The Ones We're Meant to Find(41)

“You disagree.” She made it a statement; she didn’t pretend at uncertainty when she was certain. “Why?” she asked, less certain about how she could infer so much from his tone alone.

“I think most choices are made before you reach the edge.”

Kasey agreed with him. She’d tried to jump. To expose herself. To bleed. But she was only fooling herself; she’d never choose self-destruction. Her brain was too solution-driven.

Or should have been. Because at this very moment, her Intraface pinged with a reminder from P2C headquarters that the emergency meeting was about to start and she was faced with the other choice she’d made: the choice not to help. Kasey swiped the message away; others took its place, namely unread ones from Meridian.

Where are you? Have you seen the news? Are you home?

Home. The nature of it—bubble-wrapped and safe—felt as alien to Kasey as it had to Celia.

“Actinium.” His name burned her lips. She looked to him just as he looked to her, and for a heartbeat, she saw something in his gaze. A wavering. His lips parted.

But Kasey spoke first. “I have something to confess.”

Celia had loved the sea. Loved the whitecaps that foamed like milk, the waltz of sunlight atop the peaks. Kasey did not. The sea was a trillion strands of hair, infinitely tangled on the surface and infinitely dense beneath. It distorted time: Minutes passed like hours and hours passed like minutes out there. It distorted space, made the horizon seem within reach.

And it was the perfect place for hiding secrets.

I killed Celia. I knew visiting the sea in person was a bad idea. I didn’t stop her. But as much as guilt would have substantiated her humanity, she couldn’t summon it. Anger was the easier emotion to access. Celia had been foolish to swim in the ocean, but she shouldn’t have had to die for it. Someone—a person, a company, or multiples of each—had polluted the sea. In secret. It’d gone unreported. Unremedied. Kasey had been punished when she’d broken international law; had they? If not, why should she help them? Why better a world when better for Celia had meant choosing where and when to die?

A barrier in Kasey fell. The solution spilled out of her. All of it, including the final piece she’d told no one of. She waited for Actinium’s disgust, his horror. Receiving neither, she barreled on.

“I can help,” she finished, breathless. “But I don’t want to.”

Her confession. Science was impartial to everything and everyone. It either worked or didn’t. It didn’t say who deserved to benefit. The solution existed; therefore, it had to be shared.

“I don’t want to help,” she repeated, more quietly, as lightning flashed in the distance. The storm rumbled in. The rain thundered down.

Actinium was right; the shield ended where they stood. Kasey could almost see the arc of it before her eyes, where the rain passed through less forcefully, misting over them. Nervous, she looked to him, this boy who’d used science for the people’s good. What would he think of her now?

As she waited for a response, a gale swooped in from the sea. Filtered by the shield or not, it felt real. It tugged at Kasey’s clothes, dampened her face. It swept Actinium’s carefully parted hair into his eyes, obscuring his expression. But his voice rang as clear as it had since day one.

“Who said anything about helping?”





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MY FIRST THOUGHT IS THAT I’m not dead.

My second is that I’m hanging without a rope halfway down the ridge, clinging to it by a rock, and I’ve almost certainly dislocated my right shoulder and I’m still dead because there’s a long way left to fall and my fingers are slipping and oh Joules, what a shit way to go.

“Strongly disagree.” Pressure—under my left foot, alleviating some of the strain in my arm.

U-me. Her fans whir as she supports me with her head. Whatever she was designed for, it wasn’t this. We’re both going to end up as rubble below if I don’t do something fast.

Think, Cee. My eyes roll from side to side, then down.

The rope.

Part of it is a neon-orange puddle on the ground, but the other part still dangles down the ridge face, no longer tied but caught in the hands of the boy, his figure backlit at the top.

“Tie it!” I’ll take the two of us over if I grab it now. Surely he knows that. “Snap out of it!” I scream when he doesn’t move. “Come on! Be a—”

Acid shoots up my throat.

“—hero!” I choke out.

“Hero,” intones U-me dutifully as rocks tumble out from beneath us, free-falling to the ground with a telltale pock-pock-pock. “A person who is admired or idealized…”

I can’t hear the rest. My vision is spotting and it’s impossible to see the boy’s features, let alone figure out what the hell is going through his mind as he just stands there, rope in hand. Meanwhile, the pressure is back on my fingertips. Pain sizzles white-hot down my arm. This is it. The cords in my neck tense. My lips part for one final shout— —and close when the rope brushes my cheek.

It moves as the boy moves. He’s a blob to me at this point, but I think he’s making tying motions with his hands, and if he’s not, I’m dead anyway, so I seize the rope, pincer my knees, and worm down its length as much as I can before my arms give out.