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The echoes ofopen, revealing a short, cheerfully curvy woman with spiky brown hair streaked with bleach-white lines that lookedan electric orange T-shirt that read DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS, jeans, and a lab coat, and was pointing a hunting rifle at the middle of ht, even char, with an accent I couldn’t quite identify She followed the question with a pleasant smile that didn’t warm her eyes This was a woht ere giving her reason
Not the friendliest greeting ever, and yet, not the least friendly, either, said George Kelly gasped, either in shock or indignation I wasn’t sure which, and I really didn’t care; it gaveto respond to that wouldn’t convince the woht off the bat That could coer had a weapon ai sure to slant ive the i back to the woman in the doorway, I asked, "May I reach into my jacket for my press pass? I pro "Joe! Co up behind her, its flapping jowls oozing strings of gooey white saliva Its head looked like it was bigger than , but there was no way I was going to volunteer to do thewas solid charcoal black, ly like the classic hellhound
Kelly drew her breath in again This tiiethat sounded suspiciously like "Holy shit"
"Joe, guard," said the woman with the rifle The massive canine obediently padded out onto the ay, standing between her and the rest of us It wasn’t growling, glaring, or doing anything else actively hostile; it was sih
Reaching slowly into my jacket, I asked the most sensible question I could come up with under the circuonize the wo the only dead one in this relationship
I ignored her, choosing instead to focus on the wole-minded I tend to pay more attention to the immediate threats to life and limb, and leave the sarcastic dead people for later
"That’s Joe," said the wo the rifle aier of getting hiie, almost reverently She started to step forward, one hand outstretched in a gesture I’d seen her use on her video blog whenever she was adding a new rescue to hertoward the woman with the rifle "Is he friendly?"
"He will be, once I’ve seen your ID" Still, shotgun lady’s sood boy He only eats the people I tell hi," I muttered, and held out my journalist’s license "Here All my credentials are on file Just run the code"
"And your people?" She jerked her chin toward the others, not bothering to take the license frodalene Garcia, head of the Fictionals Alaric Kwong, he’s with the Newsie division; the actual division head lives in London and isn’t with us today And this is--" For a sickening moment, I couldn’t reia
"--Barbara Tinney," I echoed "She’s a social scientist on loan to the site for a fewsome field experience"
Fro it "Uh-huh What are you folks doing here? Take a wrong turn on the way to a real story?"
I had two choices I could try to come up with a plausible lie or I could tell her the truth Once, I would have gone straight for the lie, thethe better I’ any out my license "I have some files froht she htly; she was interested I decided to press my luck "I don’t know if you follow the news, but ia Mason--"
"Retinal Kellis-Aedy I was very sorry to hear about it" The rifle wavered slightly "I need a better reason for you to be here, and not at a ‘real lab’ soe’s mental voice held a venoain, I couldn’t blaht be the reason she was just a voice in my head
In for a penny, in for a pound "Barbara Tinney is a cover ID for Dr Kelly Connolly of the CDC The researcher as killed in a break-in recently--that was a full-body clone The real Dr Connolly wasn’t killed, and this is her" This time, Kelly’s horrified expression was nore it "She’s hoe got the files, and those sah that no one would suspect we’d go to you, while still having staff who kno to find their asses with both hands It didn’t one somewhere else Now, are you or can you tell us where to find her? I’ out here in the middle of nowhere"