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 na**d 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 f**ked 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.
“You kids,” said Dr. Wynne, with a forced chuckle. “Y’all be careful out there, all right?”
“As careful as you can be when you’re looking for the living dead,” I said. “Take care of yourself, Dr. Wynne.”
“You, too, Shaun,” he said, and disconnected the call.
I took a second to just stand there with my phone in my hand, closing my eyes and listening to George swearing in the back of my head. “Here we go again,” I said, voice barely above a whisper.
“What?” asked Dave.
“Nothing.” I opened my eyes, slamming the phone into my pocket before stalking back into the kitchen for a fresh Coke. I popped the tab and downed half the can in one large, carbonated gulp. The frozen sweetness made my molars ache and snapped the world back into a semblance of focus. “I need you to tear down your workstations, and then get started on everybody else’s,” I said, returning to the living room. “Dave, where are you with that list?”
“It’s encoded. I need—”
“Forget what you need. Upload it to the main server and the mirrors; pack the physical drive.”
“Boss?” asked Alaric, uncertainly.