Immunity Index, Sue Burke [accelerated reader books txt] 📗

and understand your concern, but the city has allowed the event. We can’t do anything about that.”

“Spineless corporate bureaucracy, that’s what you are.”

She was tempted to say We’re sorry you feel that way but he’d probably see that as snide, and he’d be right. He was also right about the corporate bureaucracy being spineless. Inflexible and idiotic, too. She had the authority to offer him a small credit to his account to mollify him, but she decided not to, her own little vengeance against the kind of people she felt justified to fear.

“We hope the event hasn’t caused you any inconveniences,” she said.

His scowl delighted her. “You know what, just get me a car and I’ll go home. I wouldn’t have come downtown if I’d known about it. Those people think they deserve…”

She stopped listening and touched a few buttons on her screen. An autocar was being recharged in the service bay, and it rolled out next to the entrance before he had finished. He was coughing. She almost wished he had the delta cold and not whatever minor crap was going around.

She waved a hand toward the car. “Thank you for sharing your concerns,” she said with a fake smile.

“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t believe her. Well, he shouldn’t, since she was lying. The database had told her more about him than he might have wanted her to know. He could easily buy the kind of food that she couldn’t afford, had sufficiently high citizenship standing to be exempt from rationing, and he could even pay for a heli-taxi instead of a ground car. Tomorrow he might not be able to give orders the way he used to. She wished she could witness his face then.

She watched him leave, wondering if she’d miss the chance to inflict those minor cruelties if the mutiny failed and if she lost her job. If she lost it—maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t. Momma had lied, so Swoboda, who was a lot like her, would lie in one way or another, and maybe he wouldn’t carry out his threat. But anyone else who saw the video could expose her.

Even if the law changed, she might need to move. One roommate offered sympathy, but the other two might not. Maybe she could live with Papa, if he ever came home. Maybe he was just sleeping off another drug binge. Maybe, any minute, he’d call, or at least read her message.

“Hey, Berenike!” Jalil walked in with one minute to spare, wearing his teal uniform tunic, ready to start.

“Hey, Jalil!”

“Watch out.” He gestured south toward the protest. He knew she’d be going.

“I’ll be careful.”

She sprinted into the tiny office bathroom to change into street clothes, shoved her uniform into her backpack, and was out the door while he was still logging into the system.

The protest blocked the street in front of the gray granite federal courthouse, a couple hundred people, she guessed, and her heart fell: an enormous number considering the danger, but not nearly enough to start a nationwide mutiny. A man on the steps with a megaphone was speaking: “… and there’d be plenty of food for humans if they weren’t feeding pigs and chickens and cows to feed the rich.”

Someone was going to deliver the passwords to her. Who? They’d find her. That was all she knew. The movement had way too much secrecy, not like she could do anything about it. The crowd jostled as something or someone passed through it.

There was a bang like a gun. Close by. Then another. Gunfire? A third bang. And screams. People began to run, and behind them smoke rose and blew toward her. It stank.

Don’t panic. Make way. That was what she’d been taught in the protest training. Berenike turned and moved with the crowd. Be like a school of fish. Don’t trample. Don’t fall.

People were pushing too hard. She stumbled onto the person in front of her, both of them propped up by the press of the crowd, and tried to regain her footing.

More smoke. It was red. Gas? People were screaming and coughing.

“Stay calm,” an amplified man’s voice urged, the man who’d been speaking. “We’re clearing the crowd. You’ll be out soon. Stay calm.”

The crush didn’t decrease, but it didn’t increase either. Sirens approached.

“What’s happening?” someone up ahead screamed.

“It’s not gunfire,” the speaker said. “Follow instructions.”

“Come this way!” a high-pitched voice called from the right. “Walk calmly. This way. Walk calmly.”

The push moved her to the right. Berenike took a long stride, then another. Walk—calmly. A body lay on the ground in front of her, and someone was attending to that person. She paused and inched farther to the right, leaning back to stop other people.

Step by step, she moved around them, and suddenly there was space. Don’t run—but people were running. Don’t be trampled, be a school of fish, so she ran with them. It felt surreal, the clarity of the pavement beneath her feet, the moving bodies around her, the rising noise, shouts, sirens.…

She reached a corner and paused in a doorway to let people run past. Think calmly. What had happened? Bombs? What would help? Were people hurt? If there were bombs, there might be more bombs.

The crowd had thinned. She stepped out and looked up the street. Smoke was dissipating, red, white, and blue smoke. Patriotic antiprotesters. Crowd-control volunteers in orange vests were waving and gesturing. Could she help? Maybe the best thing to do was to get out of the way. She knew a couple of the volunteers. They were competent. Yes, get out of the way. It wasn’t cowardly—that’s what the training had assured her. Let the appropriate people do their jobs.

But she wouldn’t get the passwords. The rally had failed. The first step toward mutiny had fallen off a cliff.

Failure … All those people who had come knew the danger. She wasn’t going to abandon them, at a minimum. She ran back to the AutoKar office. It was crowded all the way out to the sidewalk with panicked