He didn’t look back as he walked out of the motel room, letting the door swing gently shut behind him. I stayed where I was, listening to the silence inside my head and the soft sounds of Kelly drying herself off behind the bathroom door. We were all hauntings waiting to happen? Really?
“I guess I can live with that,” I said, to the silence.
“Live with what?”
I turned to see Kelly standing in the bathroom door, wearing an outfit I hadn’t seen before. She must have bought it on one of her innumerable shopping trips with Maggie. Tan slacks, a white button-down blouse, and a pair of low, black heels. A starched white lab coat completed the illusion that she’d left the CDC only yesterday, not months before. I blinked and said the first thing that popped into my head: “What the hell happened to your hair?”
Kelly reached up to self-consciously touch her long blond ponytail. It was the hairstyle she’d been wearing when she first arrived in Oakland, if maybe a shade or two lighter. “Maggie found it for me at a beauty supply shop. Don’t you like it?”
“Shit, Doc, anyone who sees you is going to think they’re seeing a ghost.”
Very funny, said George.
“That’s the idea,” said Kelly, and smiled. There was a bitterness in that expression I don’t think she would have been capable of before she came to us. Even if she survived, the things she knew now had broken her, maybe forever. “Wiping my biometric information from the scanners would be expensive and time-consuming, and these people are arrogant bastards—I know, because I’m one of them. My profile will still be there. We won’t have any issues with the automatic doors. The night guards don’t really know any of the junior staff by name—we’re just faces to them, and with all the traveling we do, it’s not unusual for us to disappear for weeks at a time. As long as we don’t wander into a spot check, we’ll be fine.”
“What about the part where we’ve been hiding you all the way across the country, on account of that whole ‘faking your own death’ thing? This seems risky as hell.”
“It would be, if we were planning to deal with anyone but security, the janitorial staff, and Dr. Wynne. Security won’t stop anyone the scanner says is allowed to be there, and janitorial doesn’t care. We’ll get past them.”
“That leaves us with only the automatic systems to navigate.” We’d gone over all of this before. I was so thrown by her appearance that my mouth was running on autopilot.
“So we’d better hope the servers haven’t been updated.” Was that doubt in her voice? It could have been. It didn’t really matter either way. We were miles past the point of no return, and she was as committed as the rest of us.
“Good.” I stood. “Let’s get you across the hall to Becks. If we’re going to invade the Centers for Disease Control, I want to do it while I’m at least remotely clean.”
Kelly nodded and ducked back into the bathroom to grab her street clothes before following me to the room across the hall. It was the mirror image of the room we’d just left, with the exception of Becks. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of one of the room’s two beds, field-stripping a sniper rifle I hadn’t even been aware she had. I raised an eyebrow.
Becks looked up, hands continuing their work as she glanced at Kelly and gave an encouraging nod. “That’s good. You look like a CDC flunky.”
“Thank you?” said Kelly, raising an eyebrow.
“That’s good,” I assured her. “A sniper rifle, Becks? Really?”
“Better overprepared than totally screwed.”
“Fair enough.” I took a step backward. “You’re on Doc duty until Mahir gets out of the shower. As soon as I’m done, we can regroup and get some grub.”
“Good,” said Becks, and smiled. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah,” I said, a little dumbly. Looking at her smile, I felt a small pang of regret. We could never have really been lovers, no matter how much she wanted it or how much I tried; that just wasn’t what I was wired for. But sometimes, when she smiled at me like that, I wished things could have been different.
I realized I was staring. “Later, Doc,” I said, and left.
My shower was an exercise in minimalism. I spent no more time than was legally necessary under the spray of bleach and the steaming water that followed. If anyone checked the hotel’s records, they’d see that the rooms had been let to four occupants, and that all four had gone through proper decontamination procedures before leaving the grounds for any reason. That’s the sort of detail people don’t always think about, and that makes it the sort of detail you shouldn’t forget for any reason. Follow the rules whenever possible. That makes it a lot more surprising when you break them.
The bleach was cheap as hell. It stung my eyes, and even after I rubbed myself down in citrus-based lotion—designed for swimmers pre-Rising, back when they were the only people bleaching themselves on a regular basis—my skin kept itching. “Isn’t this going to be an absolutely awesome night?” I muttered, yanking on a clean pair of khakis.
Better than tomorrow, said George.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” I hesitated. This seemed to be my night for heart-to-heart talks, maybe because I wasn’t entirely sure I’d still be alive in twenty-four hours. “George—”
Yes?
I swallowed. “How long is it going to be like this? I mean, how long am I going to be your haunted house, or are you going to be my imaginary friend, or whatever the f**k the cool kids are calling it these days? Is this forever?”