by Mira Grant
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.”
You know what? Fuck it. Just fuck it. The Rising didn’t manage to wipe out the human race, it just made us turn into even bigger assholes than we
were before. Hear that, mad science? You failed. You were supposed to kill us all, and instead you turned us into monsters.
Fuck it.
—From Adaptive Immunities , the blog of Shaun Mason, August 7, 2041. Unpublished.
Testing. This is a test post to check formatting and be sure the files are uploading correctly. Test test test.
Is this thing on?
—From Living Dead Girl , the blog of Georgia Mason II, August 7, 2041. Unpublished.
GEORGIA: Thirty-seven
Steve was a constant, silent presence behind us as Rick steered me down the hall. It was weirdly like being back on the campaign trail, only I wasn’t carrying a gun, Rick wasn’t carrying a cat, and I was no longer sure who the good guys were.
On second thought, it was nothing at all like being back on the campaign trail.
The hall ended at a door that looked like real oak. Rick let go of me to press his palm flat against the testing panel next to the door. A small red light clicked on above it, oscillating rapidly between red and green before settling on green. It remained lit for less than five seconds. Then it clicked off, and the door clicked open.
“I’m going to be waiting for you on the other side,” said Rick. “Do you trust Steve?”
It was an interesting question. If Ryman was no longer one of the good guys, I wasn’t sure I trusted anyone. But of the people I didn’t trust, Steve was one of the ones I distrusted the least. “We’ll be fine,” I said.
“I’ll see you in a moment,” said Rick, and opened the door. Part of me wondered what kind of awesome security procedures they’d have in place to prevent people from following each other through—always a risk, no matter how much the people who design the airlock systems try to keep it from happening. Some airlocks will gas you if you try to go through without getting a blood test. Somehow I doubted they’d use something that crude on a door that might be opened by the President of the United States. The rest of me understood that playing with the security system was something too stupid for Shaun to do, and that meant it was absolutely too dumb for me.
The door closed behind Rick, the little red light making another brief appearance before shutting itself politely off. “Cute,” I said, stepping forward to press my hand against the testing plate. Needles bit into the skin at the point where each of my fingers joined my palm. That was an unusual spot for a test array. I took a small, startled breath, finally pulling away as the light turned green and clicked off. “That’s my cue.”
“I’ll be right through,” said Steve. He smiled encouragingly when I looked back at him, and I held that image firmly in my mind as I stepped through the door to whatever was waiting on the other side. Steve wouldn’t have smiled while he sent me to my death. I might be a clone, and Ryman might be corrupt, but some things about a person’s essential nature never change.
The door opened on a narrow hallway that looked like it was constructed hundreds of years before the Rising and never substantially redecorated. Rick was waiting. A relieved smile spread across his face when he saw me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“What, you thought I’d go back to the nice man in the lab coat who was about to have me recycled?” I dropped the pretense of having a migraine, straightening and looking at him flatly. “You could have warned me what we were walking into.”
“No. I couldn’t have.” The door swung open as Steve joined us in the hall. Rick switched his attention from me to Steve, asking, “Anyone following us?”
“Not that I saw,” rumbled Steve. I raised an eyebrow. He explained, “This is one of the tunnels built during the Cold War, in case we needed to evacuate the capital. They probably wouldn’t have been any use in a nuclear strike—a nuke’s a pretty damn big deal—but there’s one thing they do manage, quite nicely.”
I nodded slowly, catching his meaning. “We’re underground. No wireless transmission.”
“We sweep this hall hourly for bugs. For the moment, we’re in the clear.” Steve looked past me to Rick. “You can proceed, Mr. Vice President.”
“Thank you, Steve.” Rick sighed, beginning to walk. “It really is good to see you.”
“Most people just send flowers. Raising the dead is a little extreme.” I matched my steps to his, watching him as we walked. “What’s going on, Rick? What’s really going on?”
“I meant it when I said that, if it had been up to me, I would have simply handed you over to Shaun as soon as you woke up enough to know yourself.” A muscle in Rick’s jaw twitched as he continued. “I will go to my grave knowing that I have been responsible for your death more than twenty times. Each time one of the clones of the original Georgia Mason was decanted I told myself, ‘That’s it. No more. If she’s not real, we find another way.’ But each time, I couldn’t think of another way, and we needed you. I needed you.”
