I, Cassandra

67 | RYAN MADDOX

'Because I left a little of myself attached to her consciousness, I wanted to see Mars through her eyes. Instead, there was no Mars was there?' She tilts her head and looks at me, almost with indulgence. 'No, Cassandra had her own agenda and then the Delta Force Capitaine decided to play the hero, and so here I am, waiting to move on to my next adventure because of this diversion. A machine who loves a woman. A machine who waits ten thousand years for her and then misses her by a tiny margin. Of course, I did not know where you were. All I could do was wait for Cassandra to wake up, and for you to arrive with the key. But if anything, I am patient, no?'

I don't care about her patience. I want to know where Blue is. 'You said she found another survivor?'

de Pommier nods. 'He calls himself Amadi.'

Hope, ragged and raw shoves a path through me. 'Amadi knows I am here, he would have told her.'

The tiniest flicker of a smile fleets over de Pommier's lips. 'It seems he has decided not to. Perhaps he has his own agenda. This world is a lonely place, now, no?'

'It's going to get a lot less lonelier,' I vow, thinking of what I will do to that motherfucker. 'Where is she?'

Her eyes unfocus. 'She is in Alpha VII.' She smiles, this time with pleasure. 'Ah, they have opened Miro's box, but they have not yet figured out how to activate her. Cassandra has just pressed her thumb against the pad, but not for long enough.' She sighs. 'So close.'

de Pommier's eyes snap back onto mine. 'So, Capitaine, what will you do?'

'It's obvious. I'm going to find her.'

de Pommier arches a brow. 'And then, what?'

I look at her like she's simple. 'What do you mean? I will be with her, protect her. Help her find a way to live in this place.'

'You'll love her,' de Pommier whispers.

'Of course,' I snap. 'What else?'

'You are much more than a machine,' she says. 'To transform you into who you are now, it was necessary to make you like me.'

That pulls me up. 'What do you mean?'

'You are eternal. The only way you will end will be when the universe ends.' Her eyes meet mine, and she continues, soft, 'Like me.'

I sink back onto the chair. 'No. You gave an order to decommission me.'

She smiles once more. It infuriates me, this secret-keeping entity who has no true physical form. 'Yes, officially you were to be decommissioned three days before the end—which we now know was a lie. Unofficially, the Elites under my command were to put you in hibernation and bring you here. To me. Except none of that happened did it?'

'Why the hell would you want to bring me here?'

'I wanted Cassandra to cooperate and bring Mars back to life, and I knew the only thing that would make her do it was to give her hope—to give her you. I could show you things, many things, could make the wait for the end less brutal.'

'You could have just left me here to be wiped out by the cataclysm.'

'You cannot cease to exist, Capitaine, you will always rebuild. One way or another you will come back, even in the vacuum of space. And once Earth is consumed by the sun, there you will be. Again. It will be a very boring thing. Alone like that. No?'

And then I remember. Almost five thousand years had passed from the time the cataclysm hit and I woke up. That's how long it took me to rebuild.

I look up at her. She watches me, and waits.

'You are a monster,' I breathe.

'Go,' she says and nods at the exit. 'Find her. I will wait for you.'

'And after she is gone?' I look down at my hands, as my fingers curl into fists, and the crushing weight of a near eternity settles onto me.

'You will grieve,' she says, quiet. 'For a long time.' There is pain in her eyes. 'I too have loved someone,' she says. 'I envy you right now, though I do not envy what you will face after.'

I have nothing to say to that. I'm a man of action, not words. I need to leave, to find Blue. Every second I am here is time lost.

She picks something up from the glass surface, a small metal box and holds it out to me. 'This is for Cassandra,' she says. 'It will make things easier for her, for both of you. She will know what to do with it.'

I tuck it into my pocket, the same one where I carried de Pommier's key for almost ten thousand years.

de Pommier's eyes meet mine, and hers tell me things I don't want to know, that there is pain ahead, a lot of pain, an eternity of it. 'Be well, Capitaine,' she whispers. 'I'll be waiting.'

I turn and don't look back. All there is now is Blue.