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  The attachments on this message contain everything I’ve done to date involving mapping the structure of Kellis-Amberlee against the autoimmune oddities that cause the formation of stable reservoir conditions. I don’t have a mechanism for reversing them, or a reliable way to induce them in adult subjects, but there’s more than enough to prove that reservoir conditions are the result of the immune system beginning to learn to cope under supposedly impossible conditions. Most of the research won’t make any sense to you, but it’ll make perfect sense to the little CDC flunky who introduced us. Make sure she sees it. Tell her it all goes public if you think she’s holding out on you. See what she has to say after that.

  You’re a brave idiot, Shaun Mason, and I’m sorry I never got to meet your sister. Almost as sorry as I am that you never got to meet my husband. Give my regards to the Merry Men, and tell them to sleep with one eye open, because you’re well on the way to pissing off some pretty damn important people. Good for you. Keep doing what you’re doing. Somebody has to.

  Best wishes, and stay the fuck away from me,

  Dr. Shannon L. Abbey

  A flare of guilt rose, washed over me, and died as I contemplated the fact that talking to us cost Dr. Abbey her lab. She knew what she was doing when she let us through her door. Maybe she didn’t invite us to come for a visit, but once we were there, she was perfectly happy to tell us what she knew. If she wasn’t going to blame us for showing up, I wasn’t going to feel bad for doing it.

  The attachments on her message downloaded clean, and they opened to reveal huge, detailed medl charts and graphs that made about as much sense as abstract art. I recognized some of the labels, but that was about it. That was okay because Dr. Abbey was right: It didn’t matter if her research made sense to me. What mattered was that her research would make sense to Kelly, and once she’d seen it, maybe she’d know where we needed to look next. Given the situation we were in, every little bit was about to start counting, big time.

  I forwarded Dr. Abbey’s message to Alaric and Mahir with a priority flag, printed copies of the attachments, and returned to cleaning out my in-box. Nothing else was nearly as interesting as that message, which wasn’t much of a surprise. “Here’s my Kellis-Amberlee research, enjoy” was a pretty hard act to follow.

  According to the site log, Mahir was logged in, which meant that either he was awake or I had reasonable cause to think he might be. That was good enough for me. Leaning back in my chair, I dug my phone out of my pocket and snapped it open.

  Luck was with me: Mahir, not his wife, answered the phone. “Shaun. Thank God.”

  “Hey, Mahir. There a reason you always feel the need to invoke the divine when I call you? Is that just how they’re saying hello in London these days?”

  “It’s four o’clock in the bloody morning, Shaun, and I’m awake to take your call. That might tell you a little something about how worried I’ve been.” A door closed in the background, and the sound of distant traffic filtered through the phone. “Try remembering that I’m eight hours off your time zone and give me the all-clear a little sooner next time, won’t you?”

  “Hey, sorry, dude. I figured Alaric would keep you posted.” One of the London magazines did a profile on Mahir after the Ryman election—he was a local boy involved in a huge American political scandal, which was sort of a big deal. The picture they ran with the article was of him standing on the wide balcony outside his apartment, looking out over the Thames River with the sort of serious “I am an intellectual artist” expression that George and I always used to make fun of. That was the scene I pictured now, listening to the traffic rushing past behind him: Mahir on the balcony, surrounded by the weight of the London night, while cars packed with paranoid commuters went whizzing past below.

  “He did. So did Magdalene. But at the end of the day, Shaun, the only person I trust to tell me your condition is you.”

  “I’d feel flattered if I didn’t know that you expected me to die.”

  “Isn’t that your intention?”

  I stopped for a moment, suddenly and sharply aware of George’s silent presence at the back of my head. Lying to Mahir would border on impossible, even if George was willing to let me, and in the end, I didn’t bother trying. “Eventually, yeah. But not until after we’ve found the people who killed George. Did you get those files I sent you?”

  “I did,” Mahir admitted. “How much of them did you understand?”

