less friendly, including one I tagged for upload with the op-ed piece I was planning to write; it said Shaun and I deserved to die at the hands of the living dead, since sinners like us were about as ethically advanced. It would fit perfectly with the reality of how Buffy had been bought.
Page six had just gone up when Shaun called, “Becks says she’s cross-checking the IPs now. Most of them look to be scrambled.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she can’t follow them.”
Damn. “How about the time stamps?”
“They prove it wasn’t any of us, or the senator, but not too much other than that. Just going by the times, it could even be Mrs. Ryman.”
Double damn. “Got any good news for me?”
Shaun looked up from his screen, grinning. “How does access codes on all Buffy’s bugs sound?”
“Like good news,” I said. I would have said more, but my computer beeped, flashing an urgent message light at the bottom of the screen. I double-clicked the prompt.
Mahir’s face appeared in a video window, his hair unkempt and his eyes wild as he demanded, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“You weren’t answering your phone!” I said, embarrassed even as the words left my mouth. He was on the other side of the world; there was no way this situation could hold the same urgency for him.
“The local Fictionals were holding a wake and poetry reading in Buffy’s honor.” He brushed his hair out of his face. “I attended to report on it, and I’m afraid I had a bit too much to drink.” Now he sounded sheepish. “I fell asleep as soon as I got home.”
“That explains how you slept through the screamer,” I said. Twisting in my seat, I asked, “Shaun, we have a local copy of those files?”
“In the local group directory,” he confirmed.
“Good.” I turned back to my computer. “Mahir, I’m going to upload some files to your directory. I want you to save them locally. Make at least two physical copies. I recommend storing one of them off-site.”
“Should I delete them from the server once I’ve finished reading?”
His tone was light, attempting to joke with me. Mine wasn’t light at all. “Yes. That would be a good idea. If you can pull the rest of your files long enough to reformat your sector, that wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”
“Georgia…” He hesitated. “Is there something I should be aware of?”
I bit back the urge to start laughing. Buffy was dead; we’d been reported dead to the CDC; someone had tried to use us to undermine the United States government. There was a
“You want my
“England wouldn’t want me.”
“We’d find a way.”
“Entertaining as political exile might be, Shaun would go crazy if I forced him to move, and I wouldn’t go without him.” Impulsively, I removed my sunglasses and offered Mahir’s image a smile. “I’m sorry I may never get to meet you.”
Mahir looked alarmed. “Don’t talk that way.”
“Just read the files. Tell me how to talk after you do that.”
“All right,” he said. “Be safe.”
“I’ll try.” I tapped the keys to start the upload and his image winked out, replaced by a status bar.
“Georgia?”
Shaun’s voice; the wrong name. I turned toward him, a cold spot forming in my stomach as I registered the fact that he hadn’t called me “George.” “What?”
“Becks has one of the bugs online.”
“And?”
“And I think you ought to hear this.” Reaching over, he pulled his headset jack out of the speakers. The crackle and hiss of a live transmission promptly blared into the room, seeming all the louder in the sudden silence. Even Lois, crouched next to Rick’s monitor, was silent and still, her ears slicked back and her eyes stretched wide.
“—hear me?” Tate’s voice was almost impossibly loud, amplified by the bug’s internal pickups and Shaun’s speakers. “We are going to solve this problem, and we’re going to solve it now, before things get any worse.”
Another voice, this one indistinguishable. Shaun caught my eye and nodded. He’d have Becks running it through a filter as soon as we finished listening, trying to clean it up enough to determine the speaker. That was all we could really do.
“And I’m telling you, they’re getting too close. With the Meissonier girl gone, we can’t steer them anymore. There’s no telling how many of those damn bugs she planted around the offices. I told you we couldn’t trust a spook.”
I caught my breath as Rick started swearing under his. Only Shaun was completely silent, his lips pressed into a tight line. Unaware that he was being listened to, Tate continued: “I’m in her little boyfriend’s portable office. If there was any spot she wouldn’t bug, it’d be the one where she was doing her own share of the sinning.”
“He really didn’t know her very well,” Rick said, in a bitter, distant tone.
“Neither did we,” Shaun replied.
“I don’t care how you take the rest of them out,” Tate barked. “Just do it. If the CDC couldn’t finish them off, we’ll find another way. Understand me? Do it!” There was a slam, as if a receiver was being thrust rudely into its cradle, followed by the sound of footsteps. The hiss continued for a few more seconds, then cut off as suddenly as it had started.
“They only cut and save when there’s sound being received,” said Shaun needlessly. We all knew how Buffy’s saver bugs worked. Plant them and they’d press anything they heard to file, going dormant to save their batteries when the space around them was silent. She must not have been listening to her files. Just saving and transmitting them, serene in her own certainty that her side was the right one.
“Tate,” snarled Rick. “That
“Tate,” I said. My eyes were burning. Finally sliding my sunglasses back into place, I looked from one to the other. “We have to see the senator.”
“Can we trust him not to be a part of this?” Shaun asked.
I hesitated. “How good is Becks?”
“Not that good.”
“Fine.” I swiveled back to my screen. “Screamers on everyone. Get the whole team online. I don’t care
“Georgia…?” said Rick, uncertainly.
I shook my head, already beginning to type. “Shut up, sit down, and get started. We have work to do.”
Every life has a watershed moment, an instant when you realize you’re about to make a choice that will define everything else you ever do, and that if you choose wrong, there may not be that many things left to choose. Sometimes the wrong choice is the only one that lets you face the end with dignity, grace, and the awareness that you’re doing the right thing.
I’m not sure we can recognize those moments until they’ve passed us. Was mine the day I decided to become a reporter? The day my brother and I logged onto a job fair and met a girl who called herself “Buffy”? The day we decided to try for the “plum assignment” of staff bloggers to the Ryman campaign?
Or was it the day we realized this might be the last thing we ever did… and decided not to care?
My name is Georgia Mason. My brother calls me George.
Welcome to my watershed.