Archive of Our Own ^beta

So I wake up when a bomb goes off outside my room.
I don't know what's going on for a moment, because there's this whispering in my ears and also the mirror is on fire.
Then I realize the mirror is on fire. So is most of the wall. And I'm wearing what amounts to pajamas, and I don't know who I am. I do know that I need to get right the fuck out of here, however, so I wrench the headphones off my head and get out of the bed and run out the door, away from the hole in the wall and the moaning I can hear rising. 

The hallways are white and terrifyingly empty and everything is too loud, and then when I've run enough it's too quiet. I hurt all over and my lungs are burning, and I should be able to do this but my body isn't ready for it somehow, but I can't stop, I can't stop, because the adrenaline is pushing me on.
Then I round another corner--it might not even be new, everything looks the fucking same--and almost run right into a woman. She has dark brown hair that's long enough to curl and hazel eyes (they shouldn't be, they should be big and dark and covered by sunglasses like mine) and is paler than she should be, and she looks exactly like me, and she is holding a briefcase in one hand and pointing a gun at my head with the other.
"Who the fuck are you?" she demands.
The answer pops out of my mouth before I even think about it: "Georgia Mason."

She stares at me, and reaches for my sunglasses. I slap her hand away. "I have retinal KA!" The words come out too quickly, too sharply, tripping over each other, because here is this woman who looks just like me paired with the huge gaps I am finding in my memory and it hurts, it hurts, and it scares me.
"I know," she says after a moment, "Come with me, I think I know a place where we can hide out." I don't know if I can trust her. But I don't have a choice. 
We don't run this time. The initial burst of adrenaline has worn off, and now I feel like I want to collapse. I don't, though. I keep walking as fast as I can, and ignore the pain in my feet and legs and lungs. 
She stops us in front of a door that looks like it goes to a conference room (which is good, CDC conference rooms come with food, water, guns, and sometimes even computers) and presses her hand to the testing panel. The light flashes green. "It
won't let us in until you test clean, too," she says, stepping back.
I should have known that. Why didn't I know that?
I press my hand to the metal. Needles sting at the base of my palm. The lights start flashing--red to yellow to green to red--and settle on green. The door slides open. We step in.
And I almost get hit in the head with a chair. 

Luckily, my almost-double shouts and pulls me away by the arm, so it hits my shoulder instead and knocks me into her. It takes a minute for both of us to get our footing back, and luckily, the chair-wielder doesn't take any more swings at us.
This is probably because she's trying to figure out why we look exactly like her. She's the same as us except for the eyes, which only match the woman who brought me here.
"Okay," I say, raising my hands in the universal gesture of "it's okay, I am totally not armed and not going to kill you". "How about you put the chair down and we can talk about this like civilized people?"
She doesn't lower the chair, but she makes no move to hit us again. "I have one question that needs to be answered first," she says, "I'm Georgia Mason. Who the fuck are you?"

Nobody says anything for a good minute. Then I say, "You can't be Georgia Mason. I'm Georgia Mason." The scary thing here is, I don't know if that's true. Everything I know says I'm Georgia Carolyn Mason, Newsie blogger, A-15 license, head of the After the End Times website, sister of Shaun Mason, and attached to the Ryman presidential campaign. Also that the chips were down and shit was real, and something was very very wrong.
But mostly my identity.
It is my identity.
Isn't it?
"Very funny," the woman with the chair says. Although actually she's putting the chair down now, probably because it's heavy and her arms haven't got an ounce of muscle on them. "I would have believed you more if you'd said you were the Monkey. I'm Georgia Mason, and trust me, there's only one of me--"
"And she's dead," says my (for lack of a better word) rescuer. She has that briefcase open, and is holding three thick Manila folders. "We're not her, we're just varying percentages of her, and that's all there is to it." 
What feels like an eternity passes. Than myself and chair-George, as I've unwillingly come to think of her, say, "What?"

