Chapter 31: 31 Nowhere Shines, Part Two

Jin had to pick up the whiteboard she'd found for him and some markers first, so Angharad followed him into the building he'd set up his room in. It looked a lot like the building her room was in – neutral-toned and brutally depressing – but with the layout flipped. She didn't go through his doorway, but from the hall his room looked neat and tidy, the bed made with severe lines. It made a neat contrast to the sloppiness of the way he looked day to day with his chaotic hair and rumpled shirts. The exact opposite of her and Sophie.

He strode out, fast. She didn't get why he rushed. Given that Sophie was with Tabitha the last time she'd seen her, Darren could turn out to be a monster from the deep and Sophie would still be safe. And it wasn't like anyone else talked to Darren all that much.

Angharad shook her head as she followed him out. There was no real reason to assume that he was only interested in protecting Sophie and not the whole of Zapville. That's if he thought about protecting anything at all, and didn't just want to figure out a puzzle. As he raced toward the barrier and she quickened her step to follow, she couldn't help but wonder if this puzzle would help them figure out how to get them all out in the long run, or was just another distraction.

At the barrier Jin stood like an A-frame house, and flashed his light at the edge of one of the buildings until Freya came out. Freya came out slowly, her steps measured and deliberate, not at all with the chaotic urgency Jin gave off some times or the foot-dragging slowness he affected at other times. Angharad had only slowly signed with Freya through the waterfall distortion of the barrier, but already she could tell that Freya was way too cool for Jin. Freya's uniform was always neat and her hair never looked messy. Freya carried a large notebook under one arm in a way that somehow made her look like a movie star, and not like she just didn't have enough pockets. Angharad was genuinely impressed.

Jin handed the torch to Angharad without even a word, then scribbled something on his whiteboard super fast. He held it up so Freya could see, but that wasn't any help to Angharad. He'd written in some language she couldn't read, probably just to be annoying. She was tempted to throw the torch at his head.

Freya smirked and wrote something on her notebook. Held it up: 'Don't be mean to her.'

Angharad started to laugh.

“What the hell!” Jin said. “Now you're ganging up on me? This isn't fair.”

“That's what you get for trying to exclude me,” Angharad said.

Freya turned a page in her notebook and wrote something else: 'No Darren on this side.' Then squinted at her marker, before turning another page and writing something else: 'As far as I can remember.' And then: 'I'll look into it.'

Jin scribbled, 'You're the best,' on his whiteboard, and nodded.

Freya closed her notebook, capped her marker, and then smoothly swivelled around and marched away.

Jin's posture collapsed as soon as Freya was out of sight. It even seemed like his hair got messier the moment she was gone, as if by magic.

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“They had no Darren. So he's a zombie sent to curse us all,” he said.

“He's not a zombie,” Angharad said. “Because that's stupid. Zombies don't exist.”

“He lived in the middle as a corpse and now he's come here to ruin us all.”

“Do you even hear yourself? Because you sound like you've totally dived straight off the edge.”

“Then what's your theory?” He squinted at her like that would make his crazy talk make any more sense.

“I don't have a theory. All we know is that Freya doesn't recognise his name. He could have used a different name on that side, if he somehow got through from one camp to another. I've had, like, tons of assumed names. Or maybe he was here all along but hiding somewhere, which means we just have to, like, look harder at all the places here and take notes maybe. Or some third option I totally haven't thought of. I mean, for all we know, we're not actually on Earth, and one of the underground rooms in the hospital is actually a portal to somewhere else.”

“So we're dead and this is the afterlife and we're all waiting to be judged worthy to go somewhere else.” He looked, if it was possible, even more grumpy.

“No! That's way worse than zombie theory. Not on Earth means space colonies or the Mars base. They're attached to the gates, too! We could be, like, totally on Z1 right now and not even know it.”

“Whatever. That's just as stupid. I'm going back to my room!”

She turned to say, “Hey!” even as he walked off with his head down and his feet crunching heavy over the gravel.

It wasn't until he'd gone behind one of the buildings that she realised he'd left her book in the hospital.

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