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.
CANCEL
I am aware of the risks and accept.
I ACCEPT
||||?||||?||||?||||?||||?||||?||||?||||?|
HE CRUMPLES LIKE A BODY without a spirit, head dropping into his hands. The fork is still ringing on the floor when I rush to his side and kneel. “What’s wrong?” I reach for his arm.
“Get back.”
“But—”
“Get back.”
My hand retracts. I watch, helpless, as he lifts his head spinal disc by spinal disc, eyes glazed over with pain. The veins in his hands stiffen, followed by the veins in his neck.
The spell passes the way it came: without warning. He sags in the chair, panting. Shakes his head as if to clear it.
“What hurts?” I demand.
“It’s nothing,” says Hero. I glare, and he amends, “Just a headache.”
Something tells me it’s not the first time this has happened. He doesn’t seem surprised enough, and was able to speak to me through the pain. “When did you start getting them?” I ask.
Hero doesn’t say anything.
“Since I came back?”
After a moment, he nods.
Since I smashed an oar into your head. I slide my hand over his forehead and push up his bangs. Everything looks healed from the surface, but it’s what’s underneath that worries me. He could have a concussion—if we have the equivalent of brains. If we don’t, and it’s just wires and hardware inside our skulls, then I could have broken something that will never heal on its own.