The needle stopped.
“And you?” Actinium’s head finally lifted; his gaze burned into hers. Close, but when Kasey measured the distance between their eyes with her Intraface, still too far. “Do you know how much you meant to her? When I say she chose this, I mean she chose you. She chose to leave and accept her fate because she knew you’d try to convince her out of it. She didn’t want you to pod yourself.” Kasey couldn’t follow. What do you mean?—but Actinium had already tsked in exasperation. “You refuse to see it. I debated on how to explain my stake in finding Celia’s truth to you, but then you showed up, so ready to believe I loved her without evidence or proof. For someone so analytical, you assumed.”
So? Everyone had an exception to their rules. Celia was Kasey’s. “You led me on.”
A muscle tensed in Actinium’s jaw. Was it regret Kasey saw in his eyes, or a trick of light? The needle returned to her skin before she could decide, and she winced at the increased pressure.
“I planned on telling you when the time was right.” His voice dropped to a mutter. “Clearly, I was justified. You learned too much too soon, and look where we’ve ended up.”
The buzz filled the silence. The sleeping rabbit twitched its nose.
“No,” Kasey said quietly. She tracked the movements of Actinium’s hand. Stroke, lift, blot. “This was always to be our end.” Stroke, lift, blot. “Your truth showed me I must live mine.”
“And what is that? This?” Stroke. “Even now you chain yourself to her.” Lift. No blot. The excess ink feathered on Kasey’s skin. “You think you’re inferior to her, but you’re not. Look at me,” he said, and Kasey did—with an imperceptible forward lean this time.
One. Two. Three seconds, at the requisite distance.
“You’re brilliant,” Actinium said, in perfect harmony with the completion jingle that rang in Kasey’s head. A pop-up appeared in her mind’s eye.
SCAN COMPLETE
She had what she needed. She’d chosen, as had he. His vengeance wasn’t hers.
It was time to let him go.
But that would mean giving up on the boy who’d, in his own twisted way, been there for her as she came to terms with Celia’s death. The boy who’d built a shield around the island to protect his loved ones, and given his antiskin without second thought to a frontline medic. His beliefs may have outgrown his parents’， but Kasey still saw a glimmer of the child in the photograph, standing between Ester and Frain, raised by the ethics of medicine, named after the scientist who’d discovered elemental actinium, the key to curing cancers of old. He was the dark-eyed boy, always hiding, whom Kasey had hidden from too. They’d been similar from the start, determined to be strangers if only to resist the socialization attempts of their moms.
If she was going to leave, she had to offer him the same way out.
“We could be free from them,” she said. From the dead.
“Freedom is running away.”
“Choose science with me.”
“Science.” Actinium scoffed. “Every cure enables the creation of another disease.”
“So we cure them.”
“People are the disease, Mizuhara.”
Kasey fell silent. She would miss debating with him, no topic too sensitive to broach. Miss … this. This common language they had, even if it was based on lies.
Actinium must’ve felt it too. When he returned to inking, his hand shook against her skin. “I thought you’d understand.” His voice sounded younger. “You, of all people.”
Yes, Kasey the anomaly. The one with the mechanical mind, who’d built bots just like him. The only person who knew all of him.
And consequently, the only person who could stop him.
“I know, you know,” said Actinium, gaze still down, and Kasey’s breath momentarily froze. “You won’t forgive me. Your logic ends with her.”
And yours, with your parents. Logic ended where love began.
If Kasey loved Actinium, she’d excise his parents from his memory. Others would see it as cruel; she saw it as kind. He’d be able to live his life free of theirs. But Actinium was right. She would never forgive him, and therefore never love him. Following her heart meant following logic, leaving no room for random acts of kindness. Logic told her this: Eventually, humanity would need Operation Reset, and as long as Actinium was out there, privy to its inner workings, he would hijack it, make it serve his own motives. Kasey wouldn’t excise his motivation, but she could remove the fuel she’d added to it.