Blackout

Nine

Gregory motioned for silence as we left my room. I nodded, for once grateful for my lack of shoes. My socks didn’t squeak against the tile. Somehow, he managed to walk so that his shoes didn’t make any noise, and we passed through the darkened CDC building like ghosts.

The door at the end of the hall was open, the light above it glowing a steady amber. Alarm lanced through me. Green lights mean there’s no danger; red lights mean the danger is near. Amber lights mean something has gone wrong.

Gregory’s hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me before I could do more than stiffen. “It’s part of our window,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Come on. We’re almost there.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, taking his words as license to break my own silence. He led me through the door and into another hall, one I’d seen only in passing, when they were taking me from one lab to another.

“Someplace they’d rather you didn’t see,” he said. He didn’t need to tell me who “they” were. “They” were the people who’d brought me back from the dead, and who gave Dr. Thomas his marching orders. “They” were the people behind all of this.

“So it’s something that’s going to cause me some of that stress they’re so interested in minimizing,” I guessed, more for the comfort of speaking than out of any serious desire to have my thoughts validated.

“You could say that,” Gregory said. We reached a corner. He raised a hand, signaling me to stop, and stepped around it alone. “We’re clear. Come on.”

I came.

We walked to another door with an amber light above it. This one led to a hall I hadn’t seen before. It was less pristine than the others. There were whiteboards on the walls, scribbled with notes about cafeteria menus and security sweeps. There were even a few flyers taped up, advertising cars for sale or asking if anyone knew a good tutoring service for high school biochemistry. It looked so much more real than the place I’d been since I woke up, so much more human, that it almost made my chest hurt. The world still existed. I’d died and come back, and the whole time I was gone, the world continued.

Gregory started walking faster, saying, “We’re almost there. We allowed six minutes transit each way, which gives us fifteen minutes at our destination. I’m going to need you calm at the end of that time. I can’t drag you down these halls if you’re not working with me.”

“Meaning what?” I asked, trying to sound like my stomach wasn’t balling itself into a small, hard knot of fear.

“Meaning that if you lose it, I’ll leave you.” The words were kindly spoken—he wasn’t trying to be cruel, just stating a fact. If I couldn’t control myself, he’d leave me. The other half of that statement didn’t need to be spoken: The EIS couldn’t afford to have his cover blown because I couldn’t keep myself calm. If he left me, he probably wouldn’t be leaving me alive.

“I understand.”

“Good,” he said. He stopped at a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, producing a thumb drive from his pocket. He plugged it into the side of the blood testing unit. The unit beeped twice, and the light above the door went out. Gregory put his hand on the doorknob, but didn’t turn it. Instead, he looked at me gravely and asked, “Are you ready?”

“No,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve never been ready for anything that had to be prefaced with that question. Now open the door.”

A small smile crossed his lips. “That’s the answer I wanted to hear,” he said, and opened the door, revealing a darkened lab. A dim blue glow filled the back third of the room. I looked back at Gregory, raising my eyebrows. “It’s okay,” he said. “Go on.”

“There’s an invitation to die for,” I said, and stepped across the threshold. The overhead lights clicked on immediately, starting low and climbing to a normal level of illumination. I appreciated that small courtesy. I may not be as photosensitive as I used to be, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy being blinded.

Gregory stepped in behind me, closing the door. “Here we are,” he said.

“Where is ‘here,’ exactly?” I asked, squinting as I looked around the room. It looked like it had been cast on the same mold as all the other CDC labs I’d visited, with undecorated walls, stain-proof linoleum floors, and lots of equipment I didn’t recognize. My heart leapt a little at the one thing I did recognize: a computer terminal.

Gregory followed my gaze and grimaced, looking genuinely sorry as he said, “I can’t let you get on the Internet from here, Georgia. It’s not safe.”

“But—”

“That’s not why we’re here.” He nodded toward the back of the room. The blue glow was less evident now that the lights were on, but it was still there.

“Right,” I muttered, and turned to look in that direction. From where I was, it looked like a fish tank filled with luminescent blue liquid. I frowned and started toward it, trying to figure out what it was, and why it was important enough for Gregory to risk both our lives by bringing me here.

I think, on some level, that I knew what it was even before I saw it; I just had to put off understanding for as long as possible if I wanted to be able to handle what I was about to see. But maybe that’s hindsight, me trying to justify things to myself. I don’t really know. What I do know is this:

The blue liquid wasn’t fully opaque; it just looked that way from a distance. It cleared as I approached, and by the time I reached the tank, I could see the outline of a human figure through the blue. I squinted, but couldn’t make out any real details beyond the fact that it was female, and surrounded by a forest of tangled cords.

Gregory stepped up behind me and leaned to my left, pressing a button at the top of a control panel I hadn’t noticed until then. The glow brightened, and the liquid began turning transparent, small lines of bubbles marking the spots where filters were cleansing some element out of the mix. In only a few seconds, I could see the figure floating in the tank.

She was naked, in her mid-twenties, and curled in a loose fetal position, like she had never needed to support her own limbs or head. Her hair was dark brown and badly needed to be cut. It was long enough that the movement of the liquid around her made it eddy slowly, wrapping around her neck and arms. Sensors were connected to her arms and legs, running up to join with the main cable. Her mouth and nose were exposed—she was breathing the liquid; I could see her chest rise and fall—and a thicker tube was connected at her belly button, presumably providing her with oxygen and nutrients. I stared at her, watching the way her fingers twitched and her eyes moved behind the thin shields of her eyelids.

Gregory waited, watching me watch her. The room seemed to be holding its breath, both of us waiting to see what I would do, whether I would be able to look at what was in front of me without snapping. For a moment, I didn’t know the answer.

The moment passed. I took a shaky breath, followed it with another, and asked, “How many of us are there?”

“At the moment, three.” Gregory turned his attention to the tank where another Georgia Mason floated. Her hair had never been bleached, and was still the dark brown that mine was supposed to be. I felt a brief flare of jealousy. She looked more like me than I did. “This is subject number 8c. It’s the last member of the subject group following yours.”

“Wait—subject group?” I turned my back on the tank, unsure of my ability to keep my cool while I watched my own silent doppelganger floating in the blue. “What does that mean?”

“Your designation is ‘subject 7c.’ Subject 7a didn’t mature properly; 7b went into spontaneous amplification during the revivification process.” He gestured at the tank. “Subject 8a was shut down due to issues with spinal maturation at about this stage.”

“And 8b?” He wasn’t using names for any of the other subjects, I noticed—he wasn’t even giving them genders. They were just things to him, at least until the moment they woke up and turned into people. That was actually reassuring, because he treated me like a person. I wasn’t the same as them.

I wasn’t.

“Subject 8b is part of why we’re here. Subject 8c is just the backup, in case something goes wrong.” Gregory