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  Take a deep breath. Think about something else.

  At City Hall, politicians and staff had debated a lot of issues and reached a consensus about one of them. The mutiny would have likely failed if the Prez and his supporters hadn’t overreacted by introducing the Prez’s cold. A lot of minds changed when ordinary citizens realized that they had been targeted for death, and only incompetence on the part of the Prez’s supporters had saved them from total disaster.

  Avril was working directly with patients, which she said she found fulfilling, but it had to be hell to watch people die every day. Irene hadn’t found her mammoth, so she’d gone back to Madison, and they’d had a good, long talk about their mothers. They shared a lot of mixed feelings.

  Lillian had been talking to both Irene and Avril and it clearly helped her, and probably them, too. Pseudo-Grandfather had called once and finally seemed to accept that he was the needy one, and she didn’t owe him anything at all. He was lucky she hadn’t pressed charges.

  Lillian was a fighter. She’d offered to staff the atrium food table one day, and she had suggested commandeering a nearby sandwich franchise, closed for the duration, so City Hall could offer some food. That girl was smart—and energetic, too energetic, probably a sign of stress.

  Stale bread and mayo for everyone, thanks to her. Better than nothing.

  A message appeared on her screen and pulled her out of her thoughts. A pharmacy chain needed more insulin. Could Berenike accommodate that? No, but she’d juggle things until she could, shifting priorities until everyone would hate her with good reason. This job sucked exactly like her old one, and she had the job because she could do what no one else wanted to do. She spent most of her time stuck in a tiny office with no windows, staring at a screen until her eyes were tired. Except that now she was keeping people alive. She hoped.

  A glance at her sleeve reminded her that she was wearing one of Lillian’s mother’s shirts.

  Berenike was effectively a mother now. That night, on the way home, she’d ask Lillian about her mother. Lillian might find it therapeutic, and Berenike might learn more about how to emulate the woman whose bed she now slept in and whose clothes she wore and whose child she would raise.

  That morning she’d gotten up after another night of poor sleep—waking up every couple of hours to see if the desk lamp was still on, then staying awake for a long time after that—and at first she didn’t recognize where she was. Pink curtains, a rose-patterned bedspread … oh, yeah. With so much disaster around her, and such a bad experience with her own mother, could she avoid being a disaster for Lillian?

  Because she really, really needed to punch someone, and sooner or later, that anger was going to boil over. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, tried to center her thoughts the way the AI counselor had taught her in what seemed like ages ago, and she felt calmer—for a few minutes.

  * * *

  I returned home to my little apartment a week after being dragooned into secret government service, and as I had hoped, my pet bird warbled in his cage and my house plants were a healthy green, thanks to Noah.

  The bird, Milton, was a Grand Cayman thrush, a pretty gray and white bird much like an American robin. I had helped bring the species back from extinction, a sweet-voiced, gentle bird that ate worms and fruit, but Milton had been made blind as a chick by nest parasites, and I took him as a pet. He wouldn’t survive in the wild, but I could give him a loving home.

  Similarly, I had made my children with love, and if I had a right to ask one thing of them (which I didn’t), it would be for them to love one another. Would they love me? That would be too much to ask for. But some of them spoke to me, and that was enough.

  My drab neighborhood had been festooned with purple—not every home, of course, but enough to enforce a kind of civility. (For how long?)

  Food was scarce, but Noah came with takeout pancakes. No one was yet allowed to sit in a restaurant. “People feel betrayed,” he said. “By everyone. I mean, where was this mutiny when we needed it? Months ago, maybe years? They could have done something.” His good nature had taken a turn—temporarily, I hoped. I tried to model sensible goodwill.

  “What matters,” I said, “is what you want to change now. Here’s your chance.”

  As for work, I had been hired by a bigger, better research lab to track the delta cold viruses as they mutated and responded to treatment, work as essential as it was repetitive. I had acquired the gleam of respectability, and that flattering shine carried me through the workday.

  Before I could leave the Army installation, of course, I was debriefed and deposed. A congressional investigative committee subpoenaed me to sit in a conference room and speak via videocall to a pair of staff members who needed to know what had happened. The search for the guilty had already begun, and this was the first step. Eventually I would testify again in the Senate’s handsome Central Hearing Facility, and perhaps this time my words would be heeded. Many of the senators would be different people and perhaps more receptive. My debriefing would help the staff prepare questions for the senators on that day.

  “Please begin from the moment you were invited to participate in the research,” a young man said after thanking me for taking the time to speak to them (as if I had a choice) and expressing gratitude for my service to my country and to freedom. He and his partner seemed to be in awe of me, and I basked in it, nagged by a hint of impostor syndrome.

  But at one point he asked, “Why do you think they did this?”

  I had thought about that question, reaching an answer so bitter it could curdle souls if I shared it. I had no interest in spreading that contagion, although it had already become a political pandemic on its own.

  “I’m glad to tell my own story,” I said, “but I can’t tell the stories of the villains. They can speak for themselves.”

  He glanced down at a list of questions, momentarily deflated. Then he brightened, having found a way to get what he wanted by another route. “How do you know that they’re villains?”

