No one besides Berenike had even put on a seat belt. They must have hacked the automatic warning system. Worse, the man sitting next to her was talkative.
“The Chinese pay you well, don’t they?”
“I know jack shit about them.”
“You were made by them.”
“I was adopted. I know jack shit about that, too.”
“What were you doing?”
“I’m an assistant manager at an AutoKar, which was commandeered by the city, and me with it.”
“I mean, for the Chinese.”
“Jack shit. I don’t work for them.”
“The White House says you do.”
“The Prez said this was a common cold.”
“That’s what everyone thought.”
“Even yesterday everyone knew better. My father dropped dead of this at his kitchen table.”
“My sister and her kids are sick and they’re not getting anything. In the city, sure, some people get everything. She’s out in the suburbs and doesn’t get shit.”
Berenike understood exactly what she’d just heard and could have spent an hour explaining why it was wrong and racist and why she had mutinied. But why waste what might be her last breath on people who refused to understand?
“Her insurance company acts like it never heard of her,” he said. “But some people get stuff for free.” It was clear who some people were.
Again, she had an hour-long answer to that, with charts and graphs in multiple dimensions, leading to the conclusion that the system was victimizing the man’s sister the same way that it victimized everyone else, but it also made sure to keep everyone divided against one another instead of uniting against the victimizers. Some people were mutineers and others weren’t—but they all should be. Instead she said, “Where’re we headed?” She knew those streets perfectly, but it wouldn’t hurt if they thought she was ignorant.
“We’re going to get the other clone and turn you both in.”
The fourth one. “So tell me about her. I don’t know her.”
“Sleeper cells?”
“Jack shit, I told you. But if she’s my clone, I’m curious.”
“Her position’s on the White House site, so we’re getting her. That’s all we know.”
They turned, screeching onto Rawson Avenue, and Berenike heard a clunk. A U-joint? The U-joints tended to fail in this model. Please, break. Protect the fourth sister.
The driver said, “I think we should have cuffed her.”
“You got cuffs?”
“No.”
“Here.” The woman riding shotgun handed a pair back. The man grabbed her wrist, snapped on one cuff, and clipped the other one to the door handle. She knew how to disassemble that handle.
The driver’s screen told him where to turn, and he didn’t seem to know for sure where he was. Berenike had studied lots of maps to locate stranded and broken-down vehicles, and she could have directed them precisely to any given address and maybe provided some of the neighborhood’s history. They had come back into the city to a once-modest neighborhood that had fallen onto hard times.
The van stopped in front of one of the ubiquitous two-bedroom ranch homes with fake brickwork accents on its facade. A few of the bricks had fallen out. The trim needed paint. The lawn had been maintained, though, and there was a showy garden in the front yard with a trellis at the corner.
“Let’s go.” The driver sounded melodramatic. He looked at Berenike. “You stay here.”
Not like I have a choice.
They exited silently, leaving the doors open. They spread out, two at the home’s front door, one at the rear. Did they plan to kick in the doors and bust inside? They were in for a surprise. In neighborhoods like this, most doors were made of steel and hung in steel frames to thwart burglars. One of the men reared back and kicked the door hard. He hopped away, holding his foot, wincing.
The door opened.
Standing in it was a girl who looked like a snapshot of Berenike herself, maybe eleven years old, her hair uncombed. What had that girl hoped for by opening the door to strangers?
The streetlights went out, but not the lights in the houses. The wannabe patriots pumped their fists. The electrical grid must have been partially attacked. Berenike tried not to feel anything. Her side had lost a skirmish, maybe a battle, and much, much more was about to be lost unless she could do something about it.
They talked to the girl, who seemed upset. She must have hoped for help. An eleven-year-old, no matter how strong, needed help in bad times. Berenike had been in that situation herself. How could she help her now?
The door handle looked like it was one piece, but she pried off a cap on the underside, revealing a clip. She had no tools, so she slipped a thumbnail under the clip and pulled. The nail tore and flesh yielded—a small price to pay. The clip snapped out, and she swung the handle free at one end. She slipped it off the cuff and reached into the front seat for her backpack.
The man from the back door came running around to the front, and all three fake patriots were yelling at the girl. She began to cry and ran back into the house. The three followed. There was a lot of shouting inside.
Berenike pulled out her phone. She pushed an emergency button for the police. Then she opened AutoKar. The company could disable any vehicle automatically. Even when a car was sold, it was never cleared from the database. She tapped in the ID number and killed the car. Then she tried to make a plan.
The two men were backing out of the door, dragging the girl, followed by the woman, who fell to her knees and vomited.
“I told you she’s dead,” the girl shouted with the righteous rage of a child who had told the truth and been disregarded. “Everyone’s dying.”
The men looked around. Maybe, Berenike thought, when they tried to start the van, she could lunge for the girl, dash out, and then … do what? One of the men approached, dragging the girl. The other went to help the vomiting woman.
“Stop it!” the girl screamed, twisting and fighting. The man
