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

Irene’s alarm woke her at four in the morning next to Nimkii’s pen. He snorted at the noise, wondering why she was awake, but she knew. No one in the house would be up.

She slid from beneath the mosquito net, slipped on shoes, and headed for the truck. The light on the farmhouse porch dimly lit the way. The truck door wasn’t locked—Alan never bothered. Irene touched the controls on the dashboard to turn on the navigation panel. She wanted to be quiet, so no voice commands. The navigation history would tell her where the truck had gone yesterday.

Out of three trips, two went to the same place on Highway 29 almost due north of the farm, barely more than a mile. That close! Irene could walk there. She was pretty sure she’d seen a farm there with a huge sheet-metal barn, the sort that covered a livestock operation. She gently closed the truck door.

So, now what? She would go and take a look. Nimkii could be on his own for an hour. He usually spent the night alone anyway, and he showed no interest in escaping again. The lights were out in the house, and she could be back before Ruby got up for work, or if not, no one paid attention to her anyway.

The quarter-moon provided enough light to keep her on the shoulder of the road. Crickets chirped, and gravel crunched under her feet. A secret prison seemed like too much to expect—but even the Prez gloated about political prisons already, although he called them public safety centers. The hurricane and flooding refugee camps in southern states amounted to prisons, too. Was this what Mamá was sending her a message about? Mamá had told her the mutiny would free the prisoners.

When she approached the highway, she stepped into the drainage ditch, where tall weeds provided cover. A prison would have tight security, but it was alongside a public highway, so if she was noticed, she might be ignored. She wasn’t taking chances.

She spotted the barn right away, set far back on the property but brightly lit, which was suspicious in itself—maybe the lights were meant to watch for escapees or attacks. She used the camera on her phone to zoom in. It looked even more suspicious close up. A lot of cars and trucks and vans were parked around it—so it couldn’t be a farm. No farm was that busy. Someone, a silhouette in the bright light and wearing a hat or helmet, was walking into the barn, and when they opened one of the two doors, even brighter lights glared from inside. That also seemed suspicious. If the barn held animals, the lights would be off at night so they could sleep. Animals were treated better than humans sometimes.

She thought she spotted a security robot—what did they call them, centaurs? Yes, one was walking around the barn. No dairy farm would have one of them.

Nothing more happened over the next few minutes besides the appearance of a second centaur, so she turned around and headed back. She’d definitely found a secret prison. She had a responsibility to do something with that knowledge, but what?

When she saw headlights coming up the road, she hid in the ditch again. Most people let cars drive themselves and paid no attention to their surroundings, but she wasn’t taking chances.

The house was still dark, and Nimkii was waiting for her. He rumbled a greeting. She climbed back into her sleeping bag. She needed to tell someone and had no idea who, so she sent a message to Mamá’s artist network, all of them mutineers, and tried to fall asleep again.

Lights came on in the farmhouse.

Avril questioned Hetta calmly and gently since she seemed to be on the edge of collapse, maybe about to fall ill. “Who else is in the mutiny in Dejope? We need to get organized.”

Hetta looked up and blinked puffy red eyes. “What are you going to do?”

“Disobey. And break things.” She had some specific things in mind. And she would organize health care while she was at it, or delegate that job if she could, since she knew almost nothing useful. Around her neck, she’d looped a twilight-purple scarf with bats on it, a Halloween accessory, the only purple clothing she owned.

“Cal knew almost everything,” Hetta said, but she could provide three names and room numbers. Avril asked her to care for Shinta, who was breathing rough but steady, and went to the door of the first person she’d named. He answered immediately when she knocked, a square-built, fair-skinned young man in pajamas named Drew, who said he was eager to do something, anything. He whispered—Dejope had rules about making noise at night, and besides, he said, noise might attract a centaur.

“I couldn’t sleep. Lemme throw on some clothes. Wait there. I’ll be right out.”

He came out less than a minute later wearing a lilac-colored T-shirt. They tiptoed downstairs to the room of the next person, someone named Sergio.

No one answered.

“Maybe they’re out,” Drew murmured.

“Maybe they’re sick,” Avril said. She tried the door. “It’s not locked.” Someone somewhere was messing with the electronic controls. “Let’s go in.”

She pushed the door open slowly. “Hello?”

The room smelled like vomit. That was bad.

“Are you all right? Are you here?”

She slowly walked in, Drew following. She thought she heard breathing.

“Lights, on,” she ordered. The room looked like a disaster, not a mess from bad housekeeping habits, instead like it had been torn apart. They found a young man on the floor curled up next to the vomit. She tried to wake him as Drew stared over her shoulder.

“Sergio? Sergio, can you hear me?” She shook him by the shoulder, wondering if he was Sergio or Sergio’s roommate, not that it mattered. He felt too warm. He was breathing fast and shallow—very sick but still alive.

“Let me check him,” Drew said. “My mom’s a doctor. I know a little bit.”

“I’ll