  “By their carelessness, and by the consequences of their actions.” I spoke for the rest of the afternoon on that point, and the two staff members signed off somber and shaken. Facts are stubborn things, and frequently forlorn.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Avril had spent the two-mile walk from campus through Madison to see Irene face-to-face for the first time trying to figure out why she felt nervous. Irene had invited her and the other sisters to her house—Irene’s mother’s house—so they could finally meet in person, but they had talked to each other a lot by phone already. They knew one another, right? Berenike was righteously angry, Lillian warily curious, Irene just plain sad, and herself? Thinner than she used to be.

  And she knew what death looked like. She’d showered, but the stench seemed to linger, at least in her imagination. More cars drove down the road now, but things weren’t back to normal yet. It was the same with people, and when they passed on the sidewalk, they gave each other a wide berth. The virus had settled down into a severe but survivable cold, but every cold looked like the Prez’s cold from a distance.

  She reached a neighborhood filled with three-family bungalows. A sign at the door of one of them said RUIZ STUDIOS. When she walked in, would it be the start of something or the end? She had once thought things could change fast. Well, some things have changed. And even if it took her whole life, she would make sure that certain things would never change back.

  She walked up the wooden stairs, footsteps thumping, and waited on the porch for the door monitor to sense her presence.

  * * *

  Berenike barely noticed the passing countryside, going a hundred miles per hour past fields and buildings. The trip from Milwaukee to Madison would last only an hour, and despite light traffic, she worried and scanned each vehicle they encountered. Countermutineers had morphed into something more like pirates, organized crime—although they were sure they were modern Robin Hoods. They had infiltrated scheduling
databases and were ambushing traffic, so she’d arranged for herself and Lillian to travel in a truck loaded with automobile parts, poor plunder.

  They passed a car sitting on the shoulder of the road. A woman waved for help. Berenike felt bad about not stopping, but she didn’t dare offer help. Instead she called the local sheriff, but through a third party because she couldn’t trust him, either. That sheriff hadn’t declared a clear loyalty either way. That criminal, cowardly …

  She was paying too much attention to traffic. She was neglecting Lillian.

  “You okay?”

  The girl looked up from her display and nodded. “Yeah, I’m doing homework.” She looked down again, grumpy-faced, maybe annoyed at the interruption, maybe anxious and trying to hide it. Kids were changeable, hard to read, and hard to parent. Berenike was sure she was doing something wrong, but what?

  The truck pulled into Madison and rolled through some side streets. Almost there.

  * * *

  Lillian knew she was going to like her sisters because she’d talked to them all the time by phone and they were a lot like Berenike. They all looked the same but were different ages and had other little differences, which was weird. Most of all, it was like looking in mirrors that showed what she would be like when she was older. She had a lot to think about before the meeting, though. Irene had promised they could talk to the scientist who’d designed them. He’d answer any question, she’d promised. So she was thinking about questions, and she already had a lot.

  Now the truck was stopping, and she could barely breathe. Avril was standing on the porch.

  * * *

  Irene had moved back to Madison and found herself living in a haunted house, haunted by her mother, whose ashes from the crematorium now sat in an urn in what had been her bedroom. The art on the walls haunted Irene—no, it reminded her of how her mother had called Irene a work of art. And how she’d been possessive and perfectionistic about all of her art.

  No, stop. Don’t speak ill of the dead.

  Instead, she should miss her mother. Miss her, yes. Forget her, no. What if Mamá had known that Irene wasn’t unique? Perhaps it was best to keep her ashes safely upstairs for now. On the Day of the Dead, she’d build a shrine and make some of Mamá’s favorite foods and have a long chat with her, and maybe it would end with some happy memories and a celebration.

  Her phone rang, a number she didn’t know.

  “Hello, Irene Ruiz?” A smiling man in a brown jacket was standing in a forest. “Nimkii is here. Let me show you.” He turned the camera to show the mammoth on the other side of a river, standing among the reeds. Nimkii sloshed the water with his trunk, keeping an eye on the man. “Someone spotted him this morning. This is the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. I’m a ranger here.”

  The front door chimed.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank many people for their advice and encouragement during early drafts of this novel, including my agent, Jennifer Goloboy, my editor at Tor, Jennifer Gunnels, and the Edgy Writers Workshop, especially Michael Gullette, Mike Parilla, Zack Geoffroy, and Michael Ryan Chandler.

  Work began on this novel long before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was finished as the scope of the disaster was becoming clear. I am heartbroken by the suffering and loss, and I am inspired by the strength that so many have shown.

  ALSO BY SUE BURKE

  Semiosis

  Interference

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sue Burke is the author of the novels Semiosis and Interference, as well as short stories, translations, and journalism. Her work has been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Campbell Memorial Award, and the Locus Best First Novel Award, and she won the 2016 Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry in Translation. She lives in Chicago.

  Visit her online at sueburke.site, or sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Sue Burke

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  IMMUNITY INDEX

  Copyright © 2021 by Sue Burke

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill

  Cover photographs: virus by creativeneko / Shutterstock.com; city by Rudy Balasko / Shutterstock.com

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  120 Broadway

  New York, NY 10271

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-31787-2 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-31786-5 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250317865

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].

  First Edition: 2021