Blackout: Book 3 of The Newsflesh Trilogy Read online

  “Wait—Memphis? Is Dr. Wynne okay?” Dr. Joseph Wynne worked out of the Memphis office. He was one of the first CDC employees I’d ever met who seemed to genuinely care about people. Without him, we might have died in the desert between Oklahoma and Texas.

  “Dr. Wynne was killed during the incident. It’s still unclear what his role was—the CDC insists he was a martyr, but the EIS has reason to believe otherwise.” Catching the stricken look on my face, Gregory continued reluctantly. “Dr. Kelly Connolly was also found dead in the Memphis CDC.”

  “Which was surprising when you considered that she’d been killed several weeks previously, in a robbery gone awry,” interjected Dr. Kimberley. “Once we started analyzing video footage of your brother’s team over the weeks leading up to the incident, we found a surprising number of shots including a blonde woman whose facial features mapped quite well with Dr. Connolly’s. Perhaps she didn’t die before that day in Memphis after all.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  Dr. Kimberley motioned for Gregory to bring the water over again. “I’m saying things are much worse than you knew at the time of your passing.”

  “That wasn’t me,” I said, almost sullenly. I’d just been drugged and cut open without my consent. I was feeling entitled to a little balkiness. Gregory held the glass of water up for me to sip, and I did, gratefully. The feel of the liquid coating the back of my throat may have been the sweetest thing I had ever experienced.

  “No, you’re right; it wasn’t you,” said Dr. Kimberley. “But it was you at the same time. You’re a bit of a paradox, my dear girl, and possibly the only ace our side has left to play. We need you to be Georgia Mason, just as much as the other side needs for you not to be. We need you to think like her, we need you to act like her, and we need you to be her. We would never have made you. I like to think the EIS still has marginally more of a soul than that. Now that you exist, forgive us, but we will use you to our best advantage.”

  I coughed. Gregory pulled the glass away. “What do you think you’re going to use me for? I won’t betray Shaun for you.”

  “We never expected you would. Your loyalty is one of the things that makes you useless to Dr. Thomas and his ilk.” Dr. Kimberley’s lip drew back in a sneer. “That man’s never understood the virtue of loyalty.”

  “Right.” Moving my left arm felt like one of the hardest things I had ever done. Somehow, I managed, raising it to rest my hand against my forehead. “So you’re the good guys. You’re just going to find a way to set me free so I can run off and join Shaun, and we can blow this conspiracy open and go live happily ever after. Is that it?”

  “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that—” began Dr. Kimberley.

  I looked to Gregory. “Is she stupid, or does she think I am? Because I know a line of bullshit when it’s being fed to me.”

  “Florida has been declared a Level 1 hazard zone,” he replied.

  “W-what?” I managed, after that seeming non sequitur had been given a moment to sink in. “That’s impossible.”

  “An insect vector for Kellis-Amberlee was swept over from Cuba by a tropical storm, and deposited along the length of the United States Gulf Coast. We’ve lost more than just Florida, but that’s the only entire state to be designated Level 1. So far.”

  “Wait. Are you saying—”

  “This isn’t a natural mutation. These mosquitoes are three times the size of anything we’ve seen before—the perfect size for transmitting Kellis-Amberlee. Isn’t it a little odd that they didn’t appear until right after a major break-in at the CDC?” Gregory looked at me calmly. “The purpose of the EIS is tracking, containment, and eradication of infectious diseases. At this point, we consider the CDC a form of infectious disease. So yes, Georgia, we really are going to find a way to free you to find your team—what’s left of them—and tell them what you know.”

  “It may not tilt the balance fully in our favor, but it will help,” added Dr. Kimberley. “Your death was too well publicized, and you’re too well made. There’s no way you can be written off as a hoax once you get to the proper people. And if you can’t find the proper people, we’d be happy to provide them.”

  I sighed. “Is this all just one big political ploy to seize control of the CDC?”

  “Do you really care if it is?” asked Gregory.

