“They exist, but they aren’t natural,” I said.

“Exactly.” Mahir picked up another folder and started passing its contents around the table. “These are CDC analyses of the structure of Kellis-Amberlee. They were acquired legally; they’ve all been published for public use. People have been trying for years to figure out how something this intricate and stable has been able to mutate without once creating a strain that behaved in a manner different from its parents. The answer is simple: It can’t, and it hasn’t. Every strain after the original has been created in a laboratory and has been released following what can only be an intentional culling of the individuals afflicted with reservoir conditions. It’s a bloody global study, and we’ve all been invited to participate.”

Silence fell hard. None of us knew enough to say that he was wrong, except for maybe Kelly, and she wasn’t saying anything; she was just sitting there, tears running slowly down her cheeks as she looked at the papers covering the table. That, maybe more than anything, told me that Mahir’s conclusions were correct. After all the years she had spent living the CDC party line, if Kelly could have argued, she would have.

Becks was the one to eventually break the silence, asking, “So what do we do now?”

“Now?” I stood, slapping my palms down on the table. “We get packing. We’re hitting the road in the morning. All reports will be made while mobile—I don’t want us to be sitting ducks when the shit comes down.”

“Where are we going?” asked Alaric.

“The only place I think we might have half a chance of breaking into that’s going to have the resources to tell us where we’re supposed to go next.” I looked challengingly at Kelly. She didn’t look away. Instead, she nodded, acceptance blossoming in her expression.

“We’re going to Memphis,” she said.

I wanted to be a sport reporter. I wanted to report on sport. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Rhymes a little. “Mahir Gowda, Sport Reporter.” I’d watch the cricket matches and the obstacle courses and the stockcar races, and I’d write pithy little articles about them and make buckets of money, buy a huge house somewhere on the outskirts of London, and raise a family big enough to field a cricket team of my own.

Enter Georgia Carolyn Mason. She knew I’d never be happy reporting on sporting events and the lives of professional athletes. “The news is in yur blood”: That’s what she said to me, and she hounded me until I agreed to give it a shot. A year later, when she struck out on her own, she hired me. She was right too much of the time. She was right about me, and about what I was meant to do.

I have to say as I rather wish that she’d been wrong.

—From Fish and Clips, the blog of Mahir Gowda, June 21, 2041

Nineteen

It’s a little over two thousand miles from Weed, Califor

nia, to Memphis, Tennessee. That would have been about a two and a half days of solid driving pre-Rising, complete with miserable traffic jams and lots of rest stops. Distance is less of a barrier these days, since the average highway speed is between eighty and ninety miles per hour, and the average traffic jam involves having three cars on the same three-mile stretch.

Our problem was simpler: getting there without getting ourselves killed. Travel that crosses more than one state line needs to be registered with the Highway Commission, so that your movement can be monitored. Your updated location gets added to your file every time you stop for gas or check into a motel. It’s a nifty system. George did an article on it once, and I didn’t think it was completely boring. That’s saying something. The trouble was that if we couldn’t trust the CDC to be secure, we sure as hell couldn’t trust the Highway Commission, an organization whose databases have been hacked so many times that they might as well put out a welcome mat and stop pretending they’re secure.

I was the subject of a highway ambush once before—an ambush that landed me, my sister, and our friend Rick in the Memphis CDC, ironically enough. The three of us got out alive. The other two members of our group, Georgette Meissonier and Charles Wong, didn’t. If we assumed the people responsible for the destruction of Oakland were waiting for another opportunity to take a shot at us, the last thing we wanted to do was put ourselves on the open road, where accidents could—and doubtless would—happen.

Trouble was, we didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t take the train; the few passenger lines still in existence are luxury-oriented and would take a week to get there. Flying with Mahir and Kelly wouldn’t work, since one of them was legally dead and the other was in the country under the sketchiest of legal pretenses. What’s sad is that I didn’t know which was the bigger concern.

Maggie’s bedrock streak of practicality came to the rescue around the time Mahir and I were starting to brainstorm about stealing a crop duster and somehow riding it across the country to Tennessee. “Why don’t you idiots take my van and get it over with?” she demanded, flinging her keys down on the table. “The VIN’s registered to Daddy so I don’t get stopped when I have to cross the border to Canada, and nobody’s going to risk nuking it if they think there’s even half a chance that I’m inside. Kill the heir to the Garcia pharmaceutical fortune while my parents are still alive to destroy them? No government conspiracy is that stupid.”

Privately, I thought she was being a little complacent—anyone whas willing to nuke a city wouldn’t hesitate before killing a pharmaceutical heir and would have the resources to make it look like an accident—but I didn’t say so. I just scooped the keys into my pocket. “You really have no qualms about abuse of power, do you? Thanks, Maggie. You’re badass.”