I, Cassandra

49 | RYAN MADDOX

The silent remains of the city's melted dome call to me, a beacon that pierces the flat bleakness of the landscape. Every hundred metres I check over my shoulder for the mound. Even after half a click, I can still see it. A surge of pride goes through me. One point for me. I have no idea why it matters, this small triumph, this mark left by the sole survivor in an empty, desolate world, but it does. Another click passes under my boots before I reach the edge of a massive crater at least a half a click deep. Beneath my toes, the wall of the crater slopes away at a forty-five-degree angle. Turns out the low mounds of the dome are not so low after all. They still reach at least half their height. All I had seen were the tops of them.

'Well,' I say to no one, 'I found you, you motherfucker.'

The rift stares back at me, baleful and jagged with its teeth of gneiss, half the city swallowed into its maw. The rest of its structures tangle away into the distance twisted, melted things, barely recognisable. It's going to be a hell of a hunt, but I know I will find her. She's there. I can feel it in my titanium bones. I search for a landmark, anything that looks familiar. There's nothing. The rift is at least three kilometres long and fuck knows how deep, but it looks deep as hell. A problem for later.

I scan through my memories of the city's design, find the slaughterhouse and measure its distance to the dome's perimeter. A little triangulation targets my destination. It's half in the rift, half out. I bellow a string of obscenities that echo across the basin of the city's ruins. Its emptiness hauls at me, tragic and pointless. I might be a machine but beneath all the nanobots, titanium and whatever the hell else I'm made of, I'm still me. What's left of me reels at the legacy of hundreds of thousands of years of the human species. The pinnacle of our evolution hunkers before me, an ugly scab. Nothing. It all came to nothing.

I bark a laugh at the madness of it all. All our religions, wars, greed, destruction, compassion, science, advancement, and hope stares back at me—compressed into a single heartbeat of annihilation. I look down at myself. I'm all that's left. And Blue, something inside me whispers. I nod in answer. Yes, and Blue.

So here we are, two castaways no one would have ever expected to be here after all the well-laid plans of the rich and powerful. Just Blue, a human with the ability to adjust reality and me, a machine existing with the consciousness of a dead soldier. And it will only ever be us. And when she dies . . . Fuck. It's too intense. I have to stop thinking about it.

I glare at the chaos below me, stamping out the stray thoughts from that thread that bubble to the surface. It doesn't help to think about it. It is what it is. I'll deal with it when I have to. Later. I let out a heavy breath, taking in the work I have in front of me, the years, decades, maybe even centuries of fruitless searching I have ahead. Then again, it's not like I have anything better to do. I think of Blue, of the last moments she was aware before I closed her away for a thousand years, of her last words:

See you on the other side.

This side sucks, there isn't a single living thing except maybe those microscopic organisms that can live in the bottom of the ocean in the thermal vents—extremophiles my enhanced self tells me—and those tiny bear-like things they used to shoot at Europa and Enceladus at extreme speeds to see if they could survive, poor fuckers. What were they called again? Tardigrades overlays my vision in binary code I can read. Jesus. It keeps going: Also nicknamed water bears. Water bears. I like that. They were cute. Poor guys. At least we can't torment them anymore.

So it's just me and the water bears for now. Better than nothing. I think about them, all around me, invisible, but there. It helps. I have a feeling I'll probably start talking to them sooner or later.

My attention gravitates back to the spot I'm aiming for. It's a brutal gash, and unstable looking as fuck. I have no idea how I am going to manage to sift through all that on my own. Then again, I tossed those pods aside in my search for Blue, like they were made of foam. I'm strong, and I can repair.

I'll find her. No matter what. No matter how many times I have to break myself and rebuild again. I'll find her. Because I fucking love her and can't imagine going on without her. And that's the end of it. I activate a timer in me so I can keep track of the passage of time.

See you on the other side.

You're goddamned right you will, Blue.

Under the lead lid of a sunless sky, I jump off the crater's edge and slide straight into hell.