Blackout: Book 3 of The Newsflesh Trilogy Read online

  “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.

  And if I was going to be the kind of person who valued her life more than she valued the truth, I wasn’t going to be Georgia Mason at all. Unless I wanted to find someone else I was willing to be, this was what I was made for.

  “We have to get Emily—the real Emily—away from the CDC, and get the kids out of here,” I said slowly. “They’re going to be civilians in a position to confirm my story. If I start posting while they’re still hostages, they won’t make it out of here alive.”

  Steve cracked his knuckles. “Don’t worry about them. The First Lady still has friends in the Secret Service. We can extract the kids at any time.”

  “Dr. Shaw is organizing a team to extract the First Lady from the CDC installation where she’s being held, and move her to a secure EIS facility near here,” said Dr. Shoji.

  “The EIS has been a busy little secret government organization.” I looked levelly at Dr. Shoji. “If I do this, I need to know that we’re not replacing one bad deal with another. What are your plans?”

  “I don’t speak for the EIS as a whole, and I can’t see the future,” he said. “But for the past ten years at least, we’ve been bleeding off the best recruits the CDC gets. We’ve been getting the members of your generation, the ones who want a solution that doesn’t always involve a bullet. I think that corruption is a risk for every organization. Even ours. But we’re going to be very busy for quite some time, just cleaning up the mess that’s been made for us. If the EIS is going to go the way of the CDC, it probably won’t be within my lifetime.”

  “Whereas the CDC is a bad deal right now,” I said. “That’s fair. But you realize that if I do this, if I get involved, and you ever, ever start to cross the line—”

  “I can’t promise what the future will be. All I can do is promise that the EIS will try to make sure we have one.”

  I nodded. “Fine. Steve, get the kids out of here. Dr. Shoji, do whatever you need to do to get them to safety, and make sure Dr. Shaw takes care of Emily. Does anybody here have a gun I can borrow? The Secret Service confiscated all of ours.”

  Rick blinked. “I was expecting you to ask for an Internet connection.”

  “Oh, I’m going to need one of those, too, once we get everybody back together, but first, we have a job that requires weapons.” Steve unsnapped his sidearm and passed it to me. I accepted it before smiling coolly at Rick. “We need to go and kidnap the president.”

  “And here my mother said a job in medicine would be dangerous,” said Gregory.

  Rick didn’t say anything. But slowly, with an expression of almost painful relief, he nodded.

  I regret to inform you that we have lied to you. Last year, when most of the site went “camping,” we were in actuality running for our lives, being pursued by no less an adversary than the Centers for Disease Control. Our flight began when Dr. Kelly Connolly, believed dead following a break-in at the Memphis CDC, arrived at our Oakland offices and asked for our help. The destruction of Oakland followed soon after. In the interests of concealing our location and activities, we were forced to present a cover story to the world. For this, on the behalf of the Factual News Division, I apologize.

  We are not lying now. Please download and read the attached documents, which encompass everything leading up to our departure from Oakland. If they do not load, please visit one of our mirror sites. Continue trying. This is important. These are things you need to know.

  We are telling you the truth.

  —From Fish and Clips, the blog of Mahir Gowda, August 7, 2041.

  The mosquitoes that swept from Cuba to the American Gulf Coast, resulting in the death of millions, did not arise naturally. They were genetically engineered by scientists in the employ of the CDC. Please download and review the attached documents for further details, including a full description of the life cycle of the modified yellow fever mosquito.

  We are telling you the truth.

  That will not bring my parents back to life.

  —From The Kwong Way of Things, the blog of Ala
ric Kwong, August 7, 2041.

  SHAUN: Thirty-eight

  The man from the CDC kept on talking; to be honest, I had pretty much stopped listening. Alaric and Becks were paying attention and periodically asking questions that seemed at least vaguely connected to the things coming out of his mouth, so I figured no one would notice—or care—if I checked out for a little bit. As long as I didn’t start to drool, they’d probably figure I was just being a big, dumb Irwin and letting the smart people talk. That’s the useful thing about being a figurehead. Nobody cares if you’re an idiot, as long as you’re a useful one.

