Deadline

less… I don’t know. Something less your department.”

“Yeah, well.” It was hard to swallow past the lump in my throat. It was the damn smile that did it. I knew she was a hallucination. I just didn’t care. “You zigged when you should’ve zagged.”

“What’s done is done. So are you up for this?”

I didn’t say anything.

More sharply: “Shaun? Are you even listening to me?”

“I miss you so much.” I looked down at my feet. I couldn’t keep looking at her, not if I wanted to hold on to what little was left of my sanity. “I mean, you know that, and I know I’ve been talking to you this whole time, but I also know it’s because I’m really not all here without you, so I’m talking to myself in order to pretend I can ever be all the way here again, and this isn’t even really a sentence anymore, so I’m going to stop now, but God, George, I miss you so much.” I stopped, and hesitated before adding, very softly, “I don’t think I know how to do this without you.”

“You have to.” I heard her stand, heard her footsteps as she crossed the van to stop in front of me. Her knees were on a level with my field of vision. If there’s a rating system for quality of hallucination, I can say I was definitely scoring pretty high; I could see the wrinkles in her slacks where they fell over her knees, and a bit of carpet lint sticking to the sole of one sensible shoe. “Shaun, look at me.”

I raised my head. This close, her eyes were even more alien… but they were still her eyes. It was still her behind them.

“Step up or step down,” she said, very quietly. “Those are the choices.”

I swallowed. “Do I get anything more than that? Step up or step down?”

“This isn’t a news story, Shaun. The only reward you get for making it to the end is making it to the end—you get to know the truth, and that’s it. I don’t come back. The last year doesn’t unhappen. Life doesn’t go back to the way that it was; life never goes back to the way it was, no matter how hard we try to make it. But you’ll know. You’ll have the truth. You’ll have the pieces that we’re still missing.” She smiled again, despite the tears welling up in her eyes. I’d never seen her cry, even when we were kids. The retinal KA atrophied her tear ducts years before her eyes actually changed in a visible way. But she was crying now. “The only happy ending we can have is the ending where you take the bastards down and make them pay for what they did to us. Can you do it? Because if you can’t, I need you to call Mahir and tell him that he’s in charge now. Someone has to find the truth. Please.”

“I can do it,” I said. My voice was unsteady, but it was there, and that was really all that I could ask. “For you, I can do it.”

“Thank you.” She leand forward. My breath caught as she pressed a kiss against my forehead and stepped away again, leaving me with a clear path to the exit. “I miss you, too.”

I stood, glancing up as I did. The blood on the ceiling was gone. When I looked down again, so was George. I wiped my cheeks with the palm of my hand until it came away dry, still looking at the spot where George had been. She didn’t reappear. That was probably a good sign. “Love you, George,” I whispered.

She would have gotten better, hissed Kelly’s voice, but its power was gone. Oh, I was still going to have to deal with the reality of it, but I’m good at dealing with stupid shit. If the CDC wanted to play hardball, we’d play hardball. And we’d win.

I was unsurprised to find Becks standing outside the van with her pistol resting against her knee, lazily sipping from a bottle of water. She straightened when I stepped out onto the blacktop, asking. “Everything okay?”

“I think I just had a minor psychotic episode or maybe a breakdown or something, but it’s cool; I’m feeling basically okay now,” I replied, closing the van doors. “You?”

Becks blinked at me, momentarily thrown by the flippancy of my reply. Even after working with me for as long as she has, she hasn’t learned to take statements like “minor psychotic episode” in stride. I’ll give her this: She recovered fast, saying, “Well, I just watched my boss have a minor psychotic episode, and I thought I’d come out and make sure he didn’t get his damn fool ass eaten by a zombie before he settled down.” She hesitated, then added, “I didn’t shoot her. After you ran out of the room? I didn’t shoot her.”

I wasn’t sure whether she was looking for praise or expecting me to condemn her for showing mercy. I elected for the praise. “Good call,” I said, nodding. “We’re going to need that pretty little head of hers intact if we’re going to crack it open, pry out all its secrets, and use them to bring down the CDC.”

“Right,” said Becks, slowly. “Were you on the line to Mahir just now? Because I thought I heard voices in there.”

“Psychotic break, remember?” I shrugged. “Look, Becks—Rebecca—you know what you’re getting out of this team. We’re damaged goods, some more than others. I’m so damaged I’m practically remaindered. If you can cope with that, I can promise you the ride of your life. If you can’t, I have the feeling that when we go back in there,” I hooked a finger toward the door to Dr. Abbey’s lab, “you lose the last chance to cash in your ticket on the crazy train.”

“I like trains,” said Becks. Her expression sobered before she added, “And I loved your sister. She was the first person who gave me a chance to prove myself in the field. She was a damn good reporter. So if you’re a little nuts, so what? I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re all mad here.”

“Great,” I said. We were the only things that moved as we walked toward the door. “She didn’t want to let you go. I had to haggle like a bastard to get you away from the Newsies.”

“She recognized talent when she saw it,” said Becks, with a small smile.

“Yes, she did,” I replied, with utter seriousness. Becks blinked, smile fading as she saw the look on my face. “So did I. I’m about to ask all of you to go all-in—put up or shut up, because we’re done treading water.” I was echoing some of what George had said to me, but that was okay. She was a figment of my insanity, and she probably wouldn’t sue me for plagiarism. “Not all of us are going to walk away from this one alive.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Becks actually laughed out loud, the sound echoing through the empty structures around us. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I started working with you people, it’s that no one gets out alive.” She leaned over, kissing me lightly on the cheek and then speed-walking the rest of the way to the door. “No one,” she repeated, and was gone.

I stopped, touching my cheek and staring after her in bewilderment. “What the fuck was that?”

A complication, said George. She sounded amused. Also, a girl thing.

“Right.” I dropped my hand. “Glad to see you’re back where you belong.”

I’m right here. Until the end.

“Great.” I started forward again. “Come on, George. Check this out.”

BOOK III

The Mourning Edition

All I wanted was a little excitement in my life. Was that such a horrible thing to ask?

—REBECCA “BECKS” ATHERTON

I guess in the end, it doesn’t matter what we wanted. What matters is what we chose to do with the things we had.

—GEORGIA MASON

Here’s how it used to work: George told you the unvarnished facts, no matter how nasty they were or how lousy they made you feel, and then I came in to dance like a monkey and make you feel better about this shitty