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by Mira Grant

  Brow furrowed, Shaun mouthed “Hotel?” I nodded. Once we were in our own space with our own things, we could sweep for bugs and set up an EMP field. After that, we could talk in something resembling security—and we needed to talk. We needed to talk about a lot of things.

  The drive from the CDC airstrip to the hotel took approximately twenty minutes. It would have taken longer, but Steve took advantage of the priority override available to government officials and law enforcement, turning on the car’s beacon and sliding us straight into the fast side of the carpool lane. The tollbooths flashed green as soon as we came into receiving range. Electronic pay passes have led to a general speed-up, but nothing moves your average driver as fast as knowing that someone else is picking up the ticket for his commute. We must have provided a free pass for dozens of commuters. That almost made up for the fact that we were cutting ahead of them during the beginning rush hour, when five minutes can make the difference between “home at a reasonable hour” and “late for dinner.”

  Lois yowled the whole way, while Shaun made a vague, disinterested show of trying to pick the lock on his side of the car. My brother’s good with locks; the car’s security was better. He’d made no progress by the time we pulled off the freeway and turned toward the hotel, and he put away his lock picks with a silent expression of disgust.

  The Downtown Houston Plaza was one of those huge, intentionally imposing buildings built just after the Rising, when they still hadn’t figured out how to walk the fine architectural line between “elegance” and “security.” It looked like a prison coated in pink stucco and gingerbread icing. Palm trees were planted around the exterior, where they utterly failed to blunt the building’s harsh angles. There were no windows at ground level, and the windows higher up the building were the dull matte of steel-reinforced security glass. The infected could batter on them for years without breaking through. Assuming they somehow made the intellectual leap necessary to figure out how to use a ladder.

  Shaun eyed the building as we circled. It wasn’t until the car pulled off at the parking garage entrance that he offered his professional opinion: “Death trap.”

  “Many of the early ‘zombie-proof’ buildings were.” I adjusted my sunglasses. The garage doors creaked open as Steve waved a white plastic fob in front of the sensors, and we drove on into relative darkness. “What makes this one so deadly?”

  “All that froufrou crap on the front of the building—”

  “You mean the trim?”

  “Right, the trim. It’s supposed to be ornamental, right? Doesn’t matter. I bet it would bear my weight. So if I get infected but I haven’t converted, I can use the trim to climb the building looking for shelter. There are plenty of handholds. So I can get to the roof. And if this place followed the standard floor plan for the time period, there’s a helicopter pad up there, and multiple doors connecting it to the interior, so any survivors could use it to evacuate during an outbreak.” Shaun shook his head. “Run for the roof, it’s covered in the people who ran there before you. And they’re not looking for a rescue. They’re looking for a snack.”

  “Charming,” I said. The car pulled into a parking space and the engine cut off. “I guess we’re here.”

  The front driver’s-side door opened. Steve emerged, heading across the garage floor to the air lock. I tried my own door, but it was still locked; the safety latches hadn’t disengaged.

  “The hell—? Shaun, try your door.”

  He did, and scowled. “It’s locked.”

  The car intercom clicked on. Andres’s voice, distorted by the speakers, said, “Ms. Mason, Mr. Mason, if you could be patient for a moment. My colleague is going to pass through the air lock and will wait for you on the other side. The lock on the right will be disengaged as soon as he’s tested clean, and Ms. Mason will be permitted to proceed. Once Ms. Mason has passed through the air lock, Mr. Mason will be permitted to go.”

  Shaun groaned. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

  The intercom clicked again. “Standard safety precautions.”

  “You can take those safety precautions and shove ‘em sideways up your—” Shaun began, pleasantly. I put a hand on his arm. He stopped.

  “Mr. Rodriguez, it looks like Steve’s made it through,” I said, keeping my voice level. “If you’d unlock my door now, please?”

