He grinned. Well, she knew it was a stupid question.
“We can’t figure out an escape,” he said, “but what we can do is figure out the rescue response. The minute we get a chance, when a rescue comes from the outside, we’ve gotta have a contingency plan. You want to join that, the rescue response crew? I’ll be glad to introduce you.”
The woman in charge of that pen’s response crew, Morgana, had needed a shower at least three days earlier. Her body stank, her breath stank, and by the way she tried to keep her arms tight against her body to shield her armpits, she knew it. “Sorry I’m so rank. The second thing I want to do when I get out is shower and brush my teeth. The first thing is to get everyone to safety, whatever that means when the time comes. You’re new? What’s going on out there?”
Avril told her what she could. In exchange, she learned that there was one chemical toilet per section, and one working spigot for water for the whole place, so a bucket brigade moved water from one sector to another, painstakingly pouring it through the chain-link fences. No food had been provided since breakfast the day before, which had been bags of cheap bread tossed in. The prisoners themselves had the job to divvy the loaves up.
“I hope they saw that we could do that civilized,” Morgana said with a thumb jerked at observation cameras in the high ceiling. “We’re not like them. Fair, not greedy. In case there still are people out there watching us, I don’t know. Did you see any humans?”
“Nope. And not guarding the dorms back on campus.”
“Figures. We’ve been controlled by a morally repugnant elite and their flunkies, and the flunkies are jumping ship.”
A special priority at all times, Morgana said, were the people in the row alongside a wall, lying on jackets or scarves or whatever could be scrounged as bedding. All of them were ill. No medicine or treatment was available for them, no masks or gloves or anything else for the medical crew caring for them, and no protection for everyone else except several feet of space separating them from the prisoners who coughed into damp or bloodstained tissues or cloths. Lying still in a corner were a half dozen bodies.
Avril stood and stared.
“You okay?” Morgana said.
“No. This is not okay.”
“I know. This is uncivilized.”
“This is a crime.”
Enos joined them. “When we get outta here,” he said with clenched teeth, “heads are going to roll. I already got a list. A long one.”
Revenge. Avril could understand the urge. And like him and everyone else, she was sure the mutiny would free them soon. The thought comforted her.
An hour later, she was still trying to feel sure. Any minute now. Her crew debated scenarios: a shootout, a surrender by the guards, a wholesale victory against the federal government, or a collapse of society due to the cold.
“If everything collapses,” Avril asked, “who’s going to come for us?”
“My family will never give up on me.”
Your family might all die. Avril didn’t say that.
A few minutes later, the air was filled with chimes and beeps and snatches of music. Their phones were working again.
“Blessed be!” Morgana said. “That’s the first step.”
Avril called Hetta. “Is the dorm still free?”
“Yes. They’re all getting real care, Shinta and the rest. Where are you?”
“In prison. We need help. This place is horrible. People are dying.”
“That one on the West Side? It’s under attack, I think. Let me check.”
Irene endured endless speculation from Roger and the other quarantine-table members about what was going on outside. People might be dropping by droves from the cold, whatever a drove was.
“I think there’ll be armed resistance,” Roger said, his breath short and fast. He slumped in his chair, a man in need of serious rest and care. “I mean, the Prez has supporters. He keeps things in order, crime down—I know, not really, ’specially if it’s a crime to lock us up—and stuff like that. If you have money, things are great. But today, everyone else, they just say no, and there’s going to be pushback.”
In a game of truth and lies, Irene thought, one out of those three things—illness, mutiny, and resistance—wouldn’t be true. Which one? The question seemed too hard to answer.
Gunfire sounded outside. Everyone stopped and listened. They heard another round, then silence.
Koobmeej stood on a table. “That was a warning to us that this place is guarded. But we knew that. Everyone knows that. It was meant to scare us. Don’t be scared.”
“It’s a shooting war now,” Roger said. “Told ya.”
He looked bad, but so did Koobmeej, and as the minutes ticked by, Irene was feeling sick, too. Her head pounded so fiercely she could hardly think—since when did she get migraines?—and she felt too dizzy to want to try to think. She couldn’t breathe well.
“We could really use some fresh air in here,” she said.
“Ain’t that a fact.” Roger looked up at the skylights. “I wonder if those things open.”
“We could break them,” she said. “All we need is someone with a good throwing arm.”
“We talked about that. It might bring in the centaurs. Or something. The same with the door.”
She looked around. Koobmeej was looking at his phone. Why? It didn’t work to make calls. Maybe he was playing a game, but he definitely wasn’t enjoying it.
He climbed onto a table again. “Hey, everyone, listen up. We have a big problem. I work in a greenhouse, so I need to monitor the atmosphere in it. I’ve checked our air. The CO2 level in here is wrong. They’ve cut off ventilation. Maybe they’re messing with the air. We have to do something. But in the meantime, sit still. Try not to talk too much. We’re about to try to break out of here while we still can.”
“Suffocation,” Roger said. “It’s a tough way to die. They use CO2 to stun animals before they slaughter them sometimes. I’ve