  They’re never going to give her back to you, murmured Georgia. There was a faint echoing quality to her words, and I knew that if I turned my head she’d be there, watching me, waiting for me to admit that she was right. That scared me almost more than the things she was saying. I used to welcome the hallucinations, viewing them as the only way I could see her anymore. Now… I knew I wasn’t going to go un-crazy as fast as I went crazy. But the idea of being left alone with a voice in my head and the occasional delusional vision was suddenly terrifying. I got her back. Why the hell wasn’t the world going to let me keep her?

  You don’t need to worry about their little replacement. The world will let you keep me, she said. Just you and me, forever. That’s what you said you wanted, isn’t it? You volunteered to be a haunted house.

  “Shut up,” I muttered, trying to keep my voice low enough that no one else would notice.

  It didn’t work. “What was that?” asked the doctor, attention swinging back around to me.

  Uh-oh. “Uh…” I began.

  “He talks to himself,” said Becks, matter-of-factly. “I’m actually impressed that this is the first time he’s done it. Just ignore him and keep telling us why immune response in babies is enough to cause reservoir conditions, but not enough to avoid spontaneous amplification when they cross the sixty-pound threshold.”

  “He talks to himself?” The doctor frowned at me like I had suddenly become an exciting new medical mystery. I wondered how he’d feel if he knew I was immune to the Kellis-Amberlee virus. He’d probably start asking whether he could dissect me—assuming he cared about asking. George had already proven that people were now a matter of crunch all you want, we’ll make more. Maybe he already had Shaun II baking in one of their cloning tanks, ready for his triumphant decanting.

  Fuck. That.

  “Turns out being forced to shoot the one person in the world you thought would outlive you in the head sort of fucks with your sense of reality,” I said coldly. “I mean, my choices were a nice, mellow psychotic break with talking to myself and the occasional voice in my head, or climbing the nearest cell tower and playing sniper until somebody came and gunned me down. I figured option A would be better for my long-term health, if not my sanity.”

  “And you still listen to him? You still do what he says?” asked the doctor, his attention swinging back to Becks and Alaric.

  Alaric shrugged. “Sure. He’s the boss.”

  “Fascinating.” The man from the CDC shook his head as he turned toward President Ryman. “You see the power of trust? Once you believe a person won’t mislead you, you keep believing it, even after you realize they’ve gone insane. This plan may actually work.”

  “Or maybe not,” said George. “It’s a little bit of a coin toss right now, if you ask me.”

  The doctor whipped around, eyes widening. “What are you doing?”

  His reaction made me realize she was really here, rather than speaking into the dark inside my head. I turned to see George standing in the doorway, an unfamiliar gun in her hands. She had it aimed squarely at the doctor’s chest. Rick was behind her, expression grim, standing next to a man I didn’t recognize. Steve was nowhere to be seen.

  “If you so much as twitch, I swear, I will shoot you,” said George.

  The doctor ignored her, reaching for his pocket. The sound of the safety clicking off was very loud. He froze. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.

  “Maybe your mistake was focusing so hard on my replacement that you forgot to give me an off switch,” replied George.

  “No, they gave you one,” said the stranger. “We just took it out before they had the chance to use it.”

  “Oh, right,” said George. “Silly me. I always forget about the excruciatingly painful nonelective surgeries.”

  The doctor’s eyes got even wider, if that was possible. “Dr. Lake?” he demanded, looking toward the unfamiliar man.

  The stranger smiled, the expression bordering on a snarl. “I resign,” he said.

  “So this is mutiny.” The man from the CDC slanted his eyes toward President Ryman and his remaining agents. “This is treason.”

  None of the Secret Servicemen were reaching for their guns, and the look on President Ryman’s face wasn’t shock or outrage—it was relief, like this was what he’d been waiting for all along. “You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?” he asked. I’d never heard him sound so bitter. “Treason? That’s something you at the CDC have been experts on for quite a while.”

  The man from the CDC’s eyes widened in exaggerated shock. “I don’t understand what you’re implying, Mr. President.”