  “Very well.” My door unlocked. “Mr. Mason, please remain seated. Ms. Mason, please proceed toward the—hey! What are you doing? You can’t do that!”

  Ignoring the shouts from the intercom, Shaun finished sliding out of the car, blowing a kiss back toward the agitated shape of Andres before slamming the door and following me to the air lock. True to expectations, Andres remained seated, mouth moving as he swore at us through the glass.

  “Nobody who cares that much about security is going to come out into the open with a possible infection,” I said, taking Shaun’s hand in my left, swinging Lois’s carrier in my right. She yowled, punctuating the statement. “We’re dangerous.”

  “Man thought he could make us do this separately,” said Shaun. Taking the still-yowling Lois from me, he slid the carrier into the luggage hatch. The sensors would record the fact that the box contained a living thing, but they would also record its weight. Lois was too small for amplification and would slide straight through. “Man’s an idiot.”

  “No, he’s an amateur,” I said, moving into position in front of the blood testing panel. I raised my right hand. Shaun stepped into position next to me and raised his left. “One…”

  “Two.”

  We pressed our palms flat.

  Steve was waiting on the other side of the air lock, shaking his head. “You probably just scared Agent Rodriguez out of a year of his life,” he scolded, without conviction.

  “Given that Agent Rodriguez just annoyed me out of a year of my life, I’d say we’re even,” I said, retrieving Lois from the luggage bin. “Do we need to wait on him, or can you show us to our rooms?”

  “And our van,” Shaun said. “You promised me our van.”

  “Your van is in the parking garage, along with Georgia’s bike,” Steve said. Fishing two small plastic rectangles out of his jacket pocket, he passed them to us. “Shaun, you’re in room two-fourteen. Georgia, you’re in room two-seventeen.”

  We exchanged a look. “Those don’t sound adjoining,” I said.

  “Originally, you were going to be sharing a room with Ms. Meissonier, Georgia, while Shaun and Mr. Cousins shared a room down the hall,” Steve said. “It seemed best to let you keep your privacy, given recent… events.”

  “Right.” Shaun handed his key back to Steve. “I’ll just stalk along with George until you can get me my own key. Rick and Lois can have some valuable alone time to re-bond after their separation.” As if on cue, Lois yowled.

  Steve’s eyebrows arched upward. “You two would rather share a room?”

  His expression was a familiar one. We’ve been seeing it from teachers, friends, colleagues, and hotel concierges since we hit puberty. It’s the “you’d rather share a room with your opposite-gender sibling than sleep alone?” face, and it never fails to irritate me. Social norms can bite me. If I need to have someone guarding my back when the living dead show up to make my life more interesting than I want it to be, I want that someone to be Shaun. He’s a light sleeper, and I know he can aim.

  “Yes,” I said, firmly. “We two would rather share a room.”

  For a moment, Steve looked like he might argue. Then he shrugged, dismissing it as none of his business, and said, “I’ll have them send up a second key and get your luggage moved. Georgia, all your things and the equipment that you had marked as vital are already in your room.”

  That meant they’d been searched—standard security—but I didn’t particularly care. I make it a rule never to keep sensitive data unencrypted where other people might get at it. If Senator Ryman’s security det
ail wanted to waste their time looking for answers in my underpants, they could be my guests. “Excellent. We’ll just head for our room, then, if you don’t mind? Assuming you don’t feel the need to accompany us.”

  “I’m going to trust the two of you not to get yourselves killed between here and the elevator,” said Steve.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. Shaun snapped a salute and we walked away, Lois still yowling, to follow the wall-mounted signs leading us to the elevators in the lobby.

  The hotel was old enough that the elevators still ran up and down in fixed shafts. It would have been an interesting novelty if I hadn’t been so wired and exhausted. As it was, I stared at the mirrors on the walls, trying to ignore my growing headache and the increasingly fevered pitch of Lois’s complaints. She wanted out of the box, and she wanted out now. I understood the sentiment.