  “Not enough. I’m guessing you understood a little bit more.”

  “Enough to make me think I’ll never sleep again.”

  “That’s good—means the files are what Dr. Abbey said they were. I need you to do something for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Find a virologist with nothing left to lose and get them to check her work.”

  Now it was Mahir’s turn to fall briefly silent. Finally, tone wary, he asked, “Do you understand what you’re asking me to do?”

  “Yeah, I do. I feel like a total ass for doing it, but I do.”

  Mahir went silent again. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

  North America lost a lot during the Rising. Big chunks of Canada and the lower parts of Mexico have never been reclaimed from the infected. We held the line in Alaska as long as we could, but in the end, the infection was too strong and we had to let the entire state go. Almost every part of the United States has its little dead zones, places that are too damn dangerous to take back. None of that can hold a candle to what India lost. Because what India lost… was India.

  The conditions in pre-Rising India formed a perfect model for pandemic spread of Kellis-Amberlee. We studied it in school as part of the standard epidemiology curriculum: Combine highly concentrated populations with large stretches of rural farmland, a polluted water supply, and large, unconfined animals, and you were basically setting up the ideal conditions for losing everything. According to the reports—the ones that made it out of India, anyway; there aren’t many—the virus first started showing up in Mumbai, where it went from zero to chaos in the streets in less than thirty-six hours. While India was throwing all its resources at trying to save the city, the infection was taking hold in the country, claiming villages and small towns so quickly that no one had time to sound the alarm. By the time anyone realized that the quarantine couldn’t possibly have held, it was way too fucking late to do anything but evacuate.

  The first handheld blood testing unit was invented by an Indian scientist named Kiran Patel. Dr. Patel had isolated his family when the first signs of trouble started to show; thanks to his quick thinking and willingness to use lethal force against the infected, he managed to keep his entire apartment building clean of the live virus during a six-day siege that should have left them all casualties. When he wasn’t standing watch, Dr. Patel was modifying his own diabetes kits to look for something a little more crucial than blood sugar. By the time the UN soldiers fought their way into that sector of Mumbai, he had a crude but reliable way of proving someone’s infection status in minutes. The whole building checked out. Two of the troops who’d come to their rescue didn’t. Acceptable losses for a piece of technology that no one else had even taken the time to think about, much less put together.

  Dr. Patel went into a diabetic coma on the helicopter that airlifted him and his family out of the city. He never made it out of India. His widow went to the UN and demanded refuge for the survivors of her country in exchange for her husband’s notes. She got everything she asked for. The people who made it out of India were allowed to settle anywhere they wanted, bypassing all the normal citizenship requirements. The Indian consulates staye open and issued passports to the children of the survivors; as far as I know, they still do. When the disease is defeated, they say, they’ll be ready to go home.

  Whether that’s true or not, London has one of the largest Indian communities on the planet, second only to Silicon Valley—although Toronto is a pretty close third. Mahir was born in London. He’s never been to India, an
d as far as I know, he’s never wanted to go. That’s not true for everyone. A lot of people want to reclaim their heritage. They may like living where they are, but they want it to be a choice, not an exile. There are doctors and scientists in the Indian community who answer only to the government of a nation that currently doesn’t exist, pursuing research whose only motive is “get us home.” But racism doesn’t die just because the dead start walking, and there are some folks who watch the displaced communities carefully for signs that they might be “turning against us.” If Mahir did what I was asking him to do—if he went to one of the virologists who was working out of his home, rather than out of a government lab, and asked him to explain Dr. Abbey’s work—he was putting them both at risk of a terrorism charge.

  Finally, Mahir said, “I’m going to ask a question that sounds insane, Shaun, and you’re going to answer. Refuse, and I hang up, and we both pretend this conversation never happened.”

  That sort of thing never works. Once you’re past the age of five, you can’t make something unhappen just by refusing to think about it. “Sure,” I said. “Whatever you say.”

