Chapter 98: 98 Hello World, Part Two

James swallowed. "Angharad, I can't believe you're alive."

"Are you surprised?" she asked.

She wanted to ask James if he was disappointed, instead, but letting the guard see their regular power struggle might stop her from getting what she wanted.

"It's been ten years. Of course I'm surprised," James said.

"Ten—" For a moment the world swam. Her chest ached. She'd missed an entire decade of life. But then did that mean that Niall Turner's timeline matched up? Angharad pressed her hands into the table until she could handle the shock. "That would explain a lot."

Like the grey in James' hair and the confusion in his eyes. He pressed his hands to his face and breathed deeply. She thought it seemed a rare moment of public discomposure – but then again, maybe it wasn't. A lot could change in ten years.

"Your father mourned you," he said.

She smiled, determined. "But I'm alive now. Cheer up. Be positive."

"You look almost exactly the same. Though I don't like this hair colour on you."

"Well, okay. I look almost exactly the same because it wasn't ten years for me. And also I am the person who gets to choose what hair colour I have. Isn't that so weird?"

"What should I tell your father?" he asked.

"That his daughter is alive and wants to see him," she suggested.

He stood up and paced up and down, hands dragging down his face. "I don't know if that's... A lot has happened and it might be a bit..."

She picked up her hands just so she could slam them on the table. "Let me see my father, James. Unless you want to explain to him why you won't let that happen."

He stopped rubbing at his face and leaned back, expression remote. "You'll have to cooperate with the people here by answering some questions first."

She smiled even harder at him, and then at the guard. "Of course. I only want to help."

*

They asked her questions about Zapville. They had probably asked everyone else first, but Angharad gave the best vague answers she could think of. No, she didn't know where it was. No, she didn't know who was in control or what it was constructed for. But that was the briefest part. After that, they asked her questions about what Zapville was like, the minor details she wished she'd paid attention to, and the bigger things she knew she'd taken notes on.

"Please describe what you can of the buildings," her interrogator said.

"Um, okay. So, a bunch of them were different. There were two larger buildings with bedrooms and showers, um, but I don't really know how to describe them. Like, I don't know stuff about architecture. And, uh, there was a hospital building with a morgue and a lot of tin sheds."

"Anything you can tell us about the layout and construction of the buildings would help."

"Didn't you ask other people this already?" Angharad asked.

"We're asking you."

Angharad assumed that was a 'yes, and' not a 'no, but'.

"Uh, well, there was... No, I should tell you about the barrier first! Not that I actually understood much about it, but I took way more notes on that." She paused, looking at her interrogator. He nodded. "Okay, so it was a really showy electronic barrier. I don't think it has much in common with Rod Spark's barrier tech, but, like, I don't know that much about Spark's work. But this was definitely meant to keep things in, not suck things out. I don't really get how that would work. Like, the physics of it? But we had no contact with the world outside. I don't even know where we were."

From there to questions about the people there. They placed pictures on the table and asked what she knew. Angharad became thankful Dr Yeoh had made her memorise all the medical files.

"Did you see these people?" Accompanied by a picture of two young people, smiling at a hand-held device.

"I saw them in the morgue. Electrocution, I think."

"Is this person still there?" A picture of the businessman she'd seen on the plane was slapped down onto the table.

"Dead. He died on the way there before we even crashed. Metal pole through the abdomen."

To the picture of Neo: "Dead. Gun shot wound to the head."

A picture of Ibrahim was put down in front of her and she made her eyes wide and said, "I've never seen this person in my life."

"Are you sure?"

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"Yes."

"What about this person?" They leaned over her as they pointed out a picture of Dr Yeoh.

She shrugged. "That doesn't look familiar."

The more the person leaning over her loomed, the more clueless and hopeful she made her face look. She blinked a lot and asked if she was helping.

And then they showed a picture of Gael, and she mumbled, "Internal bleeding due to a mysterious internal growth."

She breathed hard until she could blink the spectre of tears away.

*

They let her go into James' custody soon enough. And lucky for her, she didn't have to be alone in a car with him for long. He drove her straight to the airport and surprised her by taking all her bags out of the boot – she'd suspected everything had been confiscated by the military.

"Don't act so surprised. They wanted to make sure you didn't have any untoward designs, but you proved who you were and that you're as vapid and harmless as a girl can be."

She rolled her head around, considering that. "I guess they're stricter on gate travellers since the accident."

"Since the sabotage, you mean."

She took that in, rolled with it. "Yeah, since the sabotage."

"Be thankful to the people there for putting together these travel documents for you," he said. "Your passport was long expired."

She smirked and picked up one of her bags. "It wasn't a legitimate passport anyway."

*

The airport was alive with sounds, full of crowds of people moving in strange patterns, shining lights and colours and moving ads. Shopping, that's something she'd missed. Open airport shops full of product displays, piles upon piles of new books, the wine subscription booth and bad fast food restaurants. Mediocre coffee like a punch to the mouth. Angharad tried to pay attention to the important signs and overhead announcements but the airport was so vibrant with things to look at she could barely focus on anything.

And there was colour and movement outside the windows, in the big, wide spaces of the area where the planes sat in wait or moved across the tarmac, and the people and vehicles outside moving through their duties as the sun set.

In comparison, the droning of James' voice as he sat next to her was the most minuscule buzzing of an insect.

The plane ride was a blur of sights and sounds she hadn't heard in months. The chatter of strangers around her, going on business trips and making their way home from vacations blended into overhead announcements that didn't make her worry for her own safety.

Bits and pieces of bad sitcoms she watched over people's shoulders blended into bits and pieces of bad movies, and then news excerpts. She didn't put the earphones in to listen, only watched the pictures, the scrolling captions: something to do with Finance Minister Ritawati from Gazland and the Booker Prize, something to do with bad weather in Fiji.

Even the air plane food was exciting, welcome, a variety of flavours she'd not tasted in months. Had air plane food ever tasted so good? She didn't realise how much she'd missed bread or orange juice or cucumber and wilted lettuce until that moment.

She was so excited that she almost wanted to cry, like her face was so overstuffed with feeling it was going to start leaking out of her eyes. She'd spent so many years learning how to control her face and voice and yet there was a giddy joy in the tension of knowing that if she started to laugh she wouldn't be able to stop.

And then a taxi ride all the way to the California office, the front door lock still accepting her thumbprint, and then the echoing halls with their vibrant art prints that she'd never truly appreciated before, and then her father's room at the end of the hall.

Before the door James grabbed her elbow and held her back.

He spoke, quiet and clear straight into her ear, "He's been sick. He can't handle a huge shock and neither can you. Be careful."

But she shook him off and opened the door.

Her father was sitting up in bed, watching The Dark Crystal for the millionth time. He'd gained weight. He definitely had less hair. But that was him, still totally the same Leonard Silver she'd grown up with.

She dropped her bags and yelled, "Daddy!"

Then she ran up and jumped on his bed so he wouldn't have to get up.

"Angharad! Oh, my little girl," he said, as he looked at her face and touched her hair.

She cried and he cried, but there was no dangerous shock. He didn't struggle to accept any of it at all.

She was home.

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