I, Cassandra

31 | RYAN MADDOX

'What's Genesis I?' Blue asks, before continuing, dismissive, 'Anyway, what could I possibly do? I only see future catastrophes.'

The avatar leaves her spot before the wall screen and returns to the table. She catches me watching her. A faint look of satisfaction shimmers over her features, accompanied by a glimmer of something else. Triumph. My instincts prickle, wary. I look away, uneasy.

'No. There are other things you can do,' she says, putting her cup down and pushing it away.

Silence falls between them. de Pommier's avatar remains standing by the table. She folds her arms over her breasts and looks down at her half-empty coffee cup. Blue waits, still holding onto the table, tense, her chest rising and falling, her shallow breaths loud in the thickening quiet.

'Do you remember being given injections?' the avatar asks, her gaze moving over the table's wooden surface, pale in the wan, Nordic winter light.

Blue flinches. 'Yes,' she answers, low, suspicious.

'The injections,' the avatar says, terse, '—most of them—did nothing except make you suffer, but under the influence of a certain combination your abilities became . . . enhanced.'

'Enhanced,' Blue repeats, numb. She looks down at her hands, and lets go of the table. 'So you want—'

de Pommier's avatar cuts her off, 'Do you recall being asked to imagine, for example, a category five hurricane?'

Blue nods, her jaw tight.

'What you could do,' de Pommier's avatar says, quiet, 'no one has been able to explain, but while under the influence of certain psychotropic substances . . . whatever you imagined, happened.'

Horror gathers around Blue, enveloping her, bleeding from her. It spreads through the apartment and saturates me, visceral, unbearable. She looks up at the avatar, broken, anguished. 'For years I was asked to imagine such things.' She lunges from her chair.

'You made me kill people. Thousands of them. And animals, too. Innocent creatures,' she pants, frantic, 'forced to suffer horrible deaths. No. I can't—' she lets out a long, thin wail, her torment filling the room, clawing into my soul.

I move closer. The avatar shoots me a hard look. I stop but hold my ground, glaring at her, willing de Pommier to keep her mouth shut and not to tell Blue about the thousands of lives lost by Global Command during the years Blue was forced to serve the UFF. The avatar's attention slides back to Blue, who lifts a trembling hand to the back of the chair and stares, unseeing, at the stormy sea, at the waves breaking against the rocky coastline.

'I did not make you kill anything,' the avatar says, tight, 'I tried to stop it. Now, after all these years, I am finally in a position to stand against the one who did. Work with me and you will have the chance to avenge yourself.'

'No,' Blue moans, shaking her head. She staggers and bumps into me, blind, locked in misery. 'No more killing,' she pleads, low. 'Please. I don't want to.'

'Perhaps we should finish the story,' de Pommier's avatar continues, relentless, over Blue's suffering. 'One day, a technician made a mistake. Just one small change to the combination of your drug regime and instead of creating hurricanes, you brought rain. Good rain, healing rain. You generated life. It is a miracle, no?'

Blue quiets. She looks up, hollow, fragile. A caged animal. Her eyes shimmer, brilliant with tears. She sniffs and my heart clenches. More than anything I want to gather her up against me, to shield her from herself, from what she is, from what others have turned her into. Instead, I keep my hands at my sides and force myself to let her be, to suffer with her in silence.

'So,' the avatar says, soft, 'not only can you destroy, but you can regenerate. You are a wonder. A gift sent on the brink of our extinction, who has somehow managed to survive the brutality of powerful men on both sides of the wall.' She flashes an enigmatic look at me. 'Who is being given a second chance because of the love of Capitaine Maddox, who had to die, so we could find you again. It is beautiful, no? Tragic, but beautiful.'

Blue catches her breath at my name. de Pommier sits and folds her hands together, exuding patience. I eye her. She's clever, slipping in the reason Blue is here and not dying a slow death at The Jackpot.

Ten minutes slide past as Blue processes the enormity of what she's been told. She's only a hair's breadth away from me, close enough for me to feel her tremors. She stares at the wall screen, her eyes following the rise and fall of the trees' boughs as they shudder in the wind, trapped in their silent dance, lost to another time.

'It's because of Ryan I'm here?' she finally asks, faint, without taking her eyes from the view.

'It is,' de Pommier's avatar replies, soft. 'His memories led us to you.'

A shiver ripples through Blue. Her gaze drops to the swell and crash of the dark sea slamming itself into the rocks.

'When are you going to tell me what Genesis I is?' she asks.

de Pommier looks up. 'It is a project I started in 2070, to give one thousand people a new life on Mars until Earth heals. When you vanished in 2073, everyone assumed you were dead. However, I managed to keep G-I going until the Prime Minister shut it down in favour of Genesis II in 2078.' The corners of the avatar's mouth turn downward, dismissive. 'He dug a hole two-point four kilometres in the ground, and filled it with cryogenic pods made to last a thousand years, reserved for him and his cronies on Alpha VII, sold for exorbitant prices, all of it going into his pockets.' She eyes the storm, unseeing, disgust seeping from her. 'The arrogant fool believes the world will have recovered in a mere thousand years. But the scientists know better. They estimate it will take at least thirty thousand years before Earth will be habitable again. Genesis II will do nothing except delay the inevitable.'

'Mars,' Blue repeats, dull, after a pregnant silence. 'And you need me to—?'

'Terraform it,' the avatar answers.