“I can’t.” There was genuine regret in his tone. This was news, happening right in our company headquarters, and as the head of the Newsies, Mahir had a serious jones for information. That was part of what made him so good at his job. “This is a secure conction, but if I go for a video link, it’ll attract attention, and I’ll have to answer questions.”
“I take it from your tone that this would be a bad idea right about now?”
The lights on Kelly’s unit settled on a firm, unblinking green. She held it up, smiling a little, like she’d known the answer all along. Dave lowered his guns, sliding them back into their holsters. Becks lowered one of hers, hesitated, and lowered the other. I gave her an approving nod. The Masons may not have taught me much about how to treat a guest, but they taught me not to shoot at them unless it was absolutely necessary.
Mahir sighed. “Yes. A very bad idea.”
“I told you not to marry her, Mahir.”
“I’m not having this conversation again.”
“Just saying, you didn’t have to worry about this shit when you lived the happy bachelor life. Look, I need to go—the Doc’s just checked out clean, so it’s probably time to find out what she’s doing here.”
“Call me when you know what’s going on.”
“Got it,” I said, and clicked off.
Kelly lowered her test unit, apparently satisfied that everyone had seen it, and said, “I’m clean. Do you have a biohazard receptacle I can dispose of this in?”
“It’s next to the medical supplies.” I walked toward the kitchen. “I need a Coke. Anybody else need anything before story time commences?”
No one did.
The kitchen gave me just enough privacy to feel comfortable saying quietly, “Can we try to keep the interjections down for a little bit? I don’t want Kelly thinking I’m crazy.” I paused. “Not yet, anyway.”
You have a plan? asked George.
“More making it up as I go along,” I replied, and grabbed my soda before turning to walk back into the living room.
When I got there, Kelly was on the couch, Alaric was sitting on the beanbag he’d tripped over before, and Dave was back at his terminal, watching the scrolling data feed with one eye while remaining half-turned toward the room. Only Becks was still standing, eyeing Kelly like she expected the other woman to spontaneously amplify at any second.
“Aren’t we a cheery bunch?” I grabbed a folding chair from against the wall and set it up in front of the entrance hall. Nobody was getting in or out without going through me, and that wasn’t exactly an easy proposition. Potentially entertaining; not easy.
“I’m cheerier when there isn’t a corpse sitting on the couch,” said Becks, before moving to her computer chair and slowly sitting down.
“Most people are.” I turned to Kelly. “That brings us back to story time. Well, Doc? What’s going on?”
Kelly sighed. It was a soft, exhausted sound, conveying a vast amount of information in a very small amount of time. This was a woman who’d been run to the limits of her endurance before being forced to find reserves she didn’t think she had. Now even those reserves looked about to run out. Maybe the word “corpse” was more accurate than it sounded. I tensed, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Dr. Wynne sends his regards.”
There it was: the other shoe.
Dr. Joseph Wynne was Kelly’s supervisor at the Memphis CDC. He was also the man who answered when George called the CDC for help on the night Buffy died. We knew we’d been set up—it was hard to miss that part, what with people shooting at our tires and everything—but we didn’t realize how thoroughly screwed we were until we talked to the CDC. Somebody else called them before George did. That first caller reported that we’d all gone into amplification, not just Buffy. Since we were outside in a confirmed outbreak by that point, Dr. Wynne would have been legally justified in ordering our immediate executions. He didn’t do it. That meant, in a strange sort of sidelong way, that I owed him.
“Does he?” I asked, as neutrally as I could.
“He sent a data card for you to review.” She picked up her briefcase from the floor next to the couch and popped it open, rummaging for a second before producing a plain white plastic rectangle. I raised an eyebrow. A smile ghosted across Kelly’s face as she offered the card to me. “What, did you think I managed to grow a full-body clone and stage my own death without help?”
“Guess not,” I said. “Alaric, run the card.” He jumped to his feet, snatching the card from her hand and running for his terminal so fast that I almost expected him to leave skid marks on the floor. I snorted with amusement before turning back to Kelly. “Now it’s really story time, Doc.”