Numbly, I begin the climb back up.
I reach the top. I’m sorry. Without giving my muscles the chance to recover, I descend down the other side, hardly able to see through my tears.
I’m sorry.
I hope my arms will give out. I hope to fall, break, and wake with Hero.
I decided, I’d lie to him. I decided to stay.
But I don’t fall. Don’t break down. My legs bring me all the way back to the house before they give. I clutch to the kitchen countertop for support, sobs spuming from my chest.
I can’t do this alone.
“What do I do, U-me?” I gasp as U-me rolls into the kitchen, drawn by the sounds. “What do I do?”
U-me doesn’t answer. She’s not programmed to process questions, or make life-and-death decisions.
But I am.
I’m not alone. A team of people built my brain—built the memories in it, and even built the ability for me to generate my own. So go on, then, I think, stumbling into the bathroom. Give me your best shot. Convince me. I climb into the tub, fully clothed, and run the tap. Water bulges against the rim, then spills over onto the tiled floor. I let it submerge me.
I choose to drown.
* * *
“I’ll take this one.”
The boy stands in the doorway of the operating room. An employee, by the looks of his apron. His voice, more precise than any of the scalpels laid out, sends a shiver down my spine.
For a second, the bodyworker with the puffer fish tattoo doesn’t speak. Then she shrugs. “Less work for me. Though I have to say, I didn’t take you for the type.”
The type of boy, I know she means, who’d be drawn to a pretty girl. But he should know I won’t be much for conversation. I can already feel the effects of whatever was in the flask, making everything hazy.
The bodyworker leaves, and the boy sits down before me, and through the haze I see that he’s not really someone I’d be attracted to. His hair is dark, yes, as are his eyes, which I like, but there’s a laser-sharp focus to them and an energy radiating off him that feels … intense.
“An Intraface extraction,” he says, and I nod, mouth dry, and that’s all I remember before the drug takes over, the world fades to dark, and when the lights come back on, I’m still sitting in the chair but the clip-on sheet around my neck is gone, and on a tray table before me is my Intraface. Extracted.
“You don’t have to die.”
I crane my neck to see the boy standing behind my chair. “There may not be a treatment in this lifetime,” he continues, “but they can pod you and save you in another.”
It’s obvious once I process it. “You looked.”
“I did.” He doesn’t even sound the least bit contrite. If he looked, then he knows—“Celia Mizuhara.”
My teeth click. So much for anonymity. “What do you want?” I demand.
“To protect your sister.”
That throws me for a loop and for a second, I forget to be angry. I blink twice at him, and receive an error message when his rank refuses to display. Of course—anonymity is GRAPHYC’s very selling point. But then he must do something on his end because his ID appears over his head.
ACTINIUM
Rank: 0
Yeah, right. Kay, incident with the bots aside, is the most law-abiding person I know. She’d see a hacked ID and stay six feet away from the boy.
But then he says, “I know we weren’t close, despite the machinations of our moms.”
Moms? He doesn’t offer any other words, just his gaze. His unsmiling, dark gaze, something familiar about the shape of his eyes. Then I see it—and can’t stop seeing it even though it doesn’t make any sense. The resemblance to Ester Cole has to be a coincidence. Even when the boy introduces himself as Andre Cole, I’m thinking, Impossible. I must still be recovering from the neuron-damper.
“You died,” I say.
“I should have,” says the boy calmly. “But I sent a bot in my place. A prank, you could call it.” He comes around to the front of my chair. “So now you understand.” Pulls up a stool. “How I know what your sister’s been through.” He sits down, and faces me. “For her, live.”
The info is rapid-fire. Bots. Kay. A dead boy—Andre Cole—who understands her. My brain struggles to piece it all together, then gives up. It focuses on what really matters.
For her, live.
He makes it sound simple. It’s not. To start, it’s not exactly “living” if you’re unconscious in a pod, frozen for who knows how long, basically dead in any era previous to ours. Plus, Kay doesn’t even know. Doesn’t know I was sneaking out to swim in the sea because I didn’t want to worry her. Clearly that’s backfired. It’s my fault, and my fault only. Kay was always reminding me of the risks, and I didn’t listen to her. I chose to live the way I wanted to live. And now I alone should bear the consequences.