Chapter 95: 95 Departures, Part Three

Angharad waited for the news in the hospital. She drifted through the quiet rooms, trying to ignore the occasional blurry shouts from the gymnasium. It was too far away for any of the voices to be clear, but close enough that the mass of voices sometimes drifted to her ears along Zapville's intermittent, noisy wind.

Ibrahim found her first, but he didn't say anything, just got on with trying to clean the rooms as she checked on each of them. She moved furniture around, slowly but surely, and he cleaned behind it. Someone had to. Might as well be them.

They'd silently worked their way down to the ground floor by the time Jin found them, stomping into the room and blurting out the results.

Angharad didn't want to hear it.

"I won't go," she said.

"You don't get a choice in it," Jin said. "You're coming home with us. We will tie you to the third row chair if we have to."

"It's not fair that some people get to go and everyone else has to stay. Why can't Josephine go home, too? She deserves to go home as much as anyone," she said.

"I know she does! I voted for her! It's not my fault the vote went the way it did."

Angharad looked at her clenched fingers. "It's... It's not that bad here. I could stay."

Jin grabbed her by the shoulders and stared until she couldn't look away. "You hate it here, Angharad. You hate it like I hate it and Sophie hates it and Mackenzie hates it. You hate it like your friend Tsuyoshi hated it. It is killing us. You want to go home to your dad and your fancy life. Stop fighting it."

His hands clenched on her shoulders.

"Stop shaking me! It hurts."

He stepped back. "My body belongs to my country. I was engineered to fight for them, not to waste my time here."

Ibrahim, paused in the process of cleaning the room where Darren used to sleep, clenched his hand around his towel like a claw. "Your irresponsible government convinced you that your body belongs to them, not to you, just because your parents sought fertility treatments from an unethical state-sponsored medical establishment. You were used by them."

"I was happy to be used!" Jin yelled. "I want to go back to the country I fought for! I want to see where my family are buried! I want to go home."

He stomped out, skin red with anger.

"He isn't wrong," Ibrahim said, his voice carefully measured. "This place will kill you. You should go home."

*

Angharad went into another room to pick up things and mope. Tabitha had left her vintage coin purse on the dresser, maybe while she'd been hiding from the zombie machines. Angharad smoothed her finger along the fading beads and fraying gold thread.

Niall walked in, stood in her way.

"I don't want to talk to you," Angharad said.

"You're getting on that plane to go home," he said.

Angharad turned away, but Willow stood tall behind her, blocking her in. Great, they were trapping her.

"Don't I get a choice?" Angharad asked.

Behind her Niall said, "There's a time distortion in the gate. We left to come here years after a group of people here had already gone back, and you the most famous among them. You make the choice because you've already made the choice."

Angharad's long nails pressed against her palm when she clenched her fist. She huffed out a breath and let it go.

"Me the most famous?"

In that moment she was less sure than ever that Niall Turner really was who he said he was. But she knew the choice had been made for her.

She nodded at Willow, and Willow moved out of her way.

Fine, she'd exchange one trap for another. The choice had already been made.

But when she left the room she spun out to face them again. Only one group? Willow and Niall slammed the door, their faces knowing.

*

Freya grabbed one of Angharad's hands, and then Sophie grabbed the other, and they jumped up and down, light as air.

"We get to go home!" Sophie shouted.

"Okay, okay, I'm excited," Angharad said.

She started to laugh, a little overwhelmed by the current of their enthusiasm.

"Everyone's already in our room packing things up," Freya said.

"What's to pack?" Angharad asked. "We already have everything in our bags."

"Oh, but there's Tabitha's stuff and..." Sophie said, and then trailed off into a sigh.

Angharad huffed out a breath. "Okay, let's deal with that."

The room felt overstuffed with people when Angharad walked in. Eleanor scoffed and shoved past her on the way out but Angharad got distracted immediately by the low, rumbling, vaguely ridiculous argument between Jin and Mnemosyne as he shoved one of Tabitha's embroidered handkerchiefs into his own pile of dark clothing.

"It's a shame that so many of these beautiful things are going home with you," Mac said, looking straight at the purple dress Tabitha wore at that ill-fated party. "I mean, it's not like she's using them. Why can't some of it be for the rest of us? Can you even fit it all in your own bags?"

Angharad rolled her eyes, marched over, and dumped out one of her own suitcases, letting all her most frivolous, useless stuff fall on the floor.

"Now there's room!" Angharad declared. "And anything in this pile you don't want or can't fit in your own bag, Gemma can have."

"Are you sure?" Mac asked, face a little shocked.

"I mean, it's just stuff," Angharad said.

Jin picked up a red dress from the newly created pile and dangled it in front of her. "You're keeping this. You looked good in it."

"Ooh, I need to see you in this dress!" Freya said.

Sophie jumped on the spot and clapped her hands. "Can I sleep in here with you guys tonight?"

"Sure," Angharad said. "I'll even help you pack."

And then Sophie ran out of the room with a squeak, and Angharad ran after her, breathless and laughing, and left everyone else to deal with the mess.

