Chapter 84: 84 Coal, Part One

Ibrahim led her to the bathrooms, grabbed a towel or two and helped her clean up, his hands gentle as he wiped the muck from her face and hands.

"There, all better," he said, like her father used to say when she skinned her knee running around outside the factories. And then, "Don't worry about the blood. Most of us have touched it. I don't believe there's cause for concern, and if there is then too many of us would already be infected for it to matter."

By the time morning rose over the camp the fighting was done. Mnemosyne came inside, figure straight, and started to talk about the things outside in a lot of sentences too convoluted for Angharad to understand in that moment. With gentle hands Ibrahim indicated that it was time for Angharad to leave. She was too tired to argue, too tired to think.

In the endless maze of hallways, as she and Josephine did their slow shuffle toward the front doors, they passed Dr Yeoh, finally emerging from her self-imposed seclusion, with her son standing tall and awkward by her side. And just outside the doors, Captain O'Connor with her almost too sympathetic smile, saying words Angharad wasn't ready to hear. The ground was littered with corpses, dead robots ripped apart.

She couldn't hold it back any longer. The tears burst out of her, and Josephine too, and then they held each other, weary all over, crying into each other's clothes.

The walk back to her dorm building was a blur.

At the downstairs door, Josephine put a hand to her face and kissed her, once. It felt chaste, somehow, after all that.

"I should go find Jin," Josephine said.

Angharad nodded and didn't trust herself to speak.

The walk up the stairs was quiet.

Eleanor stood at the top, her face taut with anger. "Everyone thinks you're so nice, but you—"

Angharad clenched one fist so tight it hurt. "I just watched someone bleed to death, so right now I don't care that you're angry that I made out with your girlfriend!"

She pushed past, and stomped straight to bed.

*

Yong Jie stepped over the pushed over shelving unit and followed his mother into the hallway.

Someone else would have to deal with the door and the bullet hole in the facing wall. Or maybe they'd leave it like that forever, just to avoid the risk of Rod Spark offering his help.

She began to walk up and down the halls, banging on doors and yelling at people. Yong Jie turned up the hallway toward the large space near the doors, where other people had started to congregate. His face was wet with panic sweat and cold tears; he wiped at it with his arm and only made it worse.

Maria burst in and skidded across the floor to where Ibrahim stood. He murmured something and she burst into tears. It must have been about Gael. Yong Jie couldn't imagine what else could make her cry.

"We'll burn the bodies, of course, so they can't be used against us like this again," Mnemosyne said, once Yong Jie finally got close enough to hear them.

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"Yes, that's very wise," Ibrahim said.

"Please at least cover the bodies before you burn them," Yong Jie said. "Nobody else should have to see what happened to Gael."

"Did you see... Ah," Ibrahim said. "If it's any comfort, I don't believe he was alone when he passed on from this world."

"It's not," Yong Jie said.

*

Some of the machine people still wiggled their limbs, pointless and ineffectual like turtles on their backs, but for the most part the non-human movement had stopped. Jin assumed that was Zapville giving them a break.

He let out a deep breath and let himself relax.

In the big space outside the hospital Milo walked around with a broom, pushing the bits and pieces of broken cyborg bodies into a pile. Jin took that as his cue to walk slowly back to the dorm building where he knew Freya was waiting. He kicked one of the machines off the stairs as he walked up.

The sound of voices greeted him before he reached the bathroom where she still stood, ignoring the people who were milling around her. He focused on her level voice saying, "Okay, okay, okay," and waited for her to turn around and look at him.

When she turned her face was damp and not with sweat. Her eyelids had a tinge of red.

"What happened?" he asked.

"The doctor found the other walkie and let me know what happened to Gael," Freya said, her voice unwavering.

"How did she find it? Where did you leave it?" Jin asked.

"That's not the point, Jin," Freya snapped.

"Sorry, I..." He wrapped her up in a hug, warm and close. "Sorry. Cry if you need to."

He didn't hear any tears, but she accepted his arms around her and curled into his neck. Hugging, at least, was something he didn't suck at.

"Are we hugging now?" Sophie asked. "Is it group hug time?"

"Yes," Freya said, voice barely audible, and then Sophie wrapped herself around them, too.

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