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by Mira Grant

  There was a long silence, broken when Andrea asked, “Can you tell us why you’re doing this?”

  “Buffy’s dead, and now we’re fired,” interjected Alaric. “You don’t think these things might be connected?”

  “I just—”

  “Not very well, you didn’t.”

  “Do me a favor, dears, and shut up so our former boss can speak?” Magdalene sighed. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “Thank you, Maggie.” I looked around my screen, studying each video window in turn. “Andrea, the answer to why we’re doing this is a simple one: We don’t want any of you to feel obligated to stay with this site any longer than you already have. I’m sure you’ve all heard about the call the CDC received, reporting our deaths?” Murmurs of agreement. “It was received before we placed the call to tell them we were still alive. Someone shot out our tires, there was no one else on the road, and yet somebody told the CDC that we’d been killed.”

  “Do you have time stamps on that?” asked Alaric, suddenly alert.

  “We do,” I confirmed, nodding to Shaun, who began to type. Alaric glanced away from his video transmitter, signaling the arrival of the appropriate files, and quieted. “Buffy didn’t die in an accident; Buffy was murdered, and her killers thought they’d killed us too. There’s a lot more going on, but that’s the important part right now: Buffy was murdered. Her murderers would have been happy to do the same to the three of us, and that means I can’t put it past them to do the same to any of you. This is your chance to make a graceful exit before I tell you why they want us all dead.” I tapped my PDA again. “If you check your e-mail, you’ll see an offer of new employment—everyone but you, Magdalene, and you, Mahir. We need to talk to you off-line.” From Magdalene’s nod, it was apparent that she’d been expecting that request, or something similar. Mahir just looked floored. I’d been anticipating both responses. “Again, if you want to refuse, that’s fine. You will have five minutes to make your decision. If you haven’t decided within that time, I’ll disconnect you from this conference. Should you choose to leave this organization, you will have twelve hours to remove your personal files from our servers. At the end of that time, your access will be revoked and you’ll need to contact a member of the senior staff to obtain anything you haven’t downloaded.”

  I paused, giving the others a chance to speak. No one said a word. “All right. Please review your contracts. If you accept, enter the security code listed under the space for your license number. If you do not accept, it’s been a pleasure working with you. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.”

  More silence followed this announcement as people opened and read their new employment agreements. Nothing had really changed from their original contracts; they got the same number of shares and the same percentages of the various merchandising lines, and they were expected to hold to the same deadlines and levels of journalistic conduct. In another way, everything had changed from their original contracts because when those contracts were signed, nobody was trying to kill us. We weren’t offering hazard pay or guaranteed ratings. We were just offering a lot of danger, and the only real reward was the chance to be a part of telling a truth that was bigger than any of us on our own.

  Andrea was again the first to speak, saying, “I… I’m sorry, Georgia. Shaun. I just… I was here because Buffy asked me to come. I never wanted to deal with this sort of thing. I can’t.”

  “It’s all right, Ace,” said Shaun, soothingly. He’s always been good with this sort of thing. That makes one of us. “Thank you for all your hard work.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer,” said Andrea. “I… good luck, all of you.” Wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, she looked away from her webcam just before the picture blinked off, leaving a black rectangle on the corner of my screen.

  That was the pebble that kicked off the avalanche. Screen borders started blinking white as people agreed to their new contracts; video windows started blacking as people mumbled their apologies and logged off. Some of the answers we got weren’t a surprise. I knew Alaric and Becks would stay. Shaun had given me the same reassurance about Dave. With Buffy gone, there was no one to vouch for the Fictionals, but it seemed likely that we’d lose at least half of them. What I wasn’t expecting was how many of my Newsies would be making their apologies along with them.

  Luis put it best. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re doing the right thing. I know you. You’re doing the only thing you can. But people are going to get hurt, and I can’t afford to be one of them. I have a family. I’m sorry.” And then he was gone, disconnected like half the Fictionals and most of the administrative staff.

  We were left with less than half of our original connections when the disconnections stopped, and the only windows not outlined in white were those belonging to Magdalene and Mahir. I looked to the window that held my anxious, former second-in-command and said, “I’ll call you when this is over,” before tapping out the code to close the connection. “Magdalene, you can stay, if you understand that you’re not currently employed by this site.”

  “I’m assuming you’re about to go over the current risk situation, and that you’re not hiring me right away because my contract needs review, since you want me to do Buffy’s job,” said Magdalene, matter-of-factly. “Sound right?”

  “Sounds exactly right,” said Rick.

  “I’ll stay. It’s my problem as much as it is yours, and my department’s going to need me to know what’s going on.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I meant it. She’d never really replace Buffy, but her response told me that she was willing to try. “Rick, transmit the files.”

  “Done.”

