Chapter 12

12

THE COPTERBOT LANDED ON THEgray sands of the shore.

This was it. The island. There was the house up on the rocks, looking no different than it had since the sisters’ last visit four months ago. It just felt like a lifetime, and Kasey a changed person.

Or so she thought. Her vision of how this would go—starting with having the grief-stricken courage to expose herself—vanished like the fantasy it was when the copterbot door opened on Actinium’s side and her brain defaulted to logic mode. She caught his arm. “The radioaxons—”

“It’s safe.”

Safe. You’re safe with me, Celia had said, her expression harrowingly similar to Actinium’s as he went on to say, “I wouldn’t put you in danger,” before his gaze fell to Kasey’s hand, still on his arm.

She knew what he had to be thinking: She hadn’t reached for him when he’d cut himself. Hadn’t seemed nearly as concerned. But that damage was visible. Repairable. Radioaxon poisoning was neither and all the more dangerous for it.

Still, she forced herself to release him. Watched, helpless, as Actinium stepped into the open air in nothing more than the black button-down and jeans they’d purchased on stratum-25. He turned back to her, offering a hand. She didn’t take it. She told herself it was because of his bandages but in reality, she was afraid he’d feel her fingers shaking in fear for her own life despite losing one so much more vibrant than hers.

By herself, she climbed down, disoriented, as always, to enter a new world. That’s what Landmass-660 felt like to her. It didn’t technically belong to any outside territory, but it was as far “outside” as Kasey had ever gone, and nothing like the eco-city. The ground here was alive, sand shifting under her feet. The sky above was mold-gray and far deeper than the ninety meters allotted per stratum, and wind existed, exploding in erratic, sneeze-like bursts. Was it spreading radioaxons? Suppressing the thought and the panic it sprung, Kasey looked to the house on the beach as a figure emerged on its porch, waving at them. Actinium waved back, leaving Kasey no choice but to lift an arm too, trying to wave but not quite able to because this wasn’t right. She should have been here with Celia.

Waving at the woman in the iron-on pug sweater with Celia.

They’d met Leona upon docking Hubert at the pier. She’d shown them around the island, from the cove to the levee, a holdover from pre–arctic melt times, even though she’d been under no obligation to do so, or to treat the girls like her own. Yet she had, and as she jogged toward them, the sand beneath Kasey’s feet liquified and her mind sank. If it hadn’t been for Leona, Celia might not have returned to the island. Might not have snuck out, poisoned herself again and again—not that Leona could have known, which only angered Kasey more, to see the grief on the woman’s features when ignorance still protected her. She started to back away, but then Leona’s arms were around her, her voice by her ear—“Oh, Kasey”—and Kasey’s vision darkened, a memory dragging her under. Midnight. A knock on her door. A whisper—Still up? Her sister’s heartbeat against her brow. You belong here.

“The boat,” Kasey managed to choke out.

A nod against her shoulder. Leona released her, and Kasey noticed something troubling about the scene other than Celia’s absence from it.

“Where’s your mask?” Not just that, but antiskin. Goggles. Leona was wearing no protective gear.

“Didn’t Act tell you?” asked Leona. “The island’s safe.”

Act.The familiarity of the nickname did not slip by Kasey unnoticed, nor did the ease with which Leona took them both by the arms. As they walked down-shore, Kasey thought back to all the times Leona and Celia would chat on the couch while Kasey fiddled with Leona’s teachbot—a gift, Leona explained, from her sister. Had Kasey missed news of Celia and Actinium’s relationship then? Or had Celia deliberately kept it from Kasey because she knew Kasey’s shameful secret—that she had trouble remembering Celia’s boys?

Which was it? she wanted to ask Leona, followed by How is the island safe? But whatever questions she had were blasted away when they reached the cove and Kasey saw it.

On the rocks before they curved into the cove. Tugged out of the tide’s reach.

The boat hadn’t made a lasting impression before. Now the sight of it speared Kasey. She stopped in her tracks, her inner world grinding to a halt as the world outside continued to roar with the wind and the sea. A squeeze of her arm—“Take as long as you need; I’ll be in the house”—and Kasey found herself left by Leona. Alone with Actinium.

“I can wait at the house too.”

Kasey shook her head. Last time, she’d said Celia would have wanted him here, but the truth was, Kasey did too, needed Actinium here to remind her that love was pain, and pain was approaching the boat when all she really wanted to do was retreat from it. With every step over the brine-slick rocks, she realized she was no better than the people at her party. She half expected Celia to spring up from the hull and say “Surprise!” until the very end, when Kasey was practically upon the boat, the unequivocally, indisputably empty boat.

