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T
he silence didn't last. Ben lurched to his feet, taking a wobbly step toward Dr. Lake. His lack of balance made him look alarmingly like one of the infected, but his expression was fierce and angry, not raw with hunger. I sat frozen, unsure how I was supposed to react, or what I was supposed to do, or… well, or anything. This was a new territory, one I didn't know how to navigate. I just sat, waiting to see what happened next.

“What do you
mean
, there's never going to be a cure?” he demanded. “That's what the CDC is
for
. All their resources, all their attention, it's all going toward the development of a cure. We've been diverting half the government's budget to them for decades—”

“Because they say they're going to fix this problem any day now,” said Dr. Lake. “But that doesn't account for the diseases we don't know how to fight anymore, does it? Take away Kellis-Amberlee and cancer comes back. How many oncologists are left in the world right now? How many will be left in another five years, or another ten? That doesn't even begin to touch on the number of deaths we used to see annually from respiratory infections. The flu alone killed ten thousand Americans every year before the Rising. Now, we lose half that many to zombie attacks. The math says that a cure is bad for America.”

“So why don't they come out and say that?” It took me a moment to realize that the voice saying those words was mine. I was committed now: I was in the conversation, and I wasn't going to be able to back out a second time. “Just tell people there's not going to be a cure but that's all right, because they're actually a great deal safer than they used to be—and never mind. I just answered my own question, didn't I?”

Dr. Lake nodded grimly. No one said anything. Not even Ben, who had stopped at the middle of the room, wobbling like a reed in a high wind.

Fear wasn't just an American pastime: It was a global addiction, and industries of every size existed to satiate it. Some of them were obvious, like the blood tests shoved in front of our faces at every possible turn, or the heart monitors some parents insisted their children wear before they were allowed to leave the house. Others were more subtle. Even I was in an industry designed to feed into the culture of fear. All Irwins were. We went out into the world and brought home the twin illusions of accomplishment and exposure. Someone who'd seen Ireland through my reports never needed to go there, not really; they could watch the videos any time they liked, marvel at how green the hills were, and go to sleep feeling like they'd traveled the world. Why would they ever leave the house when there was nothing left to see?

Internet journalism hadn't risen to the heights it had despite the mainstream news trying to keep us down. We'd done it
because
of the mainstream news. Because having us to contrast with the “approved” reports turned us into an outlet and a funnel for the fears of the world. Because we were supposed to be unfiltered and raw and hence
real
, and reality was terrifying to most people. We were a tool. We always had been.

“I'm still mad at you Audrey, but I could really use a hug right about now,” I said, in a small voice. She walked over to the cot, sat down beside me, and put her arms around my shoulders without saying a word. She smelled right, salt skin under decontamination bleach. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend she wasn't dressed like she was getting ready to lay siege to everything I'd ever loved. I closed my eyes.

Closing my eyes didn't make the world go away. In the darkness, Ben said, “This is impossible. This is… it's too big to hide. You can't cover up something like ‘the CDC isn't looking for a cure.' The World Health Organization would find out. They'd tell everyone.”

“The WHO is aware. The world's medical organizations came to the conclusion that the cure would be worse than the disease more than a decade ago. Everything they—we—have done since then has been geared toward one of two ends: management, or control. The EIS wants to manage Kellis-Amberlee. Humanity engineered this disease. We can find a way to live with it, one that doesn't mandate destroying the natural world or living in constant terror. The CDC wants to keep the virus at the forefront of everyone's minds.”

“Why?” asked Amber. She sounded as baffled as I felt. I decided not to hate her quite as much as I hated everyone else.

“Because as long as the world is looking at Kellis-Amberlee as their greatest threat, the CDC and organizations like it will continue to have control, and we'll keep getting along, while the rich keep getting richer on the back of everyone else's fear,” said Ben wearily. “Am I right, Dr. Lake?”

“Sadly, yes,” said Dr. Lake. “The dead rising didn't put an end to war. We fight over things like race and religion and public decency. But we fight online. We fight virtually. The Internet is real, and things said there genuinely cause damage—I'm not trying to minimize the issues of cyber harassment or stalking. They're still a far cry from the days when our government would call in drone strikes under the thinnest of possible pretenses. Now, when the enemy doesn't stay dead, it seems better to negotiate with the living.”

“So the world is healthier and more peaceful and the only cost is that we have to live in terror all the time?” I opened my eyes. I didn't pull away from Audrey. “You'll forgive me for saying so, but this isn't living. This isn't decency. People shouldn't be lying like this. They should let people make their own choices, and let the world do as it's going to do.”

“The EIS agrees with you, Miss North. The trouble is, we're a small group surrounded by large groups, and many of them have no scruples about making sure viewpoints they disagree with go unheard.” Dr. Lake shook his head. “You may be wondering why I'm telling you all this. Why I'm saying things that are virtually impossible to believe.”

“I'm going to guess it's because you know none of us are recording right now, since you're the ones who stripped us down and decontaminated us while we were unconscious, and you've already made it more than clear that we can't leak this information without the wrath of the United States government falling on our heads,” I said wearily. “If we don't want to be branded as pedophiles or murderers or something even worse, we can't say a word where anyone could hear, because we're smaller than the things we're up against. Isn't that so?”

“It is,” he agreed.

“Then here's what I want to know, and you'll need to use small words, if you don't mind; I'm an Irwin, we're not deep thinkers, we're mostly interested in what's available for us to hit,” I said. “You've told us why we can't tell anyone. But you haven't told us why you're
telling
us.”

“He's telling you because I asked him to,” said Audrey, pulling away from me. She stopped when she was far enough to look me in the face as she said, “He owed me some favors. I called them in, because I needed you to understand why I was going to ask you to run.”

