by Joan He
“A place in between land and water, where there is power in a single step.”
“You disagree.” She made it a statement; she didn’t pretend at uncertainty when she was certain. “Why?” she asked, less certain about how she could infer so much from his tone alone.
“I think most choices are made before you reach the edge.”
Kasey agreed with him. She’d tried to jump. To expose herself. To bleed. But she was only fooling herself; she’d never choose self-destruction. Her brain was too solution-driven.
Or should have been. Because at this very moment, her Intraface pinged with a reminder from P2C headquarters that the emergency meeting was about to start and she was faced with the other choice she’d made: the choice not to help. Kasey swiped the message away; others took its place, namely unread ones from Meridian.
Where are you? Have you seen the news? Are you home?
Home. The nature of it—bubble-wrapped and safe—felt as alien to Kasey as it had to Celia.
“Actinium.” His name burned her lips. She looked to him just as he looked to her, and for a heartbeat, she saw something in his gaze. A wavering. His lips parted.
But Kasey spoke first. “I have something to confess.”
Celia had loved the sea. Loved the whitecaps that foamed like milk, the waltz of sunlight atop the peaks. Kasey did not. The sea was a trillion strands of hair, infinitely tangled on the surface and infinitely dense beneath. It distorted time: Minutes passed like hours and hours passed like minutes out there. It distorted space, made the horizon seem within reach.
And it was the perfect place for hiding secrets.
I killed Celia. I knew visiting the sea in person was a bad idea. I didn’t stop her. But as much as guilt would have substantiated her humanity, she couldn’t summon it. Anger was the easier emotion to access. Celia had been foolish to swim in the ocean, but she shouldn’t have had to die for it. Someone—a person, a company, or multiples of each—had polluted the sea. In secret. It’d gone unreported. Unremedied. Kasey had been punished when she’d broken international law; had they? If not, why should she help them? Why better a world when better for Celia had meant choosing where and when to die?
A barrier in Kasey fell. The solution spilled out of her. All of it, including the final piece she’d told no one of. She waited for Actinium’s disgust, his horror. Receiving neither, she barreled on.
“I can help,” she finished, breathless. “But I don’t want to.”
Her confession. Science was impartial to everything and everyone. It either worked or didn’t. It didn’t say who deserved to benefit. The solution existed; therefore, it had to be shared.
“I don’t want to help,” she repeated, more quietly, as lightning flashed in the distance. The storm rumbled in. The rain thundered down.
Actinium was right; the shield ended where they stood. Kasey could almost see the arc of it before her eyes, where the rain passed through less forcefully, misting over them. Nervous, she looked to him, this boy who’d used science for the people’s good. What would he think of her now?
As she waited for a response, a gale swooped in from the sea. Filtered by the shield or not, it felt real. It tugged at Kasey’s clothes, dampened her face. It swept Actinium’s carefully parted hair into his eyes, obscuring his expression. But his voice rang as clear as it had since day one.
“Who said anything about helping?”
MY FIRST THOUGHT IS THAT I’m not dead.
My second is that I’m hanging without a rope halfway down the ridge, clinging to it by a rock, and I’ve almost certainly dislocated my right shoulder and I’m still dead because there’s a long way left to fall and my fingers are slipping and oh Joules, what a shit way to go.
“Strongly disagree.” Pressure—under my left foot, alleviating some of the strain in my arm.
U-me. Her fans whir as she supports me with her head. Whatever she was designed for, it wasn’t this. We’re both going to end up as rubble below if I don’t do something fast.
Think, Cee. My eyes roll from side to side, then down.
The rope.
Part of it is a neon-orange puddle on the ground, but the other part still dangles down the ridge face, no longer tied but caught in the hands of the boy, his figure backlit at the top.
“Tie it!” I’ll take the two of us over if I grab it now. Surely he knows that. “Snap out of it!” I scream when he doesn’t move. “Come on! Be a—”
Acid shoots up my throat.