“Why?”
“Same reason those people back there were hoping you’d play nicely with the other children—people associate your face with the truth. If you tell them a lie they want to believe, they won’t question it.”
“And the government can keep on killing people like me. People like your wife. God, Rick, is that really what you want?”
“No. That’s what they want.” Rick stopped at an unsecured door, pushing it open. Gregory was sitting at a terminal on the other side, with Dr. Shoji looking over his shoulder. I couldn’t even be surprised. Rick kept talking: “I want you to tell the world the truth. I want you to blow it all to hell. People believe you. People believe in you, because of the way you died. They’ll believe the truth even if they don’t want to, as long as they’re hearing it from you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Hello, Georgia,” said Gregory, looking up from the screen. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It was touch and go for a while there, but I pulled through,” I said. “How about you?”
“Minor burns, concussion, and I won’t be working with the CDC again anytime soon. That’s all right. I was tired of them anyway.”
“Good.” I turned to Rick. “Now please. Explain. A huge global conspiracy has ruined my life—hell, has ended my life, and then started it over again, leaving me with probably the worst identity issues I could imagine—and they did it for what? So you could clone me and use me to sell ice to the Eskimos?”
“A huge global conspiracy has ruined your life. If it helps, they also killed my wife.” Rick’s smile faded like it had never been there at all. “I took Lisa’s death for a suicide, because that’s what they told me it was. I found out differently only when I saw her file. They did it because of what you saw back in that room—there is no cure for Kellis-Amberlee. There’s never going to be a cure. There’s just going to be a war with the virus, one we can’t win, but can only adapt to. We can only survive it. And that’s not acceptable to some people.”
“So they’re doing this instead?”
“It didn’t start out like this, Georgia. It started out with good intentions—God, such good intentions. They thought they were taking steps to protect the country. In the end, no one noticed when protection turned into imprisonment, or when ‘for the good of the people’ turned into ‘for the good of the people in power.’ It was all baby steps, all the way.”
“Aren’t the worst things usually that way?” I asked. “So why’s Ryman on their side now? Wasn’t he supposed to be the good guy? The one we could depend on?”
Rick didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, waiting. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Emily,” I whispered. “Emily Ryman has retinal KA.”
“Which makes her an excellent candidate for an ‘accidental’ death if he stops playing along—and you’re not their first clone. Just the first one that really replicates the person you were based on. If you’d been alive for the last year, you would have noticed that Emily rarely speaks in public. She just stands and smiles. Does that sound like the Emily Ryman you know?”
I stared at him in
mute horror. Rick continued: “They replaced her the night after the inauguration, and now she and the children are hostages against the president’s good behavior. He’s in the same position you are. He’s a perfect figurehead, because even people who believe all politicians are corrupt remember his association with you on the campaign trail—and they remember what happened to Rebecca Ryman. They believe in him, even if they don’t realize it.” Rick laughed a little, bitterly. “I think this may have been the plan all along. Tate was never going to wind up in power. Ryman was too good a puppet to pass up.”
“I think I hate the human race,” I said.
“There’s the Georgia Mason we all know and love,” said Steve. “Now the question is, what are we going to do about it?”
I paused. “You mean I’m standing in a room with the Vice President of the United States, a member of the Secret Service, and two renegade EIS scientists, and you expect the clone to make the decisions? See, this is why this country is in trouble all the damn time. The people running it are crazy.”
“We just want to know if you’ll help,” said Dr. Shoji.
“And by help, you mean…?”
“Will you do what you did in Sacramento?”
What I did in Sacramento was reveal Tate’s dirty dealing and the fact that someone had been bankrolling him—but we never suspected the CDC, and so mostly, what I did was make sure Ryman got into power. That, and die. I knew they were asking me to tell the truth again, to tell it for them this time, but I couldn’t help remembering the way it felt to know that I was coming to an end. It wasn’t my memory, just a snapshot stolen from the virus-riddled mind of a dead woman, but that didn’t make it feel any less real. I died in Sacramento. If I did what they wanted me to do, I could very well die again.
