The Ones We're Meant to Find(59)

Actinium blinked once, slow. “Jinx will take care of him.”

“And your clients?”

“None of them are as important as this.”

“You won’t miss it?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Kasey asked, and Actinium glanced to the window.

“I’ve never belonged.”

“Same.” She couldn’t decide what was more surprising—his admission or hers.

“I know.” A whisper, barely audible. “Home is where the mind is,” said Actinium, and Kasey froze, her body going hot and cold as she recalled staring at her bedroom ceiling, contemplating the concept of eviction. She’d ironed out the logistics, performed damage control to feel in control, and then none of it had mattered. She’d accepted the deal. Science became her past. Her secret. But she had another secret:

She’d almost chosen eviction instead.

People confused Kasey when they invariably violated the properties she ascribed to them. But science was different. Science didn’t blindside her; it outsmarted her. It didn’t try to understand her, but Kasey understood it. With science, she felt safe. But with Celia, too. Two choices and only one, Kasey had realized, would be seen as normal. For Celia, she’d tried to be normal. For Celia, she’d stayed, and it’d been the easiest and hardest decision she’d made, eleven years old now feeling like yesterday, as Kasey trembled, breath coming quick. She heard her name and glanced up, saw Actinium’s gaze, across a chaise on which he did not exist, but he did to Kasey. He’d articulated a feeling Kasey had lived, and for moment, Kasey wished he were here.

Wished she could actually feel the hand he’d placed on her shoulder.

Then she shook her head. Stood. “I should go. Pack. Early start.”

She wasn’t sure what she was saying; Ekaterina hadn’t even sent them the itinerary.

Actinium had the grace to nod and stood himself. “Until tomorrow.”

He logged out, leaving Kasey alone.

She sat back down on the chaise. Breathed deep, oxygenating her blood. Her heart pummeled her chest with the strength of two; she dismissed it. This was just a part of the journey, of becoming more human as she avenged her sister.

She swiped back to Celia’s memories, pushing Actinium out of her mind, and opened the folder, then the subfolder labeled XXX that she hadn’t reviewed before.

It expanded to three hundred memories of all the boys Celia had loved and been loved by.

Kasey closed it, heart pounding again.

Think outside the box. There had to be a way to understand her sister’s relationships without reviewing every memory manually.

She began to develop an algorithm that would match biomonitor data to memories by date, and then narrow the memories down to the ones that corresponded with oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphin spikes, the respective hormones for socialization, motivation, and goal achievement. Of the memories left, Kasey filtered for people, prioritizing recurring faces. She hit RUN. The algorithm spit out the top five results.

Her own name and face topped the list.

Strange. Stranger still was how Actinium was not in the top five, which included Leona, or the top ten, when Kasey expanded the parameters. At number twelve was Tristan. Dmitri, number seventeen. By number fifty, Kasey, perplexed, searched directly for Actinium among the netted memories.

0 RESULTS.

Kasey ran the program again. Same result—zero.

She did a face search through all of Celia’s memories.

No saved ones of Actinium.

The unit suddenly felt colder, though the temperature in the corner of Kasey’s gaze stayed the same. An insidious thought zapped her; she located Celia’s memories of the time they’d gone to the sea. She rewatched it, laser-eyed, went as far back to the memories from their childhood, when Genevie had been alive, watched those too, pulled up the biomonitor data on the day Genevie had died, and found the neurotransmitter spike that corresponded with the adjustment she’d accepted on Celia’s behalf. Her panic abated. The memories were real. The biomonitor data was real. The facts were real and they were as followed:

Celia had been poisoned.

She’d gone to the hospel. She’d left by sea. The evidence for that was all there.

Then where was Actinium? The boy who’d sat across from her on this chaise? Who’d been in this unit just moments ago?

This unit.

Time slowed. Stilled.

Reversed its march.

Actinium had holo-ed here. Via Kasey’s hotspot. But a hotspot was nothing more than a tether, allowing people to holo to your location. It had nothing to do with access permissions, permissions being nonapplicable to public domains, but this was private. And not Kasey’s home. Had it been, Actinium holoing in would have prompted ACCEPT GUEST to appear in her Intraface, like it had at her party. That Kasey hadn’t been given the option meant one of two things: Either Actinium had hacked his way in, or …

A chill filled Kasey’s bones.

… or he wasn’t a guest. In this unit.

This unit that belonged to the Coles.

There was only one way to confirm.

Actinium was good at hacking. But so was Kasey. Finally free to use every trick she knew, she peeled back the layers of Actinium, rank 0. She stripped him down to the boy behind the identity, the same boy in the picture frame atop the coffee table, whose face did exist in Celia’s memories, and Kasey’s, too, but seven years had changed it, aged it, and left it utterly unrecognizable.