Chapter 75: 75 The Sound Before an Earthquake, Part One

Angharad, of course, was completely oblivious to all this drama. Her mind was on other things as she sat on the floor in Freya's cabin, trying to hide the extent to which she was freaking out. As per usual.

It wasn't the smallest room in Zapville, but with that many people in there it still felt kind of cramped. Mnemosyne and Maria sat next to each other on the rug, opposite Angharad, who leaned back against Freya's bed. Whenever Maria's posture started to slump she would look over at Mnemosyne and straighten up. It would almost be funny if they were talking about anything else at the time. Jin sat on Freya's bed in his flight uniform, his jacket unbuttoned and hanging open like he thought it would make him look cool, and his hair the usual mess. And Freya was halfway between the bed and the rug, patting her friend Gael on the shoulder.

"I'm not the only person who thinks it's messed up that this happened to Yong Jie and nobody has done anything about it, am I?" Gael asked.

"What could anyone even do?" Angharad replied.

Jin slammed a hand against Freya's quilt. Super dramatic. "We could go after the person who did it," he said.

"Okay, but we still don't know who that is," Angharad said.

Freya tilted her head, considering. "I did go to see him in the hospital but he was unconscious most of the time. He didn't want to talk about who was responsible. I don't think he's at peace with his injury yet."

"Who would be?" Gael asked. "What the hell, he just lost an arm."

"You can live without an arm," Andrew said from across the room, voice low and flat, but kind of soft and muffled.

Until that moment Angharad had forgotten he was in there. She knew he'd served under Ms O'Connor and that he talked to Tabitha sometimes in a quiet voice; she'd seen them talking, from a distance, sometimes in the quiet hours of the morning, and watched the way Tabitha would often storm off afterwards, face like a rain cloud. Angharad never asked. Not her business, even if she really kind of wanted to know.

"You're missing an eye, not an arm," Jin said.

When Angharad looked up to where Jin sat on Freya's bed he was rolling his eyes. Totally predictable.

"It's just a body," Andrew said, straight into his pillow.

"I think it's up to Yong Jie to decide for himself how he feels about the amputation," Mnemosyne said. "Undoubtedly he experienced great physical pain in a traumatic situation. However he comes to terms with it in the long run, I don't feel we need to expect him to be comfortable with the loss now, when the loss is so fresh."

Maria inclined her head forwards as Mnemosyne spoke, and something about the look in her eyes as she watched Mnemosyne's face made Angharad think that maybe, if it wasn't against the rules here, they'd be sleeping together. Love across the lines or something. Or maybe not – this was probably why James said she read too much romance in her continued attempts to puzzle out how people worked and fit together. It was easy to imagine soft feelings between people who barely thought of each other at all.

"Whatever. We all know Neo did it," Jin said.

"We can't prove it," Freya said.

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"Who cares?" Gael said. He tossed his hair out of his eyes and scowled as he looked around the room. "I don't see why we can't take the fight back to him."

"Let's see," Freya said. "Is it because you have puny arms? And if Neo just put Yong Jie's arm into a metal press he could do much worse to you?"

"Yeah, I think that's the reason," Angharad said.

Gael left not long after that.

Jin left later, after they'd compared notes on everything they'd found out about Zapville and tried to make progress on finding out what it all meant. Not that they made any real progress. But even if it didn't do a whole lot yet, at least working together meant they had something to do.

But first Freya walked Jin to the door, even though that was basically only five steps away, and wouldn't let him leave without a kiss, sloppy and hot. Maybe the real reason he left his jacket open was so she could slide her hands under it much more easily. It wasn't until Mnemosyne cleared her throat that Jin finally left the room and Freya closed the door after him.

Angharad blinked away the after image.

"Do you think Tsuyoshi needs someone to make him feel better about all this? I mean, he had to scrape that guy's arm off the metal plate and everything. That had to be gross," Angharad said.

"You worry too much about your friend," Freya said.

*

Angharad stayed in Freya's little hut all day. In the night, they huddled together under Freya's covers, trying to share enough body heat to stave off the creeping cold.

Not that they could sleep with all the noise – a loud, relentless industrial noise like all the machines in the camp had woken up and wanted their voices to be heard.

"If I put my head under the pillow to block out the noise I won't be able to breathe," Angharad hissed.

Freya's laugh was soft and rough. Angharad could hear in her voice how tired she was, too, and feel it in Freya's hands when she smoothed Angharad's hair out of the way.

"If you put the pillow over both of us, at least we'd go together," Freya said.

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