Deadline (20 page)

Kelly’s hesitant emergence saved us from the details of what Becks would have done to her. She gave the parking lot a horrified look before hurrying toward us, demanding, “What are we doing
here
?”

“This is the address your file said we should be at, Doc.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“Nope. Underground lab, underground facilities.” I tucked my helmet under my arm, looking at the low-slung buildings spread out around us. “Can anybody
see the numbers on these things? We’re looking for eleven.”

“You can’t mean we’re actually going to go
inside
,” said Kelly.

“No, Doc, we just drove a couple hundred miles to pose on the sidewalk.” Becks shook her head before turning to stalk off toward the buildings, scanning for more signs of habitation.

Kelly sighed. “This day just gets better and better.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure that soon, we’ll be looking back on this moment as one of the good times.” I followed Maggie, Alaric close behind me. Kelly stayed where she was for a few moments, staring after us. I could see her out of the corner of my eye. It was all I could do to not start laughing—which would have been entirely inappropriate, true, but it would have felt so damn good.

Be careful,
George cautioned.
Push her too far and she’ll freak out. We need her to stay calm, stay cooperative, and keep talking.

“I thought she’d already told us everything,” I muttered, as Kelly started running to catch up. Alaric cast a glance in my direction, but didn’t say anything.

You’re not that dumb.

There was nothing I could say to that. I kept walking, assessing the buildings surrounding us as I moved. I wasn’t exactly expecting a big sign that said
ILLEGAL VIROLOGY LAB HERE
, but it would have been nice. The buildings in the IT complex seemed to be essentially identical, all square, boxy, and in reasonably good repair, as long as you weren’t judging by the paint jobs. The building closest to us even had its original set of cell tower repeaters bolted to the roof, their narrow antennae making a familiar lightning-jag outline against the afternoon sky.

I stopped in my tracks. Looking bemused, Alaric did the same. “What year did we go to block-by-block private cell towers? Anybody know?”

“Uh… two thousand twenty,” said Alaric, after a long pause to do the math inside his head. “I remember when they put ours in.”

“Uh-huh. This is a pre-Rising complex. So who installed that?” I jerked a thumb toward the antennae.

Alaric’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Over here, guys.” I waved for the others to join us and started up the cracked pathway leading to the building door. Locked. No real surprise, that; if I were running an illegal biotech lab, I wouldn’t exactly want scavengers or thrill-seekers dropping in on me unannounced. I rapped my knuckles against the metal of the door itself, hearing the echoes they sent ringing dully into the space beyond.

No one answered. That really wasn’t a surprise, either. “Maybe we should shoot the lock out,” suggested Becks.

I gave her a dubious look. “Did you just suggest discharging a firearm into a door that may be attached to a lab? Like, ‘explosive chemicals and weird machinery and God knows what else’ lab?”

Becks shrugged. “At least we’d be dhe s something.”

“We
are
doing something. We’re getting inside.” I knocked again. After a several-second pause, I cleared my throat, and shouted, “This is Shaun Mason, from After the End Times. We’re here to speak to Dr. Abbey. Is she available? It’s about the reservoir conditions.”

The echoes of my knock were still ringing when the door swung open, revealing a short, cheerfully curvy woman with spiky brown hair streaked with bleach-white lines that looked more accidental than anything
else. She was wearing an electric orange T-shirt that read
DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS
, jeans, and a lab coat, and was pointing a hunting rifle at the middle of my chest.

“Got any ID?” she asked. Her voice was light, even charming, with an accent I couldn’t quite identify. She followed the question with a pleasant smile that didn’t warm her eyes. This was a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger if she thought we were giving her reason.

Not the friendliest greeting ever, and yet, not the least friendly, either,
said George. Kelly gasped, either in shock or indignation. I wasn’t sure which, and I really didn’t care; it gave me something to respond to that wouldn’t convince the woman with the large gun that I was insane right off the bat. That could come later, when she no longer had a weapon aimed at us.