“What?”

“Run.” Audrey shook her head. “We have to run. We have to run fast, and we have to run far, because you looked in the wrong direction, and you triggered their cost-benefit analysis unit. Now John is dead, and that means the CDC is going to be watching the rest of the Kilburn campaign for signs that we learned more than we were supposed to know. They've always been watching. My presence guaranteed that. Now they're going to be waiting to see who we told, and how many of them need to be shot.”

“What Dr. Sung isn't saying is that it was her presence that allowed you to learn as much as you did without interference,” said Dr. Lake. “She's still considered a member of the agency in good standing, and she's never violated her NDAs.”

“Not directly,” said Audrey. “My stories have a lot of coded data in them. I've been communicating with some doctors in Canada who think they may have figured out the protein coding that Kellis originally designed for his cure. It's not much, but it could be key to understanding the way the viral structures interlocked.”

“That is a topic for another time,” said Governor Kilburn firmly. “I've been approached by the CDC. They were concerned about my lack of family, and wanted me to know that they would have my back on the campaign trail. It was fairly patently a reminder that they always knew where I was going, what I was doing, and how to get to me. This is not an exaggerated danger. I got you into it. I am going to get you out of it.”

“But I don't want to run,” said Ben, sounding baffled. “We just buried my mother. My sister, she needs me. I was finally going to fix up the house…”

“Your sister needs you to run,” said Dr. Lake. “If you don't, she's going to die. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? There will be an outbreak. It will be a tragic loss of life.”

“Don't threaten my family,” said Ben. The bafflement was gone, replaced by cold steel.

Dr. Lake sighed. “I'm not threatening anyone. I'm telling you what the CDC will do, what they'll
have
to do to keep their secrets, if they even suspect you know how deep this goes. You'll be discredited, and then you'll be destroyed, and they won't have the luxury or the compassion to make sure that the people around you aren't caught in the blast. Sometimes the people who stand against them just die. That's terrible, and it's tragic, but it has a very low immediate area of effect. You've been
digging
. You
know
things, and as reporters, you have a tendency to share them with people—to back them up in places that most people won't know how to find. That means the CDC can't just arrange for an accident. They have to destroy whatever goodwill you might have with the general population, and then they have to destroy
you
.”

For a moment, we were all quiet. Finally, Ben turned and walked back to his wheelchair, sinking down into it with a defeated sound. It wasn't a sigh or a moan: It was somewhere in between, indefinable and heartbreaking. It made me want to go to him, and hold him, and lie to him about what was going to happen next; it made me want to do all the things that wouldn't help, but felt like they should. I didn't move.

“What do we do?” asked Ben. “You're saying the CDC will go out of their way to destroy us, and I don't want to believe you, which I guess proves that I should. We're in a prefab isolation chamber in the middle of nowhere. Mat's dead. What do we do?”

“As far as the CDC is concerned, right now, you're all dead, or you're all about to be,” said Governor Kilburn. “We've reported you as missing. That means you were either killed in the explosion and reanimated, or you ran. They'll assume the first—it's the most reasonable—and start by looking for you among the local dead. When they don't find you, they'll start looking farther afield.”

“I'd say we have about forty-eight hours to get you as far from here as possible before that happens,” said Dr. Lake briskly. “I can't provide an EIS vehicle—our profile needs to stay low for the time being, and while I'm happy to help Dr. Sung, within limits, there's only so much I can justify endangering our operation. We do, however, have a small off-roader that was purchased from a private owner in anticipation of a situation like this one. It will be left in the woods nearby. Some supplies will ‘accidentally' be left with the vehicle. If anyone intercepts you, you can produce papers showing it was owned by a man who died in an outbreak two weeks ago, making it legal salvage as long as you're within a hazard zone.”

“You really want us to run,” I said quietly. There were so many things I wanted to say—so many words, and so many of them meaning absolutely nothing, because all the decisions had been made before we'd even woken up. We were small fish that had somehow ended up in the ocean, and I supposed I should feel grateful that a helpful wave was nudging us back toward the shore. Gratitude simply couldn't seem to fight its way through my anger. I've never much liked being told what to do.

“No,” said Governor Kilburn quietly. We turned to look at her. She shook her head. “I
need
you to run.”

“How long have you known about all this?” asked Ben. “Did you bring us on board knowing what it could mean—what it
would
mean?” He was asking her whether she had knowingly destroyed our lives, and to her small credit, she didn't look away.

“I started making phone calls after the convention.” Her laugh was small and bitter. “That's what I do. I'm sure you've figured that out by now. When the going gets tough, the tough start calling everyone they've ever met and asking for help. I knew something had to have gone terribly wrong for that attack to have been possible. I thought maybe I could find out what it was, point you in the right direction. This isn't altruism speaking; I wanted you on point, focused on my campaign, and not on what had happened to your friends. So I needed to know what happened. I guess I called the wrong people.”

She turned her face toward the floor, and for the first time, I appreciated what a good job her makeup artists did with her. I could see fine lines around her eyes, a cobweb of fissures etching her age across her face. She hid them so well. How many of them were new, sprouted since the start of this campaign?

“The CDC showed up at my hotel room last night,” she said. “They had pictures, of people who are important to me. Not as many as they might have had if they'd been coming for someone with a larger family, but still. They made it clear that they knew everything about what we knew, and what would hurt me, and that my silence was valuable enough to keep my people safe. They don't mind the idea of my becoming President, even though they think it's unlikely—my chances are ‘witheringly small,' according to their analysts. Imagine! Coming to my hotel room and telling me, to my face, that I'm not going to win, but if I do, I'll belong to them. The nerve of it all.”