Feed: The Newsflesh Trilogy - By Mira Grant Page 0,57

being harassed by zombies or rival bloggers, but nervous. ?Sure, Buff. Give me a second.? I strode back to the table and leaned across two of the arguing aides to grab the speaker phone. They squawked protests, but I ignored them, yanking off my ear cuff and snapping it into the transmission jack at the base of the phone.

?Miss Mason?? inquired the senator, eyebrows rising.

?Sorry, this is important.? I hit the Receive button.

? testing, testing,? said Buffy?s voice, crackling slightly through the speaker. ?Am I live??

?We can hear you, Miss Meissonier,? said the senator. ?May I ask what was so important that it required breaking in on our conference??

Chuck Wong spoke next; apparently, ours wasn?t the only end on speakerphone. ?We?re at the perimeter fence, sir, and it seemed important that we call you as quickly as possible.?

?What?s going on out there, Chuck? No more zombies, I hope??

?No, sir?not so far. It?s the screamer.?

?The one that failed??

?Yes, sir. It didn?t fail because of anything my team did.? Chuck didn?t keep the relief out of his tone, and I couldn?t blame him. Carelessness can be a federal offense when it applies to antizombie devices. No one has managed to successfully charge a security technician with manslaughter?yet?but the cases come up almost every year. ?The wires were cut.?

The senator froze. ?Cut??

?The screamer shows detection of the zombies we saw last night, sir. The connection that should have set off the perimeter alarms wasn?t made because those wires had been cut before the alarm was sounded.?

?Whoever did it did a pretty good job,? Buffy said. ?All the damage is inside the boxes. Nothing visible until you crack the case, and even then you have to dig around before you find the breaks.?

The senator sagged backward, paling. ?Are you telling me this was sabotage??

?Well, sir,? said Chuck, ?none of my men would have cut the wires on a screamer protecting the convoy that they were inside. There?s just no reason for it.?

?I see. Finish your sweep and report back, Chuck. Miss Meissonier, thank you for calling. Please, call again if you need anything further.?

?Roger. Georgia, we?re on server four.?

?Noted. Signing off now.? I leaned over and cut the connection before pulling my ear cuff out of the jack and sliding it back onto my ear. Only when this was done did I glance back up at Senator Ryman.

The senator looked like a man who?d been hit, hard and unexpectedly, from behind. He met my gaze, despite the alien appearance of my contacts, and gave a small, tightly controlled shake of his head. Please, that gesture said, not right now.

I nodded, taking Shaun?s arm. ?Senator, if you don?t mind, my brother and I should be getting to work. We?re a bit behind after last night.?

Shaun blinked at me. ?What??

?Of course.? The senator smiled, not bothering to conceal his relief. ?Miss Mason, Mr. Mason, thank you for your time. I?ll have someone notify you before we?re ready to check out and move on.?

?Thank you,? I said, and left the room, hauling the still-bewildered Shaun along in my wake. The boardroom door swung closed behind us.

Shaun yanked his arm out of my hand, subjecting me to a sharp sidelong gaze. ?Want to tell me what that was all about??

?The man just found out his camp was sabotaged,? I said. ?They?re not going to come up with anything useful until they finish panicking. That?s going to take days. Meanwhile, we have reports to splice together and update, and Buffy?s dumping her footage to server four. We should take a look.?

Shaun nodded. ?Got it.?

?Come on.?

Back in our hotel room, I turned the main terminal over to Shaun while I plugged my handheld into the wall jack and settled down to work. We couldn?t both record voice feeds at the same time, but we could edit film clips for our individual sections of the site and we could write as much text as we needed. I skimmed the reports Buffy authorized while Shaun and I were on cleanup. All three of the betas had done excellent jobs. Mahir, especially, had done an amazing amount with his relatively straightforward video feed, and I saw from the server flags that both the footage and his voice tracking had already been optioned by three of the larger news sites. I tapped in a release, authorizing use of the footage under a standard payment contract that would give Mahir forty percent of the profits, with clear credit for the narrative. His first breakout report.