The Ones We're Meant to Find(9)

Her door flung open shortly afterward. “What the hell, Kay?”

“You’re in pain.” And pain was an objectively undesirable sensation and emotion.

But Celia had looked at Kasey as if she was one with bloodshot eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

Her sister would take back the words two days later. Two years later, they’d mend their rift.

But immediately after their mother’s death, a nine-year-old Kasey would ask her biomonitor Celia’s very question, and be disappointed to learn there was nothing biologically or psychologically wrong with her. Nothing to cure, nothing to fix. Kasey had a hard time buying it. Something inside her had to have been misinstalled. Why else hadn’t she reacted like Celia to the death of the woman who’d birthed them, or like the public to Celia’s disappearance?

Why else, now, when she blinked away the option to cognicise her memories of Celia, would she be faced with the following field?

INVALID REQUEST

more details

more details [x]

All citizens must maintain minimum mood level

above SEVERE_DEBILITATION [value ≥-50]

However, your minimum mood setting requires corrective action at MILD_DEBILITATION [≥-10] due to court override?.

? P2C court records: see past felony.

Failure to take corrective action will result in eviction.

She wasn’t as good as Celia, Kasey thought as she returned to the previous field and selected neurotransmitter adjustment instead. If Kasey had gone missing, Celia would’ve traveled to the ends of the earth looking for her. If Kasey had died, Celia would have been more than mildly debilitated. She would’ve stared into the reporter’s cams with tears in her eyes and spoken her mind, not lied as Kasey had.

Might your sister not want to be found?

To be honest, Kasey didn’t know. Didn’t deserve to dissect Celia. Present her with any other problem and she wouldn’t rest until it was solved. Her sister was the exception. When Celia insisted on seeing the sea in person, as if that was somehow different from holoing to it, Kasey had followed along, trying to understand. When Celia snuck out at night to go Joules knew where, Kasey let her, resisting the urge to track her geolocation. Had she, she could have prevented this. Celia wouldn’t be dead. Instead, she’d respected the sanctity of what went on in her sister’s head. Surely that had to count for something.

Yet here Kasey was.

Unable to sleep at night, as if she might stop her sister from sneaking out one last time.

Running a search for Celia’s Intraface, long after authorities had deemed it off-grid.

Staring at the sea from the highest stratum, as if she might be the first to spot the boat’s return.

Three months, twelve days.

Her actions made no sense. Logic couldn’t explain them. Only hope. It’d leaked into her system, despite her best efforts to keep it out, and in the morning, when Kasey woke to an alert flashing in her mind’s eye, she got her first taste of its addictive rush.

[CELIA MIZUHARA] INTRAFACE LOCATED





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WHERE AM I?

Who am I?

What’s my name?

Cee. I smile in relief when I remember, eyes shuttering against the sun, white overhead.

Then I roll onto my stomach and vomit onto the sand.

My relief sours to panic. No. No, no, no. I can’t have my taro and chuck it up too. I need to hold it in. But the only thing coming out of me is a cocktail of seawater and bile. No taro. Not in me. All in the ocean, dissolved to slime. Months’ worth of taro, food for the fish.

And Hubert …

I wobble to my feet. My legs are already weakening, my vision zooming in and out of focus before finally stabilizing on an object farther down the shore.

A hull.

Or half of one, resting on a crescent of wet sand.

Hubert.

I thump to my knees and crawl to his remains. “Morning, Bert,” I manage.

And lose it.

I bawl until the tide rises, then, as I hold Hubert down so the sea won’t wash him away, I form my first truly coherent thought: I need to bury him. Give him a proper goodbye.

I drag him onto safe, dry sand, and stagger around to face whatever lies behind me.

And what do you know.

There’s a house on the rocks that looks suspiciously like M.M.’s.

Then there’s me. Standing. On a shore. The shore. After sailing Hubert seven days out into the sea, plus however much time has passed since, I’m back. Waterlogged but alive.

Which begs the question: How in the fucking world?

Did I swim? Did I cling to Hubert and drift on some lucky waves? And even then, shouldn’t I have thirsted to death?

I rack my brains, trying to remember something, anything, but all I’ve got are muggy memories of drowning.

Chasing after the hows drains me, so I focus on the shoulds. I should be ecstatic. I should be grateful I’m not a bloated body in the sea. I should rebuild Hubert. Try finding Kay again.

Instead, I feel nothing.

I’m back.

I’m fucking back.

I failed the greatest mission of my life, the one goal that kept me going day after day, and I couldn’t even die in peace. I’m back to exactly where I started: marooned, color-blind, memory-less. I’d be furious if I weren’t so fatigued.

“All right, Cee,” I mutter as the clouds move in—not enough to visibly dim the beach but enough to chill me. “So what if you’re back? You’re a pro. You know what to do. Climb the ridge. Find the pieces. Build. It’ll be easier than before. Trust me.”