  Trying to think about this was starting to make my head hurt. I decided to try another approach. “Did I hear Rick? I remember waking up and hearing him here.”

  “You did,” said Gregory. That was a surprise. I’d been half expecting them to lie. “He was able to sneak away to meet with us. I’m sorry you weren’t awake during his visit.”

  “Vice President Cousins has been very concerned about you,” added Dr. Kimberley. “He’s the one who approached the EIS about infiltrating this project. He was able to get my security clearance improved—that’s how we could pull off this little ruse in the first place.”

  “Not that it’s going to do us any good if you don’t recover fast enough for us to break you out of here,” said Gregory. He turned to look at one of the monitors. “Your system is still stressed from all the excitement. You need to get some sleep.”

  “Sleep is the last thing I want,” I objected. “I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  “And that’s why you need to sleep.” Gregory smiled a little, holding up an empty syringe. “I’m afraid you don’t have all that much choice in the matter. I added a little something to your IV line. We’ll see you in a few hours.”

  “What—?” My eyes widened. “You bastard.”

  “My parents were married.”

  “You could have… could have asked me…” My voice was already slowing down. I didn’t know whether it was psychosomatic or just very well timed, but either way, I was pissed.

  “You would have said no,” said Dr. Kimberley, standing.

  “Damn… right… I…” I lost my grasp on the sentence as the dark reached up to take me. This time it was softer, and less menacing. That didn’t mean I had to like it, but when it became apparent that fighting wasn’t going to do me any good, I let go and let it pull me under.

  The fourth time I woke, no one was calling my name, and no one else was in the room; I was alone in my little half-folded hospital bed, with a yellow blanket pulled up around my shoulders. I was so used to CDC white that the color was almost shocking. I pushed myself into a sitting position with shaking arms, letting the blanket fall away. My white pajamas were gone, replaced by a set of pale blue surgical scrubs. More color. After so long in a world without it, even those little splashes were enough to make me feel disoriented.

  After I was sure I was steady, I swung my feet around to the floor—my bare feet. A momentary panic lanced through me as I realized my gun was gone. I grabbed the bedrail, intending to stand, and paused as I saw the gun resting on the bedside table. I picked it up, hand shaking slightly, and relaxed as the weight of the gun confirmed that it was loaded. They hadn’t left me defenseless after all. I tucked it into the waistband of my scrubs, checking twice to be sure the safety was on before I tightened my grasp on the bedrail, took a deep breath, and stood.

  I didn’t fall. That was a start. There was no immediate pain, although most of me was sore, and various parts of me ached in an irritated way that made me think of feeding tubes and catheters. Necessary evils, but not things I really wanted to dwell on.

  There was a door on the far side of the room. I focused on it as I let go of the bedrail and started to shuffle forward, slowly at first, but with increasing speed as my confidence came back. The soreness actually began to fade a little as I stretched the muscles in my legs and back. Maybe most of it was from lying still too long.

  I made it to the door without incident and grasped the knob, honestly expecting it to be locked. Instead, it turned easily, and I stepped out of my small recovery room into what looked like the central lab. Dr. Kimberley was there, reviewing test results with two of her
technicians. All three of them turned toward the sound of my door opening.

  For a moment, the four of us remained where we were, blinking at one another. Dr. Kimberley was the first to recover. “James?”

  “On it, Doctor,” said the technician, and stood, hurrying over to a small specimen refrigerator. He opened the door and produced a familiar red and white can, which he carried over and offered to me. “It’s good to see you awake.”

  I took the Coke without a word, popping the tab and taking a long drink. The soda burned the soreness in my throat. All of them watched me. No one spoke.

  I lowered the can.

  “The first thing I will do—the first thing—is have myself checked for tracking devices,” I said, directing my words at Dr. Kimberley. “If we find anything, I don’t work with you people. I don’t give you anything. You’ll need to shoot me and start with another clone, and hope you can get away with it twice. Clear?”

