“Ah—sorry.” Dr. Shoji produced a small remote from his pocket and pressed a button.
The “fasten seat belts” sign turned off, and the voice of the autopilot said, “We have finished external decontamination. Please rise and collect all personal belongings. An EIS representative will be waiting on the jet bridge to confirm your current medical condition and offer any assistance that may be required. Once again, thank you for flying with EIS Air. We appreciate that you have many choices in government-owned health services, and would like you to know that the EIS has always been dedicated to the preservation of the public health, above and beyond all other goals.”
“Wow. Even the private planes have to say that shit,” said Shaun.
Alaric stood, snagging his laptop bag from the overhead compartment as he asked, “By ‘offer any assistance,’ do they mean bandages or bullets?”
“I don’t know.” I stood, stretching, before retrieving my jacket from the overhead bin. I shrugged it on, checking to be sure my holster was covered. I probably wasn’t legally allowed to carry a concealed weapon—my field license almost certainly expired after I died—but I wasn’t going to tell unless someone asked me. “It probably depends on your test results.”
“You are a ray of sunshine and I don’t know how we got by without you,” said Becks.
I nodded sympathetically. “I’m sure it was hard. But it’s all right. I’m here now.” Inwardly, I was ecstatic. She was acknowledging me in the present tense. She was admitting that, real Georgia or not, I was the one they had. And it felt wonderful.
“If you’re done squabbling with each other, please follow me,” said Dr. Shoji. He walked back to the plane door, where he opened the control panel next to the lock and pressed a button. There was a hiss as the hydraulics released, and the door slid open, revealing an airlock. I closed my eyes, shuddering.
We were going into an EIS facility. An endless succession of white halls and people dressed in medical attire rose behind my eyes. I pushed them aside. It wasn’t like I had a choice. If I wanted to develop fun new phobias, however justified, I was going to deal with them. However I had to.
Shaun’s hand was a welcome weight on my shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “It’s cool.”
I opened my eyes and forced a smile, glad that my sunglasses kept him from seeing my eyes. He knew how scared I was if anyone did—I was still enough of the woman I’d been programmed to be to react in ways he recognized—but that didn’t mean I needed to shove it in his face. “Cool,” I echoed, and followed him into the airlock.
I was expecting to find men in cleanroom suits waiting for us with blood tests in one hand and guns in the other, ready to shoot if our results were anything other than perfect. It was a little odd that the EIS had a manned jet bridge, rather than using one of the safer, more convenient automated systems, but it was possible they hadn’t wanted to attract the attention a major renovation would draw. They were trying to keep the CDC from taking them seriously, and being the kind of small, unassuming organization that still needs to process incoming passengers by hand would help with that.
I wasn’t expecting to find a smiling woman with ice-blonde hair loose around her shoulders, wearing a lab coat over a blue tank top and jeans. She smiled when she saw us, the expression lighting up her face in a way that would have seemed impossible when I thought her name was Dr. Shaw and she was dancing to the CDC’s tune.
“Hello, Georgia,” said Dr. Kimberley. She looked to the rest of the group, assessing them each in turn. “Who are your friends?”
“Dr. Kimberley.” I had the sudden urge to hug her—another point of deviation, as my memories were quick to inform me. I stiffened instead, rejecting the alien urge. “You made it out of the building.”
“I did, barely; we were able to delay the cleansing sequence long enough to get into one of the incinerator shafts, and climb from there to the roof,” she said. “Gregory is safe as well. We’re both hopelessly compromised, but we’ll find a way around that. We always do.”
“Such is the life of the epidemiological spy,” I said. I half turned to the others, gesturing to each in turn as I said, “Rebecca Atherton, Shaun Mason, and Alaric Kwong. The staff of After the End Times. This is Dr. Danika Kimberley. She saved my life.”
“I’d say she was exaggerating, but she’s not,” said Dr. Kimberley. She looked toward Dr. Shoji, who was hanging back, waiting for us to finish. “Were there any issues?”