Chapter 38

38

THAT COULDN’T BE RIGHT.

Murder.The copterbot had been autopiloted, its only passengers Genevie and the Coles. The destination coordinates had glitched midway through the flight. It was a malfunction—“a technical error,” Kasey said to Actinium. His frigid laughter died.

He got to his feet.

Walked down the makeshift hall.

However crude, the PVC walls still offered some protection from microcinogens and radioaxons, levels of which rose as Kasey followed Actinium outside. Her biomonitor beeped, its warning consumed by the cacophony of trauma and triage around them, but even that faded as they walked onward.

They stopped at a drop-off at the edge of the hospel clearing. A silt sink suctioned away the land below.

“Human.” Actinium’s voice was as dark as the surrounding night. “A human error, not technical.”

Kasey waited for him to explain. “What happened?” she asked when he didn’t.

“More or less what happened here. A megaquake. Victims, desperate for relief.” He pocketed his hands. “They mistook the copterbot for a supply plane. Their hackers tried to redirect it to their village.” A shrug-like pause. “Failed, evidently.”

His nonchalance belied the weight of the disclosure.

How do you know?another person might have asked, but Kasey trusted his ability to hack any info he so desired, even if she couldn’t trust him. The real question was: “Why doesn’t the rest of the world know?”

“The event was cognicized from the minds of involved parties.”

“That’s not—”

“It was in their wills. My parents’. Your mother’s. They knew the risks accompanying their line of work.” Off his tongue, their line of work sounded like a euphemism for something awful instead of the philanthropy it was. “They understood any outside-territory accident, so to speak, would be used to impede humanitarian progress and give ammunition to political opponents of HOME.”

“And the bot?” Was that a preventative measure, too? Had the principled Ester Cole flouted her own beliefs about the separation of humans and bots to protect her son from these relief trips?

“My doing,” Actinium said simply. “I was trying to make a point. After the trip.”

The sentence ended there. He made it sound deliberate. But Kasey heard the catch to his voice. He’d meant to go on, but couldn’t. After the trip—

He would have shown his mother that bots were no different than humans.

Kasey didn’t know what to say. She was bad at comforting people—so rarely did she understand their pain—but now she understood. Intimately. An innocent experiment, he’d conducted, with ramifications beyond his imagination. It was like Kasey’s own story, except eviction didn’t come close to being left, in the span of one night, as the only Cole alive. The confusion he must have felt. The paranoia and, worst of all, the helplessness.

Helplessness crushed Kasey now. “Actinium—”

He cut her off. “I don’t need your pity. Just you.”

You.As in Kasey.

As in, he needed Kasey.

Kasey, and not Celia.

Impossible. Unthinkable, more so than Actinium not appearing in Celia’s memories, which reminded Kasey—“Celia—”

“Came to me. Asked for her Intraface to be destroyed. I never lied to you.”

It couldn’t be. Celia—Kasey—but—the island—the shield. “Leona?” Kasey sputtered, brain short-circuiting.

“What about her?”

“How do you know her, if not through Celia?”

An intake of breath. “Leona’s my aunt, Mizuhara.”

Aunt. It took Kasey a second to see. Not the resemblance—they looked nothing alike—but the pieces. How they fit into this new equation. The shield, from Actinium. The teachbot—a gift, Leona had said, from my sister. Ester Cole, whose unit Celia liked for the same reasons she liked house on the shore. The furniture was degradable. Impermanent. The floor bore scuff marks like scars. It was loved, Celia would’ve said.

Love. A funny emotion. Surely it’d have driven Leona to insist that Actinium live with her. If she knew he was alive, that was. Had he modified his face like his ID? Had he grown close to Leona under a guise, like he had with Kasey? Why? Kasey crossed her arms, hugging herself. Why me? To go through such lengths, just to approach her. The thought agitated her, felt like more of a betrayal than Actinium concealing his true identity.

“What did you tell Leona?” she demanded before her mind could spiral deeper.

“That I’d escaped an attempt on my life.”

An accident. Not an attempt. Unintentional.

But the same could have been said for so many man-made mistakes. A pipe leak: an accident. A landfill leaching into the groundwater: unintentional. Human, Actinium had pegged as the root of the accident, and Kasey knew he could prove it like a theorem. Earthquake × humans mining the earth to its limits = megaquake; megaquake × human-built fission and chemical plants = public health disaster; public health disaster × human desperation = 1 copterbot hijacking. Extract the common factor.

Human.

“I convinced her it was safer for me to stay undercover,” Actinium continued, and Kasey heard everything he compressed into one word. Undercover: an orphaned ten-year-old deciding to act incognito. “I knew what I wanted to accomplish.” Not eye-for-an-eye revenge, but wide-scale change. Disasters weren’t caused by individuals. “However long it took, I was resolved to walk this path alone.

“Then I came across the P2C report. On you. Your bots. You knew my secret untold,” Actinium said, voice softening, and Kasey’s spine tingled as she was transported back to the pier, standing beside Actinium like she did now, the storm around them inside them, too, her darkest truth shared without a spoken word.

“I wondered: What else in my mind also existed in yours? What could we achieve, if we worked together?” He glanced up to the sky even though there was nothing to see, the stars long-lost to the omnipresent smog. “Seventy-seven stratums between us, yet I felt closer to you than I had when we were but one floor apart. I hoped, if the circumstances allowed, we’d meet again. Now we have, and now you know.” Actinium finally looked to her. His gaze was solemn. “All my secrets, untold and told.”

The night seemed to expand. It swallowed the sound of life and death, shifted the hospel to a universe away. It absorbed Kasey’s body; she was a cluster of synapses, firing her from one emotion to the next. Sympathy to suspicion to empathy to discomfort. For Actinium, gravity didn’t exist on Earth. Gravity existed in her. It was heady. Overwhelming.

