Blackout (40 page)

Genetic testing of the remains found in Lab 175-c confirms that they belonged to Georgia Mason. Perhaps if we had fewer Georgia Masons running around the premises, we could be sure our rogue killed herself in her efforts to escape. As we do not have any mechanism for confirming the identity of the deceased, and as the explosions caused too much damage to determine the number of Georgias to die in the ensuing fire, we must assume for the time being that Subject 7c is now loose.

Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen. We have successfully resurrected a woman with every reason to want us all dead. I hope you can feel good about this accomplishment. I certainly cannot. Please consider this my
resignation. Further, please send someone to clean my lab, as I am about to get blood all over the walls.

Everything went so very wrong so very fast. I will not take the fall for this.

I hope you’re happy.

—Taken from an e-mail sent by Dr. Matthew Thomas, August 2, 2041.

S
he ran back the way I’d come. I ran with her, trying to wrap my mind around how
solid
her fingers felt. They were warm and strong and
right
, and I didn’t care if it meant I’d finally snapped. I had her back. Crazy or not, I had her back, and there was no way I was ever letting her go.

We caught up with Becks and Mahir less than a minute later. They turned and stared when they heard my footsteps. “We need to get out of here,” I said, skidding to a stop. They kept staring, but not at me.

They were looking at George. Scowling, Becks reached for her gun.

“There isn’t time to shoot me!” said George, not letting go of my hand. Thank God for that. “This place is about to blow. Do you know the way out?”

I opened my mouth to relay what she’d said, but Becks cut me off. Still staring straight at George, she demanded, “Why should we trust you?”

It felt like the bottom dropped out of the world. “Wait a second. You can
see
her?”

“Yes, Shaun,” said Mahir, sounding like he wasn’t
sure quite what was going on, but was certain he didn’t like it. “We can see her.”

“I have no idea what that means, but if you don’t trust me, we’re all going to be dead before you can find out how I got here.” George looked at Mahir as she spoke. “Do you know the way
out
?”

For a moment, I thought Mahir was going to refuse to answer. Then he nodded, gesturing for us to follow. “This way.”

I pulled George with me as I followed Mahir through the nearest doorway, still not willing to let go of her hand. Becks was right behind us. I didn’t look to see whether she had her gun out. I didn’t want to know how I’d react if she did.

The panel we’d removed on our way in was still off to one side, leaving our exit clear. It looked like security hadn’t been through yet, probably because of whatever breach had the lights going wacky. That was a small blessing. George didn’t say anything as we climbed through the hole, but she looked like she was torn between laughter and screaming when she took her first breath of outside air.

Becks was just stepping through the opening when the explosions began.

And thus, in a single moment, did my life go from unbearably strange, but still tolerable, to actively impossible. I am willing to allow that, once one lives in a world where science can transform mosquitoes into the harbingers of the apocalypse, the rules of our forefathers have, perhaps, ceased to apply.

That doesn’t mean that the dead should walk. Not unless they’re zombies, anyway. It’s simply impolite, and I don’t think we should stand for it.

—From
Fish and Clips
, the blog of Mahir Gowda, August 2, 2041. Unpublished.

Joey—

Not sure when I’ll be able to reach you again. We’ve done it. She’s loose. It wasn’t quite like we’d planned—someone leaked what we were doing, and we lost half the techs—but it worked, and she’s on the run. I’m going to be off the grid for a little while. Keep the lines open. God willing, Georgia Mason will be reaching out to you soon, and when she does, I want you to be ready to help her in any way that you can.

This may end soon. Pray to God it ends as well as it can.

—Taken from an e-mail sent by Dr. Danika Kimberley to Dr. Joseph Shoji, August 2, 2041.

S
haun didn’t let go of my hand once after he had it—not while we were climbing through the hole in the wall, and not when the explosions started. It was like I was the lifeline he’d been looking for. I wasn’t going to object. I
knew
he was the lifeline I’d been looking for, and no matter how improbable his presence was, I wasn’t going to let go of him until I absolutely had to.

Concussive booming sounds came from the building behind us as we ran. They followed a definite wave pattern, with a small crumping explosion followed by a cascade of louder, more enthusiastic booms. My little charges had managed to break through into something a lot more combustible—probably the formalin tanks. It’s nice how many common chemicals are just looking for an excuse to explode.

We ran across a vast, manicured lawn, with evergreen trees standing between us and the fence. If there was a scheduled security sweep of the grounds, it had been canceled in favor of dealing with the explosions; no one stopped us or sounded any additional alarms as we fled.

“If this is anything like Portland, emergency services should start responding to the alarms any minute now!” shouted Shaun, glancing back over his shoulder at the others. “Extra confusion is good, but extra eyes won’t be! Keep running!”

“Shaun—” began Becks.

“Talk later! Flee now!”

I didn’t say anything. I was struggling just to keep up. No matter how much this body looked and felt like the one that I remembered, it wasn’t, and it simply wasn’t equipped for this sort of situation. Maybe it would be one day—assuming I survived that long—but right now, it was all I could do not to fall over and wait for someone to come along and shoot me.