  “All right.” He laughed, a little unsteadily, and asked, “What does Georgia have to say about this plan?”

  Mahir had never questioned the fact that George still talks to me, but he’d never gone out of his way to address her, either. Maybe my crazy was starting to rub off on the people around me. Is crazy contagious? “Hang on. I’ll ask her.” George, I thought, if you’re just being quiet because you’re pissed or something, I could really use your help right about now…

  Sorry. I was thinking. Tell him… She hesitated. Tell him that if this research means what I think it means, the world has a right to know, and without his help, we might not be able to tell them. This is for everybody.

  “… okay.” I cleared my throat. “She says that if this research means what she thinks it means, the world has a right to know, and that if you’re not willing to help, we might not be able to figure out enough to know what to tell them. She says this is for everybody.” I paused before adding, “And I say it looks like they were willing to blow up Oakland and infect an entire CDC facility to keep the news from getting out without it looking like they were trying to hide something. I want to get at least part of the work off this continent, so somebody can keep on going after they drop the bomb on Maggie’s place.”

  “I swear, I’m going to move to San Francisco just to make you people stop using me as your off-site backup.” Mahir sighed deeply. “Fine.”

  “Fine? You mean you’ll do it?”

  “I’m clearly out of my mind, and I’m going to regret this for the rest of my life, and my wife is probably going to leave ut yes, I’ll do it. Someone has to. I’m going to have to involve my local beta bloggers. This is a rather large project.”

  “Whatever you need, but keep it limited to people you know and can trust, okay? We can’t risk this getting out early.”

  “Silence is expensive.”

  “That’s not a problem. I’m sure if we shake the merchandising hard enough, the money will fall out.” If nothing else, I had a standing offer to print a book of George’s posts from the campaign trail. I’d been refusing—somehow that felt more like making money off her corpse than continuing to run her blog did—but it would be a good way to make some reasonably quick cash. And then there was Maggie’s trust fund. Normally, I wouldn’t think of going there. These were some pretty special circumstances.

  “Oh, believe me, I wasn’t intending to worry about the budget, and if I’m still married when this is over, you’re financing the second honeymoon it’s going to take for me to stay that way.”

  “Totally fair. Thank you. Really, thank you. You’re a good guy.”

  “Your sister had excellent taste in men. Now update your damn blog, Shaun. Half the readership thinks you’re dead, and I’m entirely out of the passion it takes to refute conspiracy theories.” The sounds of distant traffic cut off as Mahir killed the connection, leaving me listening to nothing but the sound of my own breath. I clicked the phone shut and slid it back into my pocket, staring thoughtfully at the computer screen. Dr. Abbey’s research looked back at me like the world’s deadliest abstract art. The lines of it were strangely soothing when I looked at them long enough. They reminded me of the faint traceries of iris surrounding George’s pupils, little lines of brown that no one got to see unless they got close enough to look past her glasses.

  Lifting my hands, I tugged the keyboard toward me and begin to write.

  I like to think of myself as a reasonable man. I suppose that’s true of everyone. Even the people we’d paint as the villains of the piece, given leave, doubtless consider themselves reasonable. It’s a part of the human psyche. Still. My needs are simple. I have my flat, which is paid for. I have my work, which I enjoy and do reasonably well. I have a beautiful wife who tolerates the strange hours and stranger company I keep. I love the city I live in, its sights and sounds and brilliant culture, which has managed to not only recover but to thrive under adversity. London is the only place I have ever truly wished to be, and I am privileged beyond all measure to call it home.

  I like to think of myself as a reasonable man. But I have buried too many friends in the too-recent past, and I have seen too many lies go unquestioned, and too many questions go unasked. There is a time when even reasonable men must begin to take unreasonable actions. To do anything else is to be less than human. And to those who would choose the safety of inaction over the danger of taking a stand, I have this to say:

  You bloody cowards. May you have the world that you deserve.

