Blackout (23 page)

“I didn’t find out what they were like until I started working for Georgia. She talked about them more than you do. Which is sort of funny, since you talk about almost everything else so much more than she ever did.”

“She loved them,” I said defensively. I didn’t know why I felt the need to defend George’s love of the Masons, but I did. Maybe it was because I stopped loving them so long ago. Maybe it was because, awful as they were, she could never quite bring herself to do the same. “She didn’t want them to be the people that they were.”

“And you did?”

“What? No! No. I just…” I let the sentence drift off, watching Berkeley slide by outside the van window. I’d made this trip in the passenger seat so damn many times; any time we had to go out on location when the weather conditions made it unsafe for George to take the bike, or when parking was going to be at a premium. She insisted on driving after the sun was down, saying her retinal KA gave her an advantage over my puny, uninfected eyes. So I would sit in the passenger seat and watch Berkeley going by, tired, cranky, and utterly content with the world. Maybe it was nostalgia speaking, but I couldn’t remember a single night trip home where I hadn’t been happy to be where I was, riding in the van with Georgia, and both of us alive, and both of us together.

Finally, slowly, I said, “George knew who the Masons were—
what
the Masons were—as well as I did. But she wished they were different. I think she thought that if she could just bring home a big enough story, find a big enough truth, that maybe they’d get past Phillip—their son, the one who died—and finally start loving us.”

“And you didn’t think that?”

“They were never going to start loving us. That’s why we had to love each other as much as we did.”

“Oh.”

Becks was quiet after that, and I was glad. I wanted to make this last little part of the trip in silence.

The GPS didn’t take us down the streets I would have chosen—it was going by distance, not by a local’s knowledge of road conditions and traffic lights—but that was good, too, in its way. I needed this trip to be a little different. I spent too much time living in the past, and I didn’t need to encourage the part of me that would be happy to stay there forever. The businesses clustered around Shattuck and Ashby gave way to the
outlying buildings of the U.C. Berkeley campus, and finally to the low, tight-packed shapes of the residential neighborhoods. Becks pulled up in front of a familiar house, the windows shuttered, the porch light dark.

“Now what?” she asked.

“This.” I dug a hand into my pocket, pulling out the sensor disk I’d been carrying since we left Dr. Abbey’s lab. It wasn’t mine, ironically; my identity key to the Masons’ house was lost when Oakland burned. This one had been Georgia’s, and had been a part of her little black box—the only thing I’d taken the time to save before the bombs came down. I slipped the chain on over my neck, pressing the disk to my skin and flipping it into the “on” position. It beeped, twice, acknowledging that it had managed to locate a matching signal in the immediate vicinity.

A light above the Masons’ garage door flashed on, blinking twice in response to the disk’s location pulse. Without any further fanfare, the door began spooling smoothly upward.

“Go on in,” I said, in response to Becks’s surprised expression. “The house was programmed years ago to let this van inside with multiple passengers. It was an expensive enough upgrade that there’s no way they’ve taken the time to have it pulled out of the security programming.”

Unless they were really, really angry with you when you refused to give them my files
, said George.
They could have done it out of spite
.

“ ‘Could’ doesn’t mean ‘would,’ ” I said.

Becks shot another glance my way, frowning, and started the engine again. “Please try not to talk to dead people while we’re here? I don’t want you getting shot because you look like you’re getting the amplification crazies.”

“Amplification doesn’t make you talk to yourself.”

“And you don’t get better once you’re infected. There’s a first time for everything.”

“Fair enough.” The garage door slid closed again once we were inside. I unfastened my belt. “Come on. We’ll need to pass security if we want to get into the house.”

“I figured.”

I hadn’t expected the Masons to make any updates to the security system, and I hadn’t been wrong: The two testing stations were still in place, each of them equipped with the standard wall plate for blood sampling and the more expensive display screens for verbal confirmation. Becks and I stepped into position. A red light clicked on above the door leading into the house.

“Please identify yourself,” said the bland, computerized voice of the house system.

