Kat sleeps with the data. Old school, USB, under the Mouse pillow.

        Caught the methane release in real time, live, last night, by chance. Was messing around in her former company’s servers, suspecting they had an imperceptible delay on a few key sensors. Less than a second, but enough time for them to alter the numbers. She’s tired of the courts, the endless appeals, the satellites she and her new coworkers have put so much time and money into, only to have the validity of the measurements questioned into irrelevancy.

        The Mouse pillow is plain, cotton, given to her by her ex, who also got tired of the courts, the endless appeals, the satellites, etc. But also tired of her, Kat.

        She hates the pillow, but it’s the only one she has on the island. No matter; by the end of today, she will have handed off the USB to the Times and can get some actual sleep, actual windows, and not flimsy scrap aluminum that invites, if not encourages, the relentless wind.

        Mouse’s doing, the hodgepodge cabin. Kat’s grateful to have had it, to keep working here, weeks after the breakup, but how amazing a real bed will feel, tonight.

        She wraps the flash drive in an embarrassing amount of plastic. The kayak is her only realistic method of leaving the island, and Kat’s not great with the paddle.

        It was Mouse who always navigated, Mouse’s name on the side of the vessel, a vanity Kat had laughed at until it wasn’t funny anymore. After the final fight, Kat had a moment of panic, watching Mouse storm out of the Frankenstein door, barely hanging onto its hinges. There was only one kayak. She would be stranded.

        But Mouse swam. She watched her ex round the bend and cursed the moonlight for being in the right place so that she could see how effortlessly Mouse moved through the water. She didn’t need to check that Mouse had made it to the coast and cursed herself for checking the next day, online.

        Now it’s her turn. Data safe under a wad of the fossil fuels she’s fought against for so long (but not, as Mouse had quipped, long enough to make up for being on the wrong side, initially), she pushes out from shore and at once falls under waves.

        She tries again and again but cannot steady herself. Her old bosses are going down–but only if she doesn’t drown.

        Kat takes a break, dries herself off. She sits on the rock she tried to get Mouse to sit on too, to watch the sunrise. But Mouse would say, “It hurts my butt. And the sunrise doesn’t need us.”

        True, it doesn’t need her, Kat thinks. But she needs it this morning. She checks the USB–still dry, as her hair will be when she eventually gets the boat to balance right and leaves.