Deadline

“That’s great and everything, but there are a few things to work out,” said Dave. He held up a finger. “What do we do with Doc here?” A second finger. “If we don’t know whether it’s safe to talk to the CDC, where the hell are we supposed to start?” A third finger. “What are we going to say to the rest of the site? This isn’t you and a little team and a van anymore. This is a business. We can’t go chasing a story we can’t talk about, maybe even disappear on everybody, and expect them to be cool with it.”

“Call Rick, see what he says,” said Becks.

“I’m pretty sure we can’t call the vice president of the United States with ‘Hey, we have a dead CDC researcher who says somebody’s trying to suppress her research,’ ” I replied. “We’re going to call Rick, but we need more than we have before we do it.”

Becks looked mollified. Rick Cousins used to be one of our staff Newsies. Now he’s helping run the country. That gave us a certain degree of access to the president, but if we were going to announce that the sky was falling, we needed to have some proof.

“And the rest?” asked Dave.

“Starting with your third question, we’re going to tell Mahir, because he already knows, and we’re going to tell Maggie,” I said. “We can figure out the rest as we go.”

Dave frowned. “Why are we getting Maggie involved?”

“Because she’s in charge of the Fictionals. If there’s any chance this is going to end up getting big enough that we have to bring the whole site in on it, I want her to have had time to figure out how she’s planning to tell her people,” I said.

Plus, it’s the right thing to do, added George.

“Well, yeah,” I muttered. “I knew that.”

My team had learned not to comment on my conversations with George. Kelly hadn’t. Frowning, she asked, “Are you wearing an earpiece?”

“What?” Shit. “Uh… no, not exactly.”

“Then who are you talking to?”

There was no way out but straight ahead. Shrugging, I said, “Georgia.”

Kelly hesitated, emotions chasing themselves across her face like a gang of zombies chasing a government hunting party. Finally, she settled for the easiest possible answer: “I see.”

The urge to get up in her face and try to start something was almost too strong to suppress. That’s how I usually dealt with people who gave me the look that she was wearing now, that horrible mix of surprise and shock and pity. Six months ago, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. Six months ago, I was thinking a lot less clearly. Maybe I’m crazy. But I’m going to be the kind of crazy that Finreful until it blows everything in its path to kingdom come.

“We all cope in our own ways,” I said briskly. “Dave, is Maggie online? We can conference her in right now.”

“Negative,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation. I gave him a curious look. He shrugged. “She had a movie party last night. She won’t be up for another few hours.”

“Is she actually nocturnal or just trying to train herself to act that way?” asked Becks. Glancing to me, she added, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this.”

“What, with telling Maggie?”

“With not telling everyone else.”

“How many people work for this site?”

Becks paused. “Uh… I’m not sure.”

“That’s why we have to do things this way, because right off the top of my head, neither am I.” I gestured at the server bank. “Like Dave says, this isn’t just me and a team that fits in a van anymore; this is a business. You know why corporate espionage keeps happening, no matter how bad they make the penalties for getting caught?”

“Greed?” ventured Alaric.

“Poor judgment brought on by possession of insufficient data?” said Kelly.

“People stop caring,” said Dave.

I pointed at him. “Give that man a prize. People stop caring. Once you reach the point where you’re working with more people than can comfortably go for drinks together, folks stop giving as much of a shit. Politics creep in. Do I trust everyone who works for us with the day-to-day? Yeah. I’d trust every Irwin we have at my back in a firefight, and every Newsie we’ve got to tell the truth according to their registered biases. But we go dangling a giant cherry of a story like ‘The CDC has illegal clones, and their dead researcher isn’t really dead, oh, and maybe there’s a conspiracy blocking certain research paths,’ somebody’s going to leak it. They’ll do it for profit, they’ll do it because it gives them the leverage to get a better job with another site, or they’ll do it because it’s just too damn good not to share. Every person we bring in on this is another chance that this gets out before we’re ready, and we’re all f**ked.”

“Some of us more than others,” muttered Kelly, sotto voce.

“You trusted us with Tate,” said Becks.

“We didn’t have a choice with Tate, and we didn’t understand the stakes the way we do now,” I said. “We tell Mahir, we tell Maggie, and we stop there until we know what’s going on. Anyone really feel like arguing?”

No one did.

“Good,” I said, after taking another look around the room. “Doc? From what you’re saying, the CDC’s out of the picture. I’m assuming that means WHO is also compromised.”