Immunity Index by Sue Burke (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

Then I had a sudden terrifying thought of something we all should have realized earlier, especially the Prez’s team (but they were idiots). “How will people respond,” I said, my voice sounding faraway, “when they learn it’s a form of the delta virus? Because doctors will test their patients. Results should be back by now.”

I might have heard gasps from my teammates.

“What do you mean?” Node 6 snapped.

“People feel terror at the thought of the so-called Sino cold. I’m Chinese, and children were pointing at me on the street. Now they’re going to find out their partner or child apparently has that life-threatening illness. Or they themselves do. How will they know they’re not about to die?”

After a brief silence, Grrl said, “We’ll be looking at panic.”

“Short-lived, if it happens,” Node 6 said. “From what I’ve heard, the Prez will announce that the country has been successfully vaccinated. Everyone will rejoice.”

That was wishful thinking, brought to you by the people who believed flags would stave off illness. Also, how had they heard that?

“Even as contagious as that virus is,” I said, “from the figures we have so far and the patchwork distribution of the virus, it’s not going to reach herd immunity anytime soon.”

“People will try to catch it,” Node 6 said.

I felt tempted to start ignoring Node 6 because of manifest idiocy, but they’d tipped their hand. What they asserted seemed idiotic because, as I said, the Prez’s team were idiots. I was talking to one of its members.

“That’s for someone else to figure out,” Node 5 said. “Our job is to look at how it will react to that other virus, the real thing, the deadly one, when that hits.”

I had already run several models that had left quite a few questions unanswered. The biggest of all was how a given patient would respond to simultaneous exposure to both viruses, and how the viruses would interact with each other. They might swap genetic material with every possible kind of result, from beneficial to catastrophic. I presented all my doubts, and Node 6 had predictable quibbles. In order to observe Node 6 closely, I answered them all with more patience than I knew I still had in reserve, although few of the objections seemed reasonable and all of them had been based on an unsophisticated understanding of the interaction between the human body and viral infections, and between viruses themselves.

I was arguing for specific tests to confirm and expand on my concerns (I can err, too, and knowing that saves me from some kinds of idiocy) when Node 1 interrupted.

“We have reports of sudden complications.”

In fact, we had reports of severe illnesses and several deaths from around the country. The symptoms seemed to surpass the original delta virus. Within an hour, we had a genetic analysis of the virus, and as I studied it, time slowed until it stopped with a horrifying jolt.

“This is new.” I struggled to talk through my anger. “It’s not the attenuated virus meant as a vaccine. This is the deadly delta virus, the real thing, but it’s a slight variation, a new strain.” I actually saw much more than that, but I wasn’t going to tip my hand yet.

“You’re sure?” Node 6 said, anger hissing in the distorting static.

“We should check, of course, but I feel confident.”

“You know an awful lot.” Their voice rang with the singsong of sarcasm.

“I do.” At that point, I ran out of patience. And fear. “You might know me as Peng. I’ve done quite a lot of work with genetics.”

“Peng? You—you’re that Peng?”

“Yes. I could build you from the ground up. Now, how did this deadly virus suddenly appear in so many places at once?” I had a terrifying, infuriating guess.

After a long wait—but not silent, because at some node, people were shouting in the background—Grrl said, “Another question, and very important. How fast can we predict specifically how this will interact with the vaccine?”

“We can start work now,” I said.

I was going to have some conditions to demand, however, because I knew what I had seen.

CHAPTER5

Avril helped Hetta to the sink to wash her face after she’d thrown up—out of fear, Avril hoped, not illness. It was four in the morning, and the bathroom down the hall from Avril’s room had become sort of a health center—bare, echoing, damp, with soap scents unable to cover what fear apparently smelled like, which was blood, bile, and loose bowels. She hadn’t expected to find Hetta there, or to find her needing so much help.

Hetta rinsed her mouth and face and blotted it on a towel. Tears dripped down her cheeks. Her bathrobe was spotted with blood. And probably pathogens.

But I’ve already been exposed. Dead woman walking. We’ll see how far I get.

Fear—or rage or despair—whined in Hetta’s voice. “I didn’t know what to do. I was holding her, and she was trying to breathe, and blood was coming from her mouth, and she started thrashing and then she just stopped, she stopped moving. I couldn’t do anything.”

Avril began to reach out to take her hand, but stopped. Her own hand was trembling—she might die herself, other people were dying, and what could she do about them?—so it might not provide much comfort. Their phones had long been cut off, so they had no one to consult. Two other women stood nearby in pajamas, pale and huddled together.

“They want to kill us all,” Hetta said. “That’s why we’re locked in.” She sobbed even harder.

Maybe she’s right. It was one way to destroy the university or the mutiny.

First, survive. There had to be something concrete to do, or Avril would start sobbing herself. She gestured at a shelf of over-the-counter remedies that people were sharing—cold medicine, painkillers, even an asthma inhaler—along with what little advice they could give.

“I hear these might help. A little bit. So people don’t go into a death spiral.” She’d given some cough suppressant to Shinta, who was not sleeping more peacefully—but not