George and I never technically knew our birthdays. The doctors could estimate how old we were and make some educated guesses about our biological parents, but it really didn’t matter. We knew we were born sometime in 2017, toward the end of the Rising, when most of North America had been taken back from the infected, because the doctors said so. We knew she was older by about six weeks. Everything else was details, and details weren’t important. Not to me. What was important was that I had her, and she had me, and we had each other, and that meant we could face anything the world threw at us. Sometimes I was even arrogant enough to think the Rising happened so we could be together.

It’s as good an explanation as any.

As of today, no matter when my birthday really is, I’ve had a birthday without George. As of today, I’ve spent a year going to sleep and waking up in a world she isn’t in, a world that seems meaningless because she’s never going to make it mean anything ever again. I was always sort of afraid she’d turn suicidal when I died. I asked her once if she ever worried about me like that.

“You’re already suicidal, you asshole,” she said, and laughed. Only it turns out she was wrong, because losing her made me more careful about almost everything. I miss her every day. I miss her every minute. But if anything happens to me, she may never get the ending she deserves, and I refuse to be selfish enough to die before I’m finished taking care of the things she left behind.

Happy birthday, George. You made me better than I could ever have been without you, and you hurt me worse than I could ever have been hurt by anybody else. I love you. I miss you. And I’m starting to get the feeling that I’ll see you pretty soon, because I’m starting to feel like, maybe, things are coming to an end.

God, I miss you.

—From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, June 20, 2041

Anybody who messes with Shaun is messing with me. And of the two of us, I swear, I am the one you do not want to mess with. He’ll kill you. But I will make you sorry, and I will make you pay.

Trust me. I’m a journalist.

—From Postcards from the Wall, the unpublished files of Georgia Mason, originally posted June 20, 2041