Deadline (10 page)

“Negative,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation. I gave him a curious look. He shrugged. “She had a movie party last night. She won’t be up for another few hours.”

“Is she actually nocturnal or just trying to train herself to act that way?” asked Becks. Glancing to me, she added, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this.”

“What, with telling Maggie?”

“With not telling everyone else.”

“How many people work for this site?”

Becks paused. “Uh… I’m not sure.”

“That’s why we have to do things this way, because right off the top of my head,
neither am I
.” I gestured at the server bank. “Like Dave says, this isn’t just me and a team that fits in a van anymore; this is a
business
. You know why corporate espionage keeps happening, no matter how bad they make the penalties for getting caught?”

“Greed?” ventured Alaric.

“Poor judgment brought on by possession of insufficient data?” said Kelly.

“People stop caring,” said Dave.

I pointed at him. “Give that man a prize. People stop caring. Once you reach the point where you’re working with more people than can comfortably go for drinks together, folks stop giving as much of a shit. Politics creep in. Do I trust everyone who works for us with the day-to-day? Yeah. I’d trust every Irwin we have at my back in a firefight, and every Newsie we’ve got to tell the truth according to their registered biases. But we go dangling a giant cherry of a story like ‘The CDC has illegal clones, and their dead researcher isn’t really dead, oh, and maybe there’s a conspiracy blocking certain research paths,’ somebody’s going to leak it. They’ll do it for profit, they’ll do it because it gives them the leverage to get a better job with another site, or they’ll do it because it’s just too damn good not to share. Every person we bring in on this is another chance that this gets out before we’re ready, and we’re all fucked.”

“Some of us more than others,” muttered Kelly, sotto voce.

“You trusted us with Tate,” said Becks.

“We didn’t have a choice with Tate, and we didn’t understand the stakes the way we do now,” I said. “We tell Mahir, we tell Maggie, and we stop there until we know what’s going on. Anyone really feel like arguing?”

No one did.

“Good,” I said, after taking another look around the room. “Doc? From what you’re saying, the CDC’s out of the picture. I’m assuming that means WHO is also compromised.”

She nodded marginally. “WHO and USAMRIID. There’s no way we can go to them without the CDC finding out what we’re doing. But…” She hesitated.

“But what?” asked Becks. “I’m sorry, Doc, you can’t just show up here with your corpses and your conspiracy and your craziness and not give us at least a place to
start
.”

Kelly wiped her eyes, managing to do it without smearing her mascara, and said, “I mentioned that the funding wasn’t really there for researching the reservoir conditions. My team had the director’s blessing, and we were still working on a shoestring budget. Our interns kept getting reassigned, our lab spaces… anyway. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that almost all the specialists have gone into the private sector to pursue their own research. I have a list.”

“Thank you, God,” said Dave, rolling his eyes theatrically toward the ceiling.

“Dave, cut it out.” I focused on Kelly. She was holding it together better than I would have expected. Pure researchers don’t usually do well when suddenly hurled out of their labs and into the real world. “Is that everything, Doc?”

Kelly took a deep breath, and said, “No one outside the CDC knew what my team was researching.”

Dead silence engulfed the room as Dave and Alaric stopped typing and Becks and I just stared. There was a moment where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control my temper—a moment where her statement was one thing too many in the “Why didn’t you say that first?” column. Was it her fault? No. But it was suddenly our problem.

Calm down,
cautioned George.
We need to keep her talking.

“Says you,” I snapped. Kelly blinked, looking to Becks, who shook her head. My team’s had time to learn the difference between me talking to them and me talking to George. Thankfully.

It’s not her fault.

“I know.” I whirled around and punched the wall. Kelly jumped, making a small squeaking noise. That was satisfying, even as it made me feel worse about the whole situation. Like she wasn’t scared enough already? “Sorry, Doc. I’m just… I’m sorry. I was a little surprised, is all.”

“It’s okay,” she said. It wasn’t—not according to the look in her eyes—but it was going to have to do.

