Six Years Later

SIX YEARS LATER

“I THOUGHT I MIGHT FINDyou here.”

Over the waves. Over the wind. A ghostlike voice that, for a nanosecond, made Kasey forget who she was and where.

Then she remembered.

“You’re certain?”

Kasey asked from Leona’s porch, where she stood after turning down tea inside. In T-minus twenty-nine hours, Operation Reset would go into effect en masse. Before then, she had thirty-some things to do, and double-checking that Leona didn’t want reconstruction bots installed on this island wasn’t one of them.

“I have the shield,” Leona said, and Kasey felt her face harden.

“It won’t last.” Her voice, over the years, had deepened. People didn’t listen to reason but rather authority, even if that authority was as superficial as putting on a steely persona and a white coat. “It might self-maintain for a century.” Two, maximum. “But then it’ll deteriorate.” And though the island wouldn’t disappear, like so many others during the arctic melt, it wouldn’t be spared by the elements. “Nothing will look the same,” Kasey insisted, doing her best to drive the point home for Leona.

“We’ll rebuild.”

“It’ll be difficult.” A ding from her Intraface, notifying her of an impending meeting. Kasey blinked it away. “You might not have any aid.”

“I’m not afraid,” Leona said with her own hint of steel.

Kasey’s mouth opened. And shut.

They were no longer talking about this island, but the person who haunted it.

Actinium was gone by the time Kasey returned to GRAPHYC, six months after her last visit. The unit at the top of the stairs had been stripped bare, like his brain with regard to memories of Kasey and their solution. But he did not forget his ways. A year and a half later, he would assassinate the premier of Territory 2, coincidentally (or not) the territory that’d pledged the fewest number of delegates during their PR circuit. Since then, a string of murders—from CEOs in unsustainable industries to average citizens with below-average ranks—had all been linked to him. The Worldwide Union had assembled a task force to catch him, and when intel traced Actinium visiting the island, the whole of it and its residents had fallen under surveillance.

Through it all, Leona’s brown hair seemed to gray before Kasey’s eyes. Still, the woman refused to heed Kasey’s warnings—that Actinium wasn’t just a menace to society, but to Leona as well. If she believed she could rehabilitate him, just like this island, then she was gravely mistaken.

But what use was logic? It ended where love began.

“Any contact with him must be reported,” Kasey now reminded Leona, the words made trite by repetition.

Leona replied by taking a hold of Kasey’s hand. Kasey stiffened. She was surrounded by people at any given moment, but everyone—her lab included—was held at a respectable arm’s length.

“You’ve worked hard, Kasey.”

As a servant of science, she’d only done what it had asked of her.

“We’re all very grateful.”

She was as numb to gratitude as she was to death threats. It came with the job.

“Without you,” Leona continued, “so many wouldn’t have this second chance.”

“Too many already won’t.” After dropping out of school, it’d taken Kasey nearly a year to find an innotech company willing to sponsor her, then another year to convince the Worldwide Union and P2C to trust her once more. Three years to secure global commitment to Operation Reset, one to devise a system to enforce universal participation. Total time elapsed: six years. Disasters suffered: two more megaquakes, three tsunamis, and countless category five hurricanes. Dead: 760 million. Eco-cities had opened their doors to refugees on a rank-blind basis, but the corrective action came too late, and at a cost. Physiological illnesses, once eradicated by the Coles, spiked again with population density, and mental health declined when holo requirements exceeded the recommended maximum in an effort to reduce overcrowding.

If only consensus had been reached sooner; opportunity cost calculations performed faster. But Kasey had come to accept inefficiency as a symptom of the human condition, and the frustration in her chest was an ember of its former self, dying out as Leona squeezed her hand.

“You did the best you could do. Celia wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

Celia.After Operation Reset’s failure, Kasey had come to the island, alone. She and Leona had traveled past the levee to watch Francis John Jr. repair the boat. What Kasey remembered of those days: summer, sunlight green through the trees, the screams of the O’Shea twins nearby as they played in Francis’s pool. Then came fall. The boat was finished, and something in Kasey finally healed. She knew this because hearing Celia’s name no longer brought a lump to her throat.

