“You did the best you could do. Celia wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”
Celia. After Operation Reset’s failure, Kasey had come to the island, alone. She and Leona had traveled past the levee to watch Francis John Jr. repair the boat. What Kasey remembered of those days: summer, sunlight green through the trees, the screams of the O’Shea twins nearby as they played in Francis’s pool. Then came fall. The boat was finished, and something in Kasey finally healed. She knew this because hearing Celia’s name no longer brought a lump to her throat.
“I have to go,” she now said to Leona. She eased her hand free. Headed down the porch. A copterbot awaited her on the beach. Ding—the meeting had begun without her. That was fine. It’d been low-priority anyway, thought Kasey, then stopped short of the copterbot.
Maybe she did have time to spare.
One minute, she told herself, allowing her feet to choose her destination. They brought her to the pier. A peaceful place to soak in the sea and wind, except it was hard to soak in anything when her Intraface chimed with constant notifications—messages from her lab, from P2C, interview requests, and more. She answered the urgent ones, flagged others, then checked the feeds out of habit. Meridian Lan’s talk show was trending. Kasey caught the tail end to a clip.
“—polluted Earth. But what about privilege?” Meridian sat on a scarlet couch, opposite her cohost. “Those who industrialized first set rules for others. Territories behind the curve were expected to adopt clean energy and advance their societies after centuries of exploitation.”
“And can you really even call yourself clean if you’re just moving manufacturing out of your own backyard and into Territory Four’s?” added the cohost.
“Took the words right out of my own mouth.”
“Now here’s a name the world knows: Kasey Mizuhara, CSO of Operation Reset. Would you say she’s an example of the privileged?”
“Absolutely,” said Meridian. “And I think she’s playing at savior.”
It wasn’t untrue. Example of a “savior” thing Kasey had done: Before moving out of the Mizuhara unit and severing contact with David, she’d forwarded him the Lans’ relocation application, reminding him that she could reveal P2C’s cover-up of Yorkwell Companies at will. She had no intentions of actually following through—couldn’t, seeing as she no longer had the file—and she also had no intentions of telling Meridian. They’d never restored their friendship. Correspondence. Relationship. Whatever you called it. In retrospect, Kasey saw its one-sidedness—saw it even back then, but hadn’t spoken up. Like so many areas of her life, she’d been content to let others set the terms. Was she at fault? Was Meridian? Kasey didn’t think so. In that lunchroom eleven years ago, they’d been children still. They’d grown out of each other and into themselves. Into science, for Kasey, and punditry for Meridian. Kasey felt no ill will toward her. Not all molecules were meant to bond.
She closed the feed and took one last look at the scenery around her. The minute was up. If Leona didn’t agree to reconstruction bots, then the pier would surely sink. So be it. It served no practical purpose, and besides, it was here that Kasey was reminded most of the foolish girl she’d been, so unsure of herself, she’d borrowed the emotions of someone else. Here, that she could still hear his voice, over the waves—
A voice. Right now.
It came over the waves.
What were the chances? High enough for Kasey to turn, but low enough for her to wonder if she was hallucinating. Or if she’d been hacked.
The probabilities of either, unfortunately, were even lower. As a public figure, her biomonitor filled her bloodstream at any given moment with nanobots to fight off bio-terrors. Her retina, brain, and DNA down to her skin cells were protected by anti-hack technology. She was a fortress. Opaque, in every sense of the word.
Unlike Actinium. Standing at the end of the pier, his holograph half transparent. Kasey tried tracing a lead to his physical body. No luck. Her teeth gritted, temples tensing, the words he’d said echoing through her head.
I thought I might find you here.
“It was a good trick,” he said, approaching. In addition to growing more secure over the years, holographs had advanced visually. Actinium’s managed to capture the way the wind moved through his hair—longer now, grown out of its part, bangs in disarray. He was thinner, his features gaunt. His black trench coat hung off him, the front open to a white T-shirt that clung to his ribs. A five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw, but his eyes hadn’t changed. When they hit Kasey, she felt like she was looking into a mirror, and even though he wasn’t real, she found herself taking a step back right as he said, “But everyone knows to back up their files.”