“Shaun Phillip Mason and guest,” I said.

“Rebecca Atherton, guest,” said Becks. Her words were almost precisely overlaid by Georgia’s, as she said,
Georgia Carolyn Mason
.

The light above the door blinked several times as the house checked my voice against its records. I was allowed to bring guests home—had been since I was sixteen—but I hadn’t done it very often. Part of me was even ludicrously afraid the house would somehow pick up on George’s phantom voice and refuse to let us in until it had figured out how to test her for viral amplification.

The light blinked just long enough for me to get nervous before the house said, “Voice print and guest authorization confirmed. Please read the phrase on your display screen.”

Words appeared on my screen. “Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse,” I read. The words blinked out.

On the other side of the door, Becks recited, “Jack be
nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.” The light above the door began blinking again. She cast me a nervous glance, which I answered with an equally nervous smile. The feel of George’s phantom fingers wrapping around my own didn’t help as much as I might have hoped. Every time she touched me, it was just a reminder of how little time I had left before I wound up going utterly insane.

The light over the door changed from red to yellow.

“Please place your right hands on the testing pads,” requested the house. I did as I was told, slapping my palm flat against the cool metal. It chilled half a second later, and something bit into my index finger, a brief sting followed almost instantly by the cool hiss of soothing foam. The light above the door began to flash, alternating red and yellow.

“Isn’t this fun?” I asked, with forced levity.

Becks glared. She was still glaring when the light stopped flashing.

The door hissed open. “Welcome home, Shaun,” said the house. “We hope you’ll have a pleasant visit, Rebecca.”

“Um, thanks,” said Becks, looking to me for what she should do next. I shrugged, smiled, and stepped through the open door.

The kitchen hadn’t changed since Georgia and I lived with the Masons. The floor was still covered in the same off-brown linoleum, and the walls were still papered in the same cheerful yellow floral print. Papers and clippings from the U.C. Berkeley student newspaper—printed on actual paper, although it was hemp, not wood pulp—covered the refrigerator. The urge to open it, grab a snack, and go up to my room was as strong as it was unexpected. Walking into that kitchen was like walking backward through time, into
a part of my life where the biggest thing I had to worry about was whether the new T-shirt designs in my shop would sell well enough to justify their printing cost.

A part of my life where Georgia was alive, and not just a voice in my head and a ghostly hand on my arm.

“Shaun?” said Becks, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I shook off the past, shoving it away from me as hard as I could. “Come on.” I gestured for her to follow as I stepped out of the kitchen and into the front hallway, intending to wait in the living room until the Masons woke up and came downstairs for breakfast. It was a good plan. It was a plan intended to leave them off balance and catch them during the one time of day when they were as close to unarmed as possible.

It was a plan that died as soon as we turned the hall corner and found ourselves facing my adoptive mother, Stacy Mason. She was wearing a robe over sensible cotton pajamas, and holding a revolver. It was aimed straight at my chest. I stopped. Becks stopped. None of us said a word.

Correction: None of us said a word that anyone but me could hear.
Hi, Mom
, said George, her voice falling into the silence like a stone. I managed somehow not to flinch.

Finally, Mom lowered her pistol, saying calmly, “You must be hungry. Why don’t you kids go back into the kitchen, and I’ll see if I can’t whip us up some pancakes or something?”

“That’s okay, Mom,” I said. “We didn’t come here for breakfast.”

“I know,” she said, voice utterly calm—the voice that used to greet me when I came home late from school, or got another detention for fighting with the kids who picked on George because of her eyes. “I raised you better than that. At the same time, whatever
you
did
come for can wait until we’ve all had a chance to sit down and eat like civilized people. All right?”

I know when I’m beat. “Okay, Mom.” I hesitated before adding, “You know you can’t upload any footage of us being here, right?”

“I invented the rules to this game, Shaun,” said Mom. “Now go wash your hands.”

“Yes, Mom,” I said. Georgia echoed the words inaudibly, her voice half a beat out of synch with mine. “Come on, Becks.”

