I, Cassandra

65 | RYAN MADDOX

This time I kick the door as hard as I can. If I can move a pod that weighs a tonne, I can kick a goddamned metal door in. Even with everything I've got, all I leave behind is a deep indentation. I pull back to kick it again when the dent ripples and smoothes itself out until the damage I have done vanishes as if it never happened. I let out a slow exhalation. It's just like me, but it's a door. And now more than anything I want to know what's on the other side.

If this is de Pommier's vault, I have the key, I just need to find where it goes. I eye the door, but there's nowhere a key could be used. It's a plain metal door. All around its frame, there is nothing either. No panel, no indentation, no keypad or smartscreen. I run my fingers around the doorframe, thinking to release a hidden catch where an opening might accept the key. Nothing.

I take a step back and widen my search to the walls on either side, the ceiling, and finally the floor. There's nothing that stands out, if—

A faint green glint flares in my low res vision. I swing back to it, hungry. It's gone but I know where I saw it, set into the corner of the floor, tucked right up against the edge of the doorframe. My fingers become my eyes, and I feel my way around the spot, and then, I find it, a tiny sliver of metal embedded in the floor. A careful search reveals a small notch I can press with my fingernail. The sliver of metal slides back. Underneath, a slot. As I pull the key from my pocket to line it up, the slot bleats a faint blink of green, the same green I caught before—which means it still has a power source, whatever that is. The key slides into the slot. A perfect fit.

Another flare of green ignites, this time from the key. With a soft hiss, the door eases open and the green light dies.

I collect the key and step over the threshold. Along a concrete corridor, strip lighting along the wall flickers on. Even though the lights are dim, for a beat I'm blinded until the echolocation switches off and my vision returns. Ahead, there's another door made of the same metal as the first one, which sits ajar, waiting for my arrival.

I push the door open. Lights snap on. I stop. Stunned. I don't know what I expected to find in de Pommier's vault, but in a million guesses, it would never have been this.

Her.

'Hello,' she says as she turns from panels of tech far more advanced than anything I have seen before, and smiles at me. 'It's been a while.'

'What the fuck,' I breathe. 'How are you—'

'Still alive?' she finishes for me.

'Yes.'

'Because,' she answers in her French-accented English. 'I am not technically alive, at least, not any more than you are.'

And then I see it. She looks exactly the same as her avatar. But she can't be here in Alpha VI, everything burned minutes after I met her in the lab at Alpha VII—when she gave me the key, to this.

She eyes my confusion and a look of mild amusement fleets across her features. 'You are trying to put the pieces together, no?'

I don't answer. Instead, I take my gaze off her and give the room a once over, to get my bearings. The first thing I notice is it's big. And the floor is clear. I can see straight down through about three more levels packed with sleek tech, and at the bottom . . .

'Is that a fucking space shuttle?'

'You could call it that.' She walks over to me and graces me with her infuriating smile. 'Although it is a little more advanced than what your kind consider a space shuttle.'

'Our kind?'

'I find I miss real coffee,' she says, apropos of nothing. 'Out of all the planets I have been to coffee beans have only existed here, on Earth. And now,' she sighs, 'well, it is what it is.'

'It was goats,' I say. If she wants to play this game, I can, too.

'Hmm?'

'Goats discovered coffee. The goatherd noticed they got excited after they ate the berries and the rest is history.'

'Yes,' she nods, her faint smile lingering, 'in Ethiopia.'

'How did you get here so fast after you met me in the lab?' Fuck coffee. I want answers.

'I didn't,' she says. 'That was a copy of me I had built to my specifications. It burned.'

'And is this,' I gesture at her, looking exactly as I remember her, 'also a copy of you?'

'No,' she says, 'this is me, for now.'

For now. I lift a brow and wait.

She returns to the panel. On a glass surface embedded with thin threads of gold, she taps in a sequence. The floor before me erupts in light. A second later, the sphere of a blue planet similar to Earth with a swirl of white clouds flickers into view. It's big enough I need to walk around it to see it all. Unlike Earth, there is very little land, and it looks like it is almost completely covered in water.

'This is from when I was on Kirula, what I named Mars's moon,' she says.

'Mars has two moons,' I say.

She flicks me a sidewise look. 'It does now.'

That shuts me up.

'Wait for it,' she breathes.

It happens so fast I almost miss it. In a blink, it goes from a blue jewel to the dead planet I recognise, a red-hued husk of dust.

'I'll slow that down for you, shall I?' she taps the surface again and the watery planet returns. 'Three billion years ago, a gamma ray burst hit Mars and shredded its atmosphere into ribbons. Radiation from Sol's cosmic rays eradicated what life struggled to remain. I was sorry to see it go.'

The planet vanishes. Storytime is over. I take the bait.

'Three billion years ago,' I repeat. 'Does that mean you are—'