The request dies in my throat.
My throat, twist-tied off in his chokehold.
What—why? My eyes burn. My skull balloons. Just a bad dream. A bad dream. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned since arriving on this island, it’s that nothing is a bad dream and thinking so is what gets you killed from starvation, dehydration, or—in this case—boys on the beach.
I scrabble at his hands. His grip is iron. I knee him in the balls. He doesn’t flinch. Maybe he isn’t a boy after all.
My tongue is meat in my mouth. My chest is lead. Lightning—a phantom ringing—blackness—a void.
The thunder goes quiet.
Then a blue light. A room, dimly lit, dream-hazy. A man in a white suit. A casket. My voice—I won’t let her follow me—like a thought in my head, and I see myself, standing apart from myself, I reach to touch other-me but I can’t feel her and am I … dead?
Find me, Cee.
No, not dead. Dead-me wouldn’t be able to hear Kay’s voice. The sound of it returns sensation to my limbs and skin—just in time for me to feel the boy’s fingers loosen. His hands fall from my throat. His body thuds to the side. I hear U-me’s voice, reliably monotone. “Strongly disagree.” Then the rain drowns everything out like applause. It batters me, no-holds-barred now that the boy is gone. My gasps turn to gurgles and I choke again—on spit and air. I gulp it down, then finally roll. Onto my side. Onto my elbows. I lift my head, and through the rain, I see the gleam of U-me’s metal body.
She’s by the boy, who’s now lying facedown on the sand. I don’t know what she did—bot headbutt?—but it was effective. He’s out, and I’m not strangled.
“Thanks, love,” I croak, my voice a stranger’s. “I owe you one.”
“Agree.”
Together, we consider the boy.
“Now, what are we going to do with him?”
8
“SO HOW DID IT GO?”
Where to even begin? Her sister’s Intraface, or the boy who had extracted it?
“The party?” prompted Meridian, and Kasey cleared her mind. Right.
She shut the door to her gym locker. It stuck out even more now, as the only freshly painted one in the row, than it had with BITCH sprayed across it. Remarkable, Kasey had thought, that some people still had aerosols. Meridian hadn’t been nearly as impressed. “Which one of you did this?” she’d demanded, causing a scene that Kasey found more irksome than the vandalism. She hadn’t told Meridian, of course. She didn’t tell Meridian a lot of things to avoid said-things becoming events （see Kasey’s party, concocted by Meridian to flip off Kasey’s detractors）。
“Party was fine,” Kasey said. “Crowded,” she added as girls filled the locker room, clogging the air with chlorine and chatter and enveloping Kasey in déjà vu. If it weren’t for swim class, the easiest way to fulfill the biomonitor’s exercise requirement, she’d have holo-ed to school today. The trip to stratum-22 yesterday had drained her. She’d slept badly, checking her Intraface first thing this morning. Zero messages from Actinium. Cue relief. She wanted answers, but the idea of going through Celia’s memories left her queasy.
And right now, the locker room humidity wasn’t helping.
“That’s it? That’s all I get?” Meridian complained, following Kasey as she made for the exit—only to run into a familiar face.
Déjà vu round two.
“Oh, hey!” Yvone’s hair was blond in person, not blue. Kasey, unfortunately, appeared exactly as she did in holo. Her name and rank were disclosed overhead per school rules, and as luck would have it, she was standing next to none other than the one true LAN, MERIDIAN, rank 18,154. The scene was just begging to be remarked on, and Kasey held her breath as Yvone smiled.
“You know, I can almost see the resemblance.” Then she raised a hand—“See you around”—walked past, and Kasey relaxed, grateful Yvone had left it at that.
Meridian was understandably more baffled. “Uh, racist much?”
To be fair, Meridian and Kasey’s geo-genetic profiles differed by a mere 7%. While cultural identities were preserved within families, the arctic melt had irrevocably reshaped society. Rising sea levels had caused continents to contract into territories, and people from different countries aggregated in whichever eco-city levitated above their general region.
But Kasey couldn’t defend Yvone. She could only play along. “Look at her,” Meridian muttered, and Kasey did, turning as they left the locker room to glance at Yvone’s projected ID, having missed it before. “Strutting around when she just moved here.”