The Ones We're Meant to Find(15)

“Why should I?”

Quiet, but commanding. He wasn’t cowed in the slightest. Why should I?—a challenge, cold and logical. Kasey found herself agreeing. Why, indeed, should he? What gave her the right?

“Because I’m a P2C officer.” So much for not stating the obvious. Kasey drew a breath. “And that”—she nodded toward the ground—“belongs to a missing person.”

Saying it made it real. That thing on the ground was Celia’s Intraface, and Kasey’s legs went weak. What was it doing here, with him? The REM rose yet again; she eyed the boy down its length.

“May I?” he asked, unfazed. He crouched when Kasey didn’t object, scooped up the kernel, and straightened, graceful. He held out his closed fist, and Kasey reluctantly released one hand from the REM. The Intraface dropped into her palm. She brought it close, magnifying the lasered numbers.

1930-123193-2315. Her sister’s. To cross-check, Kasey held the kernel in front of her right eye. A green ring appeared in her field of vision.

OBJECT IDENTIFICATION LOADING …

LOADING …

RESULTS: 18.2 / 23 grams Intraface, gen 4.5.

18.2 out of 23 grams. Kasey’s gaze cut to the boy. “Where’s the rest?”

Without asking for permission this time, the boy went to the fuel-bar and returned with a tin.

He handed it to Kasey. “She requested that I destroy it, after I extracted it.”

Requested. Kasey focused on the word—requested, implying consent—to overcome her vertigo. Extracted. Blood and skin, sliced open. By him. What had Jinx said about him? My tenant. My hire. Kasey reexamined the boy. Sixteen like her, or older—the lean geometry of his face made his age difficult to pin. She was certain about two things, though: He was younger than most of the GRAPHYC employees she’d seen downstairs, and the exactitude of his person actually seemed befitting of his trade.

But who he was didn’t change what he’d done, and with acid in her throat, Kasey glanced down at the tin in her hand. It contained a fingernail’s worth of white powdery substance.

RESULTS: 4.8 / 23 grams Intraface.

“When?” she demanded, balling her toes as if she could grip the ground.

“A week before she left.”

Overlapping with Celia’s tech detox. Semiregularly, she would shut down her Intraface and give people no choice but to connect with her in person. Kasey hadn’t thought much of it.

“And you carried out her request?” Her voice sounded too high-pitched and accusatory, as if the boy had killed her sister even though it was becoming clearer by the second that Celia had voluntarily come here, in her final days, and asked for this—and for him.

Second mistake: thinking her sister would rely on Kasey over a stranger.

If he was a stranger at all. “I did. She was a client,” the boy explained, calm. “But to me, she was more than that.” There was an intensity in his expression, emotions Kasey couldn’t name but had seen before, somewhere. “So I saved it.” He took the Intraface back from her; she let him, unable to stop him. “Even before I heard the news, I planned on reconstructing it. I wanted to understand what had happened to make her think she had no way out. After all, people who remove their Intrafaces tend to fall into one of two camps.”

“Which are?” Kasey heard herself ask.

“Criminals, or victims.”

Criminals. The word zapped Kasey out of her trance. “Which do you think she was?”

“Celia? Committing a crime?” The boy’s gaze narrowed. “If she had any fault, it was for loving too much.”

Definitely not a stranger, then. He’d obviously known Celia. Known her well. The look in his eyes—the intoxication, the all-consuming determination—matched what Kasey had seen in the eyes of people like Tristan/Dmitri. They loved Celia so much that they couldn’t move on. They reacted with equal and opposite force to the force that loss exerted on them.

They were the normal humans.

And Kasey wasn’t. Swallowing, she glanced again to the powder in the tin. One misplaced grain, and the Intraface would never turn on again. It must have taken months to come as far as the boy had, and during this time, what had Kasey done? Dodged reporters. Accepted the tragedy. Thrown a party.

In the eyes of the world, she was more of a clown than a ghost.

She returned the REM to its holster and faced the boy, who’d answered everything he’d been asked. At a minimum, she owed him an explanation.

“I’m Kasey.” As if that meant anything to him. “Mizuhara.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d introduced herself by her full name—wouldn’t have been able to, outside, without tripping up a tapped bot and giving her location away to reporters. But here, in a private domain, she was safe. Physically.

Mentally, she felt more out of her element than at her party.

“Celia’s younger sister,” she added for good measure, at the same time the boy said, “I know who you are.”

That threw Kasey for a loop. Then she recovered. The sound bite had gone viral.

If the boy judged her for dispassionately proclaiming her sister dead, he didn’t reveal it. “Come back when it’s ready.”

Kasey’s Intraface pinged with a new contact request.

ACTINIUM

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