She crouched beside it. She refused to think of it by its painted name. To her, this was a thing, the hearse that’d delivered Celia to her watery grave. If it were sentient, she’d want to hurt it, but it wasn’t, and it was already damaged, bow dented and gunwale half gone, evidence of the abuse it’d suffered at sea. Had Celia suffered? Had she known hunger? Thirst? Or had it been quick? Kasey hoped it was. Hoped it was the death Celia had wanted, as foreign as the concept seemed. As the waves shattered on the rocks around her, she felt Actinium’s presence at her back. He remained standing. Kasey appreciated that. If he knelt too, and contributed his grief to the space, she’d actually drown.

Rising, she wiped the sea spray off her otherwise dry face.

As promised, Leona was waiting back in the house. “We’ll have it transported to the eco-city,” she said as Actinium and Kasey came through the door and into the fuel-bar, where two kettles were going on the stove.

“Keep the boat here,” said Kasey. The island was classified as private domain, prohibiting non-residents from holoing in. That, along with Leona’s lack of an Intraface, would offer her ample protection from the press.

“Then we’ll send it over to Francis,” said Leona. “He’ll patch it up, make it good as new.”

He could destroy it, for all Kasey cared, but she nodded for Leona’s sake—then stiffened.

Voices. Inside the house.

Peeking into the living room, she was taken aback to see the Wangs, Reddys, Zielińskis, and O’Sheas with their twins. It was literally the island’s entire population, minus the temporary vacationers and old Francis John Jr., the handyman who lived in the woods. The couch was crammed, the overflow sitting on the floor, spread with grandmother Maisie Moore’s monogrammed towels, everyone huddled around Leona’s small holograph projector and none, to Kasey’s growing dismay, wearing masks.

The air above her head shifted; she glanced up to see Actinium, leaned in beside her. He took one look at the living room and sighed. An odd sound, coming from him. Even odder was his mutter, something about “going outside.”

Before Kasey could ask what was wrong with inside, a scream bounded toward them.

“Act!” Roma, one of the nine-year-old twins, burst into the kitchen and ran for Actinium, skidding to a stop upon seeing Kasey. “Who’s that?”

They’d met before, but Kasey didn’t blame Roma for forgetting. Celia was the one who’d spent hours making mud-patty cakes with the twins, while Kasey stood off to the side, not very good with children. She was worse at introductions, so she left the honors to Actinium.

“A friend,” he said. Not quite true, but Kasey supposed friend was easier for kids to understand. Simple, clear-cut—

“A girl friend?”

“No,” Kasey said as Mrs. O’Shea’s voice floated in from the living room.

“Actinium? Is that you?”

The next thing Kasey knew, islanders were piling into the fuel-bar. She edged out of the way as they beelined for Actinium, shaking his hand, hugging him. Actinium reciprocated far more woodenly than Kasey would have expected from him. “You told them,” he said to Leona, sounding aggrieved, and Kasey sent him her sympathies as the mob swept him into the living room.

“They were all rushing to evacuate!” Leona called after them. “I had to explain!”

“Explain what?” Kasey asked Leona as the kitchen emptied. “Why doesn’t anyone have to evacuate?”

Leona lifted the kettle from the stove. “Because the air is filtered. Act built a shield around the island.”

Kasey blinked.

She knew perfectly well what Leona meant by shield, as an eco-city denizen protected by one. A filtration and force-field system, invisible yet impenetrable, sieving out toxins and shielding city infrastructure from the effects of elemental erosion. Before the science ban, Kasey had spent an entire summer deciphering shield mechanics and equations. She could recreate a miniature model if she tried. But around the whole of this island?

“That’s…” Kasey trailed off as the pieces fell into place. Leona not wearing a mask. The people’s warm reception. And Actinium. Come to think of it, he’d reprogrammed the hospel copterbot like it was nothing, with all the cool-headedness Kasey had witnessed during their first meeting, but those impressions had been erased, like recessive genes, by the episode with the mug. Even now, Kasey could smell the blood, but maybe she’d been too quick to judge.

“… a big project,” she finished, the words feeling inadequate.

“It’s my fault,” said Leona, smiling sheepishly as she filled the mugs on the table. Kasey set more out. “Thank you, dear. It’s like what I told you girls: I just can’t bear to abandon Maisie’s home.” Yes, Kasey remembered Leona saying so one time after Kasey pronounced the house structurally unsound. “But with all the talk of worsening storms, Act wouldn’t put up with me staying on the wrong side of the levee.”

