“What?” I straightened. “That’s not legal.”

“Becoming a blogger requires only that one establish a blog, and not necessarily even that, if one is willing to exist solely through commentary on the blogs of others. Becoming a journalist requires that one take the licensing exams, take the marksmanship exams, pass accreditation, and possess a license sufficient to allow entry to any given hazard zone, lest fines and possible charges be applied.”

“Well, yeah, Mahir. Everybody knows that. What does that have to do with—”

“The individuals involved were in established hazard zones, taking actions of the sort that journalists must be properly licensed to perform.” Mahir shook his head, light glinting off his glasses. “They’re being held while charges are brought against them.”

I gaped at him. “Wait—so—what, they’re saying that when you combine ‘has a blog’ with ‘is inside a hazard zone,’ you automatically become a journalist?”

“Poof,” muttered Becks.

“That’s insane!”

“Insane, and very, very clever, as it’s going quite a long way toward reducing the number of unapproved reports making it out of the impacted areas.” Mahir’s gaze skittered toward Alaric. Just for a moment, but long enough for me to see where he was looking. “Reduction doesn’t meaof,” mutimination, thankfully. Some things are still getting out.”

“Some things always do,” I said, putting my mug down. I wasn’t thirsty anymore. “Alaric? You okay, buddy?”

“The updates to the Wall started this morning,” he said. Tears ran down his cheeks as he turned to look at me. He didn’t bother wiping them away. Maybe he knew that drying his face wouldn’t be enough to make the crying stop. “My little sister posted for our parents and our brother. Dorian shot our parents, and Alisa shot Dorian, after he’d started to turn. I always knew getting her shooting lessons for her birthday was a good idea, even if Mother wanted her to take dance classes.”

I winced. “Fuck, Alaric, I’m—”

“Did it help you when I said I was sorry George died?”

Everyone said they were sorry when George died, even the Masons. And not a single apology had made a damn bit of difference. “No. It didn’t help.”

“Then don’t say it.” He looked back to his computer. “The forums are exploding. We’re one of the only major sites that has people actually responding to queries.”

“That’s because we don’t know anything.”

“That’s not entirely true,” said Mahir. “We know the outbreak started when Tropical Storm Fiona made landfall—and that it spread with the storm. Only with the storm.”

“Wait, what?”

“All the index cases have matched up with the initial footprint of the storm.”

I stared at him. What he was saying didn’t make sense. An outbreak starting when a major storm hit was reasonable, if horrifying. Storms cause devastation, they cause injuries, and they can cause a hell of a lot of cross-contamination. There have been documented cases of someone being injured in a major storm, only to have the wind carry their infected blood onto a bystander before anyone knew what was happening. But that outbreak would be geographically contained, and even though it would be horrible, it wouldn’t be anything unique enough to cause the sort of devastation they were showing on the news.

If the live state of the virus had gone airborne, it would be reasonable to assume that it would spread with the storm. It would also spread without the storm, and while its initial footprint might have been defined by Fiona, it wouldn’t stay that way. If this was a purely airborne outbreak, it should have been breaking out of any containment not defined through a complete absence of uninfected bodies.

“Wait…” I said again, slow dread worming its way into my stomach. I hadn’t realized I still had the capacity to be frightened. Somehow, it wasn’t a welcome discovery. “Alaric, your sister. You said she posted to the Wall. Is she all right?”

“She’s scared out of her mind, and she’s alone in the attic of the family condo, but she’s physically fine.” Alaric looked up, expression challenging me to say something as he added, “She’s using the company server to chat with me.”

“Good. Make sure she has a log-in of her own. If she wants to coauthor reports with you on what’s going on out there, use your own discretion, but I say let her. It may take her mind off things until she’s evacuated. Can you ask her a question for me?”

Alaric eyed me suspiciously. “What do you want me to ask?”

“Ask whether any of them had been outside since the start of the storm.” The idea that was unfolding in the back of my head wasn’t a pleasant one. It also wasn’t one that I could categorically ignore.

Alaric frowned. “I don’t think—”

“Please.”

He hesitated, then turned back to his computer and began to type. Mahir and Becks looked up from their respective tasks, watching him. Maggie continued to chatter in the background for a few minutes more before saying her good-byes and walking over to stand beside me. “What’s going on?”

I gestured toward the still-typing Alaric. “Alaric’s asking his sister a question for me.”

“The one in Florida?” She gave me a sidelong look. “That seems a little…”