Chapter 81: 81 They (Do Not) Live, Part Three

The door burst open again in the night.

Patrick, standing too close to the door, fell prey to one of the creatures before Maria could stop it. But at least she had enough time to move back and yell out loud that the door was open and everyone should hide before anything could hope to reach her.

*

Jin checked the doors.

Freya had decided to make their base in what had become the girls dormitory, even though the only room in the whole building that had windows was the bathroom, and even those were up high. On her instruction Jin dragged a chair into the bathroom. She climbed up over it and leaned a knee on the bathroom sink so she could open the window above it wide enough to push a weapon out.

"Is that safe?" Sophie asked, her voice all panic.

She jumped when Freya shot something and her bony hands worried at each other.

Jin slammed a hand onto Sophie's shoulder and smiled. "It's not safe for the machine people. We'll be fine."

"Someone should make sure 1090 is out of the way. I wouldn't want to shoot the robotic love of Angharad's life by mistake," Freya said. She laughed, bright and clear, and Jin's eyes were drawn back up to look at her, smiling and strong, posture perfect as she aimed out the window.

Sophie huffed. "Angharad would tell me if she was dating anyone, even this 1090 person that I haven't met."

"It's a joke," Jin said, "because Angharad won't stop being weird whenever she looks at her."

"Angharad may blush at many people, but when Sophie says Angharad isn't dating anyone, then Sophie is right," Sophie declared.

"Sophie needs to stop talking about herself in third person," came from Eleanor's gloomy voice.

"There's something coming in down..." Josephine burst into the bathroom and her voice trailed off.

But before she and Eleanor could get in too much awkward silence and staring, Jin said, "Why were you downstairs?"

"Because I sleep there," Josephine said. "Where's Angharad?

"She's in the hospital," Freya answered, voice steady. Everything about Freya was steady, unlike everyone else in the room.

"I'm going there," Josephine said.

"You're not going there," Jin said.

Josephine stood up straight, breathed in deep, and said, "You can't stop me."

Sophie grabbed Josephine's sleeve and pulled. "No, stay!"

Sophie had no real strength in her arms. Josephine broke free with ease and ran back out.

Jin ran after, yelling, "You stay here with Eleanor and Freya," to Sophie on his way out.

Downstairs, a thing was pushing its way in. The thick, heavy door dragged on the ground, like the worst musical accomplishment. The machine looked like less of a person than the thing he'd stabbed into the ground had – only the legs looked like they'd ever belonged to a human, and the rest was a scaffold of machinery, empty insides and no face.

Jin shoved Josephine to the side of the hall and shot at it, knees first. It collapsed in a pile of metal parts. As it tried to stand back up he could hear the whirr of a fan, working harder than it should, like in an overheated computer. It didn't make sense for it to be hot. The ground outside was grey-white with frost and the machine couldn't be working that hard.

He kicked it, and shot it down again. It stayed crumpled, the fan whirring on.

"Thank you," Josephine said. She jumped over the machine and ran outside as if that had been what he'd cleared the way for her to do.

He reached out a hand but she'd already run too far to catch.

The machines in the space between that building and the hospital turned their bodies to look at her as she ran past, but didn't move fast enough to grab her.

Did they use motion sensors instead of eyes? Of course they did. Jin had suffered through one of Angharad's boring rants on how difficult it was to design an AI that could see the way that humans do, and how many different problems you had to solve to get to that point. He'd barely listened. She and Jin didn't like the same machines. She liked cute things and the challenge of technical advancement. He liked planes and cars and sophisticated weapons.

Josephine reached the hospital doors. The Major, an upright sentinel guarding those doors, grabbed Josephine by the jacket sleeve and shoved her right through them.

A machine man moved as the Major did and reached out one of its arms, the strange tendrils reaching forward and almost doubling its reach. Jin raised the compact piece of sophisticated weaponry in his hands and shot the creature's arm straight off.

The Major nodded at him. Jin slipped back into the building.

