him. Mahir and Kelly blinked at me, looking startled. “See, I would have sent her to Canada. Or maybe to one of the unsanctioned labs, the ones where they’d know what to do with the stuff she had. We were grateful for the story we couldn’t break and all, but it wasn’t the best use of your illegal resources.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at, Shaun,” said Dr. Wynne, looking up. His eyes widened when he saw the gun. “What’s that for? We’re all friends here.”

“I’m starting to not be so sure about that.” Becks stepped up next to me, raising her own gun into firing position. “Why did you send her to us? What the hell made us so special?”

“You were dangerous,” said Kelly, and gave the dry-erase board another glance before looking toward Dr. Wynne. “That was it, wasn’t it? You sent me to them because they were dangerous.”

Dr. Wynne said nothing.

I gave Kelly an amiable nod. “I think that means yes. So what screwed you up, Dr. Wynne? Did somebody read the time wrong?”

Dr. Wynne frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“We checked the Doc real carefully for trackers, but there weren’t any after we trashed the ID you gave her,” I said. “If there had been, I don’t think we’d have made it out. Somebody cared enough about killing us that they were willing to blow up half of downtown Oakland—”

“I think you’re exaggerating a bit there, son,” said Dr. Wynne.

“—but they lost track of us after that, didn’t they?” I kept my gun trained on Dr. Wynne, watching his face as I spoke. “Why do you care where we got our research, Dr. Wynne? Shouldn’t it be enough that we got it? If we can do it, anybody can.”

“No, Shaun, not anybody.” Dr. Wynne shook his head, smiling a little as Mahir snatched the reader away from him. “You’d need some pretty specialized resources. People with inside data.” Kelly paled. “People who aren’t bound by American law.”

Mahir’s eyes narrowed, expression going suddenly dangerous. “Are you saying, sir, that we were a perfect testin ground for the spread of information?”

“I’m saying I expected you to run,” said Dr. Wynne. His tone was reasonable enough, still the warm, Southern-accented voice of the man who’d been there to welcome me and George back from the dead when the CDC took us off the highway. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, looking at me steadily. “I never gave you much credit for brains, Shaun—that was your sister’s department, God rest her soul, and if she made any errors in judgment, it was in trusting you to watch her back—but I still thought you were smarter than this.”

My throat felt dust dry, making it impossible to swallow. “You take that back,” I whispered.

Don’t listen to him, said George. All he’s doing is messing with you. He knows damn well that we would never have run. He didn’t expect us to.

“That’s easy for you to say, George,” I muttered. “You’re the dead one.”

Dr. Wynne’s eyebrows rose. “You really do talk to her. That’s… fascinating. I’d heard that, but I thought it was an exaggeration. Does she answer?”

I glared at him.

He raised his hands. “Now, son, I’m not trying to be insulting. I’m just interested. It seems a bit, well, crazy, if you don’t mind my saying it.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve heard it all before,” I said flatly.

“We’ve said it,” added Becks. “Frequently.”

“Dr. Wynne?” Kelly sounded… lost. For the first time since she’d shown up in Oakland, she sounded utterly and completely lost. She’d been scared, she’d been confused, and she’d been angry, but she’d never sounded like that. “Is he right? Is what Shaun’s saying… Is he right?”

He half turned toward Kelly, lowering his hands. “It was never personal, darling. You have to believe that.”

She shook her head, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know what to believe… but I do believe you sent me out there to die. The facts aren’t on your side.”

“I suppose I should have considered this as a risk. They’ve managed to get to you, haven’t they? These silly people with their silly crusade against the status quo. Well, that’s why you went in blind, isn’t it?” He took a step toward her. “You know I never wanted to hurt you. You were one of my favorites.”

Her lip trembled as she looked at him. The urge to believe was naked in her eyes. “I just don’t understand.”

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to.” He smiled a little. “Just know that you helped me a great deal with my research, and someday—when the world is ready—your work will help a lot of people. Isn’t that enough?” He took another step forward.

“Stop right there,” I said, sharply.

And he lunged.

I never would have guessed that a man that size could move that fast. In the time it took to shift my aim, he grabbed hold of Kelly, swinging her against his chest, and produced a gun from his lab coat pocket, pressing it against her temple. She squeaked once, sounding terrified.

“Drop it!” barked Becks.