Our path took us to a hole in the fence that looked like it was created by using a pair of magnetic current-bridging strips to reroute the electricity before cutting the wire. Mahir went through first, followed by Shaun, who kept my hand even while I was struggling not to snag my lab coat on the fence. Slowing down made me realize how much my lungs hurt, and how much my
feet
hurt. I didn’t want to risk looking at them, but I was pretty sure they were bleeding.

This wasn’t the time for first aid. We needed to get as far from the CDC as possible. I straightened, catching my breath as best as I could, and let Shaun pull me back into a run.

We got lucky; any zombies in the area had been attracted by the sound of sirens, and left us alone as we ran. We made it out of the grass and onto the broken sidewalk before my toes caught on the curb and I fell, gravity and momentum conspiring against me for one horrible moment. My hand was yanked free of Shaun’s, but not fast enough for me to catch myself. The landing
knocked the air out of me—what little air had been
left
in me—and I wound up prostrate and wheezing, trying to find the strength to get back up again.

“Are you okay?” asked Shaun. He sounded concerned, but calm. Too calm; scary calm, like he wasn’t surprised to see me in the least.

I was still trying to get enough air to answer when the grass rustled, Becks and Mahir jogging up behind us. There was a click—the sound of a pistol safety being released.

“Move and you die,” snarled Becks, tone leaving no room for argument. I froze, stopping everything but my efforts to breathe. “Now who the fuck are you, and what are you doing here?”

“She fell,” said Shaun, sounding wounded. “Dude, what’s your damage?”

“It’s all right, Shaun,” said Mahir, who sounded as calm as Becks was angry. “Let her deal with this. You just stay right there.”

“What’s my damage? What’s my
damage
?” Becks laughed, a short, brittle sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “I want to know what the hell game she thinks she’s playing. That’s all.”

“I’m not playing a game, Becks,” I said, voice muffled by the fact that I was talking into the pavement. “Can I get up before I try to explain myself?”

“Hold on,” said Shaun. Now he just sounded perplexed. Not being able to see people’s faces was starting to get to me. “I realize things were a little crazy in there before, so I was sort of willing to blow it off and all, but are you telling me you guys can actually
see
her?”

“What?” I said, lifting my head slightly. Becks didn’t shoot me. That was something.

“We can both see her, Shaun,” said Mahir wearily.
He was panting from the run, although not as much as I was. “I don’t know who this woman is, but she’s no ghost, and no hallucination. We can see her perfectly well.”

“And if she doesn’t start talking soon, we can see her bleed,” said Becks. She nudged my leg with her toe, snapping, “Well? Identify yourself.”

“
Please
can I get up first?” I asked. “It’ll be easier for us to understand each other if I’m not talking into the street.”

There was a pause as some consultation I couldn’t see took place behind me. Finally, Becks said, “Fine. Get up. But if you so much as twitch funny, you’re going back down, for keeps. Understand?”

“I understand.” I pushed myself to my hands and knees, wincing as gravel and chunks of pavement bit into my hands. It was worse when I actually stood, pressing my bloody feet down on the ground.

Shaun took a half step forward, reaching out to help me with my balance. Becks switched her aim to him.

“Don’t,” she said, very softly. “Don’t make me.”

He stepped back, putting his hands up. “Okay, Becks, don’t worry. I’ll stay right here.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you all,” I said. My hair was sticking to my forehead in sweaty, matted clumps, and the wind was cold on my cheeks. I hurt, I was possibly going to get shot in the next few seconds, and I’d never been so happy to be alive. I glanced at Shaun, reassuring myself that he was really there and really real, before looking back to Becks and Mahir. “I understand you’re probably confused and upset right now. I was, too, when all this started. But I swear, it’s me.”

“There is no ‘me,’ ” snarled Becks. Her eyes narrowed.
“What the fuck kind of stunt is this? Plastic surgery? Natural lookalike so we wouldn’t be able to find the scars?”

“Cloning and experimental memory-transfer techniques,” I said. That was enough to stun Becks into a momentary silence.

Not Mahir. He drew his own gun, aiming it at my chest. “What’s your name?”

“Georgia Carolyn Mason.”

“What’s your license number?”

“Alpha-foxtrot-bravo, zero seven five eight nine three.” I rattled off the number without hesitation, glad it wasn’t one of the things stored in the fuzzy area of my memory. “I was issued my provisional B-class license on my sixteenth birthday. That license number was bravo-zulu-echo, one nine three two seven one. It was retired when I tested for my A-class license. I did that when I turned nineteen.”

“What’s my name?”

“Mahir Suresh Gowda. Your license was issued by the Indian consulate in London, so it’s about ninety digits long and comes with diplomatic immunity and what are you
doing
here? Aren’t you supposed to be on a different continent, objectively observing our problems?”

He snorted. “Well, my boss went and got herself killed, so it seemed I was needed on a more local level.”

Becks recovered from her brief silence, asking, “If you’re George, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

I touched the skin below my left eye, grimacing. “Freaky, isn’t it? Again, cloning. The scientists who grew me couldn’t induce a specific reservoir condition. When they tried, they caused spontaneous amplification in the clones unlucky enough to be their test
subjects. I guess it got pretty expensive, so they stopped trying before they got to me.”

“Makes you a pretty lousy copy,” said Becks coldly.