I, Cassandra

73 | CASSANDRA VALLIS

'That's about the size of it,' Amadi says. He doesn't apologise or try to explain himself. It just is.

'You motherfucker. You let me believe there was only us left. If we hadn't come across this pod we'd be halfway to wherever you wanted to go and Ryan would never have—'

'You fucked me, too,' he says as if that makes everything alright.

My knee is in his groin before I'm aware of what I'm doing. He topples over with a strangled cry, curls into a foetal position. I kick him a second time, for the times he fucked me, for his lies, his selfishness—for being a man who thinks he has the right to decide my fate, to take what isn't his, just because I'm a woman.

He pulls himself up into a crouch and eyes me from under his brow. 'I didn't want to be alone,' he pants through his pain. 'I offered to help find you, but he fucked off. He blamed me for not waiting long enough. It was six months. Six fucking months I waited, how could I know when or if your pod would ever wake you up?'

I say nothing. I don't care what Amadi says now, it's meaningless to me. I don't care what happens to him. He watched me cry myself to sleep over Ryan, let me suffer because he didn't want to be alone. Everything has been a fucking massive lie.

I need to leave. To never see him again. I can't stand the sight of him. I feel sick that we fucked. This is worse than the soldiers at The Jackpot—worse than Zee. Then, I had no choice. But this, this is a violation that sears me to my core.

'Wait,' he says, and the look in his eyes, dark with his fear of what lies ahead for him makes me pause.

'The sphere,' he nods at the shelter, 'take it, it's yours.'

'I was going to anyway,' I say, pissed off he thinks he's in any position to grant me gifts.

'No,' he grunts through a fresh strafe of pain. 'It was made for you to have on Mars. I know what it is. I just don't know how to activate it. I've been trying to figure it out while you slept so I could surprise you. I really did want to make you happy, you know.'

'So, what is it?'

'It's a cat,' he cuts a look at Ryan, 'made like him.'

I blink. 'A cat? Is it . . . Miro?'

He shrugs. 'It's a cat, and it's yours, that's all I know. All I did was find it and carry it around for a really long time. Maybe all this was meant to be. Who fucking knows anymore.'

I give him one long, last look as he huddles back into his misery. He meets my eyes and in them, I see nothing is as simple as good and evil in this place of wrong stars and a tropical North Pole. He's not a bad man. He did keep me alive when I would have died. No, he's just a man who let his fears rule him at my expense. He took a gamble and failed. I glance at the pod.

'Better luck with this one.' I won't say goodbye. He's not worth it.

Bleak, he turns away from me, and I know it's over. Back in the shelter, I settle the sphere in its vine basket with extreme tenderness. At the thought it might be a replica of Miro I have to blink back tears. I caress its surface and find the place for my thumbprint. Later, I promise myself with a faint smile, I will try again. This was de Pommier's doing, I am certain of it. I thought she was a monster, but now, I'm not so sure. She made me a gift so I wouldn't be lonely on Mars, and somehow Amadi found it and then I found him, ten thousand years from home.

When I step back out into the heat of the sun, Ryan is at the pod, his fingers moving over its screen. Its quiet bleat quickens just a touch, and a line flares to life at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. I wonder if it's some kind of progress marker.

Amadi still has his back to us, his head between his knees. I doubt he's aware of what Ryan has done.

'In a week,' Ryan says as he rises to his feet, 'whoever is in here will wake up.'

'Why would you help him?' I ask as he takes the sphere's basket from me and settles its strap over his shoulder.

'Who's to say I'm helping him?' Ryan asks. 'Anyone could be inside. He'll get what he deserves.'

Ryan's hand enfolds mine, warm and strong. He's real to me. I don't care what's underneath. He's Ryan. He waited for me for ten thousand years and found me against all the odds. I follow him as he leads me away from the pod, past the shelter with its smoking fire, and the little stand of trees that represented my entire world for over a month.

He moves with purpose, bearing south as if he knows exactly where he is going. I don't look back. I don't need to. I can feel Amadi's eyes on us. I expect him to call after us, to follow us, to try to negotiate, or even to beg not to be left behind but he doesn't. There is only silence. And then I understand why Ryan did what he did. Even though he's a machine, he's the better man, and Amadi knows it.