Dead City

by Sean Platt

  Gennifer gave Ian a glance. He was the executive vice president; he was senior to everyone at the table to the tune of a quadrupled salary; he, if anyone here, should be reinforcing proper company behavior. But Gennifer had always been this group’s den mother, and that made her the human embodiment of Burgess’s evolutionary theory: When something provided artificial assistance, natural mechanisms relaxed and stopped trying so hard. Gennifer was like antibiotics for the unruly crew. The more she tried to control Ted, the less he stopped trying to control himself — and the less Ian found himself needing to intervene.

  “Knock it off, Ted,” Ian said.

  The table suffered a lull. Kate, as usual, seemed thoughtfully uncomfortable. Gary wore his usual expression of polite concern — he didn’t approve but would roll with the punches. Ian sat amused by it all, and Gennifer kept staring, urging Ian to follow up. Maybe he should chastise Ted for being a bigot. Issue a formal reprimand.

  Instead, Ian laughed again, unable to contain himself after his oddly stressful morning.

  “Ted!” Gennifer barked. Then, when Ted finally quieted: “Holy shit, Ian. You’re an awful example.”

  “You could ride the spasms, is all I’m saying,” Ted added.

  Ian wanted to snicker again, imagining Sarah the temp succumbing to Ted’s wiles, unable to control her reflexes. In reality, the scene would be uglier than Ted was joking it would be. Sarah wasn’t just limping and jerking; she was also sloughing. It wasn’t uncommon to find blood all over the coffee station after she’d visited. You’d point it out, and Sarah would realize she’d lost most of the skin from a finger again.

  “She’s right, Ted. Knock it off.”

  Ian tried to straighten his face. It wasn’t hard now that Gennifer had tossed cold water on the irreverence. But once Ian’s mood had dampened, his mind turned to the other thing and began to wander. To the oddly disquieting happenings on his computer. To guilt over nothing at all. To his morning spent reacting to someone’s meddling, his gut twisting into a knot.

  “Fine,” Ted pouted, breaking Ian’s spell. “I was just trying to be UNprejudiced, despite what you bigots seem to be implying.” He gathered his tray and stood then dropped his garbage in the black trashcan after almost depositing it in the biohazard barrel.

  The others stood to follow. But lunch couldn’t be over; Ian had done nothing more than eat and make small talk. Somehow, this group of scientists was supposed to miraculously shed light on the mystery that had been poking Ian all morning. The mystery that Ian somehow felt he needed to hide, even though he’d done nothing wrong.

  Ian stood to follow. When the group reached the cafeteria’s edge, Ian grabbed Gennifer’s shoulder before she could wave her card over the scanner.

  “Gennifer. You got a minute?”

  “Sure.” She looked at the others then apparently decided Ted, Gary, and Kate could be trusted to go on without her. For five minutes, at least.

  “I’ll catch up with you,” she told the group. Then to Ian: “What’s up?”

  “This might sound kind of strange, coming from me,” Ian began.

  “Damn. Don’t tell me you already had dibs on Sarah, and now I have to intervene.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  Gennifer practically snapped to attention. She could joke, but adherence to protocol was closer to her style.

  “I’m sorry. You’ve seemed distracted all through lunch. I actually meant to ask about it, but … well … Ted happened.”

  Ian inhaled, then slowly exhaled, trying to decide where to start. He hadn’t been kidding; the questions he wanted to ask, given their stations, weren’t typical. But he had to start somewhere, so he decided on the issue’s far side — not delving into the meat of the matter, but into the way it had surfaced.

  “Have you assigned me any tasks in the system lately?”

  “That’s not that strange a question. And no, I haven’t. You asked me not to assign you tasks. I think your exact words were, ‘I’m the boss, so stop fucking micromanaging me, Gennifer.’”

  Ian wanted to laugh as she’d no doubt intended, but he couldn’t. The need to get this out and be done with it had him rushing on.

