Chapter 111: 111 How Ending Starts, Part One

Two and a half years after the return home

Angharad had never paid so much attention to conspiracy theories and UFO sightings in her life. It wasn't that she tracked down every bit of bad information on her own – Mnemosyne was a bit of a conspiracy theory nerd and sometimes sent links to one of Angharad's email addresses, not that the links she sent were helpful so much as completely bizarre. The combined paranoia of every lunatic on the internet made Angharad feel both careless and sane in comparison.

Which said something, given she'd just been broken up with for being paranoid and crazy.

For once she spotted something she thought might have been useful – a sighting of a strange craft near a supposed military black site. She spent a fruitless three hours that afternoon trying to look up any further information on this sighting to see whether it might be credible. She should have been studying something else instead.

The next morning she realised she needn't have bothered. That property of Antley Grapfoy that she'd been watching out for for years had landed in Apple Sweep, out in the Western edge of the southernmost nation of the Constructed Territories.

Captain O'Connor had already worked her way in to see them. It would take more money than the Captain had to grease enough palms to get them out.

*

What she'd seen of the Northern Constructed Territory might have been unnaturally green, but what she could see of the southern territories had an unnatural smoke haze instead. She couldn't fly straight in to Gazland, instead having to take a plane to Singapore and a boat from there. And from there a private car to Apple Sweep.

Apple Sweep was strange, and not just because of the way everyone dressed like they belonged in an old and out of copyright Hollywood film. She saw shabby apartment buildings and slick mansions in the same street. The city was littered with the decaying remains of tech companies that had imploded even before the war. Strangest of all was the graffiti, growing like an invasive vine across the sides of building, gritty and weird, only sometimes pleasantly artistic. And more often than she'd like, featuring pictures of Angharad's face as she'd looked in that image taken by that drone the Canadian military had shot down.

She felt more visible than she ever had in her life. There was use in becoming a symbol, she knew. That didn't mean she had to like it.

When Angharad walked through the central business district on the way to meet with Maria and Mnemosyne, she was sure every face in a video ad all down the main street turned to face her as she walked. But that was paranoia.

"Can you see me, Antley?" she mumbled to herself as she walked.

To her left, an ad for terrible Australian beer interrupted itself to say, "It's not only me that sees you," and then went back to its pre-programmed advertisement.

*

They let her see the prisoners first, before the final details of their release were arranged.

Angharad smoothed down her black skirt suit and opened the door. Tsuyoshi and Zelko sat in a small room, still wearing the clothes she remembered them wearing on the day they disappeared from her life. She wasn't sure how long they had been wearing those same clothes.

Zelko looked up when she entered the room. She could see the calculation in his eyes as he took in the way she looked, before he gave her an ingratiating look. How clever of him to figure out she had the power to decide his future.

Tsuyoshi looked at the floor.

"You look great, Angharad," Zelko said. "New haircut?"

She smirked. "I assume somebody else has already informed you of how the times have, how should I put this? Changed."

"Right! I was born 35 years ago but I still look 22. People will ask what my secret is," Zelko said.

She looked at Tsuyoshi again. He looked tired, his under-eyes puffy and dark. He'd somehow grown an impressive beard in the time since she'd seen him, even though she'd never though of him as particularly hirsute. And no matter how long she looked at him, he continued to stare at the floor. He had been ignoring her the last time she saw him; it seemed he was still. She reminded herself that for him it had been only two weeks. For her it had been almost three years. In a few months she'd be 20 and then they'd be the same age. That was almost too weird to contemplate.

"I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get away from here," Zelko said.

When she looked at Zelko again his smile was even more bright and desperate than it had been two minutes earlier.

"Well, okay, it's like this. The officials don't want to let you go unless they're sure you have work somewhere. And, okay, like, NACEMC dissolved years ago. Apparently there was, like, scandals and stuff? And also I'm kind of, uh, I don't have a good relationship with the entire nation of Canada right now. So, uh... If you're willing to work on Sophie's dad's farm..."