“I have to go,” she now said to Leona. She eased her hand free. Headed down the porch. A copterbot awaited her on the beach. Ding—the meeting had begun without her. That was fine. It’d been low-priority anyway, thought Kasey, then stopped short of the copterbot.

Maybe she did have time to spare.

One minute, she told herself, allowing her feet to choose her destination. They brought her to the pier. A peaceful place to soak in the sea and wind, except it was hard to soak in anything when her Intraface chimed with constant notifications—messages from her lab, from P2C, interview requests, and more. She answered the urgent ones, flagged others, then checked the feeds out of habit. Meridian Lan’s talk show was trending. Kasey caught the tail end to a clip.

“—polluted Earth. But what about privilege?” Meridian sat on a scarlet couch, opposite her cohost. “Those who industrialized first set rules for others. Territories behind the curve were expected to adopt clean energy and advance their societies after centuries of exploitation.”

“And can you really even call yourself clean if you’re just moving manufacturing out of your own backyard and into Territory Four’s?” added the cohost.

“Took the words right out of my own mouth.”

“Now here’s a name the world knows: Kasey Mizuhara, CSO of Operation Reset. Would you say she’s an example of the privileged?”

“Absolutely,” said Meridian. “And I think she’s playing at savior.”

It wasn’t untrue. Example of a “savior” thing Kasey had done: Before moving out of the Mizuhara unit and severing contact with David, she’d forwarded him the Lans’ relocation application, reminding him that she could reveal P2C’s cover-up of Yorkwell Companies at will. She had no intentions of actually following through—couldn’t, seeing as she no longer had the file—and she also had no intentions of telling Meridian. They’d never restored their friendship. Correspondence. Relationship. Whatever you called it. In retrospect, Kasey saw its one-sidedness—saw it even back then, but hadn’t spoken up. Like so many areas of her life, she’d been content to let others set the terms. Was she at fault? Was Meridian? Kasey didn’t think so. In that lunchroom eleven years ago, they’d been children still. They’d grown out of each other and into themselves. Into science, for Kasey, and punditry for Meridian. Kasey felt no ill will toward her. Not all molecules were meant to bond.

She closed the feed and took one last look at the scenery around her. The minute was up. If Leona didn’t agree to reconstruction bots, then the pier would surely sink. So be it. It served no practical purpose, and besides, it was here that Kasey was reminded most of the foolish girl she’d been, so unsure of herself, she’d borrowed the emotions of someone else. Here, that she could still hear his voice, over the waves—

A voice. Right now.

It came over the waves.

What were the chances? High enough for Kasey to turn, but low enough for her to wonder if she was hallucinating. Or if she’d been hacked.

The probabilities of either, unfortunately, were even lower. As a public figure, her biomonitor filled her bloodstream at any given moment with nanobots to fight off bio-terrors. Her retina, brain, and DNA down to her skin cells were protected by anti-hack technology. She was a fortress. Opaque, in every sense of the word.

Unlike Actinium. Standing at the end of the pier, his holograph half transparent. Kasey tried tracing a lead to his physical body. No luck. Her teeth gritted, temples tensing, the words he’d said echoing through her head.

I thought I might find you here.

“It was a good trick,” he said, approaching. In addition to growing more secure over the years, holographs had advanced visually. Actinium’s managed to capture the way the wind moved through his hair—longer now, grown out of its part, bangs in disarray. He was thinner, his features gaunt. His black trench coat hung off him, the front open to a white T-shirt that clung to his ribs. A five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw, but his eyes hadn’t changed. When they hit Kasey, she felt like she was looking into a mirror, and even though he wasn’t real, she found herself taking a step back right as he said, “But everyone knows to back up their files.”

What files?But Kasey didn’t need to ask.