“—hero!” I choke out.
“Hero,” intones U-me dutifully as rocks tumble out from beneath us, free-falling to the ground with a telltale pock-pock-pock. “A person who is admired or idealized . . .”
I can’t hear the rest. My vision is spotting and it’s impossible to see the boy’s features, let alone figure out what the hell is going through his mind as he just stands there, rope in hand. Meanwhile, the pressure is back on my fingertips. Pain sizzles white-hot down my arm. This is it. The cords in my neck tense. My lips part for one final shout—
—and close when the rope brushes my cheek.
It moves as the boy moves. He’s a blob to me at this point, but I think he’s making tying motions with his hands, and if he’s not, I’m dead anyway, so I seize the rope, pincer my knees, and worm down its length as much as I can before my arms give out.
Sky. Air. Ground.
The impact jettisons the breath out of my lungs.
I don’t know how long I lie there, on my back, before a face eclipses the yellow sun.
The boy’s.
“Cee, can you hear me?” He sounds distant. “What hurts?”
“My shoulder.” And everything else.
The skin on my arm burns as the boy slides up my sweater sleeve. He slips one hand through mine and holds my elbow with the other.
“Okay,” he breathes, almost to himself. “This will hurt before it gets better.”
“What—”
The boy tugs on my arm. Someone screams. I think it’s me. I claw at him—Make the pain stop make it stop—while my muscles flex against the pressure, the tension in my shoulder mounting until it feels maxed out—
The ball slides back into the socket.
The boy helps me sit up. When I’m ready to stand, he drapes my good arm over his shoulder and uses his body to support me. Either I’m shaking, or he’s shaking, or we’re both shaking. Our first few steps almost send me sprawling back on the ground.
The rest of the walk is a slow, silent hobble.
Halfway through, U-me suddenly speaks without prompting.
“Hero: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, noun.”
I feel the boy stiffen under my arm.
“Hero: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, noun.”
The sun descends from its midday summit.
“Hero: a person who is admired or idealized for courage, noun.”
Hours later, we finally reach the house. The boy guides me to the couch, then takes off without a word. I have don’t have the mental or physical capacity to wonder where he’s going. My head lolls back, and I stare at the ceiling, tie-dyed violet from the sunset.
Joules.
What a day.
Yes, I gained a shit ton of memories. Yes, I’m also seeing in color. That may explain why I was careless in my climb, but it doesn’t explain the untied rope. I haven’t had such a close call since I perfected my knot technique two years ago.
I try to think back to the scene right before the fall. U-me was at the bottom of the ridge. The boy was at the top.
I didn’t see him untie the rope.
I wasn’t looking at him either.
What am I thinking? If killing me was his goal, he could have done it while I was flat on the ground. A rock to the temple. It would have been over in a second. Instead, he hovered over me, his face shining with sweat and worry, and maybe he could have faked the emotion, but he couldn’t have faked the pounding of his heart. He fixed my
shoulder, half carried me back, and now nothing adds up. Not the untied rope, or the way he froze at the top while I hung on for dear life.
Unless it was just that: He froze up. It’s not every day you have to be a hero.
I know one thing for sure: I don’t want to believe the boy had anything to do with my fall. He’s become more to me than a visitor or a guest. He’s a friend. And as his friend, I drag my ass off the couch when he doesn’t return by night.
He’s not on the shore, or at the sunken pier, awash in the midnight tide.
The same tide rushes into the cove, a secret place tucked past the rocks west of M.M.’s house. The sand glows with all the colors of mother-of-pearl in the moonlight. The boy, a mere blip against the waterline, is indigo.
He doesn’t turn as I approach. I sit beside him. For several minutes, the only sound comes from the surf, shushing the night as it tumbles in.
