“The same.” I took his hand and shook it. Even with all the training I’ve had to desensitize me to the necessity of occasional contact with strangers, the gesture felt wrong. You aren’t supposed to touch people you don’t know. Not unless they’ve just demonstrated their infection status with a successful blood test, and maybe not even then. “This is my colleague, Rebecca Atherton. She works with our action news division.”
“Ah, an Irwin,” said the man, reclaiming his hand and turning to study Rebecca. His gaze started at her face, swept down her body, and returned to her face again, all without a trace of hesitation or shame. “You know, I’ve always liked that term. Irwin, for the late, great Steve Irwin. He died in the field, you know. Just the way he would have wanted to go.”
“No shit, asshole,” muttered Becks.
“Actually, sir, I’m pretty sure the way he would have wanted to go was in his sleep, sometime in his late nineties, but that’s beside the point.” Something about him was putting my hackles up. Maybe it was the way he looked at Becks. Maybe it was his tone, which was slick enough to grease a rusty chainsaw. “I’m guessing you’re Director Swenson.”
“Precisely so. I apologize for making you wait. Next time, please be sure to call ahead. That will allow us to avoid these little delays.”
Yeah, because we’ll never get past security again.
I forced my expression to remain composed as I said, “I’ll keep that in mind. If you don’t mind, though, my colleague and I were in the area and had some questions we wanted to ask you—in person, hence the dropping by. Is there a place where we could talk?”
A flash of discomfort crossed his face, there and gone before I could blink. “Of course,” he said, smoothly. “If you’d both come with me, I believe one of the conference rooms is available. Miss Lassen, as you were.”
The receptionist—Miss Lassen—nodded, looking deeply relieved as Director Swenson turned wenson.”gan retracing his steps, leaving the front lobby behind. She might not have been able to keep us out, but at least we weren’t going to be her problem anymore. Becks and I exchanged a look, shrugged, and followed the director to the back of the lobby, around a corner, and into a nondescript hall that seemed to stretch on for the better part of a mile.
Director Swenson walked past three identical doors before stopping at a fourth and pressing his thumb against a small sensor pad. The light above the door changed from red to green, and the door swung open. “Past this point, you’ll need blood tests as well as someone with the proper clearances to open any doors, including the restrooms,” he said, sounding self-indulgently amused. “I recommend not wandering off unescorted.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I need to pee,” muttered Becks. I gave her a speculative look, which she met with a glare.
Funny, normally you’re the one pissing off the natives, said George.
I bit my lip to keep myself from answering as we followed Director Swenson through the door and into one of the long, featureless white hallways characteristic of CDC installations everywhere. It’s like they’re afraid to spend money on interior decorating when there’s such a good chance of the place needing to be hosed down with bleach at any moment. We didn’t pass any doctors, although we did walk past several large glass “windows” looking in on empty patient rooms. White walls, white beds, white floors—white everything. I woke up in one of those rooms once, after the CDC team picked us up outside of Memphis. I thought I’d died and gone to the sterilized afterlife.
Director Swenson stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like every other door in the place, except for the larger, more elaborate-looking testing unit built into the wall next to it. “The cycle takes approximately fifteen seconds,” he said, pressing his palm flat against the test pad. “Once I go through, the door will close and the unit will reset. Please don’t try to follow without a clean test. I’d really rather not send the entire facility into lockdown today.”
“It’s cool,” I said. “We know how to do our jobs.”
The light over the door turned green and the door swung open with a hydraulic hiss, saving Director Swenson the trouble of answering me. Instead, he raised an eyebrow and stepped through the doorway before the door swung closed again.
“Scale of one to ten, how stupid is this?” asked Becks, pressing her own palm against the testing panel.
Ten, said George.
“Oh, five, tops,” I said, and smiled brightly. “Don’t worry about it. We’re just here to ask the scientists some questions about science. Scientists like that sort of shit.”
“Right,” said Becks dubiously as the light turned green and the door hissed open again. She stepped through.
“Hey, George,” I muttered, flattening my hand against the testing panel. “Check this out.”
This is what I do know: A lie, however well-intended, can’t prepare you for reality or change the world. The accident victim will die whether they’re promised recovery or not, but the parent told that their child is dying may have time to prepare, and may be able to treasure those final days together even more. To tell the truth is to provide armament against a world too full of cruelties to be defeated with simple falsehoods. If these truths mean the world is less comforting than it might have been, it seems like a pretty small price to pay.
It seems to me we owe the world—more, we owe ourselves—the exchange of comfort for the chance that maybe the truth can do what people always say it can. The truth may, given the opportunity, set us free.
—From The Kwong Way of Things, the blog of Alaric Kwong, April 16, 2041
We had another meeting with the senator today. We’re about to head out, and he wants to be sure that we all understand our roles in the campaign. I don’t think he trusts us to have our heads in the game right now, and frankly, neither do I. Shaun is barely talking to anyone, including me, and Buffy simply isn’t talking. I keep running the footage of the attacks so far over and over again, looking for something that we might have missed, looking for some clue to who is responsible for all of this.
When I sent in the application for this position, I thought I was doing us a favor. I thought I was giving us the opportunity to make a name for ourselves, and that we could change the world by telling the truth. I thought I was doing the right thing. But now I watch Shaun punching the walls, and I wake up as tired as I was when I went to bed, and I just wish that I could take it back. I wish I could take it all back. I’m tired, and I want to go home.
But oh, God, I’m so afraid that we’re not all going to make it home alive.
—From Postcards from the Wall, the unpublished files of Georgia Mason, originally posted April 18, 2041
Thirteen
The CDC conference room lived up to the design aesthetic I was coming to expect from them: white on white on white. It was like they’d looked at the uniforms American nurses wore during World War II and said “Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.” Maybe they bleached the place on such a regular basis that they didn’t want to deal with paying to have all the furnishings re-dyed. Whatever the motivation, the combination of white walls and white carpet with a glass-topped conference table and white faux-leather chairs was enough to make me feel grubby and unwashed. CDC employees probably took a lot of showers, just to keep themselves from feeling like they were too dirty to be allowed to touch the furniture.