Chapter 21: 21 Border Skirmishes, Part Two

By the time Angharad woke it was afternoon. Her head hurt from too much sleeping and she felt strange and out of sorts. Even after all those years of moving about the globe, waking up in a different bed felt not quite right, every time. At least, just this once, it wasn't a permanent change.

A glass of water and a note in Tsuyoshi's handwriting were beside the bed. That small kindness made a smile push its way on to her face.

Once she'd crawled out of bed and pushed on her shoes, she stumbled into the hallway. Straight into Jin.

"Finally," he said, already grabbing her by the elbow to drag her along. "We have to go look at the barrier."

She didn't have the energy to fight it.

*

By the time they'd reached the safe area a few metres from the barrier, the high pitched whine of its constant electric operation seemed louder than ever. Like the electric whine of a thousand alarm clocks piled on top of each other, struggling to remember their own time.

"If we don't figure this out we don't go home," Jin said.

His voice was hard, abrupt. And yet so small against the sound of the electricity that wanted to reach out to them, little fingers of it grabbing at the air in front of them.

She felt all her hair stand up and tried not to shiver.

"You don't want to be trapped here with people like me any more than I want to be trapped here with people like you," he said, from somewhere behind her.

This close to the barrier she felt like she would lose all sense of direction. She turned to look along the line of it, edging out around the buildings, and that strange, empty space neither they nor the barrier were meant to go into if they wanted to avoid contact.

"The barrier's changed," she said.

She started to walk along the side of that uninhabitable corridor, trying not to get too close.

"It's louder,” he said. “This is like walking past a power station."

She couldn't hear his steps behind her but his voice kept up. Anyway, he wanted to figure this out as much as she did. Not just to leave – she could see inside him that same curiosity, of wanting to unlock the same knots that keep knowledge tied away.

"There was one place I lived with daddy while he was building the company up. By a river," she said. "And there was this ugly, big power station near the pedestrian path I walked past all the time. It did sound like this."

"Reminisce some other time."

"If we walk too close we'll probably get cancer."

"You, maybe. I'm a second generation enhanced human. We're genetically superior."

She stopped. Turned to look at his face. There was something angry and afraid underneath his skin that he was trying very hard not to show, and failing spectacularly.

"Oh, now I remember why I had, like, zero interest in ever visiting your country," she said. "The famously gross eugenics and genetic engineering program."

"It's not the same as eugenics. It works. I can bend steel."

"Okay, and so can Josephine and all she did was work out really hard. I'm not impressed."

She huffed out a breath and turned back to following the line of the barrier, hungry and annoyed. If she focused on the barrier's whining she could ignore Jin's.

Angharad was sure more had changed than just the noise. She stopped moving again and Jin walked straight into her, clearly not genetically superior enough to pay attention. He moved back and she grabbed the sleeve of his shirt so he wouldn't move too far.

"The barrier has moved." She pointed where she looked so he'd see how far back the edge was from the place she'd expected the barrier to be. "Our portion of Zapville has gotten bigger. I think. Or maybe it's just shuffled to the side a little."

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"Keep walking."

He was quieter after that, not bothering her with stupid words as they walked as close to the edge as they dared, the rush of discovery speeding up their footsteps.

In the dark space behind one of the unoccupied buildings on the far side of Zapville, there it was. One of the smaller craft, flung further from the gate in the accident, scorched and scarred and split open like something had just crawled out. As they looked it over, Jin looked as freaked out as she felt.

He pulled a flash light out of one of his pockets and flicked it on. With that added light she could look inside the gap without touching its edges. Inside there was the charred lump of a body, baggage that looked burned, and a less burned side that looked like everything inside had been torn open by an injured animal trying to find its way out of a trap. Which was something she'd only seen in cartoons, sure, but she was pretty sure that was what that looked like.

She breathed in deep and regretted it. Stepped back, just far enough that she couldn't look inside.

"I can't believe I actually forgot this place hates us for a moment," she said.

"This wasn't on this side of the barrier before," he said.

"I know."

"Because we looked through all the craft that got to this side of the barrier to scavenge what we could in the first weeks after we got here, so if it had been here I would have known."

"I know that, Jin. People have already told me about the morgue and taking dead people's clothes and toiletries. I know already."

He stumbled over and grabbed her by the shoulders. "I didn't mean that you were emotionally fragile. Physically fragile, that's all. All I meant was that I'm physically stronger than you."

"You probably don't even think you're being insulting."

"It's not because you're Jewish, Angharad. Jewish people are the same as everyone else. Everyone here is physically inferior to me."

"You know, it's not even a novelty for me to hear some straight guy talking about how superior he is."

He shook her a little, and she clenched her hands into fists by her sides. I am a pacifist, she thought.

"I don't want to hear this from some rich, white girl–"

"I am not the people who killed your family!"

"You are just like–"

She tried to push him away, one balled up fist pressed tight against his shoulder. "And I'm sorry your stupid war turned into a proxy war between China and America, but–"

"What would you know?"

"I am not Tabitha!" she yelled. "Stop touching me."

He stepped back. She shook so hard she could barely breathe. The air was angry around them, the erratic hum of the barrier pressing in to the space between their bodies and the grotesque corpse of the ruined craft.

He pushed a hand through his messy hair and stood up straighter. "I do think you're smart and–"

"I don't care right now."

She turned and ran as far away from the barrier's edge as she could.

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