Red. Every one of them. Red.

Tears prickled against my eyelids. It took me a moment to realize what they were, and then I had to resist the urge to blink them back. Kellis-Amberlee never let me cry before. It was damn well going to let me cry now. “Told you I was right,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted. All I managed to sound was lost.

“Bet you’re sorry,” Shaun replied. I raised my head and met his shocked, staring eyes with my own.

We sat that way for several moments, looking at each other, waiting for an answer that wasn’t going to come. It was Rick who spoke, voicing the one question we all wanted to ask and that none of us was quite prepared to answer.

“What do we do now?”

“Do?” Shaun frowned at him, looking utterly and honestly perplexed. That expression was enough to terrify me, because he looked like someone who didn’t understand the idea that before too much longer, I was going to be making a concerted effort to eat him alive. “What do you mean, ‘What do we do?’ ”

“I mean exactly what I said,” Rick said. He shook his head, gesturing to me. “We can’t just leave her like this. We have to—”

“No!”

The vehemence of Shaun’s reply startled me. I turned toward him. “No?” I repeated. “Shaun, what the hell do you mean, ‘no’? There isn’t room for ‘no.’ ‘No’ is over.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying.” Rick was pale and shaking, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. Poor guy. He didn’t sign up for political assassinations when he decided to join the so-called “winning team.” Despite that, he met my eyes without flinching and didn’t try to avoid looking at me. He’d seen the virus before. It held no surprises for him. “You’re the closest thing we’ve got to a virologist, Rick. How long do I have?”

“How much do you weigh?”

“One thirty-five, tops.”

“I’d say forty-five minutes, under normal circumstances,” he said, after a moment’s consideration. “But these aren’t normal circumstances.”

“The run,” I said.

He nodded. “The run.”

Viral amplification depends on a lot of factors. Age, physical condition, body weight—how fast your blood is moving when you come into contact with the live virus. If someone gets bitten in their sleep without waking up, they may take the rest of the night to fully amplify, because they’ll be calm enough that their body won’t be helping the infection along. I, on the other hand, got hit with a viral payload a lot bigger than you’d find in a bite, and it happened while I was running for my life, heart pounding, adrenaline pushing my blood pressure through the roof. I’d cut my time in half. Maybe worse.

It was already getting harder to think; harder to focus; harder to breathe. I knew, intellectually, that my lungs weren’t shutting down. It was just the virus enclosing the soft tissues of my brain and starting to disrupt normal neurological functions, making normally autonomic actions start intruding on the conscious mind. I’ve read the papers and the clinical studies. I knew what to expect. First comes the lack of focus, the lack of interest, the lack of capability to draw unrelated conclusions. Then comes hyperactivity as the circulatory system is pushed to overdrive. Then, when the virus reaches full saturation, the coup de grace: the death of the conscious mind. My body would continue to walk around, driven by raw instinct and the desires of the virus, but Georgia Carolyn Mason would be gone. Forever.

I was dead before the lights flashed red. I was dead the second the hypodermic hit my arm, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. But there was something I could do before I went.

Turning to Shaun, I nodded. There was a long pause—almost too long—before his expression calmed and he returned the gesture, looking more sure of himself, more like himself, despite the tears running down his cheeks.

“Rick?” he said.

Rick turned to him, shaking his head. “You can’t beat this. There’s no beating this. She’s gone. You need to realize that. She’s gone, and I’m sorry, but we have to—”

“Get me the medical kit from under the server rack,” Shaun said. I had to envy him the calmness in his voice. I couldn’t have stayed that calm if he were the one undergoing explosive viral amplification. “The red one.”

“What do you—”

“Do it!”

The words were barely out of his mouth before Rick was rushing to the front of the van, digging under the seat for the med kit. Mom packed it for us a million years ago, for use in absolute emergency. When she put it in my hands, she said she prayed we’d never have to use it. Sorry, Mom. Guess we let you down good this time. But hey, at least the ratings will be high.

I let out a long, shuddering sigh that somehow transformed into hysterical giggling. I bit my tongue before the giggles could turn to sobs. There wasn’t time for that. There wasn’t time for anything except the red box, and the things it held, and maybe—maybe, if I was lucky—one last article.

Rick came back to Shaun’s side, holding the box at arm’s length. His expression was cold. He didn’t think Shaun would be able to do it. He didn’t know him as well as he thought he did. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the seat, suddenly tired.

“You can go now, Rick,” I said. “Take my bike and the gray backup drive. Get as far away as you can, then hit a data station and upload everything to the site. Free space. No subscription required. Creative Commons licensing.”

“What is it?” he asked, curiosity briefly overriding his determination to see me dead. Bless you, Rick. A journalist after my own heart, right up to the end.

“Everything I died for,” I said. My eyes were starting to itch. I took my sunglasses off and threw them aside as I rubbed my eyes. “Files, bank records, everything. It’s just everything. Now get out of here. You’ve done everything you can.”