Mom, Dad? The next horrible thing I do in public is for you. I hope you choke on it.
—From Charming Not Sincere, the blog of Rebecca Atherton, March 8, 2041
Hello, darlings! I hope you’re ready for some sizzling romance, swashbuckling adventure, tragic love, and mysterious happenings, because all those and more are on the schedule for this week. I’ll be on the live chat every night from seven to ten Pacific time, and I’m always happy to talk about anything your little hearts desire. I’m your private Scheherazade, and I’m here to tell you stories all night long. Welcome to Maggie’s House of Horrors—I hope you’re planning to stay for a while.
After all, you know I always miss you when you’re gone.
—From Dandelion Mine, the blog of Magdalene Grace Garcia, April 11, 2041
Four
What are we going to do?”
Becks asked the question, but all three of my staffers were looking at me with near-identical expressions of impatient expectation on their faces. It was all I could do to not turn and flee the room. They were expecting me to give them a direction; they were expecting me to make the call; they were expecting me to be George.
“What are we going to do?” I echoed, hoping they’d take the question as rhetorical.
The person it was aimed at didn’t. There are small mercies. We’re going to find out what’s going on, and we’re going to scream it from the mountaintops, said George. I repeated each word a half-beat behind her, creating a weird delay that no one outside my head could hear. We’re going to do our jobs. We’re going to go out there, and we’re going to get the news.
All four of the people in the room were staring at me by the time I—we—finished our little speech. Alaric was the first to look a yoducking his head slightly as he turned back to his computer screen. Dude always wanted me to be my sister when it came time to make a decision, but he was never okay with it when I actually did.
“That’s great and everything, but there are a few things to work out,” said Dave. He held up a finger. “What do we do with Doc here?” A second finger. “If we don’t know whether it’s safe to talk to the CDC, where the hell are we supposed to start?” A third finger. “What are we going to say to the rest of the site? This isn’t you and a little team and a van anymore. This is a business. We can’t go chasing a story we can’t talk about, maybe even disappear on everybody, and expect them to be cool with it.”
“Call Rick, see what he says,” said Becks.
“I’m pretty sure we can’t call the vice president of the United States with ‘Hey, we have a dead CDC researcher who says somebody’s trying to suppress her research,’ ” I replied. “We’re going to call Rick, but we need more than we have before we do it.”
Becks looked mollified. Rick Cousins used to be one of our staff Newsies. Now he’s helping run the country. That gave us a certain degree of access to the president, but if we were going to announce that the sky was falling, we needed to have some proof.
“And the rest?” asked Dave.
“Starting with your third question, we’re going to tell Mahir, because he already knows, and we’re going to tell Maggie,” I said. “We can figure out the rest as we go.”
Dave frowned. “Why are we getting Maggie involved?”
“Because she’s in charge of the Fictionals. If there’s any chance this is going to end up getting big enough that we have to bring the whole site in on it, I want her to have had time to figure out how she’s planning to tell her people,” I said.
Plus, it’s the right thing to do, added George.
“Well, yeah,” I muttered. “I knew that.”
My team had learned not to comment on my conversations with George. Kelly hadn’t. Frowning, she asked, “Are you wearing an earpiece?”
“What?” Shit. “Uh… no, not exactly.”
“Then who are you talking to?”
There was no way out but straight ahead. Shrugging, I said, “Georgia.”
Kelly hesitated, emotions chasing themselves across her face like a gang of zombies chasing a government hunting party. Finally, she settled for the easiest possible answer: “I see.”
The urge to get up in her face and try to start something was almost too strong to suppress. That’s how I usually dealt with people who gave me the look that she was wearing now, that horrible mix of surprise and shock and pity. Six months ago, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. Six months ago, I was thinking a lot less clearly. Maybe I’m crazy. But I’m going to be the kind of crazy that Finreful until it blows everything in its path to kingdom come.
“We all cope in our own ways,” I said briskly. “Dave, is Maggie online? We can conference her in right now.”
“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 f**ked.”
“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.