Tourist | Epilogue
The sight of Redistance’s facade brings my feet to a sudden, scuffling stop. Fingers tug at mine and Paiden turns back to me, laughter on her lips dying as her momentum pulls against the gravity of my inertia.
“Allie?” She steps close, brushes my cheek with her thumb. “Hey, it’s okay. You’ll be fine.”
Logically: yes, Paiden, I know that already. Emotionally: I want to turn and run. Run all the way home and burrow into the blankets and clean laundry piled upon my bed. (Clean, at least. Finally.)
Paiden brushes my fringe—too long, she keeps reminding me—out of my eyes and gives me the most radiant smile in the entire world. I would swear on my dying breath that on the rainiest day, I could feel the sun’s warmth when she smiles at me, and I can feel it now. She thaws my frozen bones, breathes life back into my moribund soul.
I turn my face up to meet hers, and, oh, how happy I am to have her here with me. With her golden hair held back by a bouquet of a hairclip and her sunbeam eyes, I’d believe I’m staring right into the face of all that is good in the world.
“Hey Allie,” she says.
“Hey,” I say. She kisses my forehead and leans back, fingers intertwined with mine.
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, you know. Nobody would think less of you.”
Over her shoulder, I catch Chase as he spots us through the gallery windows. He starts to wave, then frowns and tries to pretend he hasn’t seen us at all. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that he’s not so good at pretending anything.
I shake my head. “I need to.”
Tourist | Fourteen
The audio cuts off at the loamy scrape of a shovel tasting soil. We are torn from Lissa’s voice back into the real world. Moments stretch within Chase’s apartment. We sit frozen and silent: Audrey with her hand over her mouth, Chase’s fist balled tight upon the desk, hot tears dripping from my chin. We are, the three of us, briefly connected in our shock, our horror, our infinite sorrow for Lissa.
“This isn’t fair,” Audrey whispers. Her fingers muffle her words, yet they fill the room. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair, I decide—had decided long ago, as glass shattered and metal crumpled around my fragile, biological body.
There’s movement to my side. Chase slumping onto forearms, fingertips clawing chaotic hair. Audrey lays a hand on his back, her bright eyes meeting mine over his hunched form. Here we are: human and ersatz. We all mourn the same losses when it comes down to it. No wonder artificials so often stick to our own, I realise. We don’t die the same. We don’t lose the same.
And then it hits me: the trade-off I’ve never considered. Paiden, with her open home and loving fathers, can only be all too aware of their impending mortality. While I wanted to live like her, maybe she was looking at my eternal sister and wishing her own family could continue on and on until the end of time.
Shit. When this is all over, I need to apologize to her.
