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She almost had me convinced. Almost. But almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as my mother used to say, and I wasn't buying it. “Come off it, Audrey. They were trying to kill us—all of us—long before I started prying into anyone's secrets. We lost more than half the Irwins at the convention before I'd ever pried into anything. They didn't start this because of my investigating. You really think they'd have stopped if I'd gotten distracted by a shiny thing and wandered off?”

“I can hope,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“You want to fix this? Start giving me actual facts, and not just vague woo-woo ‘oh they'll kill you, oh I did it to protect you' bullshit,” I said. “I'm not some fainting flower who needs to be protected. What I need is for you to tell me what's going on. And maybe to unfasten my hands. That'd be a start on me trusting you ever again.”

“Uncuff her, Agent Sung,” said Governor Kilburn. I turned my head and there she was, standing in the leftmost doorway. It was open now, and on the other side I could see a dim room with broken glass on the tiled floor.

“We're still in the visitor's center,” I said.

“Yes,” said Governor Kilburn. She stepped into the room, looking to Audrey. “I sent Frances on ahead with the rest of the campaign. She thinks we've stopped to look for survivors. I don't know what I'm going to tell her.”

“Neither do I,” said Audrey. She looked back to me. “That's sort of up to Aislinn.”

I felt my eyes widen to comic proportions as I stared at the two of them. “Are you seriously standing there and implying you're going to have me killed if you don't like what I say? Because I can guarantee that if that's the case, you're
not
going to like what I have to say.”

“Mouth like a sailor,” said Audrey, with such obvious affection that I wanted to slap her across the face. She didn't get to sound like she loved me. Not now. “We're not going to kill you. I couldn't if I wanted to. I love you.”

That was the final straw. “If you love me, take these cuffs off,” I snapped. “If you're not going to do that, stop pretending to give a damn.”

“All right,” said Audrey. She put a hand on my shoulder, pushing me forward. I didn't resist. “My name isn't ‘Sung' anymore, Governor. It's ‘Wen.' You know that.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you didn't choose that name purely for the puns it afforded you,” said Governor Kilburn.

“So what if I did?” There was a click as the handcuffs were removed from my wrists. Audrey straightened, clipping them to her belt before she reached for my ankles. I pulled my hands around in front of me, massaging each of my wrists in turn as I tried to get the circulation back to normal. I hadn't been cuffed tightly enough to hurt, but I'd been putting all my weight against my hands for long enough that they were numb and aching.

Audrey produced a knife from her belt, slicing easily through the zip ties. “Puns are the highest form of humor, and anyone who tries to tell you differently has never found a way to make a joke resonate through three languages at the same time.”

I kicked her. Or rather, I tried to kick her: My bare foot whisked through empty air, and Audrey wasn't there anymore, having somehow rolled back three feet while the muscles in my calf were still tensing. She gave me a sympathetic look.

“I know you're angry, but I'm still your girlfriend, I still love you, and we're not supposed to solve every problem with our fists,” she said.

“That wasn't my fist, it was my foot,” I said. “Completely different.”

“My little Irwin.” Audrey looked over her shoulder at the governor, and said, “This is on you, Susan. You decide what gets said and what doesn't.”

“I'll go get Benjamin,” said the governor, and disappeared, leaving me alone with Audrey. I glared at her. She looked at me, and sighed.

“I tried so hard not to have to lie to you,” she said. “I thought we were signing up with the lowest-rated Democratic candidate. We weren't supposed to make it this far on the trail. We were never supposed to be having these conversations.”

“Who did you think was going to win?” I asked. “York?”

“There was a fourth potential candidate. Senator Darren Hart of Pennsylvania was supposed to be running. Based on his numbers and his performance, he would have wiped the floor with Kilburn and Blackburn both. He would have done the same thing Susan did, and chosen Blackburn as his VP candidate, and we could have all gone home.”