  “Everyone, please check your mail. You’ll find an attachment detailing what we currently know, including that whoever ordered Buffy’s death was highly placed in the current government. Tate is involved. This information isn’t just sensitive; it’s potentially enough to get any one of us killed. Read it, transfer it to off-line storage, and wipe your mail. Whether you’re involved with our ongoing efforts to find out what’s going on is going to be up to you, but if we’re convicted of, say, treason against the United States government, all of you have just placed your asses on the line. Welcome to our party.” I stood. “Shaun and Rick will be remaining to answer any questions you may have; Shaun speaks for the Irwins, and Rick, as my new second, will be speaking for the Newsies. Thank you for coming. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make a phone call.” Ignoring their protests, I walked into the bathroom, turning off the interior lights before closing the door behind me.

  While Dave and Alaric were cobbling together a new conference room, Shaun and I had been isolating the bathroom in its own frequency screen, creating an envelope that could only be broken by transmissions made on a very specific set of bandwidths. Most of my equipment was as good as dead on the other side of that door, which was exactly how I wanted it to be. If I had that much trouble dialing out, the rest of the world was going to have one hell of a time dialing in.

  Even with the screen’s keys coded into my PDA, it took almost five minutes to establish a connection with Mahir’s phone. His first words were delivered in a sharp, wounded tone: “What the hell was that about? Have I given you some reason to doubt my dedication to this site? Have I ever done anything other than precisely what you asked of me? Because I’m not feeling terribly valued at the moment, Miss Mason.”

  “Hello to you, too, Mahir,” I said, leaning against the bathroom sink and removing my sunglasses. The glow from my PDA was enough for me to see by. It wasn’t enough to relieve my headache, but it was a start. “You are terribly valued. That’s why I fired you.”

  There was a long pause as he tried to sort through that sentence. Finally, he admitted, “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”

  “Look. There’s every chance in the world that things are going to go wrong.” I wished that I
was lying to him. I’ve never wanted to be a liar so badly in my life. “We’re playing in an arena we’re not equipped for, and there’s nobody we can call who has the tools we need to get equipped for it. We’re either going to find what we’re looking for, or we’re going to go down in flames.”

  “What does that have to do with firing me? You seem happy to take everyone else down with you. What robs me of my right to a seat on the Titanic?”

  “The fact that I need you to be receiving the signals in the Coast Guard tower.”

  There was a pause. Then: “I’m listening.”

  “If this goes as badly as it has the potential to go—if it goes all the way wrong—we could wind up dead, and everyone who works for the site could wind up charged with treason against the United States government. If whoever’s behind all this can somehow turn it from their plot into our plot, that means every employee of After the End Times is in a position to be charged with terrorist involvement in the use of live-state Kellis-Amberlee to bring about human viral amplification.”

  “… oh, my God,” said Mahir, sounding horrified. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “I didn’t think you had,” I said, grimly.

  The Raskin-Watts ruling of 2026 didn’t impact just America. How could any country, however opposed to the United States government it might be, afford to look like it was soft on the matter of the infected? It couldn’t. Every industrialized nation in the world with an extradition treaty had stepped forward by the end of 2027 to state that any individual found guilty of using or conspiring to use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon would be turned over to the government of the affected nation or nations in order to stand trial. Being outside the boundaries of a country no longer protected you from that country’s laws, if you were foolish enough to cross the one line everyone had agreed to draw in the sand.

  The United States doesn’t apply the death penalty to many crimes these days. Terrorism remains an exception to this particular rule. Use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon and die. That plain. That simple. That universal.

  “Georgia, I appreciate the thought, I truly do, but I don’t think sparing me is going to save the rest of you.”

  “It’s not intended to,” I said.

  “Well, then, what is it intended to do?”

  “It’s intended to give you time to download everything off the server, burn it to disk, and run for Ireland,” I said. Ireland has never had an extradition treaty with the United States. It still doesn’t. “If you can get across the border, you can probably lie low for years.”

  “And do what? Hope they forget that I’m an international terrorist?”

  “Make sure the world finds out the truth.”

  The pause this time was even longer. When Mahir spoke again, his voice was quiet and very distant. “I’m not sure whether I should be flattered that you trust me this much, or disturbed that you’ve just informed me that my life is your contingency plan.”

  “Does that mean you won’t do it?”

  “Are you mad? Of course I’ll do it. I’d have done it if you’d asked me upfront, and if you’d asked me in a month. It’s the only way.” He hesitated before adding, wistfully, “I just wish I were better with the notion of you doing this unsupported. Rick’s a good fellow, but I’ve not worked with him long enough to feel like I’m leaving you in competent hands.”

  “What he can’t manage, Shaun will,” I said. “I’m going to cut off your official server access at midnight. I’ll be mirroring all our findings on the old server address. You remember the old server?” The “old server” was a box we rented from Talking Points when we were all part of Bridge Supporters. We’d used it to back up our files when we were on the road, since Bridge Supporters wouldn’t post anything that hadn’t been through full validation and didn’t store anything uploaded by a beta blogger for more than twenty-four hours. We hadn’t used it since well before the campaign trail began, and almost no one outside the clerical staff at Talking Points knew I still had the lease. It wasn’t entirely secure, but it wasn’t ours, either. Mahir could access it without leaving a trail that would prove he was still a part of our group.

  “I do,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t call you after this.”

  “Not a good idea. I’ll contact you when I can.”

