Mira Grant - Deadline

There was always the possibility that time had already run out. If Kelly’s original fake ID was compromised, they might have tracked her across the country with it. That didn’t explain why they waited for her to reach us before going on the offensive, but maybe she just hadn’t held still long enough before that. They wouldn’t be tracking her that way again. Her fake ID was so much slag in the remains of Oakland, and nobody outside the team knew she was alive.

Now we just had to keep it that way.

The outbreak could have been triggered in response to my call to Dr. Wynne, but that didn’t sm likely. The timelines didn’t synch. That level of outbreak would take time to set up. Even if it had started the second my call was connected to the CDC, there wasn’t time for all those people to amplify and get into position. Whoever targeted us—assuming it was a “who,” which had to be my operating assumption, at least until something came along to make a strong case for coincidence—had more time than my phone call gave them.

I lifted my head, groaning again, and stood. One of the bulldogs had turned my discarded shirt into a makeshift doggy bed, probably as revenge for my taking up the entire couch. It opened one eye to watch me as I approached, and made a small “ buff ” noise that might have been intimidating, if it hadn’t been roughly the size of an overweight housecat. “Whatever, dude,” I said, putting up my hands. “I wasn’t that cold anyway.”

Alaric, Becks, and Kelly were gathered around the kitchen table when I came shuffling in, making a half-hearted attempt to push my spiked-up hair back into a semblance of order. All three looked over at my entrance. Becks raised her eyebrows.

“You’re looking bright and shirtless this morning,” she said, dryly. “Did you decide that clothes were for sissies?”

“Dog took my shirt,” I replied. “Where’s Maggie? Is there coffee? If Maggie’s hiding because she drank all the coffee, it’s not going to be pretty.”

“Ms. Garcia is, um, out back, in the garden,” said Kelly. She gestured toward the back door as she spoke, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Understandable. She’d probably never been in a private residence open to the scary, scary outside world before. Sometimes I think George was right when she said that people want to be afraid.

“Coffee’s on the stove,” said Alaric, before adding quickly, “Do we have a plan, or are we just going to sit around here drinking coffee and waiting to see what happens next?”

“That depends on the Doc.” I walked over to the stove. A half-full pot of coffee was on the central heating plate. “We know what happened yesterday wasn’t just bad timing. So I guess the question is, Doc, were they after us, or were they after you?”

Silence fell behind me. I took a mug from the rack and poured myself a cup of coffee, taking a slow, patient sip as I waited for someone to say something. The liquid was almost hot enough to be scalding, and it tasted like it had been brewed just this side of Heaven. I’ll drink Coke for George all day if I have to, but there’s nothing like that first cup of coffee to get the morning started.

Finally, in a small voice, Kelly said, “Dr. Wynne thought we were managing to get me out before our plan could be compromised. With most of my team dead, it’s not like there were that many people who knew about the clone, or what we were going to do with it. It should have been a clean escape. He did say… When I left, he said you were probably in danger anyway, because of…” She stopped. A lot of people have trouble talking about what happened to George when I’m in the room. I can’t decide whether it’s because they don’t want to remind me that I was the one to pull the trigger, or if it’s because they can’t deal with the fact that she’s still with me. Maybe they just don’t feel like getting punched in the face.

The why doesn’t matter much to me. The end result is the same: George stays dead, and no one talks about it.

“You knew we were in danger before you reached us?” I recognized the warning in the tone Becks was using. She started as a Newsie, and she processes facts a little faster than most Irwins. That gives her the ability to sound very reasonable, and the more reasonable she sounds, the more danger you’re in. “And you didn’t say anything?”

“There will be no killing the Doc,” I said, walking over to the settle at the table. “She’s just as screwed as we are, so play nicely, okay? This isn’t her fault.”

Kelly nodded firmly, looking more frustrated than anything else. “I tried to say something. I was e-mailing you for three weeks before we hit the point where I couldn’t hang around in Memphis anymore.”

The spam filters, said George quietly.

I winced.

“A secure phone line would have been noticed in a facility as locked down as the CDC,” Kelly continued. “When Dr. Wynne evacuated me, I wound up drugged and stuffed into the back of a truck that was hauling dry goods to California. I barely had a pulse for a few thousand miles. I definitely wasn’t in any condition to make phone calls.”

“You could still have opened the conversation with the fact that we might want to evacuate,” said Becks.

“Would you have listened?” asked Kelly.

Becks looked away.

Kelly sighed. “I thought not. Look: I had no way of knowing things would get that bad, that fast. The world doesn’t work like that in the lab. Things go slower there.” She took a shaky breath, calming herself. “Our research team was down to three when we realized none of us were safe. We had to get someone out alive if we wanted to preserve our results. Dr. O’Shea wasn’t willing to take the risk, and Dr. Li had a family. It had to be me. So I went to Dr. Wynne.”

“And he had you cloned,” I deadpanned. “Naturally. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I had to seem to die—it was the only way that I’d have a chance at getting away with our results. Dr. O’Shea was working on a nerve study that required full-body subjects. She set up the clone. It was supposed to be her DNA.”

“Swap-off happened at the techie level?” asked Alaric, suddenly paying attention. He always paid attention when something started smelling like a story.

“Yes,” said Kelly. “One intern handed the sample to another intern, who handed it to a lab tech when Dr. Wynne asked him to run an errand instead, and by that point, it was easy enough to get the sample from the incubator and swap in one of my own samples instead.”

Ask her why the source DNA matters, prompted George.

“Right,” I muttered, before saying, in a more conversationalone, “Why does the source DNA matter? I thought the CDC was exempt from the prohibition against cloning.”

“Clones are illegal for moral reasons. The CDC’s dispensation allows researchers to do full-body cloning for research purposes, and the moral questions are skirted by permitting only self-cloning,” said Kelly. “That way the question of the clone having a soul can be politely ignored, and the religious community doesn’t feel the need to shut us down.”

“Because presumably there’s just one soul per genetic pattern, and the original donor holds the copyright?” I asked. Kelly nodded. I snorted. “That’s a fun piece of bureaucratic jump rope if I’ve ever seen one. So fine, they think they cloned this other lady, and they actually cloned you. What’s going to keep somebody from doing the math when they crack the factory seal on her and there’s nothing there?”

“Dr. O’Shea died two weeks ago. There was an error in her car’s electrical system and she lost control on the freeway.” Kelly looked at me, lips drawing back in a smile that looked more like a rictus. “It was very sad. Our superiors were quick to offer their regrets and let us know that if we wanted to shut down the program, they’d support our moving on to other research projects. An immediate destruction notice was issued on her clone, since the original was deceased. It was officially destroyed four days before my ‘death.’ ” She hesitated before adding, much more softly, “Dr. Li was killed in a lab accident the day after that.”