Yeah. That was my thought, too.
The bad thing about Kellis-Amberlee, as a virus, is that it goes after all mammals. From the smallest field mouse to the largest blue whale (assuming there are any blue whales left down there), if it’s a mammal, it’s a carrier. That means that any cure we devise will also have to work for all mammals, because otherwise there’s always the chance that Kellis-Amberlee can mutate and come back for another try. Viruses are tricky that way. At least we’re used to dealing with this form of the disease. I’m not sure how quickly we’d adjust if it somehow changed the rules.
—From The Kwong Way of Things, the blog of Alaric Kwong, April 12, 2041
Ten
The outside air slapped me hard across the face as the door to Dr. Abbey’s lab clanged shut behind me. I stumbled to a stop, realizing two things at the same time—first, that I was alone in the middle of a mostly abandoned industrial park, and second, that while I had my standard field arms, I wasn’t wearing any armor beyond my basic motorcycle gear. It was like a recipe for suicide, and while it might have been acceptable when I was too out of it to realize what I was doing, that moment had passed. I let my gaze flick wildly around my surroundings, looking for signs of movement. I didn’t find any. What I did find was the van, sitting like an island of serenity among the ruins.
I took another step forward, barely aware that I was going to do it until it was already done. The van. That’s where I was going when I ran away. To the van, where George and I saved each other’s lives a thousand times… where I pulled the trigger and killed the woman who was my sister, my best friend, and my only real family, all with a single bullet.
She would have gotten better, whispered Kelly’s voice, in the black space behind my eyes where only George was supposed to speak. The world blanked out again.
The sound of the van door slamming forced me back into my surroundings for the second time. My index finger was slightly numb, with the deep, subcutaneous ache that meant I’d taken—and passed—a blood test to open the doors. No amplification for me. Not yet, anyway. I looked dully around the van’s interior, eyes flicking toward the ceiling in an automatic check for the Rorschach test that was formed by George’s blood immediately after I pulled the trigger. For a moment, I could see it, streaks of red trending into a dozen shades of brown as it dried. Then I blinked, and the blood was gone, replaced by pristine white paneling.
“Breathe, Shaun,” said George. Her voice came from behind me, rather than from inside my head. It was calm, soothing, even slightly amused; she was just talking me down from a panic attack. Nothing important, all part of a day’s work. I’ve never been terribly prone to that kind of episode, but when you spend your days playing with dead things, one or two flip-outs are bound to come with the territory. “You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm.”
“Didnt you hear her?” I demanded, clenching my hands into fists. The urge to look toward the sound of her voice was nigh irresistible. I kept looking at the ceiling instead, waiting for the blood to repeat its flickering appearance. “You would have gotten better.”
“Says her,” George said. The amusement vanished, replaced by the barely chained irritation that was practically her trademark. “The test results were locked in—the CDC knew I was dead. If you’d walked away, something would have happened, and you know it. Worst-case scenario, you would have been treated to the delightful sight of men in hazmat suits dragging me into the open while I screamed for them to take another test. My last post might not have gone out. The truth might not have gone out.” She paused before delivering what I was sure was meant to be the killing blow: “Tate might have walked away clean.”
“You don’t know,” I said. “We could have claimed there was something wrong with the test. It’s happened before.”
“How often?”
I didn’t answer her.
George sighed. “Three times, Shaun. With a top-of-the-line test, three times. In all three cases, there was proof of mechanical failure—and in two of the cases, the people were killed anyway. Their families won their suits on the basis of secondary testing units. We both know what a secondary test would have shown in my case. There’s no point in pretending that we don’t.”
That was too much. The blood flickered back into visibility a second before I spun around, feeling my fingernails cutting into my palms as I shouted, “For fuck’s sake, Georgia, there was a chance!” The empty chair would fix it. I’d see the empty chair, and she’d go back to being a voice in my head, just a voice in my head, because she was dead, I killed her. I just had to see the empty chair.