I, Cassandra

45 | RYAN MADDOX

Even though she kept me locked up with Blue or processing data in the war room, I know the layout of every building in the city, every access way, door, every hidden room. Nothing is inaccessible to me. I have it all inside me. Every corner of this city is within my reach. I feel like a god as I stride to the lab, as doors open before me with nothing more than a thought.

I leave the building, the air afire with alarms, surrounded by panicking citizens, hurrying to get to the safety of G-II, carrying whatever matters to them most. Pathetic trinkets of the vanity of men. Pointless, useless things. Art, jewels, furs, antiquities. All of it meaningless in the face of what is to come.

I push my way through them, shoving them aside, uncaring of their indignation, outrage and promises of retribution. I hate them all, savour their fear, their futile attempt to control what they cannot. The arrogance of their entitlement, clung to even now, right at the bitter end. At last, the tables have turned and those who oppressed have become the oppressed.

I reach the lab. Work my way into its heart, doors gliding open before me, one after another. I find her there, alone, tied with cable ties to a gurney, unconscious. Her guards flank her, inert, their eyes vacant. I kick the nearest one aside. He topples over, like a broken toy. I can't help myself. I kick him again and again, unleashing the rage locked deep inside me. When I am done with him, there is nothing left of his face except a metallic hole and the weak flicker of the dying light of his operating system.

I cut the ties, knowing de Pommier did this to Blue in anticipation of my next move. Blue doesn't stir. I check her vitals. She's alive, but totally under. I gather her in my arms, her slight weight collapsing against me, trusting, and my heart—or whatever it is I have in its place—clenches with love.

Now I have her, I never want to let her go, but I know I have to. The alarms continue their wail, incessant and maddening, a stark reminder of what's coming. Of what I still have to do to save her, the only woman I have ever loved.

I run, for once grateful for what I have been made into, out of the lab and past the hordes pushing to their way towards G-II's entrance corridor, none of them yet realising I killed the access codes to the main elevator and there is only one other way in. Inside the elevator in the lower level of the slaughterhouse, I tighten my hold on Blue as we glide down to where the main elevator awaits us, empty and silent, impervious to the demands of those above using their access cards to activate it.

Within the main elevator, I use the override code and start the long fall down into the earth. The blare of the alarms fades as we speed into the depths, and then, nothing but the quiet hum of our descent.

In my arms, Blue stirs and sighs. I watch her, willing her to wake before I have to let her go for a thousand years. She will sleep. I won't. A thousand years without her. I can do it. I have to because there is nothing else left for us.

In the sleep lab, Blue continues to dream as I hack into the system and gather up what I need to prep her for sleep. Predictably, the medics down here have already put themselves under, uncaring of those seeking sanctuary above. I don't blame them. They would have been left behind to die, after all. It pleases me, this silent world, deep underground, sheathed by trillions of dollars of tech and design. Of the fact that those who created the mess in the world would die with it. Of no one escaping. No one.

Miro.

I stumble to a halt halfway between the steel counter and Blue's bed. Shit. How could I have forgotten? My hands full of vials and syringes, I dither, suddenly deeply uncertain. I hadn't expected to find Blue unconscious, or kick the shit out of one of her guards. I'd planned to collect the replacement version of Miro packed in its titanium-plated safe and bring it down here with Blue so she'd have something in case anything happened to me in the millennium I had to survive, alone.

I run a quick scan of the system's main readings. ETA of the end of all things. forty-seven minutes. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Blue stirs. Her eyelids flicker open. I wait. Give her time. Precious time.

Her eyes scan the room, take in its sleek whiteness, its silence and utter emptiness. Her gaze lands on me, slides down to the fluorescent blue shit I'm holding in my hands. A flicker of uncertainty, then fear crosses her features.

'Ryan?'

I go to her. Set the chemicals and syringes on the bed, where she can't see them and take her face in my hands. 'I got you, Blue.'

Her eyes hold mine, loaded with questions I know she won't ask. She waits, wary.

'Remember when they changed me back to me?' I begin.

She nods, quiet, in my grip.

'I said I needed you to trust me.' She says nothing. I press on, clawed at by the fading time—of what I still have left to do to make things right.

'This is the part where I need you to do that.'

'I lied,' she whispers. 'I didn't want to go to Mars. I put ten sleeping pills in Miro's breakfast. She ate it all.' Tears wet her lashes. One escapes and trickles down the side of her face, somehow making her more beautiful, more precious to me than imaginable. She put her beloved cat down and waited to burn along with the rest of us, the one who least deserved to die.

I kiss her. I don't know what else to do. There's no time.

'Blue,' I say, my lips still touching hers, 'I have a plan. For us. A second chance.'

'Do it,' she breathes.

Her eyes follow me as I fill her veins with chemicals; as I access every meticulous detail of G-II's cryo-protocol from the system, amazed at the precision of my abilities, at the speed I can work, of how little I hurt her, of how many things I still don't know I am capable of.

Twenty-seven minutes left. I could wheel her bed to a pod, but I don't. Instead, I carry her, just to feel her body against mine, to excise every last precious heartbeat of our final moments before an impenetrable wall of time separates us. I choose a pod marginally more sheltered than the rest in this cavernous space. It's close to the elevator corridor. I want to be near her when the shit hits the fan.

If I make it.

She's groggy. Soon she will slip away from me. One thousand years. I can do this. I touch her face. Her eyes open, slow.

'See you on the other side,' she smiles, faint, and then she's gone. I kiss her one final time, our last kiss in this dying world before I close the pod. It seals with a sibilant hiss and activates instantly. The window over her face glazes over, and she's lost to me. I check the readouts on the side panel. Everything is as it should be. As I back away, I imprint the code for her pod—G-II-0493—into my deepest memory.

I'll find you, Blue. After all this. I'll be here. Waiting for you.

The silence of her sleep is deafening. It's unbearable. Blue. I crush the agony ploughing into my existence and run.