  “Who else might give me tasks?”

  “Just look at the assignee, Ian. That’ll tell you who gave them to you.”

  She was looking at him with a quizzical expression. His heart was beating too hard, and his palms were sweating. This wasn’t normal behavior when discussing to-do’s, and her eyebrows were already rising.

  But the truth was, he’d already looked at the assignee, of course. And according to the company software, the person who’d assigned all those odd, sticking-his-nose-where-it-doesn’t-belong tasks to Ian was Ian himself.

  As if he was being framed for something. Something he’d had nothing to do with.

  It’s just a glitch, he told himself.

  But he’d repeated that refrain over and over in his office before coming down to lunch, and it hadn’t helped. It sure hadn’t felt like a glitch. The strange to-do’s had come at him like unrelenting pillbox fire, each task burdened with accompanying attachments.

  The material he was being sent, so far as Ian could tell, was all public data — nothing wrong with having or reading any of it. Except that everything was wrong with it. They were the kinds of questions a troublemaker like Alice Frank might ask because she had an agenda against the company … which, of course, Alice Frank always had. If anyone saw the list Ian had apparently given himself for the day, they’d have had plenty of questions, about loyalty and suitability for his current job.

  Why so curious all of a sudden, Ian? What are you trying to prove that has no basis in reality except for insinuations made by muckraking journalists, Ian?

  “I’ll do that. I’ll just check the assignee.” He turned.

  “Wait.” This time, Gennifer grabbed Ian’s shoulder. “That’s not weird enough.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not really what you wanted to ask me. What is it, Ian? You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “I was just curious.”

  “About what?”

  “Virology.” He had to spit the word out to get it past his lips.

  Gennifer laughed. Then she said, “Seriously?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Wait. Is this for the designer formulation tweaks Burgess wants? For Nice and Pretty?”

  “Yeah,” Ian said. In reality, he had no idea what made any of the designer versions of Necrophage (Nice, Pretty, or any others) different from the plain old base Phage that anyone could get for free. That was something for scientists, not executives. But if it opened the conversational door with Gennifer in a way that didn’t make him look guilty, all the better.

  “What about virology?”

  But that was exactly the problem. Ian had no idea. All of those to-do’s had been vague, and he didn’t so much as know what to ask.

  Research virology.

  Research cell receptors.

  Research vascular decay as a mechanism for crossing the blood/brain barrier.

  None of which Ian understood. All of which Ian knew practically nothing about. He understood business, not biology. None of those things or the others that kept coming up were any of his concern … and yet, taken as a whole, they sure looked like Ian had big doubts about the company — the kind of doubts a mole or anonymous source for certain troublemakers might have, for instance.

  “Never mind, Gennifer. Seriously. It’s nothing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Ian almost laughed. Before, she’d been trying to pry information out of him. Now, having heard Ian ask (rather nervously) about a word he could barely pronounce, she seemed perfectly willing to let it go. That, more than anything, proved that his concerns had been judged and found unworthy.

  “I’m sure.”

  “You seem overworked.”

  “I’m always overworked.”

  Gennifer bit her lip, put her hand on
Ian’s arm, and watched him for a long second. Then she said, “All right. Well, tell Bridget hello for me, okay? And we’ll see her at the Family Picnic, right?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Gary’s bringing his wife. I wouldn’t bring your daughter, though.”

  Ian wanted to roll his eyes. It was like she thought he was retarded. The Hemisphere Family Picnic was the biggest PR event of the year, and he’d been to two of them in the past. He knew the drill just fine. Why would anyone bring kids? It was a picnic, yes, but it was a photo op for the necrotic cause more than anything else.

  “I won’t,” he said instead.

  Gennifer smiled, turned, and headed through the door. Ian followed. And as his shoes echoed down the corridor, he grew increasingly certain that no matter what he’d just learned or failed to learn, something was wrong — or, perhaps more accurately, that anyone who glanced at Ian’s computer would think Ian Keys believed something was wrong.