  “As crystal,” she said, nodding. “We’re playing fairly. Not because we’re innately fair, but because at this point, it’s in our best interests to do so… and it’s the only thing left that distinguishes us from the other side.”

  “All right, then. How much time do we have?”

  “Still three days. You were only out for a few hours this last time—long enough to let us do the last of the post-op cleanup work.”

  “Yeah, don’t ever do that again. If you’re going to knock me out, I need to know before it happens.” I took another drink of Coke. “I need an Internet connection, shoes, and another soda.”

  Dr. Kimberley smiled. “I think all those things can be arranged.”

  “Good.” My can was almost empty. I finished it before returning Dr. Kimberley’s smile. “Let’s have ourselves a revolution.”

  We’ve reached Seattle in one piece. It was a little touch-and-go for a while there, but now here we are, and Maggie has somehow managed to hide us by going the opposite of underground. Money. Is there anything it can’t do?

  We’re about to leave to see the Monkey, the man who can supposedly make identities that fool anyone and everyone in the world. That makes this Maggie’s last hurrah; when we’re done here, she’s heading back to Weed, back to her bulldogs and her grindhouse movies. I’m going to miss the shit out of her, but I’m also glad, in a way.

  At least one of us is going to make it out of this shitstorm alive.

  —From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, August 1, 2041. Unpublished.

  There are days when I wake up and realize I no longer know the man in my mirror. Who are you, with your graying temples and your two-hundred-dollar haircut? Who are you, in your fancy suit, with your vast political power that does you no good when it really matters? Who are you, with all those ghosts in your eyes?

  Seriously, you asshole. Who the fuck are you, and why are you looking back at me whenever I look into my own eyes? What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his own soul? It’s on days like this that I really want to know.

  I wish I could explain to them why I let this happen. I wish I could tell them what it was for. And I wish I thought, even for a second, that they were going to forgive me…

  —From the private journal of Vice President Richard Cousins, August 1, 2041. Unpublished.

  Eighteen

  The polite voice of the hotel roused me from my bed shortly before sunrise. I sat up, blinking in disorientation at the opulent room around me—it would have been a suite in any other hotel—before I remembered where I was, swore softly, and got moving.

  My clothes were scattered near the bathroom door, under the panel with the light controls. I’d spent almost ten minutes the night before just playing with them, cranking them up to mimic natural sunlight for the seasonally depressed, shifting them into the UV spectrum for the sake of people with retinal Kellis-Amberlee. In the end, I’d gone to sleep with the black lights on and the white-noise generator turned to full. It was almost like being back in Berkeley, before everything changed.

  I hadn’t slept that well in a year. Being woken, even gently, felt like a betrayal.

  There’d been no discussion of how we’d be getting to the Monkey’s: We just assembled at the van, like all of us being together again was the way things were supposed to be. Mahir got into the front passenger seat, balancing his tablet on his knee. Maggie and Becks took the back, and in the rearview mirror I could see Becks sitting sentry, watching out the rear window for signs of pursuit.

  “Where to?” I asked, as I buckled my seat belt.

  “I’ve got the directions,” said Mahir, and held up the tablet, showing me a black window with a blinking green cursor in the upper right corner.

  I blinked. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Our map.” He lowered the tablet, swiping a finger across the bottom to make the keyboard appear. He typed the words “find Monkey” with quick, efficient taps before pressing the ENTER key. The cursor dropped to the next line.

  Maggie was peering over the seat at us. I frowned at the tablet, which Mahir was watching with absolute focus. Minutes ticked by.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “This is officially stupid. In case you were wondering whether it had the ‘Shaun thinks this is stupid’ seal of approval, it does. Is there a plan B?”

  “Yes.” Mahir held up the tablet, showing it to me again. A second line of text had appeared beneath his, with the cursor blinking on a third line now.

  EXIT GARAGE, it said.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I grumbled, and started the engine.

