Chapter 3: 03 The Beginning, Part Two

Waking up took her a few tries. First, she drifted upwards from a warm fog, but her eyes hurt too much and she let sleep drag her back down again. Then again, and she felt like she was almost ready, but they just wouldn't open. Finally, she blinked back into the world.

She was in a room. Faintly off-white ceiling. Some sort of beeping sound. She tried to speak but her throat was too dry.

Footsteps, and then someone came around to move her body into a backrest of pillows. She smiled a dopey smile at her cute helper, barely able to control her face. He had dark hair, haphazardly tied back, with little bits falling around his face, and even better cheekbones than the girl with the ugly shorts. There was something kind about the look on his face. She could get used to being helped to move around if all her helpers were going to be that hot.

She fell in and out of sleep, and in and out of eye contact with the hottie, for at least another day. She couldn't be sure, though. Her time sense was totally busted by all the sleep.

When she could finally use her voice to speak again she asked, “Where am I?” and he turned to look at her.

“We all wish we knew the answer to that,” he said.

Her mysterious hottie, in a denim jacket patched with band signs and a picture of the maple leaf flag, was quite probably Canadian, though certainly not losing his mystery at all.

“What?” she asked, no less confused.

“This is where the ships landed. Wherever this is, we can't get contact with anyone outside the barrier, and there's no convenient signs saying where we are. It blows, right?”

Her head hurt too much to take it all in. How long had she been asleep?

“They're not ships,” she mumbled. How many gates did the accident happen to? They never let more than one vessel through at a time. She'd studied up about it for months before she'd packed to go.

The man rearranged her sheets with careful hands and headed for the door. He paused, and looked at her again. “I'll tell the doctor sleeping beauty is awake.”

“Are you my handsome prince? Did you kiss me awake?”

He raised one perfect eyebrow. “My boyfriend would have to object to that.”

“Is he cute?”

He laughed, voice dry. “I'm offended. As if I'd ever date someone less beautiful than I am.”

She could already tell she and the handsome stranger were going to be the best of friends.

“Is your name as beautiful as you are?” she asked.

“I'm Tsuyoshi. And you?”

“Are you sure there's no contact with the outside world?”

He nodded.

On the one hand, that meant being cut off from everyone she knew and loved. Daddy had to be panicking. James probably couldn't take care of himself, and Stacey and Elisa had to be carving up the social crew between them. Were all her favourite little robots getting lonely?

But on the other hand—

“I'm Angharad Silver. But I'm probably on the passenger list as Katherine Gold.”

"Wait, tech heiress Angharad Silver?"

"Yep. That's me. I mean, I'm not actually inheriting the company. It's not that kind of company."

"Sure, and you're here, and we'll probably all die here without ever seeing the outside world ever again, so you don't have to worry about that."

"Um." She wet her lips. "That's kind of depressing."

He shrugged it off. "I'm going to get the doctor."

*

Dr Yeoh arrived to check on her later. With her angular face and pale grey hair she had a tall and severe look to her, as she efficiently introduced herself, checked Angharad's vitals, and told Tsuyoshi off for not alerting her sooner. He scowled and looked away before he could rolled his eyes, but Angharad got the impression Dr Yeoh noticed he was doing that, anyway.

"I mean, I've probably only been awake for five minutes this time," Angharad said.

"Yes, and you've just been asleep for two months," the doctor said.

Two months! Her world span around her. Two months. That changed everything. Two months of being asleep, two months of being out of contact with the outside world, two months of nobody from outside the barrier that Tsuyoshi had mentioned finding them here.

Her hand clasped on nothing, twice, like it was trying to make up for her losing her grip on the world.

"You're lucky to be alive," Dr Yeoh said. Something about her voice suggested elocution lessons in the south of England.

Angharad looked up at the doctor and took everything about her in – white, collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, blue tie clipped into place with a tie bar, bland beige trousers and brown belt, and a controlled, efficient way of moving, other than the way her right hand moved as she spoke. Looked like the movement of a smoker jonesing for her next fix, not aware she was giving herself away.

But mostly, she looked like someone whose opinion she should trust. Like someone who expected her opinion to be trusted. Angharad was willing.

"But what happened to all the other people on my gate vessel? Are they alive?" Angharad asked.

"Some of them," Dr Yeoh said.

"Yeah, I guess business guy was obviously not going to make it."

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"Business guy?" Tsuyoshi asked, looking confused.