“So he built a shield for you.”

“For everyone,” said Leona, and Kasey nodded. It wasn’t the first over-the-top thing a boy had done to woo her sister. The son of an illusion-tech CEO had inscribed every undersky in the eco-city with love poems dedicated to her. In Kasey’s unsolicited opinion, Actinium’s grand gesture was superior. Impressive, actually. Amazing—the word that’d eluded Kasey.

“He only got around to checking the shield on my side of the levee this month, though,” Leona continued. “So I invited them over for my peace of mind.” She gestured at the living room and Kasey looked to it for a second time, gaze pinpointing Actinium. He was facing away from her, talking to Mr. Reddy.

The back of his shirt was soaked through.

How—when—where? It took Kasey a second to figure it out. On the rocks. He’d been standing behind her. The sea must have sprayed him then. Strange, that he hadn’t moved away.

Then her attention was drawn to the center of everyone else’s, to the holographs of tsunamis and landslides befalling ten out of the twelve outside territories, the rest left to contend with microcinogen and radioaxon fallout far more pernicious than the initial megaquake.

It was the moment people had failed to prepare for, as if preparing too well made an event inevitable. A logical fallacy. So was human exceptionalism; 99.9% of species went extinct. The end of their road was not an if, but a when. The world would end.

Wasending before their eyes.

As it should, Kasey couldn’t help but think, and startled as one of the twins began to cry. The sound was louder than she expected; she’d unwittingly drifted into the living room to better see the broadcast and as Mrs. O’Shea changed the channel, Kasey found herself staring at her dad. “The Planetary Protection Committee is set to convene at 17:00 Worldwide Time today,” came the broadcaster’s voice-over as David Mizuhara took the P2C podium. “Together, with Worldwide Union officers and delegates from the twelve territories, they will determine humanity’s next step during its most critical hour.”

The audio cut to her dad’s press briefing. His monotone voice filled Leona’s living room. “Here at the eco-cities, we thought to delay the crisis via lifestyle change, but despite the best efforts of P2C and those under its jurisdiction, the crisis has come to pass. Nevertheless, we remain committed to the health of this planet and its people. As such, we’ve been recruiting solutions for the better part of eighteen months now. And I can assure you…” A pause that would be misinterpreted as losing his place in the Intraface-fed lines but Kasey knew, from the way her dad pushed up his glasses, it was because he had seen a factual error. “I can assure you we have the best options, going forward, under our consideration.”

There it was. The factual error. The blatant lie, unless Barry had found a promising submission in the last—Kasey checked her Intraface time—eighty-four hours.

David Mizuhara went on to talk about Environmental Control and Alteration Technologies. But even if every outside territory followed ECAT cleanup protocols, the balancing agents being pumped into the atmosphere wouldn’t be able to neutralize the deadly compounds before their chemical bonds broke and re-formed into deadlier ones, the entire process expedited by increased global temperatures. It was as Linscott Horn had said, Kasey thought darkly. The dominos had been set centuries ago. One quake, and they all fell.

The people had brought this upon themselves.

“Live updates can be accessed through the Worldwide Union forum-feeds,” said the broadcaster, voice returning. “The world will be watching, and we will be unpacking developments as they occur.”

“See?” said Mrs. O’Shea to the twins. “Experts are going to make things better.”

She said more. The broadcaster said more. Both their voices faded as Kasey retreated back against the wall—the wall giving way to a door. It closed behind her, sealing her into the bathroom, Celia’s favorite space in the whole house. Eco-city showers relied on UV and pressurized air, and everfibers, like the sweaters Celia had gifted Leona, were self-cleaning. Using water for anything other than hydration was wasteful. But here, there was a tub and a non-fuel-bar sink. Kasey ran the tap to drown out the news, and as the water gushed, her rank flashed in her mind’s eye.

Rank: 2.19431621

Rank: 2.19431622

Rank: 2.19431623

Her heartbeat rose with her rank: 105 bpm. 110 bpm. 115 bpm. She looked up at the mirror over the sink. She imagined breaking it with her bare hands, like Actinium had.

Couldn’t do it, in the end.

Everyone will know you didn’t help.

No one saw Kasey leave the house, or run to the pier. She stopped when her toes met the edge.

Couldn’t jump, either.

The ache in her chest returned, metastasizing to her lungs. She took a deep breath.

And let the pain out.