Two months after impact

"And then Colonel Huppert told everyone here about it?" Angharad said.

"In English, then French, because he's dreadfully thorough," Tsuyoshi said, as he painted a second coat of dark blue on her fingernails.

"But not, like, the details, right?"

"Stay still, or I'll get this everywhere," he said.

She solemnly nodded and let her hand go limp on the table.

"Of course he didn't spill all the details. He didn't even see the bodies. The doctor is very strict about who she lets into her morgue," Tsuyoshi said.

"I'm so freaked out that we have a morgue. It freaks you out, right?" she asked.

"Maybe it should." He had strong hands, steady hands, and he didn't make a single mistake with the nail polish brush.

"Thank you for making me pretty," she said, when he'd finished with both hands. It was nice to put some effort in, when she'd spent so long not being able to. Even nicer to discover most of her nail polish had survived the crash, except for that one dark red that had leaked itself shut and gotten completely stuck to a wad of cotton balls.

"You were already pretty," he said.

"But I didn't feel pretty. Now I do! This is way better."

Dr Yeoh had declared earlier that morning that Angharad was well enough to move on her own, and so she should move out of the hospital, into one of the dormitory buildings, and besides they needed the bed. Angharad didn't ask for what; Dr Yeoh seemed to think a disease epidemic would break out at any moment and all residents of the settlement were going to be lining up to lie about, moaning in pain.

In the meanwhile, Tsuyoshi and Zelko were getting Angharad ready to face the public, and helping her check that she had everything in her bags. Apparently they'd been brought to the hospital by Josephine, whoever that was, and however they figured out which stuff belonged to Angharad. Tsuyoshi had helped her put a little make up on so she wouldn't look like the walking dead, and then made her nails pretty, too. It felt nice to be taken care of.

"If it weren't for the two inches of dark roots, I'd look great," she said.

"Unfortunately, there's nothing here I would use on your hair," Tsuyoshi said. "Try wearing a hat."

"I don't have any hats."

Zelko coughed and looked out the window. "I could fix this problem." His fingers tapped at his thighs as he looked out the window. Angharad wondered if he even noticed he was doing that. "You wouldn't like how I'd fix it."

Angharad found herself trying not to tap her own fingers. She didn't want to smear nail polish on this skirt. "Okay, but I'm totally open to hearing your solution."

"I die my hair," he said, and shrugged. "It's possible it's the same colour as yours. I have leftover stuff." He looked at them, winced, and looked away. "My hair might be going grey. We're stuck here. I'll accept it."

"How old are you?" she asked, confused.

"Ancient, clearly," Tsuyoshi said.

"21 isn't ancient. It happens to some people early. What can you do?" Zelko said.

"Then I accept your generous offer," Angharad said. "I'm okay with being a brunette again."

Tsuyoshi looked way more sad about it than he had a right to be.

*

It looked weird to see herself in the mirror with brown hair. Like she was a whole different person again. James had loved her as a blonde, constantly trying to touch his fingers to her hair no matter how often she moved away from his hand. But this was her – or at least, she'd been this person once. And he wasn't here, and she didn't have to care.

"Tsuyoshi is still sulking so I'll walk you to your new room, princess," Zelko said, and offered an arm.

She took it. She still felt a little shaky on her feet even after weeks of retraining her body to walk, like upright wasn't a thing she was meant to be for long. If Zelko wanted to push her along and carry her bags, she wasn't going to say no.

The building that people were using as a girl's dormitory was as depressing to look at on the inside as it was on the outside. Nothing but glaring off-white walls and fading painted numbers on the doors.

Zelko knocked on the door of room four and pushed in before anyone could respond. But when the door opened, it seemed like people were waiting for her to arrive. Three girls, and they looked nice.

The short one, with cool brown eyes and shocking pink hair, caught Angharad as she collapsed and helped her to a bed.

"Don't worry. We'll take care of her," said the girl closest to the door, who then slapped Zelko's chest and smiled. She had a strangely gravelly voice, like she'd been smoking six packs a day for years. She didn't look that old.

Zelko's face contorted into a lopsided smirk, and then he left.

"Stop flirting with him, Mac," said the girl sitting on the other bed. She looked like a standard California blonde. Angharad amended her assessment of them all. Two young women, and a girl younger than her. That was fine. She could get along with people of all ages.

"His boyfriend would break both your wrists," Angharad said, though she tried to sound friendly about it.

"I'm not scared of him," Mac said.

"I am," said Pink Hair. "Ah, I mean, Tsuyoshi's still my friend, but he is a little scary."

If she weren't so tired, Angharad would laugh. Instead she tried to rearrange herself against the pillows so she was almost sitting. It was more of a slump but at least she was upright.

"I'm Gemma," said the woman on the other bed. "And that's Mackenzie and Sophie."

"Just call me Mac,” said the woman by the door.

"Okay. I can do that. And I'm—"

"We know," Gemma said. She seemed like the kind of person to take charge of everything. That was okay. Angharad was pretty good at getting her way with people like that, anyway.

