T-minus 23 days to DEADLINE.

[NOTE: I am a few days behind, due to the convention I attended this past weekend. So I'll be posting several of these today. Please don't tell me how it's not spam.]

Denver, Colorado. June 13th, 2014.

Suzanne Amberlee had been waiting to box up her daughter's room almost since the day Amanda was diagnosed with leukemia. It was a coping mechanism for her. Maybe some would call it morbid, the way she spent hours thinking about boxes and storage and what to do with the things too precious to be given to Goodwill, but as the parent of a sick child, she'd been willing to take any comfort that her frightened mind could give her. These were the things she would keep; these were the things she would send to family members; these were the things she would give to Amanda's friends. Simple lines, long-since drawn in the ledgers of her heart.

The reality of standing in her little girl's bedroom and imagining it empty, stripped of all the things that made it Amanda's, was almost more than she could bear. After weeks of struggling with herself, she had finally been able to close her hand on the doorknob and open the bedroom door. She still wasn't able to force herself across the threshold.

There were all Amanda's things. Her stuffed toys that she had steadfastly refused to admit to outgrowing, saying they had been her only friends when she was sick, and she wouldn't abandon them now. Her bookshelves, cluttered with knick-knacks and soccer trophies as much as books. Her framed poster showing the structure of Marburg EX19, given to her by Dr. Wells after the first clinical trials began showing positive results. When she closed her eyes, Suzanne could picture that day. Amanda, looking so weak and pale, and Dr. Wells, their savior, smiling like the sun.

"This little fellow is your best friend now, Amanda," that was what he'd said, on that beautiful afternoon where having a future suddenly seemed possible again. "Take good care of it, and it will take good care of you."

Rage swept over Suzanne as she opened her eyes and glared across the room at the photographic disease. Where was it when her little girl was dying? Marburg EX19 was supposed to save her baby's life, and in the end, it had let her down; it had let Amanda die. What was the good of all this—the pain, the endless hours spent in hospital beds, the promises they never got to keep—if the damn disease couldn't save Amanda's life?

"I hate you," she whispered, and turned away. She couldn't deal with the bedroom; not today, maybe not ever. Maybe she would just sell the house, leave Amanda's things where they were, and let them be dealt with by the new owners. They could filter through the spindrift of Amanda's life without seeing her face, without hearing her voice talking about college plans and careers. They could put things in boxes without breaking their hearts.

If there was anything more terrible for a parent than burying a child, Suzanne Amberlee couldn't imagine what it would be. Her internal battle over for another day—over, and lost—she turned away, heading down the stairs. Maybe tomorrow she could empty out that room. Maybe tomorrow, she could start boxing things away. Maybe tomorrow, she could start the process of letting Amanda go.

Maybe tomorrow. But probably not.

Suzanne Amberlee walked away, unaware of the small viral colony living in her own body, nested deep in the tissue of her lungs. Content in its accidental home, Marburg EX19 slept, waiting for the trigger that would startle it into wakefulness. It was patient; it had all the time in the world.

***

Amanda Amberlee is survived by her mother, Suzanne Amberlee. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be sent to the Colorado Cancer Research Center...

When will you Rise?

All the bitty bits and pieces.

1. It is now twenty-one days to Deadline. I am scrambling to catch up on "Countdown" (the series of little in-universe snapshots has a name!), and writing ahead so as not to get caught flat-footed by my next convention adventure. I'm not certain I'll have internet while at Wiscon, so the last few pieces may be posted a little late, but they will be posted.

2. The cats responded to my going to Leprecon by magically acquiring giant felted mats which should have taken them well over a week to create. Last night's brushing adventure was a lot of fun for everyone involved, let me tell you what. Also, ow. Also, I am so saying "screw this noise" when I get home from BEA/Wiscon, and just taking the pair of them straight to the professional groomer for trimming and mat removal. I am not going through that again if I don't have to.

3. My whole house is clean! Why is my whole house clean? Because my mother is awesome! Why is my mother awesome? Because she cleaned my house! The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

4. I get a Cat this weekend! Cat Valente is using my house as her base of operations during the San Francisco Bay Area branch of her tour for The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She'll be at our best-beloved Borderlands Books this Saturday; there will be cupcakes, and carousing, and all the usual wonderful things. You should totally come.

