Not anymore.
48
KASEY CROUCHED AT THE END of the starting platform, waiting for the beep.
On your mark—
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I STAND AT THE END of the sunken pier, watching the waves ripple into the fog. U-me rolls beside me. I smile at her. “Stay, U-me.”
50
BEEP.
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WITH U-ME TO BEAR WITNESS, I step off the planks, into the water.
52
BUT KASEY DIDN’T JUMP.
As the mock swim meet went on without her, she stared at the approaching person, her face a haze like it’d been at Kasey’s party.
Yvone Yorkwell.
“Hey,” said the girl as she neared, in a swimskin like Kasey. “Bad timing, I know, but I’m pretty sure this is the only period we share and—”
“Less chitchatting, more swimming!” called their gym instructor from across the pool.
“—I just wanted to say, I watched your speech.”
Kasey felt her toes curl against the pebbled rubber of the starting platform.
“And it really resonated,” Yvone rushed to say. “So, let me know if there’s anything I can do. To contribute to the effort.”
Their gym instructor started walking over.
“There is no effort.” None Kasey was still a part of. P2C wouldn’t be expecting her return as a junior officer; she’d served her time, making a mockery of their trust on the international stage during it. Meridian and Kasey hadn’t spoken since that day in Territory 4, and as for Actinium, Kasey had deleted him as a contact while leaving GRAPHYC. She hadn’t looked back. That didn’t mean she didn’t regret her path. It’d been easy to refuse him in the moment, but harder to convince herself now—back in school, her environment mostly unchanged, surrounded by peers who didn’t understand her—that she was brave enough, human enough, simply enough to impact a world she, herself, often felt so distant from.
“There is no effort,” Kasey repeated when Yvone didn’t leave. Then, before their instructor could tell them again: “I have to swim.”
She jumped. The world roared, then went silent.
The water closed over Kasey’s head.
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I SWIM.
54
KASEY DIDN’T SWIM.
She sank to the bottom and curled into the fetal position.
Actinium had claimed she was running away. The opposite: Her life had come to a standstill in the weeks since, and with no one to hide behind, or to take the reins for her, she’d been forced to face herself—her thoughts, choices, and mistakes.
She’d made so many mistakes.
But underwater, she could just be.
Thoughtless.
Formless.
When she opened her eyes, the colors were muted but still complex. She carried Celia’s heartbeat with her, yes, but also her own. It was a strong heartbeat, amplified by the pool. Efficient, like her mind. Too efficient, perhaps. A flaw, by the standards of humanity, and also evidence of it. A machine would have been perfectly designed. A creature with no self-awareness would have known no insecurity. This nagging sense of incompletion, like a puzzle piece misplaced, had to be the immeasurable quality Celia was talking about, its shape and size different for everyone but its existence—this absence—uniting them. All of them.
Even her and Yvone.
Kasey located the classified P2C file in her Intraface and stared at it, just like she’d stared at the folder containing Celia’s memories this morning before school. After a while, she’d taken the memories out of her brain. Loaded them onto an external chip. Waited for the sacrilegious feeling to settle, then placed the chip in her pocket.
Celia was dead.
Other people were still alive.
Kasey might never relate to them.
But science served the living, not the dead. It didn’t care that it was Yvone’s face at the bottom of the P2C file. Yorkwell Companies, family-owned and headquartered in Territory 3, had caused the leak while shutting down their outdated deep-sea mines as a part of their immigration deal into the eco-city. Involuntary manslaughter, you could call it. Well-intentioned, not that intentions should matter.
But consequences couldn’t be changed. Only prevented.
Kasey closed the file. Deleted it. Felt bad for a moment, for not feeling more affected. Maybe she was forgiving Yvone too easily. Maybe she was betraying Celia’s memory. Then she reminded herself of her choice—to live, as herself, for herself.
She was no lesser for feeling less.