Becks and Mahir stared at me in abject disbelief. They were clearly taking my appearance the way I’d expected Shaun to take it: with surprise, and no small amount of anger. A few seconds passed while none of us said anything. Then Becks reached for her gun.
“There isn’t time to shoot me!” I said. I didn’t let go of Shaun’s hand. I didn’t know what he was doing here or how he got in, but if I was going to die, I was going to do it holding on to him as tightly as I could. “This place is about to blow. Do you know the way out?”
“Why should we trust you?” she demanded.
Shaun’s eyes widened. “Wait a second. You can see her?”
“Yes, Shaun, we can see her,” said Mahir. He sounded more dazed than Becks, and less angry.
“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.” I focused on Mahir. “Do you know the way out?”
Mahir looked at me for only a moment before making his decision. “This way,” he said, and gestured for us to follow as he turned and stepped through an unmarked doorway. Shaun pulled me along with him, perfectly willing to accept my presence. Becks brought up the rear, and I knew without looking that she had a gun pointed at the back of my head. Shaun had trained her well.
The door led to a small storage room. A panel in the back wall was missing. I could see grass and the nighttime sky through the opening. Shaun pulled me along. I went without fighting.
We were almost outside when the explosions began.
This is not fucking possible. Do you hear me, world? THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. I don’t care if she fools Shaun and Mahir and everyone else, she’s not who she’s claiming to be. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in the real world, and if we were living in a science fiction novel, good would triumph over evil a whole lot more often than it does.
I am going to find out who she is. I am going to find out what she’s doing here. And then I am going to take great satisfaction in blowing her smug little imposter head right off her fucking shoulders.
—From Charming Not Sincere, the blog of Rebecca Atherton, August 2, 2041. Unpublished.
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.
SHAUN: Twenty-four
She 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.
GEORGIA: Twenty-five
Shaun 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, i
t 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.
“I know.” I dropped my hand back to my side. “I’m the show model, to prove that they can make a realistic copy of a person. I wasn’t supposed to get out. The clone they were planning to send to you was surgically altered to look like she had retinal KA.”
“The clone they were planning?” asked Mahir.
I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. “She was in the lab where I planted the initial explosives. You wouldn’t have wanted her anyway. She was programmed to betray you.”
“And you weren’t?” demanded Becks.
“If I have been, I don’t know about it,” I said.
“This is impossible,” said Mahir.
“This is insane,” said Becks.
“This wasn’t my idea,” I countered.
Shaun cleared his throat. “This is starting to make my head hurt, and that’s probably not a good sign. Does somebody want to explain to me exactly how the CDC managed to bring George back from the dead?”
“They didn’t,” said Becks. “This woman is not Georgia.”
“Yes, I am,” I protested. “I know it’s unbelievable, but it’s true.”
Mahir frowned. I knew that look. It was the look he got when something presented him with a really interesting problem to solve. “We’ll not come to any conclusive decisions standing out here,” he said. “Miss, if you’ll allow us to search you for weapons—”
“And scan her for tracking devices,” interjected Becks.
“Yes, of course. Search you for weapons and scan you for tracking devices, and if you come up clean, we can take you back to the hotel where we’re currently quartered and try to sort this out.”
I let out a breath I’d only been half aware of holding. “I have a gun in the pocket on the right-hand side of my lab coat. It’s loaded, but the safety’s on.”
Becks stepped forward, sticking her hand into my pocket with more
force than was strictly necessary. She pulled out my gun and stepped back, stowing it in her belt. I felt instantly less clothed. “Got anything else?”
“Not that I’m aware of. If there are tracking devices on me, I don’t know they’re there. They’re probably subcutaneous.” I shook my head. “The EIS would have removed any of those that they found, but that doesn’t mean they found them all.”
Becks sneered. “We’ll just see. You picked the wrong team to try infiltrating, lady, and as soon as we find out who you really are, I’m going to kick the ever-loving crap out of you.”
I smiled slightly, relief fading into a mellower look of generalized exhaustion. “See, that sort of thing, right there, is why I missed you guys so much.” I glanced at Shaun. “Becks is with you, instead of working with the betas now? Good call.”
“Becks is in charge of the Irwins,” he said. Then he frowned. “Shouldn’t you already know that, if they’ve sent you here to infiltrate us?” His tone was turning belligerent. He was starting to get angry. That was bad.
“They didn’t send me, Shaun. I escaped,” I said. “The one they wanted you to find would have a better cover story.”
“This is all academic,” said Mahir. “Whether or not she’s really Georgia—”
“She’s not,” said Becks.
“—she’s here, and we’re going to have to contend with her, one way or another.”
“At least we won’t have any issues with the law if we need to shoot her.” Shaun looked at me coldly. “She’s already dead.”
Seeing that look on his face hurt more than almost anything else in the world. “I’m not dead anymore, Shaun. I swear to you, it’s me. Please believe me.”
He suddenly lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders and turning me to fully face him. Becks started to moved toward us. Mahir grabbed her upper arm, stopping her. I barely noticed. I was too busy staring into the eyes of the man in front of me, the eyes I’d been waiting to see since the moment I woke up. They were looking at me with such anger. I’d seen that look on his face before, but never directed at me.