Blackout (41 page)

“I know.” I dropped my hand back to my side. “I’m the show model, to prove that they can make a realistic copy of a person. I wasn’t supposed to get out. The clone they were planning to send to you was surgically altered to look like she had retinal KA.”

“The clone they
were
planning?” asked Mahir.

I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. “She was in the lab where I planted the initial explosives. You wouldn’t have wanted her anyway. She was programmed to betray you.”

“And you weren’t?” demanded Becks.

“If I have been, I don’t know about it,” I said.

“This is impossible,” said Mahir.

“This is insane,” said Becks.

“This wasn’t my idea,” I countered.

Shaun cleared his throat. “This is starting to make my head hurt, and that’s probably not a good sign. Does somebody want to explain to me exactly how the CDC managed to bring George back from the dead?”

“They didn’t,” said Becks. “This woman is
not
Georgia.”

“Yes, I am,” I protested. “I know it’s unbelievable, but it’s true.”

Mahir frowned. I knew that look. It was the look he got when something presented him with a really interesting problem to solve. “We’ll not come to any conclusive decisions standing out here,” he said. “Miss, if you’ll allow us to search you for weapons—”

“And scan her for tracking devices,” interjected Becks.

“Yes, of course. Search you for weapons and scan you for tracking devices, and if you come up clean, we can
take you back to the hotel where we’re currently quartered and try to sort this out.”

I let out a breath I’d only been half aware of holding. “I have a gun in the pocket on the right-hand side of my lab coat. It’s loaded, but the safety’s on.”

Becks stepped forward, sticking her hand into my pocket with more force than was strictly necessary. She pulled out my gun and stepped back, stowing it in her belt. I felt instantly less clothed. “Got anything else?”

“Not that I’m aware of. If there are tracking devices on me, I don’t know they’re there. They’re probably subcutaneous.” I shook my head. “The EIS would have removed any of those that they found, but that doesn’t mean they found them all.”

Becks sneered. “We’ll just see. You picked the wrong team to try infiltrating, lady, and as soon as we find out who you really are, I’m going to kick the ever-loving crap out of you.”

I smiled slightly, relief fading into a mellower look of generalized exhaustion. “See, that sort of thing, right there, is why I missed you guys so much.” I glanced at Shaun. “Becks is with you, instead of working with the betas now? Good call.”

“Becks is in charge of the Irwins,” he said. Then he frowned. “Shouldn’t you already know that, if they’ve sent you here to infiltrate us?” His tone was turning belligerent. He was starting to get angry. That was bad.

“They didn’t send me, Shaun. I
escaped
,” I said. “The one they wanted you to find would have a better cover story.”

“This is all academic,” said Mahir. “Whether or not she’s really Georgia—”

“She’s not,” said Becks.

“—she’s here, and we’re going to have to contend with her, one way or another.”

“At least we won’t have any issues with the law if we need to shoot her.” Shaun looked at me coldly. “She’s already dead.”

Seeing that look on his face hurt more than almost anything else in the world. “I’m not dead anymore, Shaun. I swear to you, it’s me. Please believe me.”

He suddenly lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders and turning me to fully face him. Becks started to moved toward us. Mahir grabbed her upper arm, stopping her. I barely noticed. I was too busy staring into the eyes of the man in front of me, the eyes I’d been waiting to see since the moment I woke up. They were looking at me with such
anger
. I’d seen that look on his face before, but never directed at me.

“Who are you?” he demanded, voice pitched low. The pain in it hurt almost as much as the anger in his eyes. My poor, poor Shaun…

“I’m Georgia,” I whispered. “I’m not anyone else, and that means that I’m her.”

He looked older, like he’d lived through more than just a year without me. His eyes searched my face, finally settling on my hairline. “Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he asked.

“The doctors responsible for my care didn’t give me the opportunity. I would have, if they’d let me.” I would have given myself retinal Kellis-Amberlee, just so I’d feel less like a stranger in my own skin. I would have done a lot of things.

“Can you prove to me that you are who you say you are?” He didn’t let go of my shoulders. “Is there anything,
anything
you can do that will make me believe in you?”

He wanted to believe; I could see it in his eyes, a deep ache buried under the pain. That was why he couldn’t let himself do it. There’s no such thing as miracles, and when the dead rise, they don’t look in your eyes and say their names. Maybe in some other world, but not this one.

I took a slow breath, casting another glance toward Becks and Mahir. Then I looked back to him and said, “There’s only one thing we never wrote down. You know what it was.”

“Do you?”

“I do, but, Shaun, I don’t know if—”

“Prove it, right now, or I swear to you, I will shoot you myself.”

“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” I said, and leaned in and kissed him. His hands tightened on my shoulders, his whole body stiffening against mine as he realized what I was doing.

And then he started kissing me back.

