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by Mira Grant

  The senator had heard my excuses with increasing frequency in the time since Buffy’s death, and it was clear that he was getting tired of them. More than tired; he was getting frustrated with them, and by extension, with me.

  Talking faster now, in an effort to keep him from shutting me out before I could finish, I said, “Senator, I’ve had two of my people running traces for weeks now on every bit of data we could find. They’ve been following the money. That’s what it always comes back to—the money. And they’ve managed to find—”

  “We’ll talk about this later, Georgia.”

  “But Senator Ryman, we—”

  “I said we’d talk about this later.” He was frowning now, his stiff, political smile, the one he used during debates, or when chastising recalcitrant interns. “This is neither the time nor the place for this discussion.”

  “Senator, we have proof Tate was involved in what happened to Buffy.” The senator froze. Finally sensing that he might listen, I pressed my case. “We’ve had audio for a while, but my team found the payments. We found the contacts. Buffy wasn’t the start. Eakly was the start. Eakly and the ranch—”

  “No.”

  The word was soft but implacable. I stopped dead, run up against the side of that refusal like I’d just slammed into a wall. After a frozen moment, I tried again, saying, “Senator Ryman, please, if you’d just—”

  “Georgia, this is not the time, and it’s not the place, especially if those are the accusations you’ve come here to make.” His face was cold. I’d never seen him look that cold toward anyone who wasn’t a political rival. “David Tate and I may not have always seen eye to eye on this campaign trail, and God knows, I’ve always known there was no love lost between the two of you, but I’m not going to stand here and listen to you say these things about a man who spoke at my daughter’s funeral. I can’t have that.”

  “Senator, that man was just as responsible for your daughter’s death as if he’d infected her himself.”

  Senator Ryman’s shoulders tensed, and his hand actually rose several inches before he forced it down. He wanted to hit me; that truth was written so clear across his face that even Shaun could have seen it. He wanted to, but he wouldn’t. Not here, not in front of all these witnesses.

  “It’s time for you to go, Georgia.”

  “Senator—”

  “If the three of you aren’t off the premises in the next fifteen minutes, you’ll be spending tonight in the Sacramento County jailhouse, as I’ll have had your press clearance pulled.” His tone was calm, even reasonable, but there was no kindness in it, and kindness was the thing I was most accustomed to hearing from him. “When I get back to the Center, I’ll come by your trailer, and you’ll show me every scrap of proof you think you have.”

  “And then?” I asked, despite my own better judgment. I needed to know how seriously he was willing to take this.

  “And then, if I believe you, I’ll back you up when we call for the federal authorities, because what you’re saying, Georgia, what you’re accusing is terrorism, and if that accusation gets made without absolute proof behind it, well, there’s more than one man’s career it could destroy.”

  He was right. If it got out that the Ryman campaign had been harboring a man who’d use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon—hell, that a man who’d use Kellis-Amberlee as a weapon was actually on the ticket—it would ruin him. His political enemies would never let the scandal die. Some of them would probably say he’d supported Tate’s actions, even to the point of killing Rebecca, for the votes it bought him.

  “If you don’t believe me?” I asked, shaping the words with lips that had gone numb.

  “If I don’t believe you, you’re all on the next bus to Berkeley, and we’re parting ways before the sun comes up,” the senator said and turned his back on me, all smiles as he shifted his attention to the crowd. “Congresswoman!” he said, joviality coming back into his voice as if he’d flipped a switch. “You’re looking lovely tonight—is that your wife? Well, Mrs. Lancer, it surely is a pleasure to finally have the opportunity to meet you in the flesh, after seeing you in so many of those Christmas card photos—”

  And then he was moving away, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the crowd, the important people of this little modern Babylon pressing all around me as they struggled for a moment of his attention, my colleagues standing not ten feet away, waiting to hear what I’d accomplished.

  The truth had never felt like it was further away, or harder to make sense of. And I had never in my life felt like I was more lost, or more alone.

  We were eleven when I first understood that we weren’t immortal. I always knew the Masons had a biological son named Phillip. Our folks didn’t talk about him much, but he came up every time someone mentioned Mason’s Law. It’s funny, but I sort of hero-worshipped him when I was a kid, because people remembered him. I never really considered the fact that they remembered him for dying.

  George and I were hunting for our Christmas presents when she found the box. It was in the closet in Mom’s office, and we’d probably overlooked it a thousand times before, but it caught George’s eye that day for some reason, and she hauled it out, and we looked inside. That was the day I met my brother.

  The box was full of photographs we’d never seen, pictures of a laughing little boy in a world where he’d never been forced to worry about the things we lived with every day. Phillip riding a pony at the state fair. Phillip playing in the sand on a beach with no fences in sight. Phillip with his long-haired, short-sleeved, laughing mother, who didn’t look anything like our mother, who wore her hair short and her sleeves long enough to hide the body armor, whose holster dug into my side when she kissed me good night. He had a smile that said he’d never been afraid of anything, and I hated him a little, because his parents were so much happier than mine.

