In that moment, I finally understood what had happened after my accident, why my friends, my boyfriend, my family, couldn’t see that beneath the wiring and the synflesh I was still me, no matter how I looked, no matter how I sounded. Because knowing something to be true is different than believing it.
This is Riley, I told myself. But you can’t force yourself to believe.
“What is it?” the stranger asked in a stranger’s voice.
I shook my head. What if I couldn’t do it? What if I just walked away from him, like everyone had walked away from me? What if, after helping him destroy his best friend, I left him alone?
He held out his hand, palm up, an invitation. “It’s still me,” he said.
I put my hand on his, palm to palm.
“It’s still us,” he said.
His arms felt different around my body. We didn’t fit together the same way, folded into the same curves and hollows. He was taller, slimmer. Even his lips were the wrong shape, the wrong size. But his hands cupping my face, slipping down my neck, my back, different and the same, all at once, and the feel of someone holding me up, a chest to lean against, a hand to hold—it was still him.
It was still us.
“Tell me what happened,” he said when we lay in the damp grass, in each other’s arms. “Help me remember.”
“BioMax lied,” I told him, launching into a well-rehearsed narrative. “They didn’t wait for my signal—they just showed up, busted us as we were laying the explosives. The explosion was an accident.”
“Jude wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “Not in the end. We would have talked him out of it. I wouldn’t have let him do that to himself.”
“I know. He’s your best friend,” I murmured, and tightened my grip on his hand.
“He’ll make contact when he can,” Riley said. “When he needs us. He knows we’ll help. He’ll be back.”
I hope not, I thought.
Because if he came back, then Riley would have to know what we’d done. Except that this Riley hadn’t done anything. He’d committed no betrayal, and given the opportunity, he might have chosen differently. In that one way—and only that one way, I told myself—the old Riley was dead. I’d left him behind and watched him die. This new one couldn’t be held accountable for someone else’s sins; this Riley was innocent.
It’s not a lie, I thought, telling him a story of what should have happened, where he was a hero and Jude was still his friend and happily ever after was still in reach for someone, someday. It’s a gift.
I would be his memory.
“It seems like a long time ago,” he said as we stood at the edge of the water, clothes in two neat piles on the ground, feet bare. “Since we were here.”
“It was,” I said to the stranger who wasn’t a stranger, with a hand that looked so wrong in my own.
We stood with our backs to the hill and everything it led to. Somewhere up there, beyond the horizon: the Brotherhood regrouping, Savona lying in wait, orgs hating us, orgs fearing us, BioMax holding us under absolute control, pretending we walked free, Auden knowing I’d saved him all over again and knowing I was the reason he’d needed to be saved. Somewhere up there: a home, my father asking God to forgive him for creating me, expecting me to be someone long dead, my sister, wanting to be anyone but my sister, not wanting me to die. Somewhere up there: Jude, who knew the truth.
All behind us. And ahead of us, nothing but a stretch of murky blue. We couldn’t run away. Or hide, like children, behind wishes and lies. We wouldn’t fight like Jude—but we would fight.
We would, but only when we climbed the hill, trekked to the road, returned to the world, where we were mechs and they were orgs and nothing made sense. Here, now, alone, we joined hands, and it didn’t matter what we were or what was waiting for us. We stepped forward, water lapping at our ankles, our knees, our thighs, our waists. We stepped forward together and let ourselves drift, the muddy seabed dropping out beneath our feet, the water carrying us toward a buried ruin, carrying us away from the noise and chaos waiting for us onshore, and together, we dipped below the surface and let our bodies sink into the silent deep.
About the Author
ROBIN WASSERMAN is the author of Skinned, Hacking Harvard, the Seven Deadly Sins series, and the Chasing Yesterday trilogy. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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