“The Elm Street entrance.”
Maggie laughed, once, sharply, and was silent.
George continued. “We were supposed to talk about evacuating me after that, but… something went wrong.” She looked down at her soda. “Someone started shooting. I saw two of the orderlies go down. Gregory and Dr. Kimberley and I ran. They shoved me through a quarantine door as it was closing. I managed to get into an empty lab and set some charges. I mostly just wanted to create a distraction so I could try to sneak out in the chaos. Instead… well. That’s where Shaun came in.”
“I see.” Mahir turned, looking toward me. “Well?” he asked.
“You know my vote,” I said.
Becks scowled. “I don’t like this.”
“I didn’t ask if you liked it. It’s a horrible perversion of the laws of nature, we’re doubtless to be struck down by the divine, should the divine ever bestir itself to remember that we’re here. As we’re still periodically having a zombie apocalypse, I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon. Now what’s your answer?”
Becks looked at George. Then she turned and looked at me. “I believe her,” she said finally. “If she’s not Georgia, she thinks she is. It’s better that we keep her close.”
I could have cheered. Instead, I looked toward Maggie, who smiled.
“This is the sort of thing that happens in comic books,” she said. “I’m in.”
“Thank you.” Mahir turned back to George. “It’s good to have you back. Disorienting and terrifying, and you’ll forgive me if I don’t rush to embrace you, but… good. Now, how would you feel about breaking this fucking thing wide open, to see where the pieces fall?”
George finished her first can of Coke and put it aside before opening the second. The carbonation hissed into the silence. Then she spoke: “What else am I supposed to do?”
Shannon—
Danika was just in touch with me. Please provide the nearest safe meet-up point. I am en route to you. We need to talk. The endgame is beginning, and you’re going to need all the assistance you can get if you’re going to make it through this in one piece.
We all are.
—Taken from an e-mail sent by Dr. Joseph Shoji to Dr. Shannon Abbey, August 3, 2041.
They got her out. Kimberley and Lake… they got her out. She’s alive, she’s intact, she’s clinically sane, and she’s
.
Peter still doesn’t know what I’ve done, or what I’m going to do. But history will remember him as a president worthy of the name, and not another in the long line of crooks and monsters to have held the position. He will be known for who he was, and for what he did, and for what he sacrificed. All of them will. If that means history must also remember me as a monster, well…
So be it.
—From the private journal of Vice President Richard Cousins, August 3, 2041. Unpublished.
GEORGIA: Twenty-seven
After some discussion, we—meaning “Maggie and Mahir,” who were the only ones still considered completely rational; the rest of us were treated as compromised, to one degree or another—decided the best course of action was to stay at the Agora long enough to recover, and then head out. Mahir also pointed out that we were better off keeping the van under cover for at least a few hours, in case it had been seen leaving the vicinity of the CDC. So we were staying put. I wasn’t inclined to argue. The last few hours were starting to catch up with me, and I wanted nothing more than a dark corner I could curl up in until the urge to start shaking went away.
After a bit more discussion, Becks reluctantly agreed that I wasn’t likely to go crazy and kill Shaun without setting off the hotel security system, which meant the two of us could do our recovery in the same hotel room. “The Agora takes the safety of its guests very seriously,” Maggie assured her. “There are so few blood tests because the biometric monitoring system is so advanced. If either of them is in medical distress, the guards will be alerted within seconds.”
“Nice place,” I said, approvingly. “I didn’t even know this was here.”
“That’s the point.” Maggie smiled, still looking somewhat uncertain. “Is there anything I can have sent up to the room for you?”
I bit back my first answer, waiting a few seconds to be sure that it was what I wanted to say. Oh, well. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Can I get some clean clothes, a pair of sunglasses, and a bottle of the darkest brown hair color you can find?”
Most of the uncertainty went out of Maggie’s smile. “We can do that,” she agreed. “Shaun? Do you want to show Georgia to your room? I’ll call the front desk and have things sent up.” She gave me a measuring look. “I think the biometrics from the door will give us her size.”
“Thank you,” I said. There wasn’t time to say much more—Shaun was making hasty farewells as he grabbed my hand and started hauling me toward the door. Mahir was still saying good-bye when the door slammed shut behind us, leaving us alone in the hall.
I expected Shaun to say something then. He didn’t. He just kept pulling me along, walking briskly back toward the elevators. I glanced at his face and decided to give it a minute. He’d survived me being dead for over a year. I could survive him being silent for a little while. Still, my feet hurt, and even the soft carpet wasn’t helping all that much. I was relieved when he finally pulled me to a stop in front of a door that looked like every other doorway in the hall.
There was a small green light just above the peephole. It blinked twice when he gripped the door handle. Then the door swung open, revealing a room that looked like the younger sibling of Maggie’s room. I had to blink twice before I realized the dimness wasn’t only because he had the curtains drawn; the overhead lights were set to UV. It was the kind of change that used to be second nature to both of us, making sure the lights in our hotel rooms wouldn’t give me migraines that left me incapable of doing my job.
Shaun let me enter first. He pulled the door closed as he stepped inside and said roughly, “The bathroom’s through there. You can change the lights if you want to. I don’t mind.”
“No. No, this is… this is good.” There were no signs that he’d been in this room before, except for the curtains and the lights. I turned to face him. He was watching me, a deep, anxious hunger in his eyes. “I’m real, Shaun. I’m not going anywhere.”
“What did you give me for my eighth birthday?”
“A black eye, because you said girls couldn’t be Newsies.”
“How did we meet Buffy?”
“Online job fair.”
“Who was your first boyfriend?”
I had to smile at that. “You were. Also my second, and my third, and every other number you can think of. You can keep asking questions as long as you want, Shaun, but I’m only going to get ninety-seven percent of them right. It’s up to you whether that makes me real or not.”
“I missed you.” He raised a hand, touching my cheek so gently that it made my heart hurt. I put my own hand over it, forcing his fingers flat against my skin. He sighed. “You
“No. You shot Georgia Mason.” He winced, but didn’t pull his hand away. I forced myself to keep going. If I didn’t say this now, when we were alone for the first time, I was never going to say it. And I had to say it. “You shot a woman whose DNA profile I share. I have ninety-seven percent of her memories. I remember growing up