I shook my hand to ease the ache as I counted to ten, considering the implications of Kelly’s words. We’d always known somebody inside the CDC was involved with Governor Tate’s doomed attempt to claim the presidency through the use of weaponized Kellis-Amberlee; Kelly’s information just confirmed it. What we’d never had was the proof necessary to make a concerted inquiry into one of the most powerful organizations in the world. “Get me facts and I’ll convince the president,” that’s what Rick had said. But the facts had been awfully slow in coming.

As for me… I’d been ready to take the CDC on single-handedly, if that was what it took. Mahir and Alaric talked some sense into me. Getting myself killed wouldn’t bring George back. If we wanted the pple responsible for her death punished, we needed to be slow, we needed to be careful, and we needed to nail them to the wall. Kelly’s information didn’t change any of that, and at the same time, it changed everything, because it meant the conspiracy was still alive and well. If someone inside the CDC decided that the study needed to stop, then someone inside the CDC was involved in whatever was raising the death rates among individuals with reservoir conditions.

Somebody
knew
. Somebody knew George was in danger—before the campaign, her condition pre-existed the campaign by years—and they didn’t do a thing. Somebody
knew—

Shaun!

Her tone was sharper this time, cutting cleanly through my anger. I took another deep breath, counting to ten before I straightened, tucking my bruised hand behind my back. “Doc, give Dave the list.” I paused. “Please.”

“Sure.” Kelly produced a flash drive from her briefcase and leaned over the back of the couch to pass it to Dave. He took it without a murmur of thanks, slamming it straight into a USB port and beginning to type.

“Thanks. Now take off all your clothes.”

“What?”
demanded Kelly, eyes going wide. “Shaun, are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine. I just need you to strip.”

“I’m not going to take off my clothes!”

“Actually, princess, you are,” said Becks, standing
and moving to stand beside me. “We need to check you for bugs. Don’t worry. You don’t have anything we haven’t seen before.”

Being asked by another woman seemed to do the trick, even if it was overly generous to call what Becks was doing “asking.” Kelly sighed deeply and began removing her clothing, holding each piece up to show us before dropping it to the floor. Finally, when she was standing stark naked in the middle of the living room, she spread her arms and asked, “Happy?”

“Ecstatic.” I glanced to Becks. “Take her clothes with you.” Becks nodded, and grabbed a laundry bag before beginning to gather Kelly’s things.

“Wait, what?” Kelly dropped her arms. “Where is she taking my clothes?”

“Don’t worry, you’re going with them. Becks, get the countersurveillance kit from the closet and take her to the bedroom. I want everything she has swept for trackers, bugs, anything that might transmit. Don’t bring her back until you’re sure she’s clean.” I gave Kelly a reassuring look. “It’s not personal, Doc. We just need to know.”

Kelly surprised me: She didn’t argue. She just sighed, looking resigned, and said, “I understand decontamination procedures,” before picking up her briefcase and turning to Becks. “Where do we go?”

“This way.” Becks slung the laundry sack over her shoulder and led Kelly from the room. The door closed behind them with a snap as Becks engaged the interior locks. They’d be a while.

Alaric and Dave were watching me warily when I turned to face them. I smiled faintly. “It’s a fun day, isn’t it? Alaric, turn on the wireless speaker. I want the two of you to hear this.”

“Hear what?” he asked, beginning to type again.

“I’m going to play the concerned citizen and call the Memphis CDC. I want to extend my heartfelt condolences to my good friend Joseph Wynne,” I said blandly, pulling out my phone. “Dave, start the server recording.”

“It’s on,” he said.

“Good.” With all the necessary steps taken, I flipped my phone open. Most guys my age have girlfriends and drinking buddies on their speed dial. Me, I have the Memphis CDC. Sometimes I really think I never had a chance in hell of having a normal life.

“Dr. Joseph Wynne’s office, how may I direct your call?” The receptionist’s voice was bright, perky, and generic. I might have spoken to him before; I might not have. Office staff at the CDC seemed trained to behave as interchangeably as possible.

