Deadline

The phone beeped. Three rings later, a CDC receptionist came on the line, perky as always as he said, “Dr. Joseph Wynne’s office, how may I direct your call?”

“This is Shaun Mason. Please connect me to Dr. Wynne.”

“May I ask the nature of your call?”

“No, you may not. Now connect me to Dr. Wynne.”

“Sir, I’m afraid I—”

“Now!”

Something in my tone must have made it clear that I wasn’t f**king around. The receptionist stammered an apology before the line gave a click, replacing his carefully cultivated blandness with the hum of hold music. That lasted only a few seconds. There was another click, and Dr. Wynne said, “Shaun, thank God. Now what the blazes is going on? You nearly gave poor Kevin an attack.”

“I’ll be sure to send a nice card and some flowers.” The acid in my voice surprised even me. I thought I was better trained than that. “I left several people in Oakland before the outbreak, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not on my best behavior.”

There was a pause as Dr. Wynne took in what I was saying: that Dave hadn’t been the only casualty of Oakland. It was a lie, sure, but it was one he had no reason not to believe. “Oh,” he said finally, voice gone soft. “I see. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It is what it is. Look, I’ve been doing some research, Dr. Wynne, and I wanted to confirm the results I’m getting. Got a second to answer a few questions for me?”

“I’m always happy to answer questions for you.”

“Maybe not this time.” I glared at Kelly as I spoke. Tears were starting to roll down her cheeks as she stared at the wall, expression otherwise remaining impassive. I didn’t care. Bitch deserved to cry. “Dr. Wynne, are reservoir conditions an immune response?”

He hesitated. When he spoke again, his tone was slower, more careful, and more heavily accented. “Well, I suppose it depends on who you ask. Some people think they might be.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m not sure that’s relevant.”

“I think it is. So what do you think? Are reservoir conditions an immune response or not?”

“Shaun…” He sighed heavily. “Yes. I think they are.”

“So if Dave had managed to scan and e-mail me some documents before Oakland went kerplooey, and if the people I’d gone to with them said that George would have recovered if I hadn’t decided to go ahead and ot her, would they be f**king with me? Or was that little slice of good news somehow omitted from my handbook?”

He was silent.

“Fine. Whatever.” Making my voice light was almost impossible, but I did it. Somehow. “I guess I’ll just publish everything I’ve got here, let people with a more scientific background than mine sort it out. Right?”

“Shaun…” He sighed again. “Yes. Yes, she might have recovered. Might. The tests we ran on her blood were inconclusive.”

My vision flashed red. The CDC had George’s blood for weeks after her death. Logically, I knew they’d been using that time for tests, as well as decontamination, but I’d never really allowed myself to think about it. The idea of them doing God knows what to her had never been a pleasant one, and the more I knew, the less pleasant it became. “You’re an ass**le,” I said, conversationally. “We trusted you.”

“Shaun—”

“Fuck off.” I hung up and tossed the burn phone back to Dr. Abbey. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She tucked the phone into the pocket of her lab coat. “Satisfied now?”

“No. But it’s a start.” I turned to Kelly. “It’s your turn to talk, Doc. Make it count.”

“I…”

I glared at her. “Talk.”

She talked.

She kept her eyes on the floor the whole time, her voice tight and bordering on monotone. It was like she was trying to convince herself that she was giving a lecture, rather than being interrogated at gunpoint. The few times she did glance up, her eyes were filled with guilt, darting between us almost too rapidly to be followed. Then she’d look down again, her monotonous monologue never stopping. The expression on Dr. Abbey’s face—calculating and predatory—probably didn’t help. Then again, the fact that Becks was holding a gun pointed at the Doc’s head probably helped even less.

“The first reservoir conditions were identified in 2018. Four years isn’t long in human terms, but it’s centuries in virus generations. The Kellis-Amberlee virus had been replicating the whole time. Spreading. Changing. I mean, the first infected didn’t demonstrate mob behavior, but they started by the early twenties. That wasn’t an adaptation on the part of the infected. It was an adaptation in the behavior of the viral substrains driving them. Six of the fifteen strains we had identified by that point would cause the pack behavior. Nine wouldn’t. Ten years later, we could find only two strains that didn’t come with that instinct to infect before eating. Outside the ones we had stored in our freezers, that is.” She hesitated, shoulders tightening for an instant. Then, like some impossibly difficult decision had been made, she continued: “We tried cross-infection. Well. When I say ‘we,’ I mean scientists working at the CDC and USAMRIID. I wasn’t working with… I wasn’t a part of that project.” Kelly glanced up again, eyes searching desperately for a sympathetic face. “I wasn’t involved.”