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"To be honest, I’d rather have her alive and pissed off than dead and happy," I said, putting rab hold of Becks again "If you’ve seen her file, you must know she suffered froshe accoed to smile at him I may never kno I did that "She did a lot with her life, it’s true Now I’ve got to soldier on and take care of the things she wasn’t able to finish"
"Oh?" Director Swenson gaveon?"
"Reservoir conditions See, she knew a lot of people through her support groups andhorrified I never joined a support group inthis crazy pattern" Was itstill? "It was like her friends died faster than anybody else’s I mean, even faster than my friends, anda big red flag in the face of Darwinis any received queries in her file," said Director Swenson His voice had gone completely blank, neither excited nor cold The voice of a
"She didn’t query the CDC," said Becks, before I could open my mouth I decided to let her take the conversation and run Her training was better for this bluff than ured that if there wasn’t a pattern, she didn’t want to bother you, and if there was…" She let the sentence trail off before lifting her shoulders in a "What are you going to do?" shrug, and said, "It was a pretty big scoop If the reservoir conditions were that dangerous, and so to break the story, why couldn’t it be her?"
"I suppose her notes were lost along with your address book," said Director Swenson, looking atthe level, but hey, what’s life without learning? She’s right, too The death rate is, like, crazy Some of these people, statistically, should have lived to see their great-grandkids Which means either the overall mortality rates for the country need to be recalculated, because we’re calibrating so, or folks with reservoir conditions are dying at a really accelerated rate" I gave hi-dumb-Irwin face, and asked, "Which do you think it is?"
"Well, now that you bring it up, there is some documentation to support your sister’s conclusions I only wish she’d brought them to us before she died It would have been a real pleasure working with her" Director Swenson stood,for Becks and me to stay where ere "If you till excuse et the files that relate to this particular issue I think you’ll find the him a half-salute Director Swensonquickly out of the conference room He shut the door as he exited Probably another of those crazy CDC security precautions… or he wanted us to think so, anyway
Rxing incarelessly, "It’s cool that he’s going to share his research, huh?" as I texted Becks with He’s up to sohtly surprised when her phone started buzzing Unclipping it from her belt, she read the screen and started to key in a reply as she said, "I told you the CDC was the place to go with this They’re going to have files on anything and everything she could have found on her own, if she just hadn’t been so damn stubborn" You think? That man couldn’t have rushed out of here faster if you’d been spurring him on with an electric prod He’s not happy that we’re here, and he’s really not happy about this line of discussion
"You know George Stubborn to the end" At least this confirms that it’s more than just Memphis Did you keep track of escape routes on the way in?
"It was her best quality" There really aren’t any, other than the e caiant kill chutes If there’s an outbreak, staff is supposed to hole up and stay where they are until help shows up
"You can say that again" Isn’t that fking awesome While Becks keyed in her response, I dipped a hand into ly li devices froal all over the world, and mail order makes it possible to make those purchases essentially untraceable None of them hold a candle to Buffy’s work
Hey, you’re the one who thought co your lead Do ant to scout while ait for hiine it would be a worse idea than co onto the bottoes until they were flush to the fra real hard to stand even a chance of finding it
Got it Becks glanced up fro to be back soon? I need to tinkle, and he didn’t shohere the bathrooms were"