“Hush,” I said, making sure to slant my eyes toward Kelly, to at least give the impression that I was talking to her. Looking back to the woman in the doorway, I asked, “May I reach into my jacket for my press pass? I promise to do it slowly.”

“Fine by me,” she said, still smiling. “Joe! Come over here, boy.” The largest dog I’d ever seen came ambling up behind her, its flapping jowls oozing strings of gooey white saliva. Its head looked like it was bigger than my chest. That may have been shock speaking, but there was no way I was going to volunteer to do the measurements. It didn’t help that the damn thing was solid charcoal black, making it look unnervingly like the classic hellhound.

Kelly drew her breath in again. This time, I didn’t blame her. Even Becks gasped, and I heard Maggie mutter something that sounded suspiciously like “Holy shit.”

“Joe, guard,” said the woman with the rifle. The massive canine obediently padded out onto the walkway, standing between her and the rest of us. It wasn’t growling, glaring, or doing anything else actively hostile; it was simply standing there, being enormous. That was more than enough.

Reaching slowly into my jacket, I asked the most sensible question I could come up with under the circumstances: “Lady, what the
fuck
is that?”

That’s right. Antagonize the woman who accessorizes with Cujo. I was tired of being the only dead one in this relationship.

I ignored her, choosing instead to focus on the woman who had the capacity to kill me. Call me single-minded. I tend to pay more attention to the immediate threats to life and limb, and leave the sarcastic dead people for later.

“That’s Joe,” said the woman, keeping the rifle aimed soidly at my chest. “He’s shown me his ID. He’s in no danger of getting himself shot.”

“He’s an English Mastiff,” breathed Maggie, almost reverently. She started to step forward, one hand outstretched in a gesture I’d seen her use on her video blog whenever she was adding a new rescue to her miniature pack. She froze midgesture, eyes darting toward the woman with the rifle. “Is he friendly?”

“He will be, once I’ve seen your ID.” Still, shotgun lady’s smile took on a slightly more honest edge. “Joe’s a good boy. He only eats the people I tell him to eat.”

“How encouraging,” I muttered, and held out my journalist’s license. “Here. All my credentials are on file. Just run the code.”

“And your people?” She jerked her chin toward the others, not bothering to take the license from my hand.

“Rebecca Atherton, head of the Irwins. Magdalene Garcia, head of the Fictionals. Alaric Kwong, he’s with the Newsie division; the actual division head lives in London and isn’t with us today. And this is—” For a sickening moment, I couldn’t remember Kelly’s alias.

Barbara Tinney,
prompted Georgia.

“—Barbara Tinney,” I echoed. “She’s a social scientist on loan to the site for a few months. Getting some field experience.”

From the look on the woman’s face, she wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh. What are you folks doing here? Take a wrong turn on the way to a real story?”

I had two choices. I could try to come up with a plausible lie or I could tell her the truth. Once, I would have gone straight for the lie, the more interesting the better. I’m not really comfortable with that sort of thing anymore. “We came to see Dr. Abbey,” I said, still holding out my license. “I have some files from the CDC that I need to have explained to me, and I thought she might be the person who could do it.” Her brows lifted slightly; she was interested. I decided to press my luck. “I don’t know if you follow the news, but my sister, Georgia Mason—”

“Retinal Kellis-Amberlee, wasn’t it? I remember her. That was a real tragedy. I was very sorry to hear about it.” The rifle wavered slightly. “I need a better reason for you to be here, and not at a ‘real lab’ somewhere.”

Tell her.
George’s mental voice held a venom I rarely heard from her, even when she was alive. Then again, I couldn’t blame her. The CDC’s secret keeping might be the reason she was just a voice in my head.