“I don’t think so,” said Dr. Wynne mildly. “But thank you for asking.” He took a step backward, dragging Kelly with him. “You know, Shaun, I would never have tried this if we’d hit our original target. I wouldn’t have needed to. Georgia would have gotten the point when Tate made his grand, villainous exit. She would have left well enough alone.”

“Don’t you talk about her!” I snarled.

I didn’t realize I’d stepped forward until Dr. Wynne tapped the gun against Kelly’s temple again, making a “tsk” sound. “Now, you wouldn’t want me to slip and shoot this little peach, would you? She’s such an earnest girl. Never could believe the worst of anyone. That’s why this was inevitable. She could be useful only so long.”

Mahir, meanwhile, was gaping. “You mean… I always thought he was a bit overblown at the end, a bit too much of a movie-reel villain. That was intentional?”

“No need to look for shades of gray when an absolute black-and-white is in front of you,” said Dr. Wynne, reasonably. “We offered you a perfect bad guy, with no motives to question and no thought required. You were just too damn dumb to take it.”

“Dr. Wynne?” whispered Kelly.

“Hush now, darling, you be still.” He took another step backward. “You like stories, don’t you? Here’s a story for you. Once upon a time, there was a young doctor who wanted to save the world. But worlds don’t save easy, and this one needed to be damned a little longer before it would properly appreciate salvation. Salvation came with… complications. So he agreed to help some men who knew better than the rest of the world. Men who would be angels. And he learned that a man who controls enough can become an angel, too, in his own time.”

“Okay, you win,” I said. “You get to be the crazy one. I give you the crown.”

Dr. Wynne shook his head. “Here’s another story for you—one that’s going to be the truth very soon. I was stunned when the security cameras reported a break-in. It’s fortunate I came to work on time or there’s no telling what sort of damage you might have done before I could stop you. Of course, we suspected you might have had some involvement with the outbreak in Portland, but it wasn’t until you tried to repeat the event here that we understood just how far astray you’d gone. Without your sister to shore you up, and without a conspiracy to chase, you simply couldn’t face reality. You started making monsters out of thin air.”

“Why is it you assholes always feel the need to tell the media your evil plans before you kill us?” asked Becks. She sounded totally calm. I have never been more proud of her. “Is it a union requirement or something?”

“I thought you might like the truth before you died. You people are always so fixated on the truth. Like it’s more righteous than a lie, even when the lie protects what the truth would destroy.” His lips quirked in a regretful smile, making him look like the sympathetic figure who once greeted me with the news that I was going to live. I hated him even more for that. “I’m not afraid of being recorded. You can’t transmit from here, and it’s not like you’ll be leaving.”

I forced myself to lower my gun, saying, “How about this. We all put down our guns, you give Kelly back, and we go. Okay? Nobody needs to die. It’s not like we can prove anything’s actually happening here.”

“Oh, but you did prove it, you did—and you exposed some holes we hadn’t even considered patching. You did the work for us, and you’ve brought me everything we’ll need to repair the situation. Half a dozen researchers, a few dozen assistants, and all this goes away for another decade. That should be more than long enough for us to make some real progress on the problem, without sending the world into a panic.” He chuckled. At least he wasn’t backing up anymore; his back was to the counter, Kelly locked against his chest. “You get so hung up on your precious truth that you can’t see the big picture. If this information got out…”

“What? People would know something?” Becks glared. “Your evil plan sucks.”

“Why tailor new strains of the virus?” asked Mahir. “What does it serve?”

“We’ll find one that doesn’t trigger reservoir behavior,” said Dr. Wynne. “Once that’s done, we’ll be in the position to pick the virus apart at our leisure. No more pesky moral issues with shooting the infected. No more unexpected behavior. Once it’s been normalized, once it conforms, we can finally get to work on a virus that does what we want it to do, that follows our orders, not anyone else’s. We’ll save the world the way we want to, in our own time, and we’ll get the proper credit. The reservoir conditions complicate things, and we can’t have that. Still, I’m sorry the strike on Oakland was called in early, Shaun. I really did like you. I’d hoped to spare you this very situation.”

“What makes you think the information won’t get out anyway?” I asked, mildly. “I didn’t bring my whole team here. If we don’t check in, it all goes public.”

“Ah, but by the time it goes public, we’ll have tied you to the outbreak in Portland, and possibly to the attacks on President Ryman’s campaign. You may even be the reason your sister died. You won’t be a hero, Shaun. You won’t even be a martyr. You’ll be the man who killed his sister for ratings, and the world will hate you.” Dr. Wynne smiled beatifically as he let go of Kelly and reached for the counter behind them. She didn’t move. Something about the gun pressed to her temple seemed to be dissuading her. “Nothing that comes out of your little tabloid press will be believed. It’ll just be the final thrashings of a madman.”