I'd heard about Hart. He'd featured heavily in the pre–campaign cycle buzz, and Audrey was right; everyone had expected him to run. And then, sometime between Ryman announcing his candidacy and Blackburn announcing hers, he'd just dropped off the map. There hadn't been a peep from his camp since all this had started. “What happened?”

“His wife got sick. Staph infection leading to multiple organ failure. Can you believe it? We cure cancer, which used to be the big reason people didn't have the chance to do things; we replace it with zombies, which become the big new reason people don't have the chance to do things; and the world finds new ways to keep the hospitals open.” Audrey paused. “I'm sorry. That was insensitive of me. Every human life matters. Every human life should be respected.” It sounded like she was reciting a mantra, rather than espousing a long-held belief.

I leaned as far from her as I could without getting off the cot. My hands were still tingling, and my legs felt faintly loose. I wasn't sure they'd hold my weight just yet. Better to wait than to stand and fall. “What did you do for the CDC, Audrey?”

“Terrible things,” she said. “And then I left them for the EIS, where I did more terrible things, but at least I did them for the right reasons. The EIS is still working for a better future, even if the CDC isn't. Please don't ask me what those terrible things were. I'm afraid… I'm afraid you won't love me anymore, if you ask me, and I need you to love me right now. Even if you're so angry you could spit, I need you to love me. It's the only thing that's allowing me to keep going.”

“Oh, I'm too angry to spit right now,” I said primly. “I'm saving all my precious bodily fluids for when I might actually need them. I'm not too mad to glare, however, or to tell you that we're going to be having some serious conversations about where we go from here, when all this is over.”

“Since that implies we'll both still be breathing, I'll take it,” said Audrey. Her expression softened, becoming more like the Audrey I knew, the one who cooked me dinner and kissed my bruises and loved me, sometimes fiercely, sometimes with restraint, but always, and continuously, to the end of my days. Seeing that look on her face when she was dressed in military gear and her hair was pulled back in a practical, field-ready style made me feel off balance, like the whole world had shifted, and was never going to shift back.

“What should I call you now?” The words came out before I could fully consider their meaning.

Audrey looked away. “Margaret Sung died when I walked away from the EIS. That was our agreement, in exchange for the things I knew not being released into the public eye. I couldn't be her and function in a world that had morality and believed in the sanctity of human life. Please, call me Audrey. That's who I am now. That's who I intend to be for the rest of whatever time I have left.”

“All right, Audrey. You want me to keep loving you? Tell me what you did.”

She looked back to me, eyes large and liquid in her too-pale face, and asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

And she told me.

Told me about the experiments with serotyping the virus and introducing new strains to volunteers, political prisoners, and the dead; about the way they'd rendered Kellis-Amberlee terrible and new, about the fires they'd set and the facilities they'd cleansed to keep their new strains from getting out. About the way the new strains had gotten out anyway, leading to zombies that didn't moan.

Told me about the infants born to infected mothers kept chained down for their entire pregnancies, born unamplified but legally already dead, perfect guinea pigs for the things the CDC felt were necessary. About the lies, and the deaths, and the manipulation of the media. About the reasons she didn't sleep anymore. And when she was done, she looked at me, and waited.

“I still love you,” I said softly.

She leaned in to kiss me, and stopped as something clattered from the second door. It opened, revealing Ben. He was sitting in a wheelchair, slumped in on himself, and Amber was behind him, pushing. She looked exhausted, and her eyes were red; she had been crying recently. That wasn't a surprise. Whether she was crying for Mat or John or both, we had all lost someone today.

Like Audrey, she was dressed in military black. That made me tense. Amber caught the look and shook her head.

“I don't work for the EIS,” she said. “They just have protocols before they'll let people into the field, and I needed to come with Audrey when she brought a team to retrieve you. I needed to see that you were safe. I'm so sorry, Ash. I'm so, so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” I said, and shifted my attention to Ben. “Hi,” I said.

Ben's eyes were red too, but they were alert, and he was sitting up fully, taking in everything. His face had relaxed into true neutrality, betraying nothing of what he might be thinking. It was a trick I had always envied. Must have been nice to be able to hide everything away like that, keeping it on the inside until it was safe to let out.