Looking uncertain, Becks turned to follow me back to the kitchen. We had barely crossed the threshold when Mom called, “Oh, and Shaun?”

I tensed, not turning. “Yeah?”

“Welcome home.”

Somehow, that didn’t reduce the tension. “Thanks, Mom,” I said, and kept walking.

Now that we were back in the kitchen, I could really look at it, rather than letting the overwhelming impression of coming home wash over me. Everything was old-fashioned to the point of parody, with frilled gingham curtains hiding the security mesh worked into the windows and fixtures originally installed sometime in the 1940s. It was all part of the homey atmosphere the Masons worked so hard to project—the homey atmosphere that had required, once upon a time, that they go shopping for adorable orphans to complement the rest of their décor. The worst part was the way I could see Becks buying into it, the tightness slipping from her shoulders and the lines around her mouth relaxing. Stacy and Michael Mason were heroes of the Rising. They were two of the best-loved faces of the media movements that came after it; between them, they
defined
what it was to be an Irwin, what it was to be a Newsie… what it was to be a blogger.

Maybe it’s insane that a news movement that started as the chosen medium of politicos and techno-nerds and geeks of all stripes wound up with a college professor and a former dental hygienist as its primary poster children, but that’s the thing about reality. It doesn’t need to make sense. They were in the right places at the right times, they had the right level of heroic dedication and personal tragedy, and maybe most important, when their backs were against the wall—when their son was dead and the world was changed forever, and the things they’d been doing during the Rising to keep themselves from thinking about those two unchangeable facts weren’t an option anymore—they decided to become stars in the highest-rated reality show anyone had ever seen. The news.

I dried my hands on the blue towel next to the kitchen sink before stepping aside to let Becks at the faucet. “Remember why we’re here,” I said, voice a little sharper than it needed to be. “This isn’t a social call.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…” Becks stuck her hands under the running water, using that small domestic activity to buy herself a few seconds. Finally, she said, “I thought she’d be taller. It’s a cliché, I know, but I really did. I should know better—I’ve seen pictures of her next to you—but somehow, I still thought she’d be…” She stopped, and then finished, lamely, “Taller.”

“I get that a lot.” Along with requests for autographs, and occasional offers of money if I could somehow get my hands on naked pictures. My college journalism courses were hell. George had it a little better—I guess Irwins feel more entitled to demand the gory details, while Newsies just look for something they can hang you with.

“I wanted to be your mother when I grew up.” Becks
said it like it was somehow shameful, the sort of admission that could only be dragged out of her by a kitchen with yellow wallpaper and stupid curtains. Mom would have been proud of her environmental design. Hell, for all I knew, she already was. For all I knew, she was watching us from upstairs; they’d had this place bugged since before I could walk. “She was so… brave, and strong, and she always knew what she was doing. Not like me. I was just sleepwalking through the things my parents wanted me to do, until the day I finally got up the nerve to run.”

We never did that
, said George. Her voice echoed oddly, coming half from right beside me, half from the inside of my head. It was the house. I’d spent too much of my life in this house with her; she was haunting it as much as she was haunting me.

God, was that what it was like for the Masons after Phillip died? Did they see him every time they turned around, a bright-eyed little ghost that never refused to take a nap, never drew on the walls with his crayons, never screamed because he couldn’t have another cookie? No wonder they adopted us. We weren’t just another way of bringing in the ratings. We were a living attempt at exorcism.

“We never ran,” I said softly.

Becks shot me a startled look that softened into understanding. We were raised by journalists; we grew up to be journalists. That wasn’t the whole story, but it was enough to make a nice headline. We were raised by people who hurt everyone around them in their single-minded pursuit of the story. No one could look at the number of bodies in our wake and not believe that Georgia and I were two apples that didn’t fall far from the transplanted tree.

“Shaun?” The voice was jovial and dry at the same time,
the voice of every college professor who ever told a slightly off-color joke and laughed with his undergrads, proving he was “part of the gang” without giving up an inch of his authority. It was the voice of my childhood, the man I watched George beat herself to death trying to become.