The Ones We're Meant to Find(68)

“Nope.”

“You wouldn’t even know, if I snuck it in.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” I claim. The look on Hero’s face says otherwise. “That’s it. You’re banned from the kitchen. I’m taking over as chef.”

“No, please. Garlic-free it is,” says Hero, much too quickly, to my genuine offense. I rise from my seat and he holds up his fork as if to defend himself, his eyes alight with laughter. Then his face stiffens. His body spasms.

The fork falls out of his hand.





40


DING. A MESSAGE FROM EKATERINA.

Ding. The clip of Actinium fighting the Territory 4 man had leaked and was trending.

Ding. Delegates were rescinding their support from Operation Reset.

Ding. The plane was about to leave.

Ding. Where was Kasey?

Currently? Sitting on the ground outside the hospel, her back to the PVC wall. Didn’t particularly want to be here, didn’t belong elsewhere, so she stayed, watching from the sidelines as shouted orders went unheeded, victims arrived on gurneys and departed in body bags. Supplies rolled into the makeshift wards and came out in metal drums of biohazardous waste. Medics ran back and forth, carrying things, dropping things.

Thunk. Kasey flinched as a container landed and tipped over, centimeters from her toes.

“Argh!” The medic crouched down, gathering the spilled toximeters. Kasey crawled over to help. As they refilled the container, the numbers on the toximeters caught Kasey’s eye. The levels for both radioaxons and microcinogens did not match the readings in her biomonitor.

She turned to the medic. “They’re broken.”

“I know,” said the medic. She shoveled the last of the toximeters into the container, hoisted it into her arms, and stood.

Kasey stood too, concern growing at the medic’s lack thereof. “They’re not safe to use.”

The medic gave her a look. “I know.”

In front of the hospel, a ring of Worldwide Union trucks had been parked, each designated for a different job. Kasey followed the medic to the trash truck, and stared as all of the toximeters were dumped in. Stared some more as the medic, after dusting off her hands, withdrew a small rectangular box from the breast pocket of her hazard suit and shook out a cylindrical filament. She struck the filament to flame and inserted it between her lips, sucking in deep, exhaling a plume of gray. It wasn’t odorless, like the hallucinogenics popular in the eco-cities, and it irritated Kasey’s lungs.

“Not a local, are you?” asked the medic as Kasey coughed.

“No.”

“Let me guess. VR-city?”

E-city, Celia had called their home. Same thing, Kasey supposed, and nodded.

“Figures,” said the medic, inhaling more air pollution. “Live here long enough, and you’d know better than to trust everything.” She nodded at the toximeters that’d joined the pile of used surgical gowns and shriveled IV bags. “Half the gov-issued ones are tampered with. The levels only go so high. ‘Anti-panic measure,’ they say.” One last inhale, and she dropped the filament onto the ground, where it glowed, a spark in the dark, before disappearing under the medic’s shoe.

“You should put on an antiskin,” she said to Kasey, grinding her heel. “Your organs rotting? Now that shit’s real.”

Then she made for the hospel, leaving Kasey by the truck with her smoke and her words.

She reopened the P2C file Actinium had sent her. Reread it, properly, as she would have done sooner or later. It just happened to be sooner, thanks to this one exchange, that she found the data she was looking for. The date of the leak.

It fell before, not after, the day she and Celia had gone to the sea.

A full two weeks prior.

The ocean had already been poisoned.

Despite Kasey checking the water with a P2C issued toximeter.

Despite the reading: SAFE FOR SKIN CONTACT.

120 bpm. 130 bpm. 140 bpm. ALERT! From her biomonitor. Her heart rate reached the anaerobic zone. Someone was talking to Kasey. Shouting her name again and again. Go away, Kasey thought. Said. Out loud. The sound of her voice brought her back into the world and she saw that it was a P2C copterbot. Not here one second ago (or had it been minutes, or hours?), but here now, hovering in front of Kasey and making a scene.

MIZUHARA, KASEY, please board. MIZUHARA, KASEY, please board.

Kasey boarded.

And smashed her fist into the window.

Pain splintered down her arm.

140 bpm. 150 bpm. 160 bpm.

Was this how Actinium felt? Learning that his family had died without him, because he’d boarded as a bot? Because all Kasey could think was Celia had died because Kasey had been sheltered. Protected. From head to toe, wrapped so neatly in her antiskin and goggles that her biomonitor hadn’t gone off in the water. The poisoned water. She’d used the toximeter. Relied on its numbers. Her mistake wasn’t trusting the tech.

It was trusting the humans the tech served.

As the copterbot flew, taking her back to the embassy like it’d been ordered to do, Kasey geolocated David Mizuhara.

For once, he was at home.

She opened the holo app in her Intraface and pressed LOG IN.

No stasis pod detected. Continue?

YES

Warning! Free-holoing, without stasis support, increases risk of cardiac arrest.