“It’s my fault.” His voice is low and dark with shame. “Back on the ridge, when I saw you fall . . . My whole body . . .” His pain is palpable and I find myself rubbing circles onto his back. His muscles bunch under my hand. “Locked.” He lets out a frustrated breath. “Except that’s not the right word.”
I might be battered and bruised, but he sounds scarred. And who wouldn’t be? He’s not like me, hardened by the brutality of island living.
“Hey,” I say gently. “No hard feelings. You managed in the end.”
“But what if I didn’t?”
“You did. That’s all that matters.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t have any memories. I don’t have a name. All I have are my current thoughts, the things I feel and think and want. If I can’t even act on those, then . . .”
He doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to. His unspoken words live in my heart. They’re the same ones that keep me up at night, when I worry Kay’s face is fading. I worry who I would be without her. Just some girl on an abandoned island, with no past to draw on, no future to live for.
Who am I? he wants to ask. I can’t answer that.
But I can offer something. “Hero.”
“What?”
“You do have a name. Hero.”
The boy breathes in. “That’s—”
“U-me’s pick. And mine, too.”
Some names are found. Others are earned.
This one is both.
The boy, Hero, frowns. “It’s cheesy.”
“Well, it’s either that or Dmitri. Cheesy or hunky. Take your pick.”
He sighs. Not calmed. Not comforted. I’m all for exploring emotions, but his are a swamp right now. They’ll only suck him down. I need to distract him. Pivot his mind.
I have an idea as to how.
“Let’s try something,” I say.
“What?” asks the boy.
“Turn toward me.”
He does.
“Close your eyes.”
He does—eyes flying open when I kiss him. Briefly. It’s more of a peck, for his sake. I know what I like. The boy, though? I giggle at the look on his face. He scowls; I make my expression serious. Not everyone is as touchy-feely as me, and I ask if he didn’t like it.
To which he responds, reluctantly, “I wasn’t expecting it.”
Not the same as not liking it, then. Grinning, I lean in and kiss him again. His lips are soft—softer, even, than when I traced them with my finger. A stir goes through me, not necessarily because I feel for him but because I simply feel. Him. I reach him. I say to him It’s okay and You’re not alone and We don’t have to overthink—we can simply live. Kissing is just another means of conversation.
And conversations can’t be sustained by one side, so when he doesn’t respond, I pull back. “Right, then. What were—”
Oh.
My eyes widen as he replies.
Recovering, I slide a hand up his chest. He questions by leaning in. I answer by drawing him closer by the collar of his sweater.
He bears us down into the sand.
We break apart only when we run out of breath. I keep on running out of breath as his mouth drifts to my neck. My hands knot in his hair, holding on as my insides melt, brim, spill. I am vast as an ocean, the only sea I don’t have to cross, and for the first time in a long time, I remember what it feels like to drown in myself.
• • •
We kiss until our lips swell. We speak in the language of tongues and teeth.
And then we speak more. I tell him about Kay, about my color-blindness, about my sleepwalking. He shares his cold, sterile dreams. I ask if he remembers being a doctor because he didn’t do a half-bad job on my shoulder. He thinks I could have been a boat builder after I tell him about Hubert. He asks me more about Kay and I tell him what I can remember, and when I run out, he asks me about me, and I tell him, too, though the words are less sure and more shy, tentative. We talk about nothing and everything, and it’s . . . nice, so nice that even when it gets colder, it’s warm enough with him here.
We fall asleep on the cove, in each other’s arms.
But my dreams take me far out, to the sister still waiting for me across the sea.
KILOMETERS OF SEA FLASHED BY as they neared the eco-city.
The ocean does not come poisoned.
Within the confines of the copterbot, Kasey glanced to Actinium.
People poison it.
Their eyes connected, black on black.
Not just the sea, but the land and the air. There are many in this world who live at the expense of others, and they need to pay.
Pay, Kasey had echoed on the pier, not sure if she’d heard right over the storm.
Yes. Actinium had met her gaze head-on, and in his, she saw herself—and the fire she was missing. For what they did to Celia and others like her.