  We never talked about that day. We put the pictures back in the closet, and we never found our Christmas presents, either. But that was the day I realized… if Phillip, this happy, innocent kid, could die, so could we. Someday, we’d be cardboard boxes at the back of somebody’s closet, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. George knew it, too; maybe she even knew it before I did. We were all we had, and we could die. It’s hard to live knowing something like that. We’ve done the best we could.

  No one gets to ask us for anything more. Not now, not ever. When history looks our way—stupid, blind history, that judges everything and never gives a shit what we paid to get it—it better remember that no one had a right to ask us for this. No one.

  —From Hail to the King, the blog of Shaun Mason, June 19, 2040

  Twenty-five

  Georgia, what just happened?”

  “George? You okay?”

  Both of them sounded so concerned it left me wanting to scream. I settled for grabbing a flute of champagne from a passing server, draining it in one convulsive gulp, and snapping, “We have to go. Now.”

  That just redoubled their concern. Rick’s eyes went wide, while Shaun’s narrowed, accompanied by a sudden frown. “How pissed is he?” he asked.

  “He’s pulling our press passes in fifteen minutes.”

  Shaun whistled. “Nice. Even for you, that’s impressive. What’d you do, suggest that his wife was having an affair with the librarian?”

  “It was the tutor, that was the Mayor of Oakland’s wife, and I was right,” I said, starting to stalk for the exit. True to form, they followed. “I didn’t say anything about Emily.”

  “Excuse me, but does one of you mind telling me what’s going on?” interjected Rick, putting on a burst of speed to get in front of me. “Georgia just got us kicked out of a major political event, Senator Ryman’s clearly pissed, and Tate’s glaring. I’m missing something. I don’t like that.”

  I went cold. “Tate’s glaring at us?”

  “If looks could kill—”

  “We’d be
joining Rebecca Ryman. I’ll fill you in once we’re in the car.”

  Rick hesitated, licking his lower lip as he registered the anxiety in my tone. “Georgia?”

  “I’m serious,” I said, and sped up, going as fast as I could manage without starting to a run. Shaun took the cue from me, linking one arm through mine and using his longer legs to give me a little extra speed. Rick hurried along behind us, holding his questions until we got outside. Bless him for that much, anyway.

  It took only one blood test to get back to the car. Since everyone on the banquet level was assumed clean after the checks they’d endured to get there, the elevator came at the press of a button, no needles involved until we wanted to exit. Like a roach motel—the infected could check in, but they couldn’t check out. My earlier curiosity about what would happen if more than one person took the elevator at the same time was answered as the interior sensors refused to let the doors open until the system detected three different, noninfected blood samples. Someone who unwittingly boarded the elevator with a person undergoing viral amplification would just die in there. Nice.

  Steve was still next to the car, arms folded across his chest. He straightened when he saw the three of us come marching out of the elevator but he restrained his curiosity better than Rick had, waiting until we were reaching for the doors before he asked, “Well?”

  “Threatened to yank our press passes,” I said.

  “Nice,” said Steve, raising his eyebrows. “He pressing charges?”

  “No, that’ll probably come after tonight’s episode of ‘meet the press.’ ” I climbed into the back seat.

  Shaun did the same on the opposite side of the car, commenting, “She means ‘beat the press,’ don’cha, George?”

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “Now will you tell me what’s going on?” asked Rick, getting into the front passenger seat and twisting around to face us.

  “It’s simple, really,” I said, sagging into the seat. Shaun already had his arm in place to support me, offering as much comfort as he could. “Dave and Alaric followed the money and proved that Governor Tate was behind the attacks on Eakly and the ranch. Also, PS, the CDC is potentially involved, which isn’t going to make me sleep any easier tonight, thanks. The senator wasn’t thrilled with the idea that his running mate might be the goddamn devil, so he’s asked us to go back to the Center to prepare our notes while he decides whether or not to fire our asses.”

  There was a long silence as the other three people in the car attempted to absorb what I’d just said. Surprisingly, it was Steve who spoke first, in a low rumble closer to a growl than a normal conversational tone. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “We have proof,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning into Shaun’s arm. “People have been funneling him money, and he’s been funneling it on to the sort of folks who think weaponizing Kellis-Amberlee is a good thing. Some of that money’s been coming from Atlanta. Some of it’s been coming from the big tobacco companies. And a lot of people have died, presumably so that nice ol’ Governor Tate can be Vice President of the United States of America. At least, until the president-elect has some sort of tragic accident and he has to step into the position.”

  “Georgia…” Rick sounded almost awed, overwhelmed with the possibilities. “If we know this for sure—Georgia, this is a really big deal. This is… Are we allowed to know this and not just report it to the FBI, or the CDC, or somebody? This is terrorism.”

  “I don’t know, Rick; you’re the one who worked in print media. Why don’t you try telling me for a change?”

  “Even in cases of suspected terrorism, a journalist can protect his or her sources as long as they aren’t actually sheltering the suspect.” Rick hesitated. “We’re not, are we? Sheltering him?”