That was the one thing we never wrote down—the one thing we
couldn’t
write down, because no file or server is ever totally secure, and it would have gotten out. No one would have cared that we weren’t biologically related, or that we’d gone in for genetic testing when we turned sixteen, just to be absolutely sure. No one would have cared that we didn’t trust anyone else enough to let them be there while we slept. No. The media loves a scandal, and we’d been raised as siblings in the public eye. It would have destroyed our ratings, and then the Masons would have destroyed
us
, for blackening the family name.

There were a few people who’d guessed over the years. I’m pretty sure that Buffy knew. But we never,
never
wrote it down.

He squeezed my shoulders so hard it hurt. I didn’t pull away, and after a few seconds, his hands relaxed and he pulled me to him, returning the kiss with a frightening hunger. I grabbed his elbows and pulled him closer still, until it felt like we were pressed so closely together that there was no room for anything to come between us. Not even death. We were home.

I didn’t pull away until my lungs started burning. His hands dropped from my shoulders and he opened his eyes, staring at me. I stared back. Slowly, he reached out with one shaking hand and brushed my bangs away from my forehead.

“Georgia?” he whispered.

I nodded.

“How—?”

Mahir cleared his throat. “Unbelievable as I find all this—and believe me, I
do
find it unbelievable—this is, perhaps, not the best place to go into it. CDC security will find the hole we created sooner or later, and we’ve been standing here long enough that I feel it will be sooner. If everyone agrees, we should remove this reunion to a safer location.”

“I still say we shoot her,” said Becks.

I glanced at her, frowning. “Has she always been this bloodthirsty?”

Shaun kept staring at me. It was like there was nothing else in the world. Somehow, I understood the feeling. “I may have taught her a few things.”

“If we’re going to move, we should move,” said Mahir. There was a core of cold efficiency in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before. “Shaun, you’re unfit to lead the remainder of this mission. Becks, I outrank you. Georgia…” He faltered, realizing what he’d just said. “Miss, whoever you are, you are not currently a part of
our structure. As that makes me the senior staff member here, I hereby command the rest of you to
move
.”

I smiled at him. I couldn’t help it. “Thanks, Mahir. I missed you, too.”

Shaun grabbed my hand, starting to walk. I went with him, only wincing a little as my battered feet hit the ground. Mahir and Becks followed us, Becks never putting her pistol away. I didn’t care. She wasn’t going to shoot me now; not without getting the story of who I was and what I was doing with them. She was a Newsie for too long to throw away a lead like that once the heat of the moment had passed.

We didn’t talk as we made our way across a decrepit parking lot to an even more neglected-looking garage. There was nothing we could say that wouldn’t confuse matters further. Shaun and Becks produced flashlights from their pockets, clicking them on and using them to light the way into the darkness of the parking garage. I stopped when I saw what their beams had illuminated, a grin spreading, unbidden, across my face.

“You still have the van,” I breathed. “I was afraid that after… well, after what happened, that the decontamination would have been too expensive.” And that he wouldn’t have wanted to keep it after he killed me in it.

“I had to replace all the upholstery, but I wasn’t willing to lose the frame,” said Shaun. “We spent too much time there for me to give it up that easily.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. Becks took one look at my face before she snorted, snapped, “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” and went storming over to the van.

“She’s not always like this,” said Shaun.

“I’ve got a feeling she will be for the next few days,” I said, and let him lead me to the van.

All four of us had to submit to a blood test before the locks would disengage. I held my breath until mine came back clean and the doors unlocked. Becks opened the back and pulled out what looked like a modified metal detector wand. “Spread,” she ordered me.

I knew better than to argue with an Irwin who had that look on her face. I pulled away from Shaun, who let go of my hand with obvious reluctance, and assumed the position used by air travelers since the birth of the TSA. She ran the wand along my arms, legs, torso, and back, scowling a little more each time it failed to beep. Then she passed it to Mahir, who repeated the process. I had to admire their thoroughness, even though I knew that a false positive—or worse, an accurate one—would probably result in my getting shot in the head.

Finally, Mahir lowered the wand. “She’s clean,” he said. Becks scowled.

Shaun, on the other hand, grinned like he’d just been told that he was now uncontested king of the entire universe. He tossed Becks the keys. She caught them automatically. “You’re driving,” he informed her. “I’m riding in back with George.”

She muttered something before getting into the driver’s seat. I didn’t need to hear it to know that it wasn’t complimentary. I also didn’t have the energy to worry about it just then. Shaun helped me into the back of the van, where he sat down on the floor, opening his arms to me. I climbed into them willingly, nestling myself as closely against him as anatomy and the space around us would allow, and closed my eyes.

I fell asleep listening to the sound of his heart beating. I have never slept that well in my life, and I may never sleep that well again.

Miss me?

—From
Images May Disturb You
, the blog of Georgia Mason, August 2, 2041. Shared internally only.

Yes.

—From
Adaptive Immunities
, the blog of Shaun Mason, August 2, 2041. Shared internally only.