I, Cassandra

38 | CASSANDRA VALLIS

de Pommier's avatar wakes me at 05:00 hours with a cup of tea. Disappointment floods me. Every night I go to sleep hoping it will be Ryan there with the tea in the morning. But for the third day in a row, I am left wondering where he went and why, and my only company intent on squeezing every last scrap of my abilities out of me in record time.

I drink my tea as I dress in the soft material of a jumpsuit the colour of an unpolluted sky. Made especially to fit me, it has pockets where I can tuck small items. Foci, de Pommier calls them. In the lab, there is a table filled with beautiful things. I am allowed to choose whatever I want to 'help' me focus on creating life: Sachets of fresh flower petals, colourful gemstones, vials of scent, seashells, minuscule figurines of animals made of glass. I get to keep whatever I have chosen if I am successful in my 'work'. So far I have kept everything, and my little collection on my bedside table is growing fast.

Yesterday, something new, a selection of smooth, polished oak shapes no bigger than a joint of my finger. I took a cube and a sphere. Somehow they comforted me, being able to feel the solidity of the trees we lost. I think these are my favourite foci so far. I scoop them up and tuck them into one of my pockets, even though I have been told not to bring anything back with me to the lab.

In the kitchen, I feed Miro real fish in a cream sauce as the door opens and one of the guards I now know sits at a desk outside my door carries in my morning meal and sets it onto the table. It smells delicious. One of the few highlights of my day: the food of Alpha VII.

It's something different every day. I join de Pommier at the table, who ignores me as she swipes through a tablet, scanning god only knows what intelligence. Under the tray's thermal cover: crêpes with maple syrup and bacon, fluffy scrambled eggs, and a whole avocado fanned out in slices. I don't ask if the bacon or maple syrup is real. I know they are Everything here is real.

de Pommier glances up, mid-swipe. Notes my pleasure at the offering before me.

'Only the best for the best, no?'

From under her brow, she watches me begin. Her avatar's eyes move over me as if to unlock the secret of me. A secret even I do not understand. It unnerves me. The way she watches me. I know her avatar is a machine, and yet, I can sense something vaguely human in her presence, a hint of envy. Of regret. Of sadness. It's a strange cocktail to get from a machine. But, after Ryan, I have learned not to trust my senses, but my gut.

She is not unfriendly, but neither is she friendly. She just is. I never ask where Ryan is and she doesn't mention him. It is as if he never existed. But it's there. The question hangs between us like an undetonated bomb. I sense she wants me to ask. And even though the question claws at me hour after hour, of whether he has been shut down, or worse, repurposed into something else, a brute killing machine for god knows what the GC could use him for, I keep my mouth shut. I won't give her the satisfaction of seeing my disappointment. Of losing what I had left for the man I loved. I grieved him once. I can do it again. But I won't lie. I keep waiting for him to come back. I feel he will come back, even though I have no reason to believe it. Still. Ryan. I miss him. Even what he became.

I smear a slice of bacon in what's left of the maple syrup. It's glorious. I try to make the bite last as long as possible.

'It has been more than ten years since I have had the pleasure of real bacon.'

I glance up mid-chew, surprised she doesn't get bacon every single day. Her avatar's lips quirk into a soft smile.

'That's from a real pig, not lab-grown. Reserved for the most elite. I had to call in a few favours to get those four slices for you.'

I want to feel flattered, but in this place privileges make me feel uneasy. Great gifts are only granted for great sacrifices.

'I need you to work harder, Cassandra. Much harder. Time is short.'

Ah, there it is. 'I'm tired,' I answer and take a sip of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I assume it's probably from real oranges too. No lab-grown shit for me.

I wonder what she looks like under the elegant illusion of her perfect avatar. Probably old. I'm betting somewhere in her eighties, someone born around the turn of the millennium. Someone that calculating, that powerful, would have to be part of the old guard, the ones responsible for the exclusion zone and the hell they left behind on the wrong side of the barrier.

No. I won't ask. I will not give my sudden oppressor her little triumphs. I am good at suffering, and she hates my refusal to play her game, I can tell. I endured Zandiki. I can handle this. Still, it would have been nice to say goodbye to Ryan. But then again, I was never one allowed the luxury of closure. I finish the last of my bacon.

de Pommier rises from her seat. 'And now, to work.'

I get up, kiss Miro goodbye and leave, surrounded by four dispassionate guards and the machine who owns me.

It's almost midnight when de Pommier opens the door to my apartment. All I want is to sleep. I have nothing left in me, not even words. I stumble past the kitchen counter where my reward for a successful day's training sits. Roast beef sandwiches on rye that look as soft as pillows, a plate of French fries sprinkled with sea salt set on a thermal plate, accompanied by a little dish of mustard, another of ketchup. But I can't face it. Fatigue has butchered my hunger. I long for the silence of sleep.

Today I breached a barrier I didn't know was in me, and the power which poured out of me stunned me. At first, euphoria. Then, dizziness. Then I vomited. All that beautiful, rare maple syrup-drenched bacon. Splattered into a metallic basin, stinking of bile. What a waste. We had to stop. But not for long. Again and again, she put me through the same drill until I was able to call it on command, and not puke, or pass out. And now, all I want to do is sleep for days.

'Cassandra,' de Pommier's avatar says from behind me. 'Please, a moment before you retire.'

I stop, swaying from fatigue.

'I have something else for you,' she says, soft. 'Something I think you will like very much.'

I don't turn around. I hope it's not more bacon, because after this morning I never want to see or smell it again.

The door to the apartment opens, closes again. I wait, willing whatever it is that is happening is over with quickly. I close my eyes and wonder if it's possible to sleep on my feet.

'Capitaine,' de Pommier, says, 'Welcome back.'

My eyes open. The fatigue slides out of me, vanishes in a heartbeat. Ryan. de Pommier's brisk steps move to the door. It opens, a hesitation, then it shuts. Quiet. Silence falls. I still do not turn.

'Where did you go?' I ask. I am glad he is back, but I don't want him to see it.

'I'm not sure,' a voice from the past answers. I voice I thought I would never hear again.