*

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Angharad wandered back into Gael's hospital room. Milo had gone out at some point, replaced by Niall, and Tsuyoshi was still there, wiping things down with a dry hand towel.

"Milo felt his expertise was better used elsewhere," Niall explained.

"Uh, I guess to deal with Colonel Huppert?"

Tsuyoshi snorted, a low sound she could barely hear over the regular huff of Gael's breathing, then looked sideways at Niall Turner. There was a weird kind of tension there that Angharad didn't know the source of. Then Tsuyoshi mumbled, "Oh, yeah, give it enough time and everyone here will be in quarantine."

"Oh, because of..."

"Why am I not in quarantine?" Gael asked, voice light despite it all. "I'm here watching everyone come in and out."

Niall straightened up into that too stiff way posture he affected, and crossed to the window, a dark shadow against the blind.

"Because we already know you're going to die," Niall said. "And if your infection was airborne, we would already be doomed."

Then he tugged on the blind's string, and with a violent movement let the light of the outside world in. Beyond the hospital the weird grey light of day was giving way to the flood lights that lit up the night, and strange metal creatures roamed slowly in the gaps between buildings.

"You could say it more nicely to spare his feelings," Angharad said, already angry at Niall.

"What would be the point?" Niall said, as he turned in a dramatic motion. "We all know how this ends."

"You're such a dick," Angharad said.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tsuyoshi smile. She turned to look and took in the full force of his smile for the first time in what felt like days.

Angharad moved further into the room, closer to Gael's head so he wouldn't have to pull against the chains just to look up at her. She smiled down at him, and he smiled back up, gentle and sweet, but her eyes were distracted by the path of Tsuyoshi's elegant fingers as he dragged the towel across the sweaty edges of Gael's bed.

"It's good that you're here," Niall said. "With both me and Mr Okada to supervise you, there is no danger of you getting into trouble."

"Wow, so formal, so stuffy," Angharad said. "You're like the overbearing older brother I never had and never wanted."

Tsuyoshi's hands stilled. It took three of Gael's slow breaths before he moved again, pressing the towel in some other direction.

"Willow does call me overbearing," Niall said.

The sound of footsteps thundered through a distant hallway. Two people were arguing, somewhere in the hospital, though Angharad couldn't make clear their voices.

"Oh, uh, sorry. For some reason I forgot you were related to her," Angharad said. Niall's face, when she looked up at him, was severe. "Sorry, Gael, I guess you're stuck with only one girl in the room. I didn't have time to call in a whole cheer-leading squad."

"How can I get a girl like you?" Gael asked in a dreamy voice, then started to seize again.

Gael arched and stretched against his chains. He moaned and cried until Tsuyoshi put his hand on Gael's chest and pressed him down against the bed. Then there was only a faint gurgling sound coming from Gael's throat. Then a weird hiccup.

Gael's body calmed, and then so did his breathing.

Tsuyoshi stumbled back, breathing hard. His hand was wet, dark.

"I have his blood on me," Tsuyoshi murmured. "I'm fucking doomed."

"If you have tears or wounds on your hands—"

Tsuyoshi ignored the sound of Niall's voice, so Angharad did, too, reaching out to clasp Tsuyoshi's wet hand in her hand. She held him with all her strength until he looked into her eyes and the moment began to expand and time became as thin and stretchy as a really sheer chiffon.

"If you're doomed then I am, too, okay. Just hold on and we can deal with this together," she said.

He pushed her away and ran from the room, and as she stumbled back into the edge of Gael's bed time snapped back into its usual shape.

Niall stalked out after him. "For god's sake, Okada, be a man and..."

Then it was only her and Gael in the room, cosy with the warm sound of his breathing.

"I'm going to die alone," he said. His voice rose in panic and she could hear him begin to shiver again against the bed.

So she turned around and smiled at him with every warm feeling she could drag up at the moment. "Not alone. You have me. I'll stay here until the end."

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