  Our hotel room was as old as the elevator, with hideous wallpaper striped in yellow, green, and brown, and a steel-reinforced window looking out over the central courtyard. Sunlight reflecting off the pool three floors down turned the water into a giant flare of light, shining directly through our window. I whimpered involuntarily, whipping my face around and squeezing my eyes shut. Shaun shoved past me to close the blackout curtains, and I stumbled blind into the room, letting the door swing closed.

  The lights were off, and when Shaun got the curtains fastened the room was plunged into blessed darkness. He walked back across the room, putting a hand on my elbow. “It’s safe now,” he said. “The beds are this way.”

  “That was a rotten trick,” I complained, and let him guide me.

  “But funny.”

  “Not funny.”

  “I’m laughing.”

  “I know where you’re planning to sleep tonight.”

  “And yet somehow, still funny.” He stopped walking, pushing down on my shoulder as he took the cat carrier out of my hands. “Sit. I’ll get things set up.”

  “Don’t forget the EMP screen,” I said, settling on the bed and flopping backward. The mattress was younger than the decor. I bounced. “And get the servers up.”

  “I have done this before,” said Shaun. The amusement was evident in his tone, but it wasn’t enough to conceal the concern. “You look like hell.”

  “You can tell that with the lights off?”

  “You looked like hell before the evil day star punched you in the face. Now you look like hell in a darkened room. Easier on the eyes, no less hellish.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “We were surrounded by people, and you were getting your bitchy-and-thwarted on. It didn’t seem appropriate.” Rattling noises marked his passage across the room, followed by a thump and the sound of a lightbulb being unscrewed. “I’m swapping the bulbs in the bedside lights.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No worries. You’re more pleasant when you haven’t got a migraine.”

  “In that case, toss me my big painkillers when you’re done with that?”

  There was a pause. “You actually want them?”

  “I’m going to need them after we talk.” I take a lot of generic drugs for the headaches my eyes give me. That’s not the same thing as my “big painkillers,” a nasty narcotic mix of ergot alkaloid, codeine, caffeine, and a few less-pronounceable chemical agents. They kill the pain. They also kill all higher brain functions for at least six hours after I’ve taken them. I avoid drugging myself whenever possible, because I don’t usually have the time to waste, but I was getting the feeling this might be the last “free” time we were going to have for a while. If spending it drugged out of my mind meant I had the stamina to handle the rest, well, I’ve done worse in my pursuit of the truth.

  “Georgia—”

  “Don’t argue.”

  “I was just going to say that there’s time for a nap before we talk, if you want it, and painkillers after that. The Daughters of the American Revolution always talk for hours.”

  “No, there isn’t. We ran out of time when someone decided we’d outlived our usefulness. Time is now officially something we don’t have. Hit the lights as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Right,” said Shaun. There was a click. The room brightened before I heard him move away again. “Servers need to initialize, and I’ll turn on the screens. Your computer’s on the desk if you want to get it hooked up.”

  “Got it.” My headache screamed when I opened my eyes. I ignored it. The lower-wattage bulbs Shaun put in were bearable, if not exactly pleasant; I could deal. Sitting up, I bent forward to open the cat carrier, which was still sitting on the floor near the base of the bed. Lois was out in a flash, vanishing into the bathroom.

  I rose and walked over to take a seat at my desk, where I started connecting cables. I was moving gingerly, to upset my head as little as possible, and that slowed me down; I was only halfway done when Shaun called, “Clear.” I put down the plug I’d been holding, and the air filled with an electrical buzz that made all the hair on my arms stand on end.

  “You’d better have that set low enough not to fry anything,” I said, going back to work.

  “What do you take me for, an amateur?” Shaun was trying to sound affronted. I wasn’t buying it. It’s easy to slip when you’re setting up a privacy screen—that’s part of why I’m not fond of using them. They also make my teeth itch. “It’ll short out anything around the perimeter, but as long as you don’t get any closer to the walls, you’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re wrong, you owe me dinner.”