  “It’s based off a pre-Rising computer game,” said Mahir. “So primitive it’s invisible to most monitoring systems.” He began typing. “At the end of the drive, wave to the guards and turn left. You’ll come to an intersection with a 7-Eleven. When you get there, turn right.”

  “Fucking. Kidding. Me,” I said.

  At the base of the driveway, we all waved to the guards as we waited for the gate to open. They waved back, apparently accustomed to strange behavior from their eccentric, wealthy clientele.

  “Are you sure this is necessary?” I asked, still waving.

  “If the directions say to do it, we do it,” said Maggie. “That’s what everyone says. If you don’t listen to the Monkey, he doesn’t meet with you.”

  “Let’s hope the directions don’t tell us to shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” I muttered, and pulled out onto the street.

  The directions did not tell us to shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die. They did tell us to drive down dead alleys, only to turn around and go back the way we’d come; to drive in circles through residential neighborhoods, probably setting off dozens of security alerts; and to get on and off the freeway six times. It was incredibly annoying. At the same time, I had to admire the Monkey’s style. None of the neighborhoods we drove through had gates or manned security booths. None of the freeway exits we used required blood tests. We might be driving like idiots, but we were driving like idiots without leaving a definite record of where we’d been, or why we’d been there.

  We were crossing a bridge that actually floated on the surface of a lake—thankfully, the Monkey hadn’t requested we do anything stupid, like drive into the lake; I would have refused, and then I might have had a mutiny on my hands—when Mahir looked up, eyes wide. “Shaun?”

  “What?” I asked. “Are we being followed?”

  “No. The directions…” He cleared his throat, looked at the screen, and read, “ ‘Turn on your jamming unit. Tune it to channel eight, or these instructions will cease.’ We don’t have a jamming unit, do we?”

  “Actually, funny story—hey, Becks!” I looked at the rearview mirror. She turned, the reflection of her eyes meeting mine. “Put the jammer’s batteries back in and turn it on, will you? The text-based adventure wants us to get scrambled.”

  “On it, Boss,” Becks called, and put down her gun.

  I hadn’t wanted us to kill the jammer in the Ago
ra parking garage—no matter how upper-crust they were, there were bound to be some things that would upset them. We’d settled for checking it for obvious bugs and removing the battery pack before heading into the hotel. Now I was glad we’d taken that approach. If the Monkey knew we had the jammer, he would probably have been pissed if we’d killed it.

  “This guy must think he’s the goddamn Wizard of Oz,” I muttered. “I don’t like being spied on.”

  “We’re off to see the Wizard,” chanted Maggie, in a gleeful singsong voice.

  “Before you start killing people with joyous abandon, you might like to know that the next batch of directions has arrived,” said Mahir dryly. “Maggie, please don’t antagonize him; he’s had a hard week, and he’s liable to bite.”

  “Spoilsport,” said Maggie.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  “At the end of the bridge, turn right,” said Mahir.

  There was no joking around after that. Whatever test we’d been taking, we’d apparently passed, because the directions sent us along a straightforward series of increasingly smaller streets, until we were driving down a poorly maintained residential road in one of the oldest parts of Seattle. This was a million miles from the cultivated opulence of the Agora, or even from the reasonably well-maintained Berkeley streets where I grew up. This was a neighborhood where half the houses burned years ago and were never rebuilt, and where the remaining homes were surrounded by the kind of ludicrous fencing that was popular immediately after the Rising, when people were frantically trying to protect themselves from the next attack.

  “People still live in places like this?” asked Maggie. Her levity was gone. She stared out the window with wide eyes, looking baffled and horrified at the same time.

  I shrugged. “Where else are they gonna go?” The question sounded rhetorical. It wasn’t. There were patches like this in almost every city, tolerated despite their sketchy adherence to the safety requirements, because there was nowhere else to put the people who lived in those slowly collapsing houses. Eventually, they’d all be condemned and razed to the ground. Until that day came, people would do what they always had. They would survive.