“Is Dr. Wynne available?”

“Dr. Wynne has asked not to be disturbed today.”

“And why is that?”

“There has been a recent personnel change, and he is attempting to redistribute tasks in his department,” said the receptionist pertly.

That was the coldest way I’d ever heard to describe somebody’s death. Rolling my eyes, I said, “Tell him it’s Shaun Mason calling with condolences for his recent loss.”

“One moment please.” There was a click and the speaker was suddenly playing the elevator music version of some bloodless pre-Rising pop hit. Removing the lyrics and most of the subliminal bass actually improved the song.

Dave and Alaric got up and came to stand beside me, as much for the psychological benefit as to hear
what was going on; the speaker was broadcasting every tortured, tuneless note to the entire room, and it kept broadcasting as the music clicked off, replaced by the tired, Southern-accented voice of Dr. Joseph Wynne: “Shaun. I wondered when you’d be calling.”

“I just finished processing the news, sir. How are you holding up?”

“Oh, as well as can be expected, I suppose,” he said. Someone who thought Kelly was dead might have taken the strain in his voice for grief. Since Kelly was in the next apartment showing Becks parts of her anatomy that only her gynecologist would normally see, I recognized his hesitance for what it was: fear.

I was talking to a man who was scared out of his mind.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We don’t rightly know yet, although I wish we did. There’s a group of folks here from the Atlanta office going over our security tapes and checking all the facilities. There’s no way anyone should have been able to ghis far into the building, but they managed it somehow.”

“I’m so sorry, sir,” I said, exchanging a nod with Dave. It was good tactical thinking. Set up a convoluted enough break-in and distract the security teams with picking it apart, rather than looking too closely at “Kelly” while she was still in the morgue. The body would be cremated almost immediately—hell, it might have been cremated already, depending on her family’s wishes—and any chance of them identifying it as a clone would be lost. Sure, Dr. Wynne would be fucked beyond belief if the break-in was revealed as a fake, but Kelly would be in the clear.

“I’m still a bit in shock,” he said. “I’m sorry to say it,
Shaun, because I know the wounds are still raw for you, but it’s like Georgia all over again.”

Shit,
hissed George.

“George?” I said, automatically.

Luckily for me, Dr. Wynne was one of the few people I knew who hadn’t received the “Shaun has lost his marbles” memo. Him and my parents. “The way we lost her was just so damn sudden,” he said, continuing our conversation without missing a beat.

He’s saying it was an emergency evacuation, you idiot,
said George.
She may not know it, but he got her out to save her life. God, I wish there was a way you could ask if he was sure she wasn’t bugged.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “It really was. Was there any way anyone could have predicted this was coming?”

“I don’t think so,” said Dr. Wynne, quickly. Not quickly enough. I could hear the hesitation in his voice, that split second of uncertainty that told me everything I’d been hoping I didn’t really need to know. Did he think he’d managed to get Kelly out clean? Yeah, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have risked sending her to us. But was he absolutely one hundred percent sure that he’d succeeded?

No, he wasn’t.

“Let us know if there’s anything we can do over here, but you may have to wait a little while for a response,” I said. “The team and I are going on location for a little while. I’m not sure when we’ll be back.”

“Really?” There was deep reluctance in his voice as he asked the natural next question: “Where are y’all heading?”

The reluctance was the last piece of evidence I needed to support the idea that Kelly might not have gotten out as cleanly as she thought she had. Dr. Wynne didn’t
want to ask in case I was serious about the trip; he didn’t want me to tell him the truth about where we were going. “Santa Cruz,” I lied. “Alaric’s testing for his field license soon, and we want to get some footage of him on his provisional to build into a supporting report. We’re trying to up his merchandise sales among the female demographic, and our focus groups agree that the best way to do that involves getting him shirtless in a pastoral setting. Danger is just a bonus.” Alaric shot me a confused look. I waved him down.