Against The Current
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Matched
Copyright: Ally Condie
She is swimming along the river of her home, no longer quite human, flicking a redfish's scaly tail. The water is warm, and somewhere beyond the bend, her husband is waiting. She hears his laughing voice – Come on, love, catch up! – and glimpses his golden hair at the corners of her eye.
Behind her lies the world of the living, and she does not want to return.
"Lei!"
Not Vick's voice.
"Come back, Lei, please!" It's Carrow. Swimming after her, his lean strong body cutting through the water, his voice cracked with desperation.
"Come back for what?"
Life is the hopeless monotony of typing records, checking comatose bodies, and giving medicines that do not work; antiseptic, white sheets, black uniforms and red rashes. It is being without Vick, not even knowing how or why he disappeared. Any moment now, she will find him again. She must …
"Come back for your patients," he says. "For your co-workers. They need you. For the redfish and the river, your favorite painting and all the stories in your head. You don't have to be the pilot who died for her husband. Choose to live, Lei, for yourself. Maybe even … for me?"
Carrow – Xander – holds out his hand, as if to touch the back of her neck again the way he did when searching for the mark. His eyes are blue, bluer than the shimmering water around them. Not Vick's color, as she thought. A softer one.
She takes his hand and they rise to the surface in a glittering spume of spray: a human man and woman once again.