Deadline

“Is this a side effect of blocking the transmission? You change something internally so it registers negatives as positives?”

“No, Shaun. I didn’t.” Dr. Abbey calmly picked up the lid to the testing unit, snapping it back into place. She watched my face the entire time, moving with slow, methodical gestures, so that I wouldn’t be surprised. She didn’t really need to worry. I was somewhere past surprise by that point. “None of the adjustments we’ve made to our equipment would do something as suicidal or idiotic as showing a positive result as a negative one. We’d just disable the readouts, like we did with your first test. Those results came to my computer, and no one else’s. I was able to study your entire viral profile.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m not trying to say anything. What I am saying is that your test results—both times, the ones you didn’t see and the ones you just witnessed—came back clean.” Dr. Abbey looked at me gravely, a wild excitement barely contained in her expression. “You’re not sick, Shaun. You’re not going to amplify.

“I don’t know what your body did, but it encountered the live virus… and it fought it off. You’re going to live.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I just stared at her, the green lights on the testing unit glowing steadily, like an accusation of a crime I had never plotted to commit. I’d been right all along; amplification would have been too easy an exit, and when given the chance, my body somehow refused to do it. I was going to live.

So now what?

Coda: Living for You

I have no idea what’s going on anymore. When did the world stop making sense?

—SHAUN MASON

What the fuck is going on here?

—GEORGIA MASON

One of the Fictionals asked me this morning, if I could have one wish—any wish in the world, no matter how big or how small—what would I wish for? This would be a universe-changing wish. I could wish away Kellis- Amberlee. Hell, I could wish away the Rising if I wanted to, restore us to a universe where the zombies never came and we never wound up hiding in our houses, scared of everything we couldn’t sterilize. And I stared at him until he realized what a stupid question that was and went running off, probably figuring that I was going to start hitting next.

He wasn’t wrong.

If I could have any wish, no matter how big, no matter how small, I’d wish to have George back. Without that, nothing else I could wish for would be worth a fucking thing. And if you don’t like that, you can shove it up your ass, because I don’t care.

—From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, January 5, 2041

Twenty-seven

I woke up in a white bed in a white room, with the cloying white smell of bleach in my nose and the tangled white cobwebs of mdreams still gnawing, ratlike, at the inside of my brain. I sat up with a gasp, realizing as I did that I was wearing white cotton pajamas and covered by a white comforter with no buttons or snaps. I took a breath, then another, trying to force my heart rate down as I looked around the room, seeking some clue as to where I was.

The only furnishings were the bed I was in and a single bedside table with rounded edges. I reached out and gave it an experimental shake. It was bolted to the floor. The bed probably was, too. Nothing in the room could be used as a weapon, unless I wanted to try strangling myself with the sheets. Even hanging was out of the question, since there was nothing for me to hang myself from.

A huge, inset mirror that almost certainly doubled as an observation window took up one entire wall. That sort of fixture in this sort of room can mean only one thing: medical holding facility, probably owned by the CDC. That fit with the dreams I’d been having, horrible, tangled things about some sort of major outbreak. No, not a major outbreak—there weren’t that many people involved, at least not when we closed the doors. And we had to close the doors. We had to close the doors, because—

“I see you’re awake.”

The voice came from a speaker in the wall above the mirror and caught me entirely by surprise. I screamed a little, clutching the blanket against my chest before I realized I was being an idiot. Whoever had me in here could do a lot worse than talk to me, if they decided that was what they wanted. I eyed the speaker suspiciously, letting go of the blanket.

“I’m awake,” I confirmed.

“Good, good. Now, you may be a little shaky at first. I don’t recommend trying to walk before you’ve had a little time to get adjusted.”

I was out of the bed before the voice was finished with its warning, stalking across the floor toward the mirror. Then I stopped again, stunned by the sight of my own reflection in what should have been—for me—a completely transparent surface. My eyes make one-way glass a pretty fiction.

Or they’re supposed to, anyway. Only for some reason, things weren’t working that way this time, and instead of looking at the hallway beyond the glass, I was looking at myself.

The pajamas I was wearing were at least two sizes too big, or maybe it was just that I’d lost weight: I looked like I was recovering from a long illness, all pale skin and bird-boned limbs. The lines of my collarbone stood out like knives, making me seem downright frail. My hair was too long, falling to hit my shoulders in those annoying thick curls that always seemed to form when I let it grow out, and my eyes… There was something wrong with my eyes. Something very, very wrong.

I was still staring at my reflection when the speaker crackled on again. The voice from before came smoothly into the room, saying, “We’re very glad to see you up and about. Some disorientation is normal at first, and you shouldn’t let it bother you. Now, the speakers in your room are voice-activated; you don’t need to look for a button or anything like that. Just speak loudly and clearly, and we’ll understand you. Can you please tell us your name, and the last thing that you remember?”

I took a deep breath, holding it for a moment before letting it slowly out. Looking directly into my reflection —and hence, directly at anyone who happened to be standing in the hallway outside the one-way mirror, watching their little test subject, I answered.

“My name is Georgia Mason,” I said. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Acknowledgments

Writing a follow-up volume to Feed was both elating and terrifying, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of a wonderful group of people. I can’t thank them enough. They ranged from medical professionals who worked with both humans and animals to gun experts and epidemiologists. Deadline is the work of many hands, and I am grateful to each and every one of them, because they were the ones who made this all possible.

Michelle Dockrey is a longtime editor of mine who chose to sit out Feed because it