"Great, we'll take it," Zelko said, with a manic laugh. "Let's be labourers."

*

At the same time Maria O'Connor went elsewhere in the complex to identify Tabitha's remains. Tabitha's father had handed her responsibility for Tabitha's life with his dying breath. Maria couldn't say she'd managed that responsibility well. Tabitha had been a media symbol too complex for her to handle, and a teenager too strong-willed for her to tame. But she'd take responsibility for Tabitha after her death and give her all the dignity she could.

*

Angharad sat back on the hotel bed. She had piled the pillows up against the headboard while she made half the notifications – Maria O'Connor had promised to do the rest – and now she felt like she might sink into the wall.

"You don't want to fly in?" she asked.

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"I don't really want to leave home right now," Sophie said, her face blurry through the phone. "Or ever again maybe."

Angharad stared at the bland off-white wall and nodded. "Yeah, I get you."

"It's not that I don't miss her," Sophie said. There was a crack at the edge of her voice.

Angharad looked back at her phone, propped up on a mini tripod further down the bed, at the grainy video image of Sophie wiping at her face.

"Hey, no, I totally don't doubt that you do. Of course you do. It's just travelling that you don't miss. Because..."

Sophie wiped her face some more and nodded with a decisive motion. "Because of that thing that happened to all of us that we don't really need to mention."

"So we won't."

"I don't know how I'm supposed to feel," Sophie said.

Angharad remembered helping Tabitha into clothes. Remembered Freya helping Tabitha out of them, helping her to shower. Tabitha's bitter laugh, the way she sometimes lashed out so hard it made Sophie cry.

They were always going to arrive at this end point. She'd known that the whole time. It didn't help.

"I know what you mean," Angharad said, and slid down onto the bed.

*

It would be too much bureaucratic hassle for Angharad to go out and meet them when their boat came in, so Jin and Freya met her at the hotel instead.

Angharad opened the door at their knock and Jin barged in first. He was warm in a giant red coat when he hugged her, not too tight, even as his head pressed right against the skin of her neck. Jin was always a committed hugger, never ashamed of his need for human contact. When he drew back and Angharad could finally get a good look at him she realised his hair had gotten long enough that he had to brush it out of the way before she could notice how dark and wet his eyelashes were.

Freya, by contrast, looked like she was dressed for a tropical climate instead, and her long, thin limbs were tanned and golden. She tossed her hair out of her face and gave Angharad a hint of a smile.

It was hard for Angharad not to cry as soon as she saw them, so she held off the tears until five minutes later instead, when they'd all managed to sit on the bed.

"Are you okay?" Freya asked.

"Of course I'm not okay!" Angharad said. "My friend just died, and this stupid time distortion means that I don't even know if she just died, or died ten years ago, or technically won't die yet until some nebulous point in the future and her body came back in time. Are you okay?"

"I could be worse," Freya said.

Jin laughed, just once, and slumped over onto his knees. "I know I'm not okay. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. There's no point or purpose to anything I do when I'm not investigating who sent us to Zapville and why. I waited years for the moment when we could bury Tabitha and now what do I do? We achieved nothing."

"We don't have to achieve everything," Freya said. It sounded like it belonged to a long running argument.

"I hate my job," he said, and then Freya said, "But you have a job," and then their argument descended into angry mumbles until Freya said, "But Angharad is doing fine! She's studying! She has direction! She's got a new girlfriend."

"I got dumped," Angharad said, "because apparently I'm too paranoid. I can't try to have sex without thinking about electrocution. I'm always worried about being watched. I'm always thinking about who did this to us and why.

"I'm not fine. We don't have to be fine. The thing that happened to us was awful. It's okay to say that."

"I think we should all sleep together," Freya said.

"What? No!" Angharad said.

"No way," Jin said, shaking his head.

"We're attracted to each other and we're all too stressed. It would solve those problems," Freya said, voice way too calm.

"How much did you have to drink?" Jin asked, voice low.

"Vague attraction to people isn't a problem," Angharad said. "It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't need to be solved."

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