You bastard, whispered George.

For once, I was calmer than she was. “You’re an asshole,” I said.

“Yes, but I’m an asshole who’s going to walk away from here alive, which is more than I can say for you,” he replied. He locked his arm aroundagain, pulling her toward the door. “Security is on the way. There’s nothing you can do.”

When he moved his hand, I saw what he’d picked up from the counter: two plain ballpoint pens. “What are you going to do when security gets here?” I asked. “Scribble us to death?”

Kelly’s eyes widened. She didn’t look lost anymore. Now she looked terrified. Even having a gun against her head hadn’t elicited that response. “What?” she whispered.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said Dr. Wynne.

“It’s a pen,” I said.

Appearances can be deceiving, said George.

Kelly looked at me, eyes still wide, and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Then she reached behind herself, fumbling a scalpel from the tray of surgical instruments before driving it into the back of Dr. Wynne’s neck. He bellowed like a wounded bull, gun falling as he clapped his hand over the side of his neck. The hand that held the pens snapped upward, some sort of trigger releasing in one of them. A thin dart whistled through the air past my ear, embedding itself in the wall. Becks fired twice, one shot catching Dr. Wynne in the arm, the other going wild. I brought my own arm back into firing position and shot him squarely in the chest, right in the spot where he’d been aiming the pen at me.

The impact whipped him hard to the side, and Kelly lost her grip on the scalpel, falling back. She slammed into Mahir. Dr. Wynne, still bellowing, raised the pens again, aiming at them. Kelly screamed and shoved Mahir to the side, sending him sprawling as Dr. Wynne’s knees buckled.

Dr. Wynne fell hard to the floor, and Becks immediately shot him twice in the head. That was one body that wouldn’t be getting back up.

Mahir staggered to his feet, careful to avoid touching Dr. Wynne’s blood. “Oh my God—”

“Mahir, are you clean?” I demanded.

He looked down at himself, scanning his clothing. “I—I think so. Nothing seems to have gotten on me.”

“Great. Well, avoid fluid transfer until we can get you to a test unit. A non-CDC unit. Suddenly, I don’t trust anything in this damn building.” I lowered my gun, but didn’t put it away. “Come on, Doc. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, sounding dazed.

My head snapped up.

There was a clear plastic needle embedded in her chest, glittering with a faint, oily sheen. “He shot me,” she said, staring at it. “Dr. Wynne shot me before he fell down. With the pen. Only it’s not a pen—it’s a defense mechanism. You can load them with knock-out darts, or lethal injections, or… all sorts of things.” She swallowed. “All sorts of things.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Becks.

“Right. Because he obviously shot me with a ative or something.” Kelly shook her head, looking actively annoyed. “Don’t be stupid. We don’t have time for this.”

“Fuck, Doc, just come on.”

“No.” She turned and yanked open a drawer, pulling out a test unit. She slammed it down on the counter, popped off the lid, and shoved her hand inside. “I’m so sorry. I swear, I didn’t know. Maybe I should have known, maybe I was being a naive little idiot—I was so busy trying to do what I was supposed to do, and save the world, that I didn’t open my eyes—but I didn’t know.”

“I believe you,” Becks said, softly.

The lights along the top of Kelly’s test unit were turning red, one after the other.

She pulled her hand out when the last light stabilized on red, shooting a challenging glare in our direction. “Now do you believe me? Dr. Wynne shot me, and I’ve gone into amplification. I’m done. It’s over. And I really think it’s time for you to leave.”

I winced. “Fuck. Doc, I’m sorry.” Becks raised her arm, gun up, and pointed at Kelly’s head. From this distance, there was no chance she’d miss.

“So am I.” Kelly pulled the needle free. She held it up for a moment, long enough for the rest of us to see it clearly, and then she dropped it to the floor. It made a faint clinking noise when it hit the tile, before rolling to a stop in a puddle of Dr. Wynne’s blood. “Leave the door open when you go. I’ll stay here and distract security.”

I reached to the side and pushed Becks’s arm slowly down, shaking my head in negation. “Doc, are you sure? Amplification’s not something to fuck around with.”

“I think I know that better than you do.” A thin smile tilted her lips up. That, combined with the ponytail, made her look briefly, heartbreakingly like Buffy. I’d seen the resemblance when Kelly first showed up in Oakland, and now here it was again, at the worst possible time.

