The light in the room was dimmer when I finally opened my eyes. George was gone, but that didn’t matter; she’d be back, and soon. She always came back.
I went to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, and then began the final preparations to depart. I was loading my pockets with clips when a speaker hidden somewhere in the room chimed, and the voice of the Agora said, “Mr. Mason, I apologize for the interruption, but Mr. Gowda has been trying to reach you for the past fifteen minutes. I didn’t want to wake you. Will you accept the call?”
“If I don’t, he’ll probably wind up coming down here to yell at me,” I said, still working. “Hell, I’m surprised he hasn’t already. I’ll take it.”
“Thank you.” The Agora went silent, followed by another chime.
“Shaun?” It was Mahir this time, sounding worried. Business as usual, in other words.
“Hey, Mahir. What’s up? Aren’t you like, three doors down? This takes ‘lazy’ to a new level, don’t you think? Then again, I just spent the whole day asleep, so who am I to talk?” I couldn’t fit any more clips in my pockets. That was a bummer. I picked up my tablet, clipping it to my belt. There was one nice thing about this particular suicide mission: We’d downloaded floor plans for all the major CDC installations as part of our research weeks ago, right before we followed Kelly into the Memphis office and got her killed. Seattle was a major enough office that we had pretty good blueprints. It didn’t show any secret tunnels, but it had the public areas. At least we wouldn’t be lost while we were rushing off to our deaths.
There was a time when that thought would have made me uneasy, rather than reassuring me. It’s amazing what has become comforting since the start of the Ryman campaign.
“Alaric tried to get in touch with me.”
My head snapped up. No one respects radio silence like a Newsie. It’s practically one of their sacred creeds, right alongside “protecting your sources” and “off the record.” “Did he say why?”
“No, and that’s why I’m concerned. The message he left was basically ‘you know this matters, or I wouldn’t be doing it,’ over and over. I already tried dialing one of his burn phones.”
“And?”
“There’s no response. I’ve left a message and sent an e-mail to one of Dr. Abbey’s encrypted addresses, but—”
“Do you want to stay here and keep trying to reach him while Becks and I go to the CDC?”
“What? No.” Mahir actually sounded offended. “I didn’t come this far to be left sitting on the stands when things are finally getting interesting. I do intend to return to my career once I’m no longer a wanted fugitive, and the more I can learn, the better my prospects will be.”
“You’re a natural-born snoop, Mahir,” I said, and picked up my pack. “You ready to blow this taco stand?”
“Have you ever even seen a taco stand?”
“Sure. There was one right next to campus. Are you ready to go, Mahir?”
He sighed, attempts at levity dismissed in an instant. “Yes. Much as I’m afraid of what’s to come, I rather do believe I am.”
“Good. Meet me in the hall.”
“Shall do.” There was no dial tone, but something about shape of the silence filling the room told me that he’d hung up. I slung my pack over my shoulder and turned to head for the door. I didn’t look back. There was nothing there to see.
Becks’s room was between Mahir’s and mine. I had barely finished knocking when her door swung open. “Yes, Mason?” she asked.
“You ready to go?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be. I’ve been waiting on you.” She was dressed almost exactly like I was: a charcoal-gray T-shirt, camouflage pants, combat boots, and way too many weapons to be on her way to a tea party. Her hair was slicked back in a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. This wasn’t an expedition intended to be filmed and sold by the download. This was serious work.
She raised an eyebrow at my assessing look.
“Something wrong?”
“No. Just thinking how much it sucks that we can’t post any of this.”
Her grin was sudden, the flash of white teeth there and gone almost before it had fully registered. “Someday this story is going to make us legends.”
“Only if it doesn’t make us dead,” I shot back, and then winced, waiting for Georgia to say something. She didn’t. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or not.
Becks looked at me with concern. She’d clearly seen the wince, and was waiting to see what it was going to mean. “Boss?”
“I’m good. Come on.” I turned to head for the elevator, waving for her to follow me. With barely a moment of hesitation, she did.
Mahir met us in the elevator lobby. “Are we ready?” he asked.
“That is a question for the sages, not for us, Mahir,” I said. “But we’re going either way, so what the fuck does it matter, right?”
He took that answer in stride. None of us said anything as we got into the elevator and rode down to the lobby. The concierge smiled at us politely, like journalists stormed through his hotel every day. I waved, and we walked on, to the van.
I had unlocked the doors and was about to get inside when Becks caught my elbow, saying urgently, “The jammer.”
“… shit.” If the Masons could use that thing to track us—still unproven, but still likely—then so could other people. The Monkey’s people had known we had it. That made it a liability if we were going somewhere sensitive, like, say, the CDC. “Got a hammer?”
“I’ve got a better idea.” She picked up the jammer, dropping her backpack on the passenger seat, and turned to walk back toward the hotel.
I blinked. “Mahir? You want to logic that one out for me?”
“The concierge is supposed to be the hotel’s private on-call miracle worker,” said Mahir, hoisting himself into one of the rear seats. “Presumably, she’s gone to ask him if he has access to an industrial-grade furnace of some sort.”
“Rich people are weird,” I said, and got into the van.
Becks returned about five minutes later, looking smugly pleased. She hopped into her seat, pushing her backpack to the floor, and slammed the door before announcing, “The staff of the Agora is more than happy to dismantle any unwanted professional equipment we may have, and can promise the utmost discretion in the destruction of the individual components.”
“Is there anything money can’t buy?” I asked.
Immortality, said George.
I grimaced and started the van.
The Seattle branch of the CDC wasn’t technically in Seattle at all; it was across the lake, in Redmond. The facility was located on part of what used to be the main Microsoft campus, before the Rising demonstrated every possible flaw in their architecture. The CDC bought the site when the rebuilding of the area was getting underway; it was viewed as a major coup, since at the time, having a CDC installation nearby was seen almost as a magical talisman against further infection. That hasn’t changed much in the last twenty years. People would rather live near the CDC than in areas with good schools or excellent hospitals. The CDC will keep the zombies away.
I chuckled as I drove, largely because laughter stood a chance of keeping me from screaming. Becks kept herself busy cleaning and double-checking her guns, while Mahir monitored the GPS. The only conversation consisted of directions, given quietly and with calm efficiency, like we were going to be graded on how fast we got there. The Cat’s instructions included the location of a secure parking garage formerly connected to a grocery store. The store was long gone, but the garage remained, free-standing and abandoned. With the CDC so close, regular patrols checked the area for signs of zombie infestation. We’d be safe there, as long as the roof didn’t collapse on us.