For six years, she’d operated under the assumption that whatever Actinium did, it was without his memories of her. Of them. Now, to know he hadn’t forgotten—he’d only let her think so—

“What a waste of space,” Kasey deadpanned. So she’d failed. Actinium? He’d just given up his advantage by revealing that fact. She still had the edge. Operation Reset would still go into effect. This turmoil inside of her—these feelings of resentment, joy, humiliation, relief—were perverse and overblown, like all emotions.

He was one soul, compared to the billions relying on her.

“Still playing down your self-worth,” said Actinium, walking ever closer.

“I know my worth without you saying so.”

“Then you’ve changed.”

And he hadn’t. Mentally, certainly, and physically when compared to the latest Wanted ad—not that Kasey would ever admit to looking at them. “What are you here for? To gloat over my oversight?” she asked, taking a step back.

“Partly.” He stopped exactly 3.128 meters away, according to her Intraface. “Mostly to tell you that you’ll fail.”

Impossible. Kasey’s mind ran through the scenarios. The stasis pods were guarded around the clock; their original plan of engineering them with a permanent lock, triggered by rank, was no longer feasible. There was the barometer technology, but even if Actinium could replicate it, manipulate it to wake him before everyone else, then what? The population’s pods were unbreachable without Kasey, as re-habitator zero, and Kasey’s pod would only open upon being found by her bot, programmed to take her out of stasis regardless of Act—

“I’ve developed bots that know exactly how to stop yours.”

So?Kasey almost asked. You don’t get to choose who wakes and who doesn’t. Only I can. Without Kasey, in fact, no one would wake—

No one would wake.

Stop her, stop her bot from waking her, and everyone would stay in stasis.

It’d be a world without people.

“You can’t stop my bots.” Kasey was glad for her naturally monotone voice; it gave nothing away, none of her horror or disgust or shame. She was wrong. He had changed—from a monster to something worse. “Kill them, and they’ll just regenerate.”

“There are other ways to sway a person from their course,” said Actinium.

“Are you speaking from personal experience? Because I don’t think I swayed you from yours.”

At that, he grinned. The nerve! He took another step forward, and Kasey instinctively reacted with another backward one. Except there was no more pier behind her.

Just sea.

Her center of gravity tipped. The sky spun overhead—and stilled as something caught her around the waist.

“Others might believe there’s power in a single step,” murmured Actinium, the cadence of his breath brushing Kasey’s ear. Her eyes widened. His warmth was real. So was the brace of his arm. The press of his chest. “But most choices are made before you reach the edge.”

He released her, and stepped back. As he did, his figure shimmered. His opacity increased to 100% as he turned off the illusion filter he’d set upon himself. He had calibrated it to match Kasey’s Intraface presets perfectly, tricking her, fair and square, into thinking that he’d come as a holograph when really, he was here. Physically here.

In the flesh.

She could kill him. He could kill her. This close, he could have shot her point-blank.

Why hadn’t he?

“I know your mind as well as you know mine,” he said, but did she? Why would he give up the element of surprise? Where was the benefit to offset the risk? Surely, any moment now, he would reveal his true hand.

But as Kasey’s brain fired through the possibilities, all Actinium did was turn away.

“We’ll see who wins, in a millennium,” he said, walking back down the pier. Something shimmered at the end of it, concealed by the same illusion tech Actinium had used on himself.

A copterbot.

The sight of it restarted Kasey. She whipped out the REM she always carried with her and fired.

Missed.

Her next shot hit the copter, denting it, but the paralysis effect was negated on the inanimate object. Actinium dove in and the copterbot rose.

It vanished with a wink.

It was one of the few luxuries she allowed herself. Celia had been right; air didn’t come close to the cleansing effect of water. At the end of a long day, sometimes a hot shower was what Kasey needed to feel reborn.

But today, no matter how scalding the temperature, she couldn’t seem to sanitize her skin. It only reddened, and her blood heated with it.

If she’d realized he was real from the start, Actinium would be captured by now. If she’d been faster, sharper. If she’d had better aim—

Most choices are made before you reach the edge.

Without toweling off, Kasey sat at the foot of her stasis pod, rubbing the C tattooed around her right wrist as she deliberated.

