Page 131 of Because I Killed Him
“It’s cold,” he says, “but it still cuts less than the Luminescent Lake.”
I tuck the board under my arm, surprised. “How do you know I go there?”
“I saw you once.”
“Saw me? From where?”
Edmund glances up at the sky and grins. “My jet.”
Then he turns and heads into the water, leaving me to wonder what long-range tech could enable him to see my face from that height.
The night is so dark that the beach seems to bleed into the ocean, erasing the boundary between sand and surf. I activate the night-vision app on my Bond before paddling after Edmund. The app is designed to process thermal data and overlay it as a live visual feed, but the processor lags, and the algorithm struggles to separate moving heat sources from static ones. Near the shore, the thermal glare washes out the waves, and farther out, the images are darker than if I had no night-vision at all. I keep misjudging the distance between my board and the break, toppling headfirst into cold, salty water that leaves me shivering inside my wetsuit.
Jack is faring better, laughing wildly as he and Edmund shoot each other off their surfboards with stun guns.
“Last shot wins,” Edmund shouts, hauling himself back onto his board after Jack knocks him into the water. “And that doesn’t include whiskey.”
“I’m not drinking tonight,” Jack yells back.
“Really? You’re sober?”
“Sober enough to keep lighting you up.”
Jack fires. The stun beam crackles past Edmund as he kicks out of the wave and pops back onto the shoulder. They’re still laughing when Jack catches the next set, builds speed along the face, and raises his gun again,only to clip a submerged rock lurking beneath the break. The impact jars the board to the side, shearing the center fin clean off before Jack spills headlong into the whitewater.
He resurfaces with a curse, drags the crippled board to shore, plants it upright in the sand, then hunkers down beside Charlotte and Dickie at the fire pit.
Now, it’s just Edmund and me. I lie belly-down on my board, watching in bewilderment as he drops into the pocket of a wave and carves up the face with seamless rail-to-rail transitions, as if he’s surfing in broad daylight.
When the wave closes out, I paddle up beside him. “How are you surfing so well?”
Edmund laughs and sits upright on his board, water sliding off his shoulders. “You want to see?”
I nod before I understand what I’m agreeing to. He sends a Bond link request, and when I accept, my vision changes. The ocean around me floods with light, as if a hidden sun burns beneath the waves, casting the water in a soft, ethereal blue. Shapes I couldn’t see before now shine in flawless detail, from the ridges of coral beyond the reef to the flick of a fish’s tail as it breaks the surface.
I blink, dazed. “What kind of app is this?”
“You’re not seeing through my Bond, Miss Waldsten,” Edmund says, and for the first time since I met him, he sounds a little shy. “You’re seeing through my eyes.”
I go quiet, trying to take in the sight without slipping off my board. I didn’t realize Blues could see in the dark like this. I know they have more genetic enhancements than we do, but it’s easy to forget how far they’re engineered to surpass us. Now it makes sense why Jack always has to nudge Edmund to turn on his headlights when he drives, and why he walks through the shadows as if they’re familiar hallways.
Minutes pass, but Edmund keeps the connection open, letting me borrow his sight and see the night as he does, for as long as I want. When I dip my head below the surface, I’m stunned to find I can see all the way to the ocean floor, where hundreds of seashells are scattered like gemstones across the sand. I lean off my board, arm extended toward a pretty pink one, but it lies too far beyond my reach.
When I finally lift my head out of the water, I disconnect from the Bond link. My vision shrinks back to its limits, and everything dulls in the pale wash of moonlight… except Edmund.
But he’s the only thing I want to look at anyway. Every part of his face is familiar by now, from the proud set of his brow to the slow blink of his wet lashes to the way his finger absently grazes his eyebrow. And yet the longer I stare at him, the harder it is to look away. Even in silence, even at rest, there’s something inside him that’s always moving, as if he swallowed fire once and it never went out, just settled deep in his chest and burns there, constantly.
I don’t realize how long I’ve been staring until Edmund looks up and catches me. Our eyes meet for a moment before I turn away, too obvious and too fast. My board jerks sideways with the movement, and Edmund reaches out to steady it. I grab the rails, working to regain my balance as the nose dips and rocks beneath me. All the while, I try to ignore the wild pulse in my gut.
“Miss Waldsten, you all right?” he asks.
“Yes, I—” I scrub at the gooseflesh on my arms, furious at it, at myself. This has never happened before, and it shouldn’t be happening now. “I’m just cold. There was a seashell down there that was pretty.”
Edmund nods, as if he only heard the first part, the part he can fix. “If you’re cold, we can head back.”
“It’s fine,” I say, still rubbing at the gooseflesh. “I’d rather be cold than stuck studying for Cloning Theory. I’ve got a quiz tomorrow.”
“You don’t like it?”
