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.
* * *
Ekaterina sent the itinerary at midnight. By then, Kasey was far too deep down the rabbit hole to reply.
She reviewed everything she could get her hands on. The media coverage of the copterbot crash. The report from the forensics lab. The cambot footage of the departure: Genevie, Ester, Frain, and the Coles’ son, a ten-year-old boy, waving at the crowds on stratum-100 before they boarded the copterbot. Kasey studied the clip again and again, until she found it.
Actinium’s secret to surviving the accident that’d killed everyone else.
Her brain, kicked into overdrive, began to shut down nonessential functions. First to go were emotions. She could get upset, or she could get answers to her questions, too many of which relied on Actinium’s cooperation. Back in the Mizuhara unit, Kasey drafted several messages, deliberating over her tone. Sent none come afternoon. Departure time. She set off for P2C headquarters. She’d confront him in person. A perfectly logical plan—assuming they’d be on this trip alone.
“Meridian?” Of all the things Kasey had prepared for, this was not one. “Why are you here?” she asked, brain ejected out of autopilot mode and forced to assess this new confounding variable standing outside of P2C headquarters.
I could ask you the same, said the sour look on Meridian’s face. She was clearly prepped to travel, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. “Officer Trukhin invited me.”
Ekaterina. Kasey opened the itinerary she’d been sent and read it in detail—down to the note about adding personnel that could be viewed as grassroots support by the Territory 4 locals.
“She asked if I’d be interested in presenting a variation of my solution.” Meridian went on, right as the copterbot descended. “Yes, you heard right. Mine. I submitted it.” At that moment, Actinium arrived. Meridian pointedly refused to look at him, reserving her glare for Kasey. Then, with a turn of her heel, she proceeded to climb into the copterbot.
You don’t know what you’re getting into, Kasey wished she could say. Could not, of course, or confront Actinium. Could only take the seat between the two of them. To her right was a boy who knew her, knew their true agenda, but who had hidden himself. And to her left was a girl who thought Kasey’s worst crime was hogging the solution when it was so much worse. Yes, with Meridian here, Kasey finally confronted how her and Actinium’s vision for the world would be viewed by outsiders—as a crime. Immoral and unforgivable.
And now she couldn’t even trust the person who was supposed to be her partner.
The 3,000 km flight was too silent and too long, then too short after they touched the ground. From the copterbot they were ferried to a car—an antique driven by a live chauffeur. Heat roared from the vents to combat the outside freeze. A polar vortex had taken up permanent residence over the northeastern territories after the arctic melt, and beyond the car windows laid a world stark and bleak, sun radiating in a barren sky, clouds dispatched by high concentrations of atmospheric carbon. The roadside crowds were the only sign of life, and the throngs densified as they neared the embassy.
The car pulled into park.
“Good luck,” Ekaterina messaged as Kasey secured her breathing mask. It couldn’t protect her from the dry-ice air, an assault on her lungs the second she stepped outside, into the blinding flash of cameras. Behind an orange barricade, reporters in the flesh pushed and shoved for the best angle. Citizens, some with masks and some without, held up signs criticizing the government’s megaquake response. The expressions on their faces were somber—save for one group of men, women, and children, waving at them.