Mira Grant - Deadline

“Dr. Abbey?” I asked. She looked toward me, expression that of a teacher who wanted to encourage a favorite student to come up with the right answer before the final bell. “What do the reservoir conditions really do? Do you know?”

“Of course I do.” She smiled, setting her drink aside as she stood. “Come on. I think it’s time I took you for a tour of the lab. You need to understand what we’re doing here.”

“I’ve always liked a good perversion of science,” said Becks. At least one of us was remembering to keep things light. “Let’s take the tour.”

Yes, said George, sounding oddly subdued. Let’s.

Kelly didn’t say anything. Maybe that was for the best.

We left ourdrinks behind and followed Dr. Abbey from her cramped cubicle to the main floor of the lab. Joe padded along at the rear of the group, claws making an unnerving clacking sound against the bare linoleum. It was impossible to forget that he was there, or that he was—all protests aside—more than large enough to undergo full amplification. He could kill us all before anyone had a chance to reach for a weapon.

But he won’t, said George, picking up on the thought. I don’t think Dr. Abbey’s quite that crazy.

“Says the one with the least to lose,” I muttered.

Dr. Abbey looked back at me, brows raised. “What was that?”

I offered her a sunny smile. “Just talking to my dead sister. She lives inside my head now. She says you’re not crazy enough to let your dog go zombie and eat us all.”

“She’s right,” Dr. Abbey agreed, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that I was talking about carrying on conversations with a dead person. It was weirdly jarring. “Even if Joe could amplify—which he can’t, after all the work we’ve done—I wouldn’t let him do it outside a sealed room. There’s too much here that he could damage.”

“Like these?” Alaric stopped, frowning at a tank that contained about a dozen things that looked like guinea pigs with too many legs. Becks followed his gaze and let out a shriek, jumping backward.

“Goliath tarantulas,” said Dr. Abbey. “Average weight of the specimens in that tank is between four and six ounces. It’s taken generations to breed them up that large.”

“Why would you want to?” demanded Becks. “They’re horrible.”

“They’re infected,” said Dr. Abbey. We all turned to stare at her. She continued blithely, “The biggest female has amplified twice so far. Once she got sick enough that she started displaying stalking behavior and infected three other spiders before she could be contained. One of them didn’t recover. A pity. He was from a very encouraging line. Come on, there’s a lot to see.” She resumed walking, obviously trusting us to follow her.

“Spiders can’t amplify,” said Kelly, sounding uncertain.

“Keep telling yourself that,” said Dr. Abbey, and kept walking.

The rest of us hurried to catch up, with Joe once again lingering long enough to bring up the rear. I found myself wondering what would happen if one of us tried to split the party, the way they always seemed to do in the horror movies Maggie and Dave liked so much. Given the size of Joe’s head, and the number of teeth it contained, I wasn’t in any real hurry to find out. Let Becks take the suicidal risks. She was the group’s remaining Irwin, after all.

Dr. Abbey waited for us at the head of a narrow alley that smelled of salt water and damp. “I was starting to think I needed to send search parties,” she said, and ducked between the racked-up tanks, starting into the darkness.

“I don’t like this,” said Alaric.

“Too late now,” I replied, and followed her.

The source of the smell quickly became apparent: The tanks making up the sides of the alley were filled with salt water and contained a variety of brightly colored corals and plastic structures. I paused to peer closer and recoiled as a thick, fleshy tentacle slapped the glass from the inside. Dr. Abbey snickered.

“Careful,” she said. “They get bored sometimes. They like to mess around with people’s heads when they’re bored.”

“They who?” I asked, pressing a hand against my chest as I waited for my heart to stop thudding quite so hard against my ribs. There was a distinct heaviness in my bladder, telling me that I needed to find a bathroom before I lined myself up for too many more exciting surprises. “What the fuck is that thing?”

“Pacific octopus.” Dr. Abbey tapped the offending tank. The tentacle responded by slapping the glass again, before it was joined by two more near-identical appendages, and a large octopus slithered out from a crack between two pieces of coral. “We do a lot of work with cephalopods. They’re good subjects, as long as you can keep them from getting bored enough to slither out of their tanks and go around wreaking havoc.”

I glanced to Becks. “Isn’t this the part where you should run screaming?”

“Nah,” she said. “I’ve got no problem with octopuses. It’s bugs and spiders that I don’t like. Octopuses are cute, in their own ‘nature did a lot of drugs’ sort of way.”

“Girls are fucking weird,” I said.

You should know, George replied.

I smirked and leaned in for a closer look at the octopus. It settled against the glass, watching us with its round, alien eyes. “That is a freaky-looking thing,” I said. “What’s it for?”

“Barney here is for testing some of the new KA strains we’ve been developing,” said Dr. Abbey, removing the cover from the tank. The octopus promptly switched its focus to the surface of the water. She stuck in a hand, and it reached up with two tentacles, twining them firmly around her wrist. “We haven’t been able to infect him yet, although he’s shown some fascinating antibody responses. If we can just figure out what’s blocking infection in the cephalopod family, we’ll be able to learn a lot more about the structure of the virus.”

“Wait, you mean you’re actually trying to develop new strains of the virus?” Kelly looked at her with wide, baffled eyes, like this was the last thing she could imagine anyone wanting to do.

Dr. Abbey took her attention away from the octopus—which was now trying to pull her arm all the way into the tank—as she frowned at Kelly. “What did you think we were doing here? Growing hydroponic tomatoes and talking about how nice it’ll be when the CDC finally decides to get around to saving us all?” She began untangling her hand from the octopus’s grasp, not appearing to take her attention off Kelly. “Please. Are you really going to stand there questioning my medical ethics while you tell me you people haven’t been working with the structuthe cephalthe virus at all?”

Kelly bit her lip and looked away.

“Thought not.” Dr. Abbey pulled her hand out of the tank and replaced the lid. The octopus settled back at the bottom in a swirl of overlapping arms, appearing to sulk. “If you’ll all walk this way, I think we’re about ready to conclude our little tour. You should have all the information you need by this point.” She turned and strode down the alley, shoulders stiff.

“Think we should follow?” asked Alaric, sotto voce.

“I’m not sure Joe here is going to give us a choice.” I glanced at the mastiff. He was sitting calmly behind our little group, blocking the only other exit from the narrow row between the tunnels. “Besides, we’ve come this far. Don’t you want to find out what the big secret the Wizard has to share with us is?”

“Maybe she’s planning to give you a brain,” deadpanned Becks.

“If she does, I hope that means you’re getting a heart,” I replied, and started walking.