Deadline

what sort of damage you might have done before I could stop you. Of course, we suspected you might have had some involvement with the outbreak in Portland, but it wasn’t until you tried to repeat the event here that we understood just how far astray you’d gone. Without your sister to shore you up, and without a conspiracy to chase, you simply couldn’t face reality. You started making monsters out of thin air.”

“Why is it you assholes always feel the need to tell the media your evil plans before you kill us?” asked Becks. She sounded totally calm. I have never been more proud of her. “Is it a union requirement or something?”

“I thought you might like the truth before you died. You people are always so fixated on the truth. Like it’s more righteous than a lie, even when the lie protects what the truth would destroy.” His lips quirked in a regretful smile, making him look like the sympathetic figure who once greeted me with the news that I was going to live. I hated him even more for that. “I’m not afraid of being recorded. You can’t transmit from here, and it’s not like you’ll be leaving.”

I forced myself to lower my gun, saying, “How about this. We all put down our guns, you give Kelly back, and we go. Okay? Nobody needs to die. It’s not like we can prove anything’s actually happening here.”

“Oh, but you did prove it, you did—and you exposed some holes we hadn’t even considered patching. You did the work for us, and you’ve brought me everything we’ll need to repair the situation. Half a dozen researchers, a few dozen assistants, and all this goes away for another decade. That should be more than long enough for us to make some real progress on the problem, without sending the world into a panic.” He chuckled. At least he wasn’t backing up anymore; his back was to the counter, Kelly locked against his chest. “You get so hung up on your precious truth that you can’t see the big picture. If this information got out…”

“What? People would know something?” Becks glared. “Your evil plan sucks.”

“Why tailor new strains of the virus?” asked Mahir. “What does it serve?”

“We’ll find one that doesn’t trigger reservoir behavior,” said Dr. Wynne. “Once that’s done, we’ll be in the position to pick the virus apart at our leisure. No more pesky moral issues with shooting the infected. No more unexpected behavior. Once it’s been normalized, once it conforms, we can finally get to work on a virus that does what we want it to do, that follows our orders, not anyone else’s. We’ll save the world the way we want to, in our own time, and we’ll get the proper credit. The reservoir conditions complicate things, and we can’t have that. Still, I’m sorry the strike on Oakland was called in early, Shaun. I really did like you. I’d hoped to spare you this very situation.”

“What makes you think the information won’t get out anyway?” I asked, mildly. “I didn’t bring my whole team here. If we don’t check in, it all goes public.”

“Ah, but by the time it goes public, we’ll have tied you to the outbreak in Portland, and possibly to the attacks on President Ryman’s campaign. You may even be the reason your sister died. You won’t be a hero, Shaun. You won’t even be a martyr. You’ll be the man who killed his sister for ratings, and the world will hate you.” Dr. Wynne smiled beatifically as he let go of Kelly and reached for the counter behind them. She didn’t move. Something about the gun pressed to her temple seemed to be dissuading her. “Nothing that comes out of your little tabloid press will be believed. It’ll just be the final thrashings of a madman.”

You bastard, whispered George.

For once, I was calmer than she was. “You’re an asshole,” I said.

“Yes, but I’m an asshole who’s going to walk away from here alive, which is more than I can say for you,” he replied. He locked his arm aroundagain, pulling her toward the door. “Security is on the way. There’s nothing you can do.”

When he moved his hand, I saw what he’d picked up from the counter: two plain ballpoint pens. “What are you going to do when security gets here?” I asked. “Scribble us to death?”

Kelly’s eyes widened. She didn’t look lost anymore. Now she looked terrified. Even having a gun against her head hadn’t elicited that response. “What?” she whispered.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said Dr. Wynne.

“It’s a pen,” I said.

Appearances can be deceiving, said George.

Kelly looked at me, eyes still wide, and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Then she reached behind herself, fumbling a scalpel from the tray of surgical instruments before driving it into the back of Dr. Wynne’s neck. He bellowed like a wounded bull, gun falling as he clapped his hand over the side of his neck. The hand that held the pens snapped upward, some sort of trigger releasing in one of them. A thin dart whistled through the air past my ear, embedding itself in the wall. Becks fired twice, one shot catching Dr. Wynne in the arm, the other going wild. I brought my own arm back into firing position and shot him squarely in the chest, right in the spot where he’d been aiming the pen at me.

The impact whipped him hard to the side, and Kelly lost her grip on the scalpel, falling back. She slammed into Mahir. Dr. Wynne, still bellowing, raised the pens again, aiming at them. Kelly screamed and shoved Mahir to the side, sending him sprawling as Dr. Wynne’s knees buckled.

Dr. Wynne fell hard to the floor, and Becks immediately shot him twice in the head. That was one body that wouldn’t be getting back up.

Mahir staggered to his feet, careful to avoid touching Dr. Wynne’s blood. “Oh my God—”

“Mahir, are you clean?” I demanded.

He looked down at himself, scanning his clothing. “I—I think so. Nothing seems to have gotten on me.”

“Great. Well, avoid fluid transfer until we can get you to a test unit. A non-CDC unit. Suddenly, I don’t trust anything in this damn building.” I lowered my gun, but didn’t put it away. “Come on, Doc. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, sounding dazed.

My head snapped up.

There was a clear plastic needle embedded in her chest, glittering with a faint, oily sheen. “He shot me,” she said, staring at it. “Dr. Wynne shot me before he fell down. With the pen. Only it’s not a pen—it’s a defense mechanism. You can load them with knock-out darts, or lethal injections, or… all sorts of things.” She swallowed. “All sorts of things.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Becks.

“Right. Because he obviously shot me with a ative or something.” Kelly shook her head, looking actively annoyed. “Don’t be stupid. We don’t have time for this.”

“Fuck, Doc, just come on.”

“No.” She turned and yanked open a drawer, pulling out a test unit. She slammed it down on the counter, popped off the lid, and shoved her hand inside. “I’m so sorry. I swear, I didn’t know. Maybe I should have known, maybe I was being a naive little idiot—I was so busy trying to do what I was supposed to do, and save the world, that I didn’t open my eyes—but I didn’t know.”

“I believe you,” Becks said, softly.

The lights along the top of Kelly’s test unit were turning red, one after the other.

She pulled her hand out when the last light stabilized on red, shooting a challenging glare in our direction. “Now do you believe me? Dr. Wynne shot me, and I’ve gone into amplification. I’m done. It’s over. And I really think it’s time for you to leave.”

I winced. “Fuck. Doc, I’m sorry.” Becks raised her arm, gun up, and pointed at Kelly’s head. From this distance, there was no chance she’d miss.

“So am I.” Kelly pulled the needle free. She held it up for a moment, long enough for the rest of us to see it clearly, and then she dropped it to the floor. It made a faint clinking noise when it hit the tile, before rolling to a stop in a puddle of Dr. Wynne’s blood. “Leave the door open when you go. I’ll stay here and distract security.”

I reached to the side and pushed Becks’s arm slowly down, shaking my head in negation. “Doc, are you sure? Amplification’s not something to fuck around with.”

“I think I know that better than you do.” A thin smile tilted her lips up. That, combined with the ponytail, made her look briefly, heartbreakingly like Buffy. I’d seen the resemblance when Kelly first showed up in Oakland, and now here it was again, at the worst possible time.

I guess they have more in common than we thought, said George.

Kelly shrugged out of her lab coat, letting it fall. The blood on the floor began to soak through the cotton almost instantly, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just kept talking as she bent to pick up Dr. Wynne’s gun. “At my