"Worry about that later," the doctor said. "If any of them are your friends they can come see you, if Okada here ever bothers to tell anyone you're awake."

"Use my first name, like a normal person" he said.

"Tell Zelko to stop making so much noise," Dr Yeoh said, and walked out.

"You use his first name!" he yelled. But then he turned and sighed, letting that hint of anger disappear. "She's always like that. And Zelko hasn't shut up even once in the time I knew him. He's not going to start now."

"Okay, I'm guessing he's the boyfriend."

"It's a good thing he's pretty, or I'd get rid of him," he said.

"Well, that's fair," she said, and laughed. Even that made her head hurt.

But as soon as Tsuyoshi was gone she was left with the reality of being asleep for two months in who knows where, without anyone from home being able to found out what happened to her.

She collapsed back on the bed, heavy all over, and thought about home. Was her father frantic? Did he assume she was dead? She'd spent so long trying to get him to relax his restrictions, promising that there was no chance what happened to her mother would happen to her. Now she had no way to call him and let him know she was fine.

She wished for a way to cross that distance. Instead, she was overcome by sleep.

*

After that was the indignity of limited mobility, legs that didn't want to carry her after so long asleep, needing Tsuyoshi's help to eat and Dr Yeoh's help to go to the bathroom.

Dr Yeoh was surprisingly nice. And funny. Or at least, she found Angharad funny, bursting out into laughter when Angharad said she was her new female role model.

"I'll give you some advice, kid. Don't ever tell anyone you look up to me," Dr Yeoh said. The doctor smelled like cigarettes a lot, so Angharad guessed she was right about the smoking. And the doctor had a son, "about your age. He's here, as well. I doubt you would like him."

If he was anything like Dr Yeoh, then Angharad was determined to like him. And when she was determined she usually got her way.

*

On the day that Tsuyoshi finally decided he would help her walk outside the hospital, they were met at the doors by a taller guy who smiled at Tsuyoshi like he'd never seen anything as nicely shaped before in his life. Handsome if you liked that squinty eyes, floppy hair thing, which she had to assume Tsuyoshi was into.

"Ah, this is the beautiful woman Tsuyo's been neglecting me for! I imagined you'd have bigger tits," he said. The boyfriend she'd heard so much about, then.

"Zelko, you're disgusting," Tsuyoshi said.

Angharad leaned further into Tsuyoshi's shoulder so she wouldn't have to say anything.

Zelko opened the doors in front of them, with a sweeping gesture. "Don't worry, some men like that sort of look."

"She wasn't worried," Tsuyoshi said.

Angharad didn't know how to describe what she was seeing in front of her. Sure, a bunch of buildings, the occasional person walking about between them – but where was this? The sky was a weird shade of grey, and the distant horizon rippled like it was melting in the sun.

"Is this, like, a settlement of some kind?"

"We don't know," Zelko said. "A bunch of us landed here. Nobody knows why."

They walked with her, slowly, through the gaps between buildings, just as grey and depressing as the sky. Some of them two storeys, some only one. The buildings looked like an homage to brutalism, which she only knew about because Justin in her accounting class was an old architecture nerd.

"Maybe something drew us here," Tsuyoshi said. "On purpose. I think the gates were sabotaged on purpose."

"I mean, of course they were," Angharad said. "But, like, all of them? There's at least 18 on the planet that the public knows about. Have people come here from everywhere?"

Tsuyoshi shrugged and it jostled her about. She still felt a little sick if she stood up too long, and that wasn't helping.

"Maybe. I haven't talked to most of the people here, because they're all assholes," Tsuyoshi said.

They stopped in front of a large metal shed-like structure, with a smeared sign and its door wedged open by a spare brick.

"Do you want to go into the cafeteria?" Tsuyoshi asked.

"I'm kind of tired," she said.

Tsuyoshi immediately lifted her in a bridal carry and turned around. Her head felt even more heavy than before as she slumped against his hard shoulder. She couldn't wait to get back into bed.

"Don't worry, princess," Zelko said. "The food will come to you even if you don't go to it."

If there's a barrier where does the food come from, she wondered, but she was too overwhelmed to ask.

After Tsuyoshi dumped her back in bed she rearranged herself so she could look through the door as far into the hallway as was possible. He and Zelko were arguing, maybe. They seemed like that type. Tsuyoshi looked angry, but when he kissed Zelko their mouths were slick and open. Maybe they just liked having angry sex. She watched a little too long, until the sight of their desperation started to make her uncomfortable.

She rolled over and fell asleep.

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