She hadn’t known how to reply. Not at first. Then the ache in her chest had pulsed like a second heart. The heart said yes. Between them, they shared an ocean of loss. It was under their chins, threatening to drown them the moment they sank. And Kasey chose to sink. The world was ending. People were dying. But how many others were consuming more than their fair share when Celia could taste no more? Emitting carbon, when Celia, who’d never polluted in the first place, could exhale no more? The planet wasn’t a single-occupancy home. Those who trashed it and got away? Who profited off other people’s pain?
Save the deserving. Make the murderers pay.
She might not have been brave enough to poison herself, or sad enough to cry. But she was angry enough, and that made her feel alive.
As their copterbot waited in line to clear decontamination, Kasey linked into the video and audio feed of the P2C meeting taking place at the HQ conference room. She stayed on mute and listened as an eco-city 6 delegate spoke.
“All predictions remain in flux. But with ECAT, I reckon we can neutralize up to eighty percent of airborne microcinogens.”
“And how long will that take?” asked Ekaterina, standing at the front, David beside her like a potted plant. For once, it frustrated Kasey to see him so passive.
“Like I said, it really depends—”
“The question, Officer Ng,” Ekaterina cut in.
“Eleven months to two years. A lot can change—”
“And where, may I ask, are impacted peoples going to stay for a year?” A snap of Ekaterina’s fingers and holographs appeared, destroyed territory cities fountaining up in the center of the conference room. “Already, we have twenty million dead and ten million missing. More will succumb to the complications of prolonged exposure. A projected hundred million casualties are expected by the half-year mark. Territory hospels are failing. Their governments will follow.” Mutters, quieting when Ekaterina said, “We eco-cities are vulnerable too.”
Not to toxins, Kasey knew, but to hysteria. During the first wave of natural disasters, people had tried to claw their way into the eco-cities, forcing the adoption of a rank-based admission system. Who’s to say it wouldn’t happen again?
“Now,” said Ekaterina
. “Does anyone have a better proposal?”
Silence.
Kasey pressed UNMUTE. “I do.”
I STEP OFF THE PIER and stroke into the sea. I don’t tire. Don’t falter. I go as far as the horizon, and beyond. The sun rises, transmuting the water around me to gold. I could swim for days.
But I stop when I see the empty sky.
There used to be a city suspended in the air, made of disks of varying diameters but all stacked together, forming a 3D teardrop.
Now it’s in flaming pieces, bobbing in the ocean, and there isn’t a soul in sight.
“Kay!” Her name bursts from my lips before the thought shudders through my brain—that this is our home. Was our home, before I somehow ended up on the island. “Kay!”
A hunk of metal floats past me, sending up a wave. I swim faster, into the wreckage, but I’m too late. I spent too long on the island, too long building my boat, too long with Hero, the boy who washed ashore.
I stop swimming and sink.
Too late . . .
Too late . . .
I wake with a start.
Choke on salt water.
It’s under my chin. Under my toes. All around me. Sea, and nothing else.
So this is how it is. A nightmare within a nightmare. A wave claps over me. Salt water rips up my sinuses. I breathe it in to wake up faster.
But I don’t wake. The sea spits me back out, swallows me again, and again, and in between the rounds it sinks in: It’s finally happened.
I’ve woken up in the ocean.
My senses return. I’ve lost the clogs on my feet, but I’ve still got on M.M.’s cargo pants and sweater, and they’re weighing me down. Come the next wave, I duck under, shucking both. Breaking the surface, I try to orient myself. The steel-blue waters are never-ending, but my eyes latch on to a smear of beige in the distance.
The shore.
I throw everything I have into the swim. Sand scrapes my knees—in the shallows finally. I part crawl, part paddle, the surf growing feeble but I am too. For a moment, I don’t think I’m going to make it. The sea tugs at me, refusing to let go.