  “Pardon me for breaking in, Mr. Cousins, but if Miss Mason’s proof is as good as she seems to think, it doesn’t matter whether she plans on sheltering him or not. My partner died in Eakly.” Steve’s tone was normal now, almost casual. Somehow that was even more disturbing. “Tyrone was a good man. He deserved better. Man who started that outbreak, well. That man doesn’t deserve better.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I have no intention of sheltering him. I’ll talk it over with the senator, and if he wants to throw us off the campaign, he’s welcome to. I’ll mail our files to every open-source blog, newspaper, and politician in the country while we’re on the road for home.”

  “This is crap,” Shaun said, withdrawing his arm.

  “Right,” I agreed.

  “Absolute fucking crap.”

  “No argument.”

  “I want to punch somebody right about now.”

  “Not it,” Rick said.

  “I punch back,” Steve said. A note of amusement crept into his voice, making him sound a little less likely to explode. That was good. Not that I’d object to seeing Tate get the crap kicked out of him—I just didn’t want to see Steve go to federal prison over it when the FBI would be just as happy to do the honors. Hell, after they had Tate in custody, and considering what had happened in Eakly, they might be willing to let Steve have his licks. Just as long as they got theirs first.

  “Just have patience; this is all going to be over soon,” I said. “One way or another, I guess we’re finishing things tonight.”

  “Let’s pick one way, okay?” said Shaun. “I don’t like another.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Neither do I.”

  We finished the drive in silence, pulling through the Center gates and enduring the barrage of blood tests that followed with as much grace as we could muster. Three of us were exhausted, scared, and angry; Steve was just angry, and I almost envied him. Anger’s easier to run on than exhaustion. It doesn’t strip your gears as badly. Less than two hours after convincing him to abandon his post for my fool’s errand, Steve drove back into the motor pool, his car heavier by two journalists and a whole lot of free-floating worry.

  “Don’t say anything, please,” I said, as we climbed out of the car. “I’m meeting with the senator tonight, when he gets back from his dinner. After that—”

  “After that, I guess what needs doing is going to be clear one way or the other,” said Steve. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have gone into security if I didn’t know how to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Steve smiled, briefly. I smiled back.

  “George, c’mon!” Shaun called, already a good four or five yards from the car. “I want to get out of this damn monkey suit!”

  “Coming!” I shouted, muttering, “Jesus,” before I turned to follow him back to the trailers.

  Rick walked with us as far as the van; then he turned left, toward his trailer, while we turned right, toward ours. “He’s a good guy,” said Shaun, pressing his thumb against the lock on the trailer door. It clicked open, confirming Shaun’s right to enter. “A little old-fashioned, but still a good guy. I’m glad we got the chance to work with him.”

  “You think he’ll stay on after we all get home?” I started rummaging through the mass of clothing on the beds and floor, looking for the cotton shirt and jeans I’d been wearing earlier.

  “He can write his own ticket after this campaign, but yeah, I think he may stick around.” Shaun was already halfway out of his formal wear, shedding it with the ease of long practice. “He knows he can work with us.”

  “Good.”

  I was doing up the last of the buttons on my shirt when I heard the shouting. Shaun and I exchanged a wide-eyed, shocked look before we both went running for the trailer door. I made it out half a beat ahead of him, just in time to see a shell-shocked-looking Rick come staggering up the path with Lois cradled against his chest. I didn’t have to be a veterinarian to know that something was horribly wrong with his cat. No living animal has a neck that bends that way or hangs that limply in its owner’s arms.

/>   “Rick…?”

  He stopped in his tracks, staring at me, the body of his cat still clutched against his chest. I ran the last fifteen feet between us, and Shaun ran close behind me. That was probably the part they didn’t figure on: those fifteen feet.

  Those fifteen stupid little feet saved our lives.

  “What happened?” I asked, putting out a hand, as if there were a damn thing I could do. Seen this close, it was even more obvious that the cat had been dead for a while. Her eyes were open and glazed, staring blankly off at nothing.

  “She was just… I got back to the trailer and I almost tripped on her.” For the first time, I realized Rick was still wearing his formal clothes. He hadn’t even had time to change. “She was just inside the doorway. I think… even after they hurt her, I think she tried to get away.” Tears running down his cheeks. I’m not sure he was even aware of them. “I think she was trying to come and find me. She was just a little cat, Georgia. Why would anyone do this to such a little cat?”

  Shaun stiffened. “She was inside? Are you sure this wasn’t natural causes?”

  “Since when do natural causes break your neck?” asked Rick, in a tone that would have been reasonable if he hadn’t been crying so hard.

  “We should go to the van.”

  I frowned. “Shaun—?”

  “I’m serious. We can talk about this in the van, but we should go there. Right now.”

  “Just let me get my gun,” I said, and started to turn toward the trailer. Shaun grabbed my elbow, yanking me back. I stumbled.

  The trailer exploded with a concussive bang, like an engine misfiring.