Immunity Index by Sue Burke (ebooks children's books free txt) 📕

to old-fashioned freedom, like no cars for people who weren’t citizens in good standing. Every customer would be equal. No revenge, only justice. And an important part of the infrastructure would remain up and running. Then …

In two days, they’d be free—if everything went right. It couldn’t possibly be that simple, but she’d do her part, and she was going to try to enjoy it while it lasted.

As he walked in, Jalil looked around for customers, then waved his phone.

“Hey, you gotta see this. She looks just like you.” He wasn’t smiling.

His display showed a video of a young woman up in Wausau riding what looked like a woolly mammoth.

“It escaped from a farm where it was, where she works, and she brought it back. It’s a real woolly mammoth.”

She looked exactly like Berenike, only skinny. Fuck. Swoboda wasn’t lying. Berenike gripped the edge of the counter, a little dizzy and a lot angry.

“Well,” she said when she could speak, “her ride’s better than anything we’ve got.”

Jalil nodded, complicit. “Some coincidence, hey? I thought you’d like to know. I’ll go clean some cars for a while.” He’d give her some space to process. He knew what he’d seen and what it meant, and he sympathized. He knew how close to second-class a young black man could be, too, if one or two tiny things went wrong for him through no fault of his own.

I’m a dupe. Really.

Breathe deep. One step at a time. Had Swoboda seen that video? It had been posted a few hours ago. She checked his message. He had seen it, and he’d somehow identified the woman in it: Irene Ruiz. “Everyone’s going to see this,” he said, joy lilting in his recorded voice.

Fuck.

Using Irene’s name and location, Berenike looked her up in the corporate database: age twenty-two, mother Celia Ruiz, an artist—Berenike knew about her, an author of kids’ books—from Madison, Wisconsin. Irene had used AutoKar until early summer for trips in Madison, where she’d been living in a University of Wisconsin dorm. At the end of May she’d received a bachelor of science in environmental ecology.

The database had several photos of her, and every one of them confirmed that they were look-alikes: dupes.

Berenike paused, breathing deep. Fuck. Fuck Swoboda, fuck everything. But stay calm.

There were likely more dupes, too, everyone knew that. She would need to look for them. She ought to learn everything she could as fast as she could.

Using Irene’s face and her own face as parameters, she ran the database’s facial recognition. Three potentials came up, but two were only 75 percent matches. A 98 percent match was Avril Stenmark, who had just graduated from high school and was now at the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus, living in a different hall from the one where Irene had lived. Her father was Michael “Mick” Stenmark, assistant United States attorney; mother Emily, real estate manager.…

Company policy forbade personal searches, and sending data to her own phone would be monitored, so she used the work-around she’d learned from a friend: she wrote the information down with the paper and pencil she always carried in case she needed to do something subversive. It was easy to find herself doing something subversive. Her hand shook, though, and she had to struggle to write legibly.

There was a lot she needed to do. “Hey, Jalil,” she called over the intercom, “I’m going!”

“I’ll come down, then.” He took his place behind the counter as she left, and he gave her a sympathetic look. “You be careful.”

“Thanks.” No amount of carefulness might be enough.

She biked home, stopping to buy something for dinner, crappy food, and there wasn’t much else on the shelves anyway because the people who had put out the flags also panicked and bought all the food and toilet paper that they could. Some cricket protein chips were left—those were sort of healthy, and the sriracha flavor wasn’t bad.

The apartment was empty. Good. She wanted to learn more about her potential … sisters. Triplets. Much nicer words than dupes. University education spoke of privilege, but no child could pick their parents. For a while, though, parents could pick their children.

Avril’s family lived in a rich suburb of Chicago. Beauty was only skin deep, but privilege seeped down to the bone. Avril had a negligible public footprint because she had only recently turned eighteen years old, but her high school math and computer team had won some big awards.

Irene hadn’t been doing anything online since she’d arrived in Wausau. Berenike watched the video of her ride three times. If Berenike got to Wausau, would Irene let her ride Nimkii? Or pet him? Or at least treat Berenike as an equal?

Swoboda had found Irene. Would he find Avril? And if Avril was studying at Irene’s old campus, how long before she got found out by other people there?

Berenike had their contact information. She ought to do something. But was she the one to tell them they were dupes?

The apartment door opened. Another roommate had come home, Deedee. She gave Berenike a hard, steady look and closed the door.

“We need to talk.” She put a finger to her lips, gestured to the door, and took the phone off her wrist. Berenike took hers off, too. By law, everyone was required to have their phone with them at all times. But now and then a person could leave it someplace where they might logically remain for a while and sneak away.

They left the studio apartment and walked down the musty hallway and stairs. As familiar as it was to Berenike, she felt as if she had no idea where the walk would lead. No, she knew exactly where: she was about to be kicked out. She followed Deedee outside to the old parking lot behind the building. No one living there could afford a private car, so the cracked pavement now hosted an abandoned, decaying picnic table and a scattering of trash and broken toys.

“Let’s sit down,” Deedee said. She didn’t seem angry. Was that