*

When she opened the door to Tsuyoshi's tin shed late in the night it felt too quiet, and more empty than even a truly empty room would feel. There was a deadness to the air.

But his bag wasn't there, anyway. She'd wasted her time.

"Oh," she said, quietly to herself.

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She closed the door and turned away, strolled across the space between buildings near the humming edge of Zapville until she saw Ibrahim watching her, silently, from the half-open door to his own tin shed.

She stopped walking when she noticed him and tried to smile. His smile in response was similarly weak.

"Are you looking for Tsuyoshi's belongings?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Then come in," Ibrahim said. "I have everything."

The inside of the room he shared with Milo was warmer than everything outside. Everything in the room was organised neatly in a way that looked like it belonged in a photograph, exactly as she'd suspected. Milo, paused in the action of cleaning something that was already clean, nodded at her.

Ibrahim retrieved a small bag from one of the top bunks. "It's not very full or heavy, I'm afraid, though I suppose that makes things easier for you."

"Yeah, I mean, I guess," she said.

Ibrahim handed it to her, and she looped it over her shoulder. It was lighter than she expected. Or maybe she had become stronger than she realised and could carry its weight easier.

Milo pointed to a book that rested on top of their small set of drawers, taking up pride of place next to a glossy, laminated copy of the Koran. "Tsuyoshi left his copy of The Remains of the Day here. Do you want it?"

Angharad nodded with her whole body. "Yes, of course! I'll take very good care of it."

*

The day of departure dawned. Almost everything had been packed into the craft the night before, so on the morning they were allowed to leave all Angharad had was her outfit for the day and a small bag with what she wore the night before.

She dropped it outside the door of Dr Yeoh's office and knocked on the door frame.

Irene Yeoh startled, shuffled all her papers, and jerked up at the sound. She looked tired and stern, but when she saw Angharad one half of her mouth softened like she wanted to smile.

"I thought we could talk one last time," Angharad said.

"I won't make a big scene outside. I wasn't planning to say goodbye. We will see each other again," Irene said.

Angharad nodded. "We will."

That morning her shoulders felt light. It was easier to choose to have faith.

Angharad waited out Irene's awkward silence. Then Irene shuffled over and wrapped Angharad in a surprise hug. Angharad hugged back almost immediately. She needed it, too.

"Don't tell anyone I cried," Irene said.

"I won't."

"And talk care of yourself."

"I always do," Angharad said.

"You almost never take care of yourself. You have the self preservation instinct of a video game lemming."

Angharad laughed. "But I'm cute and other people love to take care of me. I'll be fine."

*

Almost all the goodbyes had been said, and Freya and Jin leaned against the craft, waiting for Angharad to be ready to board, but there was still one last person Angharad didn't want to leave.

"So, this is it," she said.

Josephine righted her body from its slump and said, "Indeed! You begin your journey home! This marks the end of your adventure, and you return older and wiser but no less kind." Josephine knocked Angharad on the shoulder with a fist, the same way she sometimes did to Jin.

"This isn't Star Wars episode 19. I'm not a fantasy hero."

"No. I don't like Star Wars. I like you," Josephine said.

"You don't have to pretend you're okay with this."

Josephine looked at her feet. "I don't want people to see me cry."

Angharad looked around at the people watching, at all the people she'd be leaving behind. Antoine, who hadn't been afraid to cry when he said goodbye to Tony earlier. The Turners, silent and mysterious. 1090, the machine woman of her childhood dreams. And Eleanor, arms crossed and glaring at them from where she leaned against the girl's dormitory like the delinquent in one of those old teen films.

"I'll give them something to look at," Angharad said.

She grabbed Josephine by the face and kissed her, soft and sweet and not the slightest bit chaste. Josephine wrapped her in her arms and kissed back.

They'd wasted so much time. If they hadn't sabotaged it so much and been so afraid they could have been doing this for months.

They only parted at the sound of Freya whistling at them in mockery.

Angharad looked at Josephine, at her big brown eyes and soft smile.

"I won't forget you," Josephine said.

"You better not," Angharad said.

But she let go.

Angharad walked to the craft and looked at Jin and Freya's amused faces. She felt pretty good about herself. She looked back at Josephine's blushing face once to give an exaggerated wink, an image of herself for Josephine to really remember, but then people were helping her into the craft and strapping her into her seat and she couldn't look back any more.

"Really?" Sophie said, gasping, as she leaned over the edge of her seat. "You and Josephine?"

"Oh, yeah," Angharad said.

From the pilot's chair Mnemosyne warned them not to get out of their seats.

"Since when?" Sophie asked.

"Since the moment I saw her in line on the way here and thought she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But, technically, I didn't kiss her until months later."

Sophie looked kind of excited at the news, but she turned back in her seat and murmured, "Poor Eleanor," anyway.

"You think you're the coolest person here, don't you?" Jin said.

"Of course I do," Angharad said. "I'm amazing."

"Everything in the craft secure," Maria O'Connor said.

Outside, the gate lit up, but its rumbling sound was muffled in Angharad's ears. And then they shot up and through the strange near-liquid shimmer of the portal to go home.

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