I, Cassandra

64 | CASSANDRA VALLIS

'My story?' My attention swings to a weird kind of bee with a thin beak like a hummingbird flitting past into the basin of the city.

'Same as yours. I was put into a pod to sleep for a thousand years. Woke up ten thousand years later. Walked here in the dark. Heard you scream. The end.'

He smiles under that rat's nest of his beard. I get the feeling he was handsome once. Probably also had a lot of power if he was already in a pod several days before the event. But I have no intention of letting him know I know hardly anyone else was frozen, or who I was, or who was supposed to be waiting for me—and wasn't. Amadi has the easy confidence of someone who's used to being admired, but all I see is a man who looks like he's been dragged backwards through seven levels of hell. But, as shit as his company is turning out to be, at least I'm not alone anymore. And it's not dark. Or cold. It's enough to take the edge off wanting to hang myself, for now.

'OK,' he says, quiet. 'I get it. You need time to get used to me.'

'It's been two years for you here—'

'Almost two years,' he cuts in, sharper than seems necessary, 'no need to make it longer than it is.'

'Whatever,' I say, 'I don't understand how you are so calm about meeting another person after all this. Shouldn't you be relieved or full of questions or, I don't know, something?'

He looks back down at his worn trousers. A shrug. 'I didn't know there was a protocol for behaviour in this situation.' He glances up at me. 'I had just fallen from up there.'

He picks up the clear container with its dark sphere inside. In the daylight, it's much easier to see its markings. Whatever it is, it's high tech, which means it will be totally useless here. But it's impossible to tell what it is or what its purpose is when it's packed up like it is.

Amadi prises apart the biggest fracture in the case until it splits with a sharp crack. It's tough, whatever it's made of, even after all this time, but my new companion is strong. I am impressed by his ability to work out the container's weakest places and exploit them. Piece by piece, he pulls the casing apart until the metal sphere slips out of its ten thousand year imprisonment and drops onto the carpet of vines with an unceremonious thump.

He picks it up and examines it, his thumbs pressing against small indentations as if searching for some way to activate it.

'I doubt it will work now,' I say. 'I mean, after all this time it's got to be dead.'

He cuts me a thin look I can't decipher and returns to his work, as if trying to solve a puzzle he once knew the answer to but has since forgotten.

Eventually, he tires of his task and sets the sphere aside. He lets out a heavy sigh and for a beat, I feel sorry for him.

'You carried that around for how long?' I ask, crouching down to get a better look at the thing.

'More than a year.'

'Can I have a look at it?'

He shrugs as if he doesn't care, but disappointment leaks from him. Whatever he was hoping for, hasn't happened. Then again, if you carry something around for a year, you probably don't expect a cold, meaningless piece of tech. Whatever it is, it's dead weight, anachronistic, and pointless here.

I reach out for it. It's heavier than it looks and I need to hold it in both hands. Patterned with numerous indentations and lines in a complex layout, it speaks of high technology—even for Alpha VII—but it is a closed thing to us, nothing more than a mysterious sphere.

One of the indentations slips under my thumb. I press my thumb pad against it. I hold it up for Amadi to see.

'A perfect fit,' I smile. 'What are the odds?' I put it back down. 'I wonder what it was.'

'It doesn't matter anymore,' he says. He pushes himself to his feet with a groan. 'I was working my way south when I got sidetracked and ended up back here.'

'What's south?'

'Probably nothing,' he answers with a sniff. 'But it doesn't hurt to try to get further down this island and reach the coast. I mean, you never know, with all the changes that have happened, maybe there's an island chain that leads back to the continent.'

'That's an ambitious hope.'

'What else is there to do but hope?' He prods the sphere with the worn toe of his boot. It lays there, an inert, dead thing. A relic of a lost world. I wonder if he's going to keep carrying it around or leave it behind.

'So,' he says, and falls silent.

I wait while he continues to nudge the sphere. It feels like he's deciding whether he will take me with him or leave me behind, and the longer he deliberates the shittier I feel. I realise I want him to take me because I don't want to be alone again in this place.

'Did you have anyone,' he asks, right out of nowhere. He jerks his head towards the ruined basin of the city. 'Back then?'

'Did you?' I counter.

A heavy veil of sadness falls over him. He nods. 'Adiana.'

'She didn't come with you?'

He shakes his head and blinks back a haze of tears. 'She's dead.'

'I'm sorry.'

There is no reaction. He waits. The message is clear. It's my turn.

'Yes, there was someone,' I meet his look. 'But he died. Before.'

He takes a minute to absorb that, then: 'What was his name?'

'Ryan,' I whisper.

Amadi eyes me in the strange, unreadable way I am learning is part of who he is here. I expect the usual platitudes, but they don't come.

'Was he a good man?' he asks at last.

'So good,' I breathe and blink back the tears that belong to the endless ache inside that is Ryan. 'He saved my life. Twice.'

'Adiana was too good for me,' he says, blindsiding Ryan's heroics. 'I was lucky she even looked at me.'

I don't know what to say to that, so I say nothing.

Silence stretches between us, broken only by the hum of insects and the thump of a loose vine against the strut, caught in a sudden breeze.

'So there's just us, then.' He sighs. He gestures to the south. 'Think you can tolerate my company?'

'As long as I don't have to listen to you eat beetles.' I toss a wan smile at him, but my heart isn't in it. This is it. This is the part where we survive, where we are together whether we like it or not. One day, when we get lonely enough, we'll fuck. It's over. For both of us. And now it's this. Whatever this is. Adam and Eve, I guess. And I don't like it one bit.