The average person in her position, with conventional morals, would notify the Worldwide Union of Actinium’s newfound—or rather, never-forgotten—intel. Having devoted the last few years of her life to studying them, Kasey was capable of average human behaviors. She could lay bare her past relationship with Actinium, if asked, even if it meant losing her authority as Chief Science Officer. That wasn’t the reason for her reservation.

Wasn’t the reason why the doubt seeped in.

People are the disease, Mizuhara.

Just as Kasey knew typical human behaviors inside and out, she also knew the typical pitfalls. The logical fallacies. The bias for certainty. Introduce any possibility of the solution being compromised, and Operation Reset would be canceled at worst, stalled at best. The suffering would be protracted for who knew how long while the world redoubled its efforts to catch Actinium. He’d win at his own game simply by eluding capture.

What a nuisance. He ought to have just killed her. Why didn’t you? Kasey thought.

Her own brain conjured Actinium’s response. For the same reason you didn’t kill me.

Jaw tensing, Kasey stood up and faced the interior of her stasis pod. Its high-shine finish reflected a woman who’d successfully convinced her species to follow her to the depths of the sea.

But she wasn’t one of them. And unlike the girl she’d been, she’d stopped wishing to be. This was who she was.

She had her worldview, as did he.

She had her bots. He had his.

It would be his hypothesis versus hers.

Let the experiment run, she could almost hear him say. If you trust yourself.

And not tell the rest of the world? It’d been seen as gambling with lives. But not all gambles were reckless. Her labs had put her bots through every simulation imaginable, for a success rate of 98.2%. The average population might not have been able to tolerate a 1.8% chance of failure, but Kasey could. Probability was on her side.

It hadn’t always been. The first bots had deviated from their programming one in five times to choose their own freedom. Not everyone was as socially driven as Kasey had assumed. It took a certain kind of person to carry out the mission to termination, a person powered by the need to be needed, who took shelter not in a house but in a heart. Celia was that person, Kasey realized, when she ran the chip of her sister’s memories through the simulation generator. She’d accepted her terminal prognosis, in part to avoid condemning herself to a lifetime in a pod and in part to prevent Kasey from podding herself as well. To this day, Kasey disagreed with the decision. Found it extreme and rooted in Celia’s own biases. But her sister was only human, as prone to harmful beliefs as much as the next person. It’d taken Kasey a while to come to terms with that—that Celia’s fear of letting her loved ones down could be considered a flaw. She had her own insecurities, just like Kasey, and a million facets that Kasey, too blinded by the brightest ones, only saw after her sister was gone.

But better late than never. Once Kasey accepted that she and her sister were equals, she knew what she had to do. With her blessing, her lab had abandoned programming the bots with generic memories and used Celia’s directly. It was the logical choice, eliminating replication errors, and even provided Kasey a bit of illogical comfort. She trusted Celia. They might not have been “joined at the hip,” to use the language of normal people, but their bond could bridge any distance of minds or millenniums.

Yes, Kasey now thought to Actinium. She believed in herself. Believed in the perfection of her design.

Like everything else, though, it’d taken time, and the last six years had exacted their toll. Had Celia been alive, she would have been horrified to see the state of Kasey’s hair, buzzed to save on the upkeep, and her living space, spartan as a space station, and her nonexistent social life. But Celia also would have been proud. As Kasey came to understand her sister’s every side, she realized Celia had never been scared of her bots. She was scared that she’d failed Kasey, been absent when Kasey, unaware of it herself, had needed a sister most.

Celia shouldn’t have worried. These days, Kasey needed very little. The things she did need—her bots, her labs—were dispensable. Not Celia.

The only place Kasey still found Celia was in her dreams. Her sister would be waiting every night, no matter how long it took for Kasey’s mind to release her. Together they would go down to the sea on a ladder. They would float for days under the sun, never pruning, and Kasey would reel up the words from the bottom of her heart:

I love you.

And even if you failed me,

I’d never replace you.