  —From Fish and Clips, the blog of Mahir Gowda, April 20, 2041

  Fifteen

  Writing up the events of the day was enough to leave me utterly exhausted. I just wanted to go upstairs, shower, go through a proper decontamination cycle, and crash for six to eight hours before something else demanded my attention. If I did that, though, my post would go up in plain text and I’d have eager beta bloggers flooding my in-box with offers to “help.” Their “help” would probably end in tears—theirs, after I dismissed them from the site for pissing me off beyond all hope of recovery. It was easier to force myself to stay where I was and go combing through the footage of the day, looking for suitable clips and screenshots.

  There are times when I miss Buffy. I mean, I always miss her—she was one of my best friends, right up until she sold us out—but there are times when I really miss her. I could have handed her my report and told her to make it pretty, and she would have had a multimedia extravaganza ready to go almost before I could finish making the request. She was the best at what she did. Everything she did, which was sort of the problem, since in the end, what she did included betraying us and getting a lot of people killed. She said she was sorry when she came clean. I believed her then, and I believe her now. Sometimes people make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are the sort that don’t allow for second chances.

  Doesn’t make her any less dead, or make me miss her any less.

  In the end, I chose three short film clips and ten stills and called it a day, slapping them into my article in the places where they’d have the most impact, or at least look like they were there for a reason. I dropped a note in the mod forum to let folks know I’d be going off-line for a few hours and that I was only to be disturbed if the world was ending. Even then, they were supposed to get clearance from Mahir before they called me. That wouldn’t guarantee I’d be left alone, but it would slow people down. Sort of like setting a snooze button on reality.

  It wasn’t until I stood that I realized how sore I was. I stretched until something in my shoulders popped. That was the cue for half the muscles in my body to start complaining, while the other half seemed to turn to jelly. “Fuck. I’m not getting any younger,” I said, and walked toward the kitchen.

  Alaric was gone, probably off doing his time on the message boards. I’d say better him than me, but I’ve done that
gig more times than I can count, and it’s not something I’d wish on anybody. Becks and Maggie were still sitting at the table, watching the uncomfortable-looking Kelly the way cats watch mice. She turned toward me when I entered the kitchen, expression going pathetically relieved. If I was her idea of salvation, things must have been really nasty while I was in the other room.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m going to go upstairs and get a shower.”

  Kelly’s look of relief died. “Don’t you want to finish your potpie?”

  “No, I’m good. Maggie, can you take care of any comments I get for the nex few hours? I need to catch some sleep or I’m going to be useless tomorrow.”

  “Absolutely.” Maggie smiled. “Now go. You’re running yourself too hard.”

  “You’re probably right.” I paused, a thought hitting me. “Maggie, tell Alaric to check on the bug we planted in the conference room. It should be showing up on the live index now, and I want to know the second it picks anything up.”

  “Decontamination will take a few days,” said Kelly. If she had opinions about the legality of bugging CDC installations, she was keeping them to herself. “You won’t be getting anything until that’s done.”

  “Well, then, I guess I’ll have plenty of time to catch up on my beauty sleep. All of you, good night, and try to get some rest.”

  “I will,” said Becks, giving me a thoughtful look as I turned to go.

  Making it up the stairs took more effort than it should have. I was so damn tired. It seemed like too much trouble when I could sit down and sleep perfectly well on the steps. I knew I needed to shower. Strict field protocols said I should have showered the second I got to the house, like Becks did. It can really screw up your insurance if you don’t go through proper decontamination after every logged trip into the field, but there are loopholes to the law, if you know how to use them. We didn’t log the trip to Dr. Abbey’s lab, and CDC offices are counted as some of the few public places not considered hazard zones. My failure to scrub up like a good little boy was strictly legal, and I was aware enough of my exposure risks to know that I hadn’t been dangerously close to anything infectious. I just didn’t want to go to bed feeling like I’d never be clean again.