  “If I’m right, you owe me dessert.”

  “Deal.” I swiveled in my chair. Shaun was sitting on the bed, leaning back on his hands in a pose of such sheer relaxation that it had to be forced. Skipping the preamble, I said, “Buffy sold us out, and someone tried to kill us.”

  “I got that.”

  “Did you get the part where, legally, we were dead as soon as the CDC got the call saying we were infected?”

  “I did.” Shaun frowned. “I’m surprised they didn’t come in shooting.”

  “Call that the last of our luck,” I said. “The way I see it, they weren’t just gunning for Buffy. If they were, they wouldn’t have bothered calling the CDC after they saw her truck go down. Horrible accident, very tragic, but there’s no need to do that sort of mopping up.”

  “Makes sense,” Shaun said and flopped over backward. “So what do we do? Pack our things and go running home?”

  “That might not work, since presumably we already know something that’s worth killing us for.”

  “Or Buffy knew something worth killing us for.”

  “Whoever’s behind this has already proven that it’s the same thing. I can’t imagine we’ve got two conspiracies running in parallel. That means whoever had our tires shot out was also responsible for the ranch.”

  “And for Eakly,” said Shaun. “Don’t you dare forget Eakly.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “I dream about Eakly.” The statement was almost offhanded, but there was a depth of hurt to it that surprised even me, and I usually know what Shaun’s thinking. “They never saw it coming. They never had a chance.”

  “So leaving isn’t an option.”

  “Leaving never was.”

  “What are we going to do about Rick?”

  “Keep him on, of course.”

  Raising my eyebrows, I leaned forward to rest my elbows on my knees. “There was no hesitation there. Why not?”

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Shaun sat up, falling into a posture that was the natural mirror image of my own. “Buffy got bit, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Buffy was dying—that’s not right. Buffy was dead, and she knew it. She told us what she’d done and how to find out more about it, right? Rick was there, and she didn’t finger him for a snitch. She was sorry for what she’d done, George
. She didn’t mean for anyone to die. So why would she’ve gone and left us with a cuckoo in our birdhouse?”

  “What if she didn’t know?”

  “What if?” Shaun shook his head. “They tried to kill Rick, too. If his car was a little less reinforced, or if he’d hit at a slightly different angle, he’d have been a goner. There’s no way to stage that. And the call to the CDC said we were all toast, not just the two of us. So what if Buffy didn’t know? Rick’s not a moron. He’d have said something by now.”

  “So you say he stays.”

  “I say we can’t afford to lose anyone else. And I also say that with Buffy gone, I’m an equal partner in this enterprise, so get up.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Get up.” Shaun stood and pointed to the bed. “You’re going to take a nap, and you’re going to do it right now.”

  “I can’t nap. I’m waiting for Mahir to call me back.”

  “He can talk to your voice mail.”

  “No. He can’t.”

  “Georgia—”

  “Just wait.”

  “No.” Shaun’s voice was firm. “I’ll get the rest of the equipment set up, I’ll get the servers running, and I’ll check your caller ID every time your phone rings. If Mahir calls, I’ll wake you, without consideration for the fact that you’re going to work yourself to death. I’m agreeing to that, but I’m also making an executive decision, and my decision is that you, Georgia Carolyn Mason, are going to bed. If you do not like this decision, you may appeal to the court of me hitting you in the back of the head as soon as you turn around.”

  “Can I have my painkillers?”

  “You can have two pills and a pillow,” Shaun said. “When you wake up, the world will be a magical wonderland of candy canes, unicorns, and fully assembled servers. And Rick stays. Deal?”

  “Deal.” I stood, stepping out of my shoes before sitting back down on the bed. “Bastard.”

  “Close your eyes.” I did. Shaun removed my sunglasses, pressing two small round objects into my hand. “Swallow those and you can have these back when you wake up.”