“It took a while,” I say, not wanting to give the boy a definitive timeline to compare his own progress to. “But it came back.”
Cee. My name is Cee, and when the boy intones it—“Cee … you said it was?”—something in me stirs. It’s the first time I’ve heard my name on another’s lips since washing up on the shore.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “C-E-E, pronounced like the sea outside that window.”
I want him to say it again.
He doesn’t. He looks at me, as if accepting this is reality, and I look at him, too. He is real. I have to hold my own hands to keep from touching him, because, apparently, as I’m learning, that’s how I connect to people. I want to feel their emotions. To share them and to shield them. I wish you were here, I suddenly think to Kay. I’d hold her and never let her go. But for now, as incomplete as I may be, I’m not alone.
I’m not alone.
“—red on your face.” The boy’s voice draws me out of my head. I’ve missed part of what he’s said, but I’m already catching on quicker, and when he taps the corner of his lip, I swipe at mine. A gray smear on my knuckles. I lick it, just to be sure. Iron blooms over my tongue.
Blood.
His or mine, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. Red, the boy said.
He sees in color.
My stomach sinks. Still alone, in some ways. He has something I don’t. Should I tell him? I decide against it. He has his own missing pieces to worry about, evident when he asks me, “What if I never remember my name?” His throat bobs as he swallows. A lump grows in my own. I know what he’s looking for—the reassurance that can only be found outside of yourself. The squeeze of a hand, or a promise.
“You will,” I say, giving him both.
This time, he doesn’t flinch from my touch.
10
THE MEMORY RUSHED BACK IN like the tide.
Saturday, six months ago. Temperatures set to an agreeable 26°C, when Kasey emerged from P2C headquarters on stratum-50 to find Celia waiting outside. She wore a baby-blue yoga set. Kasey was still in her school blazer. “My clothes—” she started as Celia took her hand.
“You won’t need them.”
A place where she didn’t need clothes, albeit borrowed from Celia? “Where are we going?” Kasey asked, rightfully concerned as they made their way to the nearest duct. They hadn’t always spent weekends together. For almost two years after Genevie’s death, they’d barely spoken to each other. Then the incident had happened, tearing science out of Kasey’s life. Celia had tried to fill the gap by reducing the time Kasey spent alone, in the company of her thoughts, as if they might be dangerous. Maybe they were. Kasey certainly wasn’t breaking laws while watching soaps, shopping, or doing whatever it was Celia planned, which, by her sister’s answer of “someplace special,” could mean anything from a mud spa to rock climbing. Just last week Kasey had been roasted alive in something called a “sauna.”
To make matters inconvenient on top of uncomfortable, the experiences, rarely ever virtual, predominantly took place in the lower stratums. But today, Celia didn’t get off at stratum-50 or -40. Stratum-30 came and passed, then stratum-25. Six passengers remained as the duct continued downward, stratums blurring beyond the polyglass cylinder until Kasey deduced their destination.
“We shouldn’t.” Stratum-0 was off-limits; David Mizuhara had said so himself in one of his once-a-month messages.
“You’ve got to see it, love,” said Celia as three more people got off at the next stop.
“I’ve seen the stratum.” Kasey had holo-ed there on a class field trip.
“No, the ocean. Up close,” Celia insisted before Kasey could argue they’d also seen the ocean from the Cole’s unit while watching the sun set—another one of Celia’s favorite pastimes. “It makes a world of difference.”
“All right,” Kasey conceded, as if they hadn’t already arrived. “Just this once.”
As the bottommost layer to the eco-city, stratum-0 functioned as part shipping dock, part observation deck. The lowest point of its bowl-like belly was formed completely out of polyglass, creating the illusion that the sea was beneath one’s feet, and an unfortunate greenhouse effect. Perspiring, Kasey watched as Celia stared at the ocean. “Why do you like it so much?” she asked. Try as she might, she couldn’t see what was so special about water, salt, and heavy metals.
“Because it’s alive.”