"We should all sit down," says file-George, because she has to be George, too, just like me. Or not. 
Fucking CDC.
So we do. We get water, too, because all that running meant sweat and sweat means water loss. And file-George explains. She explains that Georgia Carolyn Mason died after being shot with a KA-filled dart, but not before writing a blog post that had files proving the corruption behind Governor Tate (she helpfully provides copies of said blog post. I feel as though another woman wrote it. And, well, I'm right.) She explains that the CDC, bankrolled by Vice President Rick Cousins--yes, our Rick--started making us, and that it took a long time to get even as far as her. She's subject 6d. Chair-George is probably somewhere in the seven line. I'm 8b, and I was scheduled to be deployed.
Yeah. Deployed. Like a missile. 
(I want to scream, and scream, and keep on screaming until the world is blotted out by the sound.)
(But I don't.)
(I can't.)
This is because, file-George tells me, the reason I have retinal KA and the other two don't? There isn't one, because I don't have it, because they can't induce specific reservoir conditions (when they tried, they got zombie-Georges or, like what happened with file-George, stuff like ovarian KA instead). What I have is surgically modified eyes that are eighty percent artificial, and also I was supposed to be a little less than most of Georgia Mason with enough subconscious commands to make me a loyal little test tube baby so that when I found Shaun and he found me, I would make sure the CDC found both of us, and make sure Shaun didn't know until there was a bullet in his brain. 
The reason that second part didn't take hold is that I was less than halfway through the process when someone set a bomb. It was, says file-George (who wants us to call her 6d, because it's more factual) probably what's left of the Irwin division of After the End Times. Which means Shaun. Which means I missed my brother.
Which means we missed our brother. Let's not lie here.
Although really I'm the one lying, calling us all George (I'm goat-George, as in Judas goat) when really none of us are. Apparently I'm sixty-four percent, and chair-George is somewhere in the thirties or possibly forties, and file-George is a whopping eighty-eight percent. But the real George? Is dead. And I won't let myself forget that. 
I refuse to. No matter how badly it hurts.
"As soon as the CDC realizes we're here, they'll terminate us," I say. Even me. It's not like I'm special or anything--they know how to get a me now. They might even make a better me the next time around. And the other two were probably just kept around for medical reasons or some kind of flimsy excuse that will fold when they make this much trouble. We're done for.
"We could run," says chair-George, sounding like she doesn't really mean it. "Get ourselves new identities. The Monkey could make it like we've always been around."
I laugh, I can't help myself. "The Monkey? Even if we can find him, what are we supposed to say? 'Hey we just met you, and this is crazy, but we're illegal clones of a dead blogger who need to hide from the CDC before they exterminate us, so make us all fake identities for free maybe'? Yeah, that'll go over well. I give us thirty seconds before he starts shooting."
Chair-George smiles. It's very small, and it's very grim, and it's nowhere close to a happy expression. "I know," she says, "I just needed to hear it said."
"We go public, is what we do," says file-George.
And it's obvious.
Of course.
I still have the Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer back door passwords to After the End Times. Buffy, may she never get up and walk around chewing on her friends after presumably having been headshotted, had put in enough of those. And chances are if I have them, then so does file-George. Maybe even chair-George. 
We can say something. About the cloning program. About what's happening, and how the CDC was going to use me to silence Shaun because he's trying to find out something they want kept a secret.
We can do that.
We can.
Especially if we use the admin password, which I remember perfectly.
"Perfect," I say.
"Let's find us a laptop," chair-George says.
There turns out to be a whole cartful of generic ones in the conference room closet. No login required. Internet access still going strong.
We start to write. 

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Transcript taken from a video posted on Images May Disturb You, August 2, 2041

(A woman who matches the appearance of deceased blogger Georgia Mason stands in front of the camera. She wears no sunglasses and does not appear to have retinal Kellis-Amberlee. She is very quickly joined by another woman who is nearly identical except for her hair cut. The first woman speaks.)

Before we start, here is something you need to know: we are not Georgia Mason. We have her DNA. We have some of her memories. My friend with the glasses even has her eyes, although not her reservoir condition. We are clones, created for the express purpose of eventually developing a model who would harm Shaun Mason. We would not be here had someone not set off a bomb.

(The second woman steps forward.)

We hereby apologize for this video. We know it's shitty, and we know even the real George could have shot a better one,  but we don't have the time or materials to make anything better. Once the CDC gets their act together, we're so much meat. And, um, that's mind of morbid, but it's the truth. And I might only be forty-something percent of George, but that's enough to tell the truth, don't you think? (off to the side) You should come on now.

(They leave the frame, and a woman in sunglasses who appears otherwise identical to the first two walks into it.)

That was supposed to be me. I was being implanted with memories that would cause me to betray Shaun. This process was interrupted by an explosion set by an unknown party, as well as an outbreak.  We are making this video so you know what the CDC is doing. Three of us have survived. Soon that number will be zero. We're--we're very sorry. Download this video. Mirror this video. Take screen caps. Do whatever you can to save it. And, for fuck's sake, the moderators better keep a handle on the comments section. 

Say hello to Shaun and Buffy for us. 

(The video ends here.)

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Taken from the comments section of Images May Disturb You:

Alaric Kwong: Whoever you are, you are NOT FUCKING FUNNY. 

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Andrya Madekwe: What the ever-loving shit is this and how did they do it?? (Does anybody have a way to get at Shaun?)

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Lena Feldman: Just shut up already, Mike.

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Isabel Suarez: How come they don't know Buffy's dead?

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Taken from an email to Mahir Gowda from Alaric Kwong

Mahir. I'm sorry for breaking radio silence again, but it's really important. I need you to look at George's blog now. I mean, right now. This instant.
I mean it.
Please go look.
And tell me I'm not crazy.

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In a refitted news van currently getting the hell out of Oregon, Shaun Philip Mason and the woman who was ninety-seven percent of Georgia Carolyn Mason watched the video with something like horror.
"Mahir," says George. "Wake up."