I, Cassandra

55 | RYAN MADDOX

Even though it calls to me like a siren song, I won't give in to my growing despair. I'm going to find her. No matter what. I divert my thoughts with a deep scan of the landscape beyond the crater, saturated with its weird vegetation, lost in the blue light of a full moon, determined to prove myself wrong. The mantra I have begun to repeat each time I search for a new pod flares up inside me as I push my way out of the trees and onto a plain, studded with low bushes. From my vantage point clear of the trees I can see far, very far. The mound of rocks I piled up all those millennia ago are of course, long gone. I ignore the feeling of loneliness that claws for my attention, of the erasure of my once-existence in that time and place. To stave it off, I repeat the mantra.

The next one will be her. The next one will be her. The next one—

'Oh my god,' a voice cuts through the silence, flat and incredulous all at once. 'I'm not alone. Oh my god.'

I turn, thinking at last I have gone mad and have begun to hear the water bears talking to me. But no. Not one hundred metres away is a man, clothed in rags and covered in filth, his face shrouded by a dense beard and his hair matted into what might be called dreads. And tucked under his arm, a box misshapen and dented to hell. I scan it, wary, as always. It rebuilds itself in my vision to its former glory—

'Miro,' I breathe. And then, I am running.

He starts, and looks around wildly for somewhere to go. Finding nothing, he drops to his knees and hunches over the safe, protective, as if it were his only child.

'Who are you?' I ask as I come to a halt and scan him for weapons.

He looks up, the whites of his eyes stark in the pale light of the moon. 'I am—was—Amadi.'

'Was?'

'What's the point of names here?' he answers, bitterness gilding every word. His hand moves over the top of the safe containing Miro, and I swear to fuck he caresses it. 'All I have is this, and I can't open it. It's all there is that's left from before.'

'I can open it,' I say.

'No,' he says, mournful. 'I have tried everything, if anything I have made it worse. It's never going to open, but I can't leave it behind.'

'It's a cat,' I say.

His eyes slam into mine. 'What?'

'It's not a real cat,' I clarify when I clock his horror, as he snatches his hand away from the safe and rubs it on his stained trousers. 'It's a special kind of cat. Meant for someone to take to Mars.'

He looks at me like he's losing the last grip he has on his sanity.

'You're saying for the last year I've been carrying around a safe that has a cat inside that was meant to go to Mars?'

'Yes.' I answer. Then it registers: 'A year?'

He fumbles at his waist and pulls free what looks like a rope but I realise is a vine stem stripped of its leaves whose length has been tied into hundreds of knots.

'More or less,' he says. 'It's hard to keep track when it's dark all the time, I have to backtrack when the light comes back to make sure the knots are right.' He lifts it up for me to see, but I couldn't care less.

'Where did you find the safe?' I ask instead.

He tilts his head towards the north. 'A good way from here.'

'Have you found any other pods,' I ask, careful. I don't want to spook him.

Another shrug as he tucks his timekeeping vine back into the depths of wherever it came from. 'Not many and the ones I found were mostly empty, those I found with passengers were already dead, turned to dust. Only one pod was still active because its window was still frosted over.'

Hope corrals me into a corner. 'One?'

Another shrug. 'I couldn't tell if its passenger was still alive or not. I waited a long time for them to wake up on their own, but they never did. I thought if there was one, there might be others, so I went looking for more, but until now there was only the one. I meant to go back, but it's a long way, and there's a marsh—'

'Was there a light blinking on the side of it?'

He considers. 'It was lying on its side. I honestly can't remember. Everything just blurs together here.'

It's Blue. I'm one hundred percent certain of it. I just hope she's still sleeping and not wandering around alone like this poor fucker with his primitive timepiece.

'Can you take me back to where you found it?'

'You got any food?' he asks eyeing my healthy physique, assuming things.

'I don't eat.'

'Shit.' Disappointment laces his tone. 'You're one of them, aren't you?'

'Them?'

'Upgraded soldiers turned into machines that can rebuild themselves. Of all the ones I could have found—'

'I'm better than them,' I interrupt his lament, holding out my hand to help him to his feet. 'Because I have purpose.'

'Which is?' he asks as he takes my hand, his grip solid, and honest. I feel a vague recollection of this man, as if we have met once before, but I have no idea when or where.

I haul him to his feet. 'First: To find someone.'

'What? Here?' He cuts a look at me like I am unhinged.

I nod. 'And I think you know where they are.'

'Let me guess,' he says, bleak. 'The pod I left a year and a half ago?'

'Lead on,' I say.

And to his credit he starts walking, the safe still tucked under his arm.