“Hey, you okay?” Neal asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m okay like that too. I gotta keep doing something.”
They were going to bring antivirals, other medical supplies, and food to the electrical grid control facility in the south suburbs, a nondescript building she was sure she’d seen but never noticed because it was deliberately unmarked and bland to prevent notice and sabotage. A variety of people and groups might try to bring down the electrical grid, even in good times.
The county government—what was left of it—was still dithering over supporting or opposing the mutiny, so it would neither aid nor block the city’s mission. Rumors said countermutineers were coalescing. The control room might be a target, but a lone unmarked truck, driving manually, off the grid, might not attract attention. Drones would discreetly follow their progress. A remote-controlled decoy truck emblazoned with the blue city logo would approach the main entrance in an attempt to draw off attention.
Berenike took the wheel. It felt good. “Route plotted with course corrections for red dots.” She mimicked the dialogue from a movie.
“Full throttle.”
She poked through city streets at the legal limit and, as soon as they reached the freeway, let the truck go at top speed. With almost no traffic, reckless acceleration was fun. The lights alongside the road were on, and most houses were lit—a sign of victory. Take that, dead Prez.
“It’s like there’s a snowstorm,” Neal said, “but no snow.”
They approached a side gate in a chain-link fence on an unlit road and waited for the truck’s electronic ID to open it.
The window next to Neal shattered. Then the windshield. For a moment, Berenike sat frozen, covered by little chunks of broken glass. What did that?
An attack. They were under attack. Countermutineers? Had to be.
She fumbled to unhook her seat belt and ducked down. She stayed down. She waited … and nothing more happened. Maybe they weren’t under attack. Maybe it was something else.
“Neal?” she whispered. No response. That was bad.
She fumbled with the visor on her helmet and closed it, then peeked up. Neal. He sat slumped over, restrained by his seat belt. He was twitching.
“Neal?” she said louder. No reaction.
Shouts came from outside. “Hands up!”
Countermutineers, it had to be that. Fuck. She put her hands up. Her fingers felt distant and numb.
“Get out of the truck!”
She found the door control, found her feet, everything far away, and stepped out. Her legs shook. Where was the man who was shouting? It was too dark to tell, and all the distances suddenly seemed huge. She tried to focus, to pull things in, to control her own body. Breathe.
“Step away from the truck.” A blinding light shone on her. She took a couple of steps.
Was that a drone buzzing? No, two drones, very faint and far away, but maybe not their drones.
Some people approached: hoods, camouflage, goggles, breathing masks. Pointing rifles. She stood still.
“Look toward me and take off your helmet.” A man’s voice.
She slowly turned, reached up, and struggled with unwilling fingers to unsnap the chin strap. She lifted off the helmet, and the cold breeze on her head made her shiver from the sudden vulnerability.
A silhouette pointed a phone at her. It clicked. A photo. “We’ll see who you are.” Facial recognition. What database did they have access to, and why did they care who she was?
“What were you bringing?” someone else asked. A woman’s voice.
There seemed to be no point in lying. “Antivirals, some other medicine, some food.”
“We could use that a whole lot better than the assholes in there.”
“Let’s move fast,” a man said. “Dump that body and take the truck.”
“What about her?”
“Can you drive the truck?” a man asked her.
“Yes.” I got it here, shithead. The shock was wearing off and anger was boiling up.
“No,” the woman said, “that truck has a tracer, for sure.” She pointed up. “And those are drones. Let’s move fast. Just shoot her.”
There’s no point in keeping me alive. If you don’t kill me and I can kill you, I will.
“Hey,” the man with the screen said. “She’s wanted. A Chinese agent. That’s what the White House said. The ones who released the flu virus.”
What?
“Then let’s shoot her,” the woman insisted.
“Hey, there’s another one just like her up in Wausau. Two more besides that. Clones. They’re all alike, clones. Let’s take her and turn her in. That’s what the White House wants.”
Irene and Avril! And the fourth.
“Let’s hurry. Dupe girl, unlock the back doors. You can do that, right?”
“If you let me move.”
“Nothing fast,” the man said.
She reached inside the cab and punched a button. The cab smelled of blood. Neal. He wasn’t moving. Please be playing dead.
The counterrebels grabbed boxes as fast as they could, even her backpack—“Evidence,” the woman said, glaring at her—and shoved it into a nearby van.
“Get in,” screen man said. He threw her a face mask. “Put this on.”
She obeyed. She was immune to a virus, but not a bullet. Somehow that immunity would give her an advantage. How exactly could she kill these people?
With a gun pointed at her, she thought about how fast the police would come. They knew Neal was injured, if not dead—she hoped not dead. They’d slipped trackers into some of the boxes, and she wore a tracker clipped to her bra strap. But sometimes the police weren’t fast enough even in good times, and now it was all hell.
The van raced off, heading north back into the city, speeding through the streets. She recognized the model she rode in, a low-end resale from AutoKar, its ID number still visible on the dashboard, its autopilot hacked. She’d serviced that model a lot when she was low-level staff. It wasn’t designed to careen in turns through empty intersections like an old-fashioned chase scene in a classic movie. It could handle only gentle, computer-controlled use. Turns like that could damage an axle. Oh, please, at least snap a tie
