We designed you to be mechanically hardier than a real human.
How many times did I fall in the beginning? More than I care to remember, that’s for sure. I’ve had more than my fair share of broken bones. But I always heal. And then there’ve been the handful of really bad falls—too high up, the ground too far—where I’ve blacked out. Did I die? Have I been revived, like Hero? Would death leave a physical mark on my body, at least?
I realize I don’t know the answer to that, and when Hero reaches the top behind me, I turn to him and clasp his face between my hands. I’ve checked his forehead before, but now I check again, searching for a scar and finding none. His wound has healed over completely. I should be troubled, because that means I might have lost scars myself, but I’m just relieved I don’t see a single trace of my killing blow. I start to quiver, my breathing becoming rapid.
“Hey.” Hero holds my wrists. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“No. No, you’re not.” Am I hyperventilating? Definitely. Why now, though? I’ve faced scarier things. But nothing beats realizing our bodies are not ours, and even if Kay ceases to exist, her control over us remains indestructible as long as we do too.
“Cee, really, I’m oka—”
“I cracked your head open with an oar.”
Hero blinks. “The oar I made?”
I nod, bottom lip trembling.
“So I died, and came back…” to life “… hours later,” he finishes, skipping the words we both know.
Again, I nod.
I didn’t cry, not then.
I cry now, hands still cupped around his face.
Hero thumbs away my tears, brushing them from my lips. Then, slowly, so different from the rush of before, he angles his head. His mouth replaces his fingertips.
He kisses me, featherlight, and I’m the one who presses in. He lets me, before backing toward the edge. Rocks tumble down the ridge.
I start to tell him to be careful, before I realize he has been this entire time. This walk was carefully planned. This climb. This kiss, as carefully planted as a first.
Or a last.
“I wanted to give you the space to decide,” Hero says, and my mind pinwheels. What did he just ask me to confirm? So I died. Came back hours later. “The time. Without my interference, mental or physical. And this”—he glances over the edge—“is the only way I know how.”
No—
I scramble for him, and almost reach him, but falter when he says, “Don’t, Cee.” His voice is soft. Fearless. His eyes, though—I think I see fear there, but the wind covers them with his hair, and his lips smile. “Don’t choose me, or her. Choose yourself.”
Then he jumps.
46
THE DEATH OF OPERATION RESET came quietly on deadline day. Only 29% of delegates had pledged. The world had failed to come together. Behind the scenes, the solution’s two masterminds had suffered their own bitter break. But unlike a megaquake, there were no reverberations to be felt. Not in the eco-cities, at least; business as usual on this Sunday afternoon. In eco-city 3, residents milled through stratum-25’s emporium, going from vendor to vendor as they did their shopping for the odd essential. Few noticed the P2C symbol materialize in midair, at the center of the piazza.
But they did notice the girl that appeared moments later.
Her holograph spawned like a game avatar in the middle of not just stratum-25, but of every stratum, in every eco-city. She wore a black school blazer. Her hair was bobbed, her bangs combed straight. Her face had last been seen blurred and bloodied in a viral clip. Now it was clean and fresh, as far as the crowds could tell.
Only her mind was obscured from them.
It was better that way, for a tempest still raged in Kasey’s brain. Everyone lived at the expense of someone else. Those who refused to admit that, who’d rejected the solution because they could afford to, because it inconvenienced them … well, maybe Actinium was right and they didn’t deserve saving in this finite, material world, where more for someone meant less for someone else.
But science was infinite. Science knew no revenge. No emotion. It was above the gnarly questions of who ought to live and who ought to die for infringing on another’s right to life. Science was what made Kasey feel alive.
And after a five-year ban, it was hers again.
Kasey breathed in. In another timeline, she read the lines scripted for her by P2C. It’d be wise to; they almost hadn’t permitted her this postmortem speech after the Territory 4 debacle.
In yet another timeline, she condemned the territories that’d rejected Operation Reset, and revealed the name of the company that’d killed Celia while she was at it. She stoked the fire.