  With the Sherman Pope virus, now kept in check save the occasional outbreak in the sticks.

  With Hemisphere, the company that rescued the nation from a plague when things had seemed hopeless.

  And, maybe, with the drug that saved the world.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TO BE READ

  IAN TOOK THE LONG WAY to reach his office in Alpha Building. It required him to take the sprawling hallway past the accounting department on the first floor then take the elevator up on the far side. Usually, he rode the first elevator, just past the security doors, but that route required him to walk through the cubicle farm. For some reason, he didn’t want to do that today. It wasn’t elitism, about not wanting to mingle with the rank and file. It was something deeper, tinged with nerves, unease, and perhaps even guilt.

  Why had all those new to-do’s shot to the top of Ian’s list, assigned by a ghost? And he hadn’t even told Gennifer the rest — about the to-read information that had risen to the top of his list. Why would the EVP care about virology and epidemiology? It had to be a simple mistake on par with someone clicking the wrong box — Oh, sorry, Mr. Keys. I was supposed to assign those tasks to Paul in R&D — and that was likely all there was to it. But Ian couldn’t shake the feeling that he was sticking his nose where it didn’t belong even if he wasn’t sticking it anywhere.

  Ian arrived in his spacious office and found that his queue had been stocked with several Alice Frank articles bookmarked in his to be read list.

  Ian felt his pulse rise. Frank’s articles weren’t any more damning or restricted than the research the system had suggested to Ian earlier, but seeing someone read her stuff, listen to her occasional podcast episodes, receive her email newsletters, or especially watch her upcoming Bobby Baltimore interview inside Hemisphere’s walls was a bit like seeing someone reading communist propaganda in the 1950s. It wasn’t against the rules, but it felt like sleeping with the enemy. Ian, who was nowhere near the PR department or media relations, still knew the legends of how often Alice Frank had tried to land an interview with Archibald Burgess and how stalwartly he kept refusing. Some people thought Archibald didn’t know what to expect from the often-rogue, deeply skeptical reporter. But others said he refused because he knew exactly what to expect.

  Working quickly, his eyes darting side to side even though his screen wouldn’t be visible from the door and across the large office, Ian removed the bookmarks and deleted the tasks directing him to them. If it all turned out to be a big mistake (if, say, the boss had decided to talk to Frank after all and wanted Ian to bone up), it would be simple enough to find the articles again. But safe seemed so much better than sorry.

  This done, he sat behind his desk and stared at the screen as if it had done something to offend him. So far, the only things that had struck Ian as amiss (research that someone at executive veep level would never care about and bookmarks from Wrench-In-the-Works Number One) hadn’t breached even the most rinky-dink level of security. Nobody had broken into Ian’s office; nobody had remotely accessed his computer; nobody had rummaged through his stuff. A few tasks had been misassigned, that was all.

  Still, Ian couldn’t flee his creeping unease.

  That prickling, back-of-the-neck sensation.

  Ian hadn’t assigned himself these particular bits of research, but they painted a questionable picture for anyone who came across them and thought he had.

  Why is Ian Keys reading up on the history of Sherman Pope? What’s this about viral genetic shift? And why all these articles from Alice Frank, who seems to disbelieve everything Hemisphere and Mr. Burgess says, even though the rest of the country accepts it with nary a question? What exactly is Ian doubting? Does he think something’s amiss, and is he planning to … gasp! … blow a whistle?

  Certainly not. Not the loyal Ian Keys.

  After all, Ian knows what a great company this is, and how noble its aims. He’s deeply loyal. The company has been generous to Ian, and he’s not the kind of person who’d betray his own kind.

  Ian would never distrust years of research — aspects of the disease that are so accepted now that no one ever bothers to investigate. He’d never think there was something about the disease agent’s structure that needed more attention — say, the specific sequence of nucleotides in … in …

  Ian stood up. This was stupid.