5. There will be another, probably photo-heavy post about this later, but...I got an Evangeline Ghastly doll! More precisely, I got two; the one I bought, and one that mysteriously appeared on my doorstep in a big-ass box from Wilde Imagination. My squealing, it was vast. Of course, now I have entered the dark realm of the ball-jointed doll, from which there is no returning. Which leads us to...

6. I am allowed to do one fiscally silly thing every time I do certain things, career-wise. As I have done a certain thing (more on this later), I get to be silly, and I've decided that this time, for silly, I want a resin Evangeline doll. They fit more of the clothes, and can wear all the shoes. Specifically, I want the Cemetery Wedding Evangeline, since she has the best face. If you know anyone who might be selling part of a doll collection, please let me know?

7. The new season of Doctor Who continues to delight me.

8. I have finished the Tybalt short! "Rat-Catcher" is 10,000 words long, and has been officially submitted to the market it was written for. If they buy it, I'll announce when and where it will be appearing. If they don't, I'll start looking for something else to do with a story full of Cait Sidhe. Whatever I do, it will probably need to involve gooshy food.

9. Zombies are love.

10. I am hammered enough right now that my response time is slow, and the amnesty on replying to comments on the "Countdown" posts endures. I'll still answer comments on all other posts; it may just take me a little while. Thank you for being understanding.

T-minus 22 days to DEADLINE.

[NOTE: I am a few days behind, due to the convention I attended this past weekend. So I'll be posting several of these today. We're almost there, I promise.]

Reston, Virginia. June 15th, 2014.

"Alex?"

All the lights in the main lab were off. Most of the staff had long since gone home for the night. That made sense; it had been past eleven when John Kellis pulled into the parking lot, and the only car parked in front of the building was his husband's familiar bottle-green Ford. He hadn't bothered to call before coming over. Maybe some men strayed to bars or strip clubs. Not Alex. When Alex went running to his other lover, he was always running to the lab.

John paused to put on a lab coat before pushing open the door leading into the inner office. The last thing he wanted to do was upset Alex further by providing another source of contamination. "Sweetheart? Are you in here?"

There was still no answer. John's heart started beating a little faster, spurred on by fear. The pressure had been immense since the break-in. Years of research gone; millions of dollars in private funding lost; and perhaps worst of all, Alex's sense of certainty that the world would somehow start playing fair, shattered. John wasn't sure that he could recover from that, and if Alex couldn't recover, then John couldn't, either.

This lab had been their life for so long. Vacations had been planned around ongoing research; even the question of whether or not to have a baby had been put off, again and again, by the demands of Alex's work. They had both believed it was worth it for so long. Was one act of eco-terrorism going to change all that?

John was suddenly very afraid that it was.

"I'm back here, John," said Alex's voice. It was soft, dull...dead. Heart still hammering, John turned his walk into a half-jog, rounding the corner to find himself looking at the glass window onto the former hot room. Alex was standing in front of it, just like he had so many times before, but his shoulders were stooped. He looked defeated.

"Alex, you have to stop doing this to yourself." John's heartbeat slowed as he saw that his husband was alive. He walked the rest of the distance between them, stopping behind Alex and sliding his arms around the other man's shoulders. "Come on. Come home."

"I can't." Alex indicated the window. "Look."

The hot room had been re-sealed after the break-in; maybe they couldn't stop their home-brewed pathogens from getting out, but they could stop anything new from getting in. The rhesus monkeys and guinea pigs were back in their cages. Some were eating, some were sleeping; others were just going about their business, oblivious to the humans watching over them.

"I don't understand." John squinted, frowning at the glass. "What am I supposed to be seeing? They all look perfectly normal."

"I've bathed them in every cold sample I could find, along with half a dozen flus, and an airborne form of syphilis. One of the guinea pigs died, but the necropsy didn't show any sign that it was the cure that killed it. Sometimes guinea pigs just die."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand the problem."

Alexander Kellis pulled away from his husband, expression anguished as he turned to face him. "I can't tell which ones have caught the cure and which haven't. It's undetectable in a living subject. After the break-in, we're probably infected, too. And I don't know what it will do in a human host. We weren't ready." He started to cry, looking very young and very old at the same time. "I may have just killed us all."

"Oh, honey, no." John gathered him close, making soothing noises...but his eyes were on the animals behind the glass. The perfectly healthy, perfectly normal animals.

***

Dr. Alexander Kellis has thus far refused to comment on the potential risks posed by his untested "cure for the common cold," released by a group calling itself "the Mayday Army" almost three days ago...

When will you Rise?