I, Cassandra

72 | CASSANDRA VALLIS

I dream of Miro, of the evening I let her sit on the dining table in the apartment of Alpha VII and eat my leftover grilled salmon from my plate, of luxuriating in her contentment. It's been two days since Ryan has disappeared. I don't know where he is or if he will come back. I'm thinking about him—about the man I love buried inside the body of a brute and of my conflicting feelings for him—as I run my hand along Miro's back and savour the softness of her new, glossy fur.

'Blue.'

My heart skids to a halt. It's Ryan's voice. Not the one with the Slavic accent. The one I knew from The Jackpot. I turn, but he's not there. Nothing but the dim lighting of the empty apartment faces me.

He says my name again, right above me. I look up, certain I will find him there, whole again. Emptiness confronts me. I glance at Miro who washes her whiskers, oblivious to Ryan's voice, the one she always ran to. Frustration claws at me; I sense he's right there, beside me. I wonder if de Pommier has terminated him now he's served his purpose. Hollow, I cling to the sensation of his nearness as the apartment, the table, and even Miro fade away; memorise the low, warm resonance of his voice, once so familiar, now lost to me, perhaps forever.

Behind my eyelids, the slick of newborn tears salt the lonely wound of my heart.

'Blue. Wake up.'

The muggy heat of the shelter hits me. I don't dare open my eyes. I don't want to break this spell. I can't.

Please, I implore whatever entities rule this strange world, let it be real. Let this not be a hallucination from the plants I ate yesterday.

The merest touch against my lips. I know this. Ryan would do this with his thumb before he kissed me. I catch my breath.

'At last, I've found you,' he breathes. His reverence makes me shiver. 'Blue, look at me. I'm here.'

I open my eyes. Ryan crouches beside me, his arm on his thigh. Real. Solid. Alive. Strong. His look aching with love, laden with ten thousand years of longing. He's exactly the same as when he carried me to the pod, as if time has stood still for him, even though I know it has not. His lips part and he exhales, slow. All I can think is: This is where it begins.

'See you on the other side,' I whisper.

He smiles and brushes my stray tears away. 'See you on the other side.'

And then his hands are on my face and his mouth is on mine. His passion tears into me, seizes my soul, silences my sorrow. I don't care that he's a machine. Inside, where the tech stops and Ryan begins is love, and it's enough. More than enough. I want him to love me. And before long, he does.

When at last we emerge into the brilliant light of a new day, Amadi is there. He sits with his back against the eternal silence of the pod, alone and lonely. I want to feel sorry for him, but I am lost in a haze of happiness and it blunts my ability to empathise with Amadi's loss. Or, is it loss? No. It can't be. There was no love between us—only a companionship born of survival. I cannot regret him. I feel nothing for him. There it is. The truth. We become what we must to endure what is unendurable.

Ryan stops in front of Amadi. A spark of hostility flares between them, silent but lethal. 'This is where we part ways.'

Amadi hits Ryan with a look the force of a sledgehammer but says nothing.

I wait for it to make sense, to understand their animosity and why Ryan intends to leave Amadi behind—and why Amadi is doing nothing to stop it.

'You going to tell her,' Ryan asks into the lengthening silence, 'or do you want me to do it?'

'I'll do it,' Amadi gets to his feet. 'Over there.' He tilts his head at a cluster of trees a little way away—the same spot where he brought me the nest for my period. Where we first fucked. I follow after him. Tension radiates from him, eats into my happiness. He stops. Takes a deep breath. I glance back at Ryan, but he's got his back to us.

'I lied to you,' Amadi says.

I search my mind but can't imagine what it could be. 'About?'

'The pod I found.' He cuts me an oblique look. 'It was yours.'

For a beat I have no idea what he means, then: 'That was Adiana's pod. I thought you said—'

'No,' he interrupts. 'It was yours. I waited beside it for six months.'

'But I'm alive,' I point at myself as if to confirm the obvious. 'You said she didn't wake up.'

'You didn't. Not when I was there.'

And there it is, what I had suspected all along, that he uses words to mislead. He says nothing more, but he doesn't need to. I don't want to hear any more of the words he uses to conceal everything and reveal nothing. I turn and look back at Ryan, who's watching us, his eyes hard. I sense he wants to kill Amadi but I can't understand why.

I work through what I know: The hostility between them could only come from them knowing each other before Amadi met me. The pieces work their way together, shape themselves into a rough, ugly thing, built with lies. Amadi knew where my pod was. He was here for almost two years. He must have crossed paths with Ryan who was still searching for me. When they reached my pod, I was already gone . . . and Ryan had no way to find me. But, I only woke up a couple of months ago, they must have just missed me. And then, it hits me with the force of a tidal wave that decimated New York in 2069—

'You were with Ryan,' I breathe. 'And you didn't tell me.'