In for a penny, in for a pound. “Barbara Tinney is a cover ID for Dr. Kelly Connolly of the CDC. The researcher who was killed in a break-in recently—that
was a full-body clone. The real Dr. Connolly wasn’t killed, and this is her.” This time, Kelly’s horrified expression was more than a bit betrayed. I did my best to ignore it. “She’s how we got the files, and those same files identified this lab as being disreputable enough that no one would suspect we’d go to you, while still having staff who know how to find their asses with both hands. It didn’t mention the giant dog, or we might have gone somewhere else. Now, are you or can you tell us where to find her? I’m getting a little uncomfortable standing out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” The spiky-haired woman lowered her gun, suddenly smiling with genuine sincerity. “I’m Dr. Abbey—you can call me Shannon—and it’s a pleasure to have guests. Especially guests with such interesting connections.” Her smile dimmed as her gaze fell on Kelly, who was too busy staring at me to notice. “How about you all come inside, and we’ll sort this out.”

Alaric managed to find his voice, swallowing hard before he asked, “Will—will the dog be coming?”

“Of course he will. Joe’s my lab manager, aren’t you, Joe?” The enormous canine responded with a bark loud enough to make my ears hurt, tail beating against the ground. Maggie looked like she was physically restraining herself from running over and throwing her arms around his neck. Catching the look, Dr. Abbey laughed. “He doesn’t bite. Joe, guest passes for all these folks. Got it?” The dog stood, tail still wagging.

“Does that mean I can pet him?” asked Maggie eagerly.

“Can you pet the moving legal violation after we get inside?” I asked.

“Come on.” Dr. Abbey stepped aside, waving a hand at the open door. “Ladies first.”

“That means us, princess.” Becks looped her arm through Kelly’s, tugging the reluctant doctor along with her as she went striding through the door to the lab. Maggie followed, still casting longing looks at the dog. Alaric gave me an uneasy glance and went after her, presumably unwilling to leave her alone in the company of a bona-fide mad scientist.

Dr. Abbey crooked an eyebrow, studying me. “Will you be joining us?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I did my best to swagger as I walked toward the door, even going so far as to give her enormous pet a pat on the head as I passed him. “Good doggie.”

Joe made a deep buffing sound in the back of his throat. I hoped that meant he was happy, rather than planning to bite my hand off at the shoulder. The law forbidding urban ownership of any domestic animal large enough to undergo Kellis-Amberlee amplification was named after my family. That means I never got much experience with dogs beyond Maggie’s epileptic teacup bulldogs.

Dr. Abbey snorted with amusement and followed me inside. Joe padded after her, killing any lingering hope that I might have had about the big dog staying outside to, I don’t know, guard the sidewalk or something.

I was so busy watching what the dog did that I walked right into Becks, bumping her forward a half step. “Hey, watch it,” I began.

Shaun,
hissed Georgia.
Look.

I looked. And promptly understood why the rest of the team was standing frozen in their tracks at the end of the short entrance hall, staring into the gutted
warehouselike depths of the former IT building. I’d been expecting a dingy little basement operation, something barely more technically advanced than a buh of kids running their own pirate news site out of their parents’ house. This was a functional lab, operating totally outside all sane safety precautions, but still equipped way beyond anything I might have anticipated.

All the interior walls not essential for structural support had been knocked out at some point, replaced with a maze of cubicles, portable isolation tents, and live animal cages. Racked computer servers stood side-by-side with rabbit hutches. Hydroponic beds studded the floor, growing healthy-looking crops of things I vaguely recognized from Maggie’s garden. The light was an even, brilliant white, and about half the people I could see moving around the computers were wearing either sunglasses or the clear plastic bands hospitals sometimes used to protect the eyes of individuals with reservoir conditions.

Kelly was staring at the scene with her lip curled upward, looking utterly disgusted. “This is… horrific,” she breathed, turning toward me. “We have to get out of here. This is an abomination. It’s a violation of so many medical and ethical regulations that I can’t even start to count them, and—”

“And it’s not under CDC control, which means it’s not okay to break the rules, is that it?” asked Maggie. Her tone was icy.