Chapter 37

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DISBELIEF. GRIEF. ANGER. SHOCK. BYthe time I run every emotion programmed into me, the timer on the pod is down to 191HR07MIN31S.

How many days is that? I do the math. Easily. Mentally. My vision swims as I notice these things that make me … not me.

In 7.96355 days, the pod will stop functioning. Everyone will be doomed, trapped forever in stasis, but first to die will be the person I pushed. Not my sister, I tell myself, when I finally get to my feet and back away. Not Kay. Kay wouldn’t want me to die for her. Wouldn’t want to kill me, like Hero, except it’s incomparable, because Hero had no awareness over his actions. No control. Kay is in perfect control—of herself, and of me. She designed me so that I would have no choice over my own life, no dignity in my own death.

Realizing that is what ultimately gives me the strength to walk away.

I leave the facility, determined and undaunted by the prospect of surfacing from the bottom of the ocean and swimming back to the island. Or so I tell myself. Because I swim too fast, like I’m scared that I might regret my decision, and the more I try to escape, the more my body numbs and the line between my consciousness and my … programming blurs and the memories slip back in even though they aren’t mine; I don’t want—

164HR18MIN59S

6.84651, my mind thinks, before I wrench it—and my body—away, run before both are overtaken again.

This time I go slow. Every stroke hurts. It feels like I’m swimming through stone.

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise.

Five days left now.

I’m so tired.

So weak.

Am I hallucinating when I see land? Or—worse—am I’m really back at the dome and I can’t trust the optics of my mind?

No, I’m on the shore. This grittiness—it’s sand.

I collapse on it, boneless. Brainless. I could pass out. But I didn’t come this far just to let my unconscious regain command.

I make myself stand.

I’m back on the island, and I’ve never been happier. I spot the house—and energize when I remember who’s in it.

That energy curdles to unease when I enter the kitchen. Dust coats the countertops. How long has it been? I recall my excruciating swim. Two days to return to the island on my final attempt, but factor in all the time I lost in between and the time it took reach the dome in the first place and that means—

“I’ve been gone for five days.”

“Agree,” says U-me, rolling out from the living room.

Five days, Hero’s been tied up.

He’s conscious when I enter M.M.’s bedroom. A recent development, I pray. Even if he doesn’t need food or water to survive, he doesn’t know that, and it’s not even worth asking if he’s okay. Who would be, after being bound to a bed for five days? Unable to meet his eye, I focus on untying him, the task made harder because his wrists and ankles have swelled around the rope, and as I struggle, he poses the question on me instead.

“Are you okay?”

His voice is soft as ever. My fingers stop, and I make the mistake of looking at him. Under his sky-colored gaze, I feel translucent. I wonder if he can see the murderer under my skin—the girl who killed him and the girl who, in the coming days, will also kill her so-called sister.

I wonder if he would flinch away from my touch if he knew what these hands could do.

But when Hero says, “I’m guessing I tried to kill you again,” I remember I’m all alone in knowing our place in the universe has forever changed. This boy is no longer the biggest threat to my existence. The truth is so much more sinister.

And my first instinct is to shield Hero from it. “No, love. You didn’t do anything like that.”

The lie comes easily. Have I done it before? Lied to protect someone I care about? Or would that be Celia? Who am I? Celia, or Cee?

“Then…” Hero trails off, trying to make sense of his circumstances.

“What did I say?” I attack the knots with newfound resolve. “I like it kinky.”

I undo the final knot. The ropes fall, and Hero grimaces as he flexes his wrists. His pain pains me, and to my alarm, I find I still have tears left to cry. At my sniff, Hero glances up. “Cee?” Before he can ask me what’s wrong, I silence him with a kiss. I swallow his questions, my tears, and relish the way he said my name—not as a letter, or the third iteration of some experiment. C-E-E, I remember spelling out for him. Pronounced like the sea outside that window. From the start, he said it as if I were real. I am real, I decide. I’m Cee. Not Celia, as much a stranger to me as Kay. I don’t need either of them. I can be happy with myself. Live for myself, in service of no one else.

Or, at least, live for the people who actually care about me.

“Are you okay?” Hero asks again, breaking the kiss first—breaking it, I think, just to ask. Concern shines upon his face, held between my hands. His rise to cover mine. “What happened?”

He doesn’t ask, Why are you back? But I hear the question anyway, and suddenly feel like I’ve let him down. He was rooting for me, the only one of us with memories, to succeed. Get off this island. Find my sister. Fulfill my cosmic destiny. He doesn’t know, of course, that humans manufactured our fates. And he never has to know. I won’t hurt him the way not-Kay hurt me. We are as real as we believe ourselves to be.

“You were right.” I draw his right hand, still wrapped around mine, to me and kiss his knuckles. “There’s nothing to find out there.”