“Hi,” he said. “You okay?”

“A little numb, but apart from that, I'm fine,” I said. “They had me all cuffed and zip-tied like a cartoon supervillain. You?”

“I guess they think of me as slightly less dangerous, probably because sedation makes me pukey,” he said. “All I had was one hand cuffed to my cot.”

“Not sure whether I should be flattered or pissed off right now,” I said. “So I'm going to default to ‘pissed off.' It's generally safer.”

“We're sorry about that,” said Governor Kilburn. I turned. She was standing in the other doorway, expression weary and normally perfect hair in disarray. Unlike Amber and Audrey, she wasn't wearing black; she was still in one of her campaign pantsuits, this one slate-blue and accented with blue topaz jewelry. Chuck and Mat had probably worked together to select it for her, basing their color palette on Mat's makeup designs. The thought made my chest ache. Mat was never going to be doing another makeup design, or rebuilding another transmission, or anything. Mat was over. Mat was done.

Distance wasn't going to make this better. Distance was only going to transform new injury into immobile scar tissue. I was never, never going to forgive the people who had taken them from us. There was something pleasant about that realization. It meant that I was a little less shallow than I might have been, and a little more prepared to do whatever needed to be done.

“But really, come on,” said Amber. “If you hadn't been cuffed all to hell and you'd woken up before one of us could get in here to monitor you, you'd have like, kicked a wall down and gone rampaging around the place, and there are a lot of people with guns outside, keeping things locked down and keeping the CDC out.”

Audrey shot her a quick glare. Amber smiled sunnily instead of glaring back, expression wholly unrepentant. I looked between them before looking to Ben.

“Have they been doing this to you, too?” I asked. “Implying that the CDC isn't on our side and then clamming up like they've done something messy on the carpet?”

“I think they've been talking a little less freely in front of me,” he said. “I got freedom of movement, you got freedom of information. It's almost like they knew what our respective strengths were and wanted to be sure that they didn't give away more than they intended to.”

“Funny thing, that,” I said. My hands were no longer tingling. My legs still felt weak, but I forced myself to stand, ignoring the way my short hospital gown barely covered the tops of my thighs, and walked across the room to take the handles of Ben's chair from Amber. “I also notice that you got a full set of scrubs, while I got this stupid surgical nightie. If anything's been implanted in me, I'm going to be
very
cross.”

“Benjamin didn't have any wounds on his lower body that were actively bleeding,” said Governor Kilburn. “You, on the other hand, had badly scraped knees. The pseudoskin set better without fabric in the way.”

“I can accept your logic without liking it,” I said, as I wheeled Ben over to my cot. Those same knees were knocking, trying to buckle under the strain of supporting the rest of me. It was a relief when I reached my destination without falling down. I parked Ben, turning his chair so he could face the others, and sat, smoothing my too-brief gown as far down over my legs as it would go.

The divide in the room had never been clearer. Ben and I on one side, Amber and Governor Kilburn on the other, and Audrey in the middle, seeming more than a little lost as she looked between us.

Then Governor Kilburn stepped fully into the room, moving out of the way of a tall, brown-skinned man with long brown hair that grazed his shoulders despite being tucked behind his ears. He was wearing khaki slacks and a black tank top under a startlingly white lab coat.

As was so often the case, my mouth engaged before my brain got a vote on the subject. “How often do you bleach that thing? Every fifteen minutes? It's like you're wearing a toothpaste commercial.”

He looked down at himself and laughed. It was a genuinely amused sound. It didn't make me relax one bit. “I guess that
is
pretty white, isn't it?” he asked. “It's new. That's the secret to keeping things clean: recycle them before they have the chance to get dirty.” He looked back up, studying me and Ben before he said, “I'm Dr. Gregory Lake. I used to be Dr. Sung's supervisor. I'm glad to see that you're both awake and alert—the lingering effects from the sedatives should wear off shortly—and I came to answer any questions you might have about what's going on here.”