What files? But Kasey didn’t need to ask.
For six years, she’d operated under the assumption that whatever Actinium did, it was without his memories of her. Of them. Now, to know he hadn’t forgotten—he’d only let her think so—
“What a waste of space,” Kasey deadpanned. So she’d failed. Actinium? He’d just given up his advantage by revealing that fact. She still had the edge. Operation Reset would still go into effect. This turmoil inside of her—these feelings of resentment, joy, humiliation, relief—were perverse and overblown, like all emotions.
He was one soul, compared to the billions relying on her.
“Still playing down your self-worth,” said Actinium, walking ever closer.
“I know my worth without you saying so.”
“Then you’ve changed.”
And he hadn’t. Mentally, certainly, and physically when compared to the latest Wanted ad—not that Kasey would ever admit to looking at them. “What are you here for? To gloat over my oversight?” she asked, taking a step back.
“Partly.” He stopped exactly 3.128 meters away, according to her Intraface. “Mostly to tell you that you’ll fail.”
Impossible. Kasey’s mind ran through the scenarios. The stasis pods were guarded around the clock; their original plan of engineering them with a permanent lock, triggered by rank, was no longer feasible. There was the barometer technology, but even if Actinium could replicate it, manipulate it to wake him before everyone else, then what? The population’s pods were unbreachable without Kasey, as re-habitator zero, and Kasey’s pod would only open upon being found by her bot, programmed to take her out of stasis regardless of Act—
“I’ve developed bots that know exactly how to stop yours.”
So? Kasey almost asked. You don’t get to choose who wakes and who doesn’t. Only I can. Without Kasey, in fact, no one would wake—
No one would wake.
Stop her, stop her bot from waking her, and everyone would stay in stasis.
It’d be a world without people.
“You can’t stop my bots.” Kasey was glad for her naturally monotone voice; it gave nothing away, none of her horror or disgust or shame. She was wrong. He had changed—from a monster to something worse. “Kill them, and they’ll just regenerate.”
“There are other ways to sway a person from their course,” said Actinium.
“Are you speaking from personal experience? Because I don’t think I swayed you from yours.”
At that, he grinned. The nerve! He took another step forward, and Kasey instinctively reacted with another backward one. Except there was no more pier behind her.
Just sea.
Her center of gravity tipped. The sky spun overhead—and stilled as something caught her around the waist.
“Others might believe there’s power in a single step,” murmured Actinium, the cadence of his breath brushing Kasey’s ear. Her eyes widened. His warmth was real. So was the brace of his arm. The press of his chest. “But most choices are made before you reach the edge.”
He released her, and stepped back. As he did, his figure shimmered. His opacity increased to 100% as he turned off the illusion filter he’d set upon himself. He had calibrated it to match Kasey’s Intraface presets perfectly, tricking her, fair and square, into thinking that he’d come as a holograph when really, he was here. Physically here.
In the flesh.
She could kill him. He could kill her. This close, he could have shot her point-blank.
Why hadn’t he?
“I know your mind as well as you know mine,” he said, but did she? Why would he give up the element of surprise? Where was the benefit to offset the risk? Surely, any moment now, he would reveal his true hand.
But as Kasey’s brain fired through the possibilities, all Actinium did was turn away.
“We’ll see who wins, in a millennium,” he said, walking back down the pier. Something shimmered at the end of it, concealed by the same illusion tech Actinium had used on himself.
A copterbot.
The sight of it restarted Kasey. She whipped out the REM she always carried with her and fired.
Missed.
Her next shot hit the copter, denting it, but the paralysis effect was negated on the inanimate object. Actinium dove in and the copterbot rose.
It vanished with a wink.
* * *
Back in her unit, Kasey stood in her airshower. After a few minutes, she switched to aqua-mode.
It was one of the few luxuries she allowed herself. Celia had been right; air didn’t come close to the cleansing effect of water. At the end of a long day, sometimes a hot shower was what Kasey needed to feel reborn.