I guess they have more in common than we thought, said George.

Kelly shrugged out of her lab coat, letting it fall. The blood on the floor began to soak through the cotton almost instantly, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just kept talking as she bent to pick up Dr. Wynne’s gun. “At my body weight, you have approximately eleven minutes before I become a danger. That’s long enough for you to get out of here, and that gives me long enough to make sure the security team has a really, really bad morning. Exit, take a left, and head for the end of the hall. Security will be coming from the other direction. Turn left again when you reach the T-junction, and open the fourth door you see. That should put you—”

“Same place as before?” I asked.

She nodded. Her smile faded slowly, and her lower lip quavered for a moment before she said, “The security systems in the evacuation tunnels are independent of the rest of the building, in case of malfunction or… or something like this. As long as you can test clean, you can get out, no matter what else is happening in here.”

“I remember.” I took a step back, away from her. “Becks, Mahir, come on.”

“Yeah.” Becks hesitated before asking, “You got enough bullets?”

Kelly smiled again, this time directing it at Becks. It was a small thing, and it hurt to see, because it might be the last smile she’d ever wear. At least this one didn’t make her look like Buffy. “I do. Thank you.”

“If you decide you can’t do this—if you want to die remembering who you are—just make sure you save one for yourself.”

“I will.” Kelly sighed, looking at the gun in her hands. “Under the circumstances, I think my grandfather would want me to do this. He thought the truth was important… and so do I. I really didn’t know Dr. Wynne was sending me to hurt you. And I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of this.”

“I know,” said Becks.

I took a breath, letting it out slowly before I tried to speak. “Thanks, Doc.” A whisper at the back of my mind brought a sad smile to my lips. “George says thanks, too. She’s sorry she didn’t trust you.”

“You’re welcome—and tell her it doesn’t matter.”

Kelly’s smile faded. She stepped back, bracing herself against the cabinet before sinking to the floor. That was my last image of her, just sitting there with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring at Dr. Wynne’s unmoving body like she expected it to tell her some sort of a secret—to say something that would magically make everything she’d been through start making sense.

The three of us who were still standing left the office at a walk that turned rapidly into a run and left us with no time for dwelling on what had just happened. We were too busy racing for the exit, looking for an escape from what I was raised to believe was the safest place on the planet.

We were halfway to the end of the first hall when the alarm started to blare, flashing amber lights snapping on at the top of every wall. Mahir sped up, passing us both to take the left. Becks reached back to grab my elbow, hauling me around the corner and out of sight just before the sound of running footsteps filled the hall, coming hard and fast enough to be audible under the alarm. Security was finally on the way.

“You need to keep up,” she hissed. I could barely hear her; it was mostly the shape of her lips that told me what she’d actually said.

“Yeah, I know.” Becks started to let go of my arm. I grabbed her hand. “Come on, you two. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Neither of them argued. We started moving again, traveling at a pace that was just short of a run as we followed a dead woman’s instructions to freedom. Kelly was true to her word; she kept security busy in Dr. Wynne’s lab. The sound of gunfire started as we were making our way into the evacuation grid, only to be cut off when the hidden door swung shut behind us. The secure tunnels were silent and dark, just like before.

We didn’t see a soul during our escape. I still barely bthed until the outside door swung open to let us out on the far edge of the parking lot, half-hidden from the building by a short fence made of steel strips. It took me a moment to realize what it was for: If the facility had been taken by the infected, the metal would hide us from view and might give us the time to either run like hell or go back underground to wait for rescue. It was a nifty idea. Too bad “escape” didn’t mean anything but getting the hell off the grounds before we were spotted.

I waited for gunshots as we ran to Maggie’s van, crouched to minimize our visible profiles, with guns in our hands and ready to fire. They never came. Security was still inside, searching for Kelly’s phantom guests. No one had checked the logs showing the evacuation tunnels, possibly because they hadn’t compared notes with Portland, possibly because they didn’t think we’d get that far. My heart hammered against my ribs, George making soothing, incoherent noises at the back of my head to try and keep me calm. It did, barely. I didn’t really start breathing until we were safe inside the van with the doors closed against the outside. Then I was slamming the key into the ignition, and we were racing away into the brittle golden light of morning, leaving the CDC—and Kelly Connolly, who was naive, but never bad—behind.

We’ve left too many people behind. And somehow, the running never seems to end.