  “Right.” He chuckled. “Cloak and dagger, that’s us.”

  “Welcome to journalism.”

  “Indeed. I do wish I’d met you in the flesh, Georgia Mason. I truly do. It’s been an honor and a privilege working with you.”

  “You may still get the chance, Mahir; I’m not ready to count us out yet.” I slid my sunglasses back on. “Be good, be careful, and be alert. Your name is still connected to After the End Times. I can’t change that.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to. You do the same, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try. Good night, Mahir.”

  “Good night, Georgia… and good luck.”

  The click of the call disconnecting sounded more final than it had any right to. Snapping my phone closed, I straightened, sighed, and reached for the door. It was time to get back to my team.

  We had an awful lot of work to do.

  It is with regret but without shame that I must announce my resignation from this site. We part, not over differences of politics or religion, but merely over a desire to explore different things. I wish the Masons the best in their future projects, and I look forward to seeing what they will accomplish.

  I am sure it will be something spectacular.

  —From Fish and Clips, the blog of Mahir Gowda, April 9, 2040

  Twenty-three

  Six weeks is a long time in the news, even when you’re not working on a big project. Following a political campaign is a big project, one that’s capable of taking up the resources of an entire team of dedicated bloggers. Training a new division head is also a big project. The Fictionals tend to require the least amount of hand-holding, being largely content to sit around, tell each other stories, and look surprised when other people want to read them, but the person in charge of keeping them on-task needs to be more focused than the rest of the breed. There were contracts to sign and review, permissions to change, files to transfer, and a thousand little administrative things to handle that none of us wanted to deal with. Not with Buffy’s blood still fresh in our minds.

  Buffy caused her share of problems during those six weeks. Maybe she was gone, but she was still very much a part of the team—and not a productive one. Becks spent the bulk of her time hunting through our code and communications feeds looking for bugs and back doors. I’d clearly never realized how paranoid Buffy really was, because the number of confirmed recording devices hidden internally was over three digits, and Becks was still finding feeds for wireless listening devices hidden in just about every office, public gathering place, and conference center we’d been to since this whole thing started. “If she’d wanted to go CIA, she could have owned the place,” Shaun muttered on the day Becks confirmed that there were still bugs running in Eakly.

  “But would they have put up with her fixation on sappy purple poetry?”

  “Guess not.”

  Alaric and Dave followed Becks through our systems, rebuilding the mess she made as she rooted out Buffy’s worms. Together they were almost up to the task of remaking the things Buffy had built alone, although it was starting to wear on them; they’d signed on as journalists, not computer technicians. “Hire new field systems maintainer” was near the top of my to-do list, right under “uncover massive political conspiracy,” “avenge Buffy’s death,” and “don’t die.”

  And even with all of this going on, we still had a job to do. Multiple jobs, really. Not only did we need to keep following the Ryman-Tate Campaign—which continued to gather steam, now buoyed by not one, not two, but three major tragedies, earning us a lot of extra news cycles in the traditional media outlets, as well as online—we needed to
keep our beta bloggers on-task and updating the rest of the site. The news marches on, whether you’re walking wounded or not. That’s one of the beautiful things about the news. It’s also one of the most frustrating.

  Two weeks in Houston. Two weeks of sending Rick on every assignment we could get away with sending him on, while Shaun and I locked ourselves in our hotel room and planned for a war we’d never signed up for, against an adversary we’d never volunteered to fight. Whose side was Ryman on? I was guessing he wasn’t a part of Tate’s plan; no sane man would sacrifice his daughter like that. Then again, Shaun and I were adopted to satisfy the Masons’ desire to prove the zombie war had been won by the living, and they’ve never stopped us from walking into the jaws of death—if anything, they’ve encouraged it, living for the ratings, because when they lost Phil, the ratings were all they had. So who are we to judge the sanity of parents? We sat up until almost dawn every night, working through the darkness, making plans, making contingencies for those plans, looking for a way out of a maze we didn’t see before we were already lost inside it.

  Shaun pretended he didn’t know I wasn’t sleeping, and I pretended not to hear him punching the bathroom walls. Caffeine pills and surgical tape; that’s what I’ll always think of when I think of Houston. Caffeine pills and surgical tape.

  I tried to talk to Ryman twice; he tried to talk to me three times. None of our attempts synchronized. I couldn’t trust him when I didn’t know whether or not he was working with Tate; he couldn’t understand why we’d pulled away, or why we were overworked and snarly with exhaustion. Even Shaun was visibly withdrawn. He’d stopped going out in the field with Steve and the boys when he didn’t need to file reports, and while he was still meeting his contracted duties, he wasn’t doing it with anything like the flair and enthusiasm Ryman had come to expect from him. From all of us. There wasn’t anything we could do about it. Until we knew if we could trust him, we couldn’t tell him what was going on—what we suspected, what we knew, anything. And until we told him what was going on, we couldn’t be sure we could trust him. It was a Mobius strip of a problem, endlessly twisting back on itself, and I couldn’t see a way out of it. So we pushed him away and hoped he’d understand the reasons when things were over.