  It was simply entered wrong. No one was trying to direct Ian’s attention or send him a message. Half the company was SP-positive; it was Hemisphere’s way of literally taking its own medicine. When Necrophage was still new, Hemisphere had been the first company to hire infected people in whom the disease’s progress had been safely arrested. Hiring necrotics of all functional levels remained excellent PR juju, so Hemisphere had committed to the practice. With so many necrotics on staff, a simple clerical error like this wasn’t a shock.

  Because let’s face it, it’s not like they all do great work.

  Most necrotics didn’t improve by the day. Most stayed exactly the same. And given that someone entering data and assigning non-sensitive tasks and information at Hemisphere might have an incubation period of a week or more, mistakes were bound to happen. Necrotic workers had modified keyboards to account for their spastic movements, but there was nothing to be done about their lack of focus or easily distracted dispositions.

  Or for their drooling. Or groaning.

  Ian looked at the screen. Stupid necrotic bastard, assigning the EVP information meant for a research assistant or clerical worker.

  There was a knock at Ian’s door. The visitor didn’t wait before entering because the blinds over the glass panels flanking the door were open anyway, but the turning knob made Ian jump up fast enough to bang his thighs against the desk’s heavy polished-wood edge.

  Raymond Smyth entered his office — one of the men between Ian and Archibald Burgess, and the one man who would surely fire him if he had reason to doubt his loyalty.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  REALITIES OF THE DISEASE

  “IAN?”

  IAN SWALLOWED. HE WASN’T doing anything wrong. Why the hell did it feel so much like he was naked and playing with fire? Some damned twitcher had fumbled their task assignments. Ian wasn’t sitting here in his big, high-powered office sowing doubts about the company. He wasn’t reading Alice Frank’s articles, thinking that she might have a few valid points that an insider’s investigations might easily shed some light on, one way or the other.

  “Hey, Raymond.”

  Raymond hovered in the threshold, assessing. Ian didn’t think he was sweating, but his entire physiology was wrong. It probably looked like Raymond had walked in and caught him masturbating.

  “How was lunch?” Raymond didn’t care, and was clearly assessing. He was a large man in his fifties with reddish-blond hair and a permanent haze of barely-there stubble. He had a curious, almost sideways way of speaking that seemed to use too much palate. It made him seem almost innocent, maybe naive, but in the years Ian had worked under Raymond, he’d learned that underestima
ting the man was always a mistake.

  Right now, he was giving Ian a look that was almost playful. As if he knew something.

  Like, maybe, that Ian had been snooping.

  Which Ian definitely hadn’t. Someone had made a rather ordinary, uninteresting mistake. And that error had nothing to do with him.

  “It was fine.”

  “You feeling all right, Ian? I just saw Gennifer. She said I should check up on you.”

  Ian tried on a smile. “Gennifer.” He laughed. “She’s a good girl, but she sure doesn’t know when enough is enough. She thinks I’m sick or something.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “No.”

  “Because I have to say, you don’t look well.”

  “I — ”

  “Never mind.” The strange standoff ended as Raymond took a few steps into Ian’s office, not bothering to close the door behind him. “I think you know better than Gennifer how you feel. It’s not why I came. I needed to talk to you anyway.”

  Raymond sat with one butt cheek on the corner of Ian’s desk, dangerously close to a view of the non-incriminating no-big-deal stuff filling Ian’s screen.

  Ian picked up some pens, pretending to fuss over his otherwise meticulous desk. Of course the screen got an adjustment as part of the refurb. It seemed so much more organized after it was angled farther away from Raymond’s potentially wandering eyes.

  “What about?” Ian asked.

  “Did you see Alice Frank’s interview with Bobby Baltimore?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Raymond’s blond brow furrowed. Even his eyebrows were so light they seemed to barely be there.

  “Why ‘of course’?”

  Right. That would be protesting too much. “I just didn’t have a chance.”