  “Emily’s safe,” said George. “The EIS has her. Steve’s getting the kids out of the building. They can’t hold your family over you anymore.”

  “Do you think it’s that simple?” asked the man from the CDC. “We’ve had a long time to get to where we are today. You’re making a large mistake. People have died for less.”

  “People have died for nothing,” George shot back. “And no, I don’t think it’s that simple. But I do think you made one major tactical error when you invited us here.”

  The man from the CDC sneered. “What’s that?”

  “We’re the ones that people listen to… and we’re the ones who learned about backups from Georgette Meissonier.” George smiled. “Anybody here who doesn’t have six cameras running, raise your hand.”

  Not a single member of my team raised their hand. Becks grinned. Alaric smirked.

  And the man from the CDC, perhaps realizing that he was finished, moved. Jamming his hand into his pocket, he pulled out the pen he’d been holding before, aiming it at the president. The Secret Servicemen shouted something, grabbing Ryman’s shoulders. Not fast enough. There was no way they’d be able to get him clear fast enough. I didn’t think. I just jumped, putting myself between the man from the CDC and President Ryman half a second before I heard the sound of Georgia’s gun going off.

  The man from the CDC froze, looking slowly down at the spreading red patch in the middle of his chest. The pen dropped from his hand and he fell, crumpling to the floor. The last sound he made was a hollow thud when his head hit the tile. It was almost comic, in a weird way.

  No one was laughing. They were all staring at me. Becks had a hand covering her mouth, and Alaric looked like he was about to be sick. Only Georgia didn’t look distraught; mostly, she looked confused. Lowering her gun, she asked, “What is that?”

  I looked at the needle sticking out of my chest, anchored in the flesh a few inches to the right of my sternum. It hurt a little, now that I was thinking about it. It would probably hurt more once the adrenaline washed out of my system.

  “Oh,” I said, my words almost drowned out by the sound of one of the Secret Servicemen emptying his gun into the man from the CDC’s head. “That’s a problem.”

  You know what’s awesome? Assholes who do all their research, and have all the pieces of the puzzle, and can’t be bothered with anything that doesn’t fit the picture they’ve decided they’re putting together. You know. Idiots. The kind of stupid you can manage to achieve only by being really, really smart, because only really, really smart people can reach adulthood without having any goddamn common sense.

  Seriously. Thank you, smart people, for being absolute idiots. I appreciate it.

  —From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, Augu
st 7, 2041. Unpublished.

  Kill me once, shame on you.

  Kill me twice, shame on me.

  Kill my brother? Oh, it’s on. And you are not going to enjoy it.

  —From Living Dead Girl, the blog of Georgia Mason II, August 7, 2041. Unpublished.

  GEORGIA: Thirty-nine

  Everyone stared at the needle sticking out of Shaun’s chest, their expressions showing varying degrees of shock and horror. I put the safety back on my borrowed gun and slowly lowered it, shoving it into the waistband of my pants.

  No one said anything. One of the Secret Service agents pulled President Ryman back, putting more distance between him and Shaun. I tried to force myself to swallow. I remembered being hit by a similar needle in Sacramento, although mine had been attached to a syringe. “Shaun?” I said, very softly.

  “The CDC weaponized Kellis-Amberlee a while ago,” said Shaun. He grimaced as he pulled the needle out of his chest. “Okay, fucking ow. Could we go with a slightly less ouch-worthy doomsday weapon next time? Not that I don’t appreciate it failing to, you know, puncture my lung or something, but that stings.”

  “Put the needle down and step away from the president,” said one of the Secret Service agents. His gun was in his hand, and from his tone, he meant business.

  “Shaun…” said President Ryman.

  “Oh, right. You guys didn’t get the memo, did you? See, part of why they’re so into killing the people with the reservoir conditions—like, you know, George, or your wife, or Rick’s wife, who probably didn’t kill herself, and isn’t that a bitch?—part of why they’re so into that is because of whatchamacallit—”

  “Antibody transference,” said Alaric. He relaxed as he spoke, some of the tension going out of his shoulders.