It couldn’t stop her from circling back to the pity Actinium hadn’t asked for.

Just as Meridian’s appearance had thrown Kasey out of orbit, so too did learning that she and Actinium weren’t hurting over the same, recently opened wound. In seven years, she could be like him. Still bleeding. An actual ghost, dead as far as the world was concerned.

“Is this what you really want?” she asked.

The distance between them didn’t change, but the magnetic charge did, Actinium’s every emotion so similar to Kasey’s that they could have physically repelled each other.

“You answer,” he said, then transmitted her a file.

A classified P2C document, beyond her permission level. The text was dense but Kasey was used to skimming for key points.

The first one was already bolded in the title.

… Deep-sea pipe leak …

The rest rushed by … Cleanup underway … minimal risk posed to populace … limited ocean foot traffic … mild adverse health outcomes for the majority … low chance of severe outcomes … avoid alarm … responsible party to front the costs … words a whirlpool, pulling her gaze to the bottom of the document, where she saw a familiar face among a row of faces.

A familiar name.

Their entire family, residing fifty stratums below the Mizuharas.

Celia’s murderers, found by Actinium.

“They’re not just out here.” His voice was quiet compared to Kasey’s pulse. “They’re among us, too, in our cities, relying on us to protect them from a world they ruined. And in spite of that, in spite of their ranks, they think they deserve more.”

“Who?”

A voice, behind them.

Heartbeat slowing, Kasey turned.

Meridian stood several meters away, silhouetted by light from the hospel.

How much had she heard?

“Who do you think ruined the world?”

That much at least. But the situation wasn’t unsalvageable. All Kasey needed—

“Those with ranks mid-five digits or more,” Actinium said, and Kasey looked at him in horror. Why? But she knew why. It was the same reasoning behind sharing the P2C file with her. Remember: You have a stake in this too. “Or those who pollute,” Actinium went on, airing out the words that he and Kasey had shared, in the dead of night. “Past or present tense irrelevant, since all environmental damage is permanent within our life spans.”

The night seemed to hold its breath.

“Fuck you,” Meridian spat at Actinium, before turning to Kasey. “Well? Say something.”

Something. People were rarely literal and Kasey knew Meridian didn’t actually want her to say something, but to refute everything. To deny that Actinium’s thoughts had ever crossed her mind. To lie. It’s what SILVERTONGUE would have recommended, given Kasey’s minimal conflict settings back when she’d installed it. Minimal conflict was what she still wanted. Her mouth opened.

Her throat closed.

Her anger wasn’t all of her, but it was a part of her, and she was tired of hiding parts of herself, however inhuman, from people.

Her silence was telling. Meridian backed away. Something dawned in her gaze, and Kasey both dreaded and embraced the accusation headed toward her. The true reason behind her and Actinium’s mission, seen through. The facade dismantled—

“So that’s why you never offered to help.”

Kasey blinked. “Help?”

“Oh, please!” hissed Meridian. “Your mom helmed the HOME act! Your dad oversees immigration! You could have put in a word for my relatives if you wanted to!”

The thought had never occurred to Kasey. Did that make her a bad person? Or did that make her … Kasey? “You never asked.”

“For charity?”

Well, yes. Wasn’t that what it was? Asking didn’t change the nature of the favor. Besides, Meridian wasn’t like Kasey. She was vocal about her opinions and needs.

But when would Kasey ever learn that humans were complex and full of contradictions?

“I always do things for you without being asked!” said Meridian, and Kasey was stunned to hear her resentment. “Meanwhile, you? You ignored all of my messages in the last week.” It wasn’t personal; David could have messaged to say he was moving to the moon and Kasey would have ignored him, too. “Next thing I know, you’re friends with him.” Meridian jabbed a finger in Actinium’s direction. “Where was he when no one wanted to sit with you?” On stratum-22, but that wasn’t the answer Meridian wanted, nor was it the answer Kasey wanted to give: She hadn’t needed anyone.

Meridian breathed hard, then went on. “You know what he is? The privileged-as-hell kind. The kind who takes off his antiskin and hands it to a medic because he’s oh-so-heroic, who probably travels outside for an immersive experience.”

The privileged-as-hell kind.

Takes off their antiskin.

Travels outside for an immersive experience.

“What can you tell him but not me?” Meridian asked, and Kasey thought she might actually be sick, especially when Actinium joined in.

“Go on, Mizuhara.” His tone was impossibly sleek and cool, and when Kasey met his eye, she knew she was exactly where he wanted her: cornered. Choose, he was saying to her. Me or her. Justice or complacency. Yourself, or everyone else. “Tell her the truth. Tell her who killed—”

Crack.

Actinium’s hand rose.

Kasey closed hers.

If she squeezed her fingers tightly enough, she could erase the stinging of her right palm. But she couldn’t erase the mark on his face, already reddening.

It was all she could think to do, to stop him. The public could speculate as much as they wanted about Celia’s death, simplify a girl to her name and picture and color her in with their conjectures. But the truth was Celia’s to tell. And Kasey would protect it—protect Celia—no matter the personal cost. She could alienate the world, if she had to.

She could estrange both sides.

“I don’t know who you are anymore,” said Meridian, staring at Kasey. “You’re like … a different person.”

No, Kasey imagined saying. I’m just not who you want me to be. She’d say it to Meridian and Actinium.

She’d walk away from the two of them.

But she wasn’t who she wanted to be, either, and it was Meridian who walked away from her first, then Actinium. They left her alone.

Kasey told herself she preferred it.