Chapter 54

54

KASEY DIDN’T SWIM.

She sank to the bottom and curled into the fetal position.

Actinium had claimed she was running away. The opposite: Her life had come to a standstill in the weeks since, and with no one to hide behind, or to take the reins for her, she’d been forced to face herself—her thoughts, choices, and mistakes.

She’d made so many mistakes.

But underwater, she could just be.

Thoughtless.

Formless.

When she opened her eyes, the colors were muted but still complex. She carried Celia’s heartbeat with her, yes, but also her own. It was a strong heartbeat, amplified by the pool. Efficient, like her mind. Too efficient, perhaps. A flaw, by the standards of humanity, and also evidence of it. A machine would have been perfectly designed. A creature with no self-awareness would have known no insecurity. This nagging sense of incompletion, like a puzzle piece misplaced, had to be the immeasurable quality Celia was talking about, its shape and size different for everyone but its existence—this absence—uniting them. All of them.

Even her and Yvone.

Kasey located the classified P2C file in her Intraface and stared at it, just like she’d stared at the folder containing Celia’s memories this morning before school. After a while, she’d taken the memories out of her brain. Loaded them onto an external chip. Waited for the sacrilegious feeling to settle, then placed the chip in her pocket.

Celia was dead.

Other people were still alive.

Kasey might never relate to them.

But science served the living, not the dead. It didn’t care that it was Yvone’s face at the bottom of the P2C file. Yorkwell Companies, family-owned and headquartered in Territory 3, had caused the leak while shutting down their outdated deep-sea mines as a part of their immigration deal into the eco-city. Involuntary manslaughter, you could call it. Well-intentioned, not that intentions should matter.

But consequences couldn’t be changed. Only prevented.

Kasey closed the file. Deleted it. Felt bad for a moment, for not feeling more affected. Maybe she was forgiving Yvone too easily. Maybe she was betraying Celia’s memory. Then she reminded herself of her choice—to live, as herself, for herself.

She was no lesser for feeling less.

She freed the pressure mounting in her chest. Carbon dioxide bubbled from her nose, drifting to the surface where it belonged. Where she did, too. With or without a team behind her, she’d make good on her final promise to Celia. It’d start here, with emerging into a world that needed her every bit as much as it’d needed her sister.