"Do you really think they're dating?" Mac asked. Her body was turned to them but she still looked through the door. Zelko had to be long gone by now. "I mean, I thought maybe they were just friends that hooked up. Are you sure it's serious?"

"It seemed pretty serious when I was looking at them," Angharad said.

Sophie smiled and helped her sit up properly on the bed. She seemed sweet, and much stronger than she looked. Or maybe it was just that Angharad was so weak that anything seemed strong in comparison.

"I don't really know why Mackenzie likes Zelko like that. He's so old," Sophie said. Winked, like it was their private joke.

"I mean, he's not really that old," Angharad said, a little confused that she was somehow defending this. "I sort of have a boyfriend that age."

"How can you sort of have a boyfriend that age?" Gemma asked.

"It's complicated." But she scrunched up her face and thought about it a little. "Okay, it's not really complicated."

"It's just not our business?" Gemma asked.

"Yeah. That. I mean, he's not here, so it doesn't matter how it's complicated, anyway."

"So you can flirt with anyone you like, and he doesn't have to know," Mac said. "It's pretty much the only fun you can have around here, anyway."

"No, I don't think that's how it works," Angharad said. But what did she know about how it worked? She supposed even rats in a trap had to find some joy.

*

Gemma and Mac had their own room and had only been there to help her settle in, so after she had another nap it was Sophie that took her to the cafeteria, or whatever everyone else was calling it. That was such a frustrating thing about this place – nobody could decide on what to name anything.

"The robots give us the food but it's all in these little containers," Sophie said, pointing to the set up. "Do you think they cook it, too? I've heard there's a kitchen back there."

"Who else would cook it?" Angharad asked. "There are, like, heaps of robots that cook. We had some at home for a while."

The robots moved swiftly with their little ladles, dumping food on people's plates and hitting people's hands if they held out their plates too long.

"I'm a vegetarian," Angharad said to one of them. "Do you have anything without animal stuff in it?"

It tilted its featureless head and banged the ladle it held against its other arm, letting a hollow, tinny sound into the conversation. She patted it at the joint where one arm connected to the upright column of the rest of its body.

"Never mind. You're doing your best."

It swivelled and dumped some yellowish goop that smelled kind of like chickpeas onto a plate. It would do.

"Hey, Angharad, you should meet one of my friends over there while we sit," Sophie said.

Sophie grabbed Angharad's elbow to drag her along as soon as she'd picked up her plate, so she went with it. Why fight it?

The girl at the table had dark red hair that fell onto the padded shoulders of a designer jacket. She looked up as soon as they approached and said, "Oh my god, I love your hair. It has so much volume."

"Thanks," Angharad said.

"It's so hard to keep your hair bouncy and vital in this soul-sucking environment. I'm Tabitha." Her eyes were kind of hooded but still big and round, and her mouth was rendered red by a perfectly applied lipstick. No smudges at all.

"And I'm Angharad."

She tried to eat the yellow slop and it was truly disgusting, but it was food. She felt awkward, but she had to force it down.

"I've been living off the last Katherine Gold magazine column for months now, and that's all the civilisation we have here. Nobody here cares about shoes or clothes except Sophie and me," Tabitha said.

"Well," Angharad said, perking right up. "There's also me."

"Lucky us. I like you already," Tabitha said. Her voice was kind of low like Lauren Bacall in that movie Angharad's dad liked so much, like Tabitha had practised trying to sound more mature than she was so many times it became automatic.

"Oh," Sophie said, and clapped her hands together. "We should invite Josephine to sit with us, too."

Another person mentioning the elusive Josephine. Now Angharad was actually intrigued.

"Did she get dumped by her loser girlfriend again?" Tabitha said.

"I don't see why you have to be so mean about them!" Sophie said.

"Maybe if she'd put some make-up on she could keep a date," Tabitha said.

"Wait, who is this?" Angharad said, interrupting their fight.

Sophie grabbed her arm again and said, "That's Josephine," as she pointed across the room.

Oh. It was the girl she'd seen in line to board on the day of the crash. Josephine wore a baggy black shirt and loose black jeans, and as she strolled across the room like she was sure of her own body, she casually pushed the hair out of the way of those round brown eyes. It was too short, though, and little bits flopped straight back onto her face.

Angharad tried to catch her breath.

"I think she's pretty without make-up," Angharad said. Was her voice too breathy, too obvious?

Sophie bumped against Angharad's shoulder. "She told us which bags were yours in the crash so people wouldn't ransack them for stuff and visited you almost every day in the hospital when you were asleep, see."

"Then I definitely have to meet her."

Sophie signalled to Josephine with some kind of weird hand gesture. As soon as Josephine reached the table, Angharad stood, as if to offer a hand to shake or something equally ridiculous. She pushed her hands against her skirt to remove the temptation.

"You changed your hair!" Josephine said.

Not the coolest thing anyone ever said the first time they met Angharad, sure. She smoothed her hair behind her ears and said, "Do you like it?"

Josephine cackled and said, "You are still an extremely attractive lady!"

Angharad could feel both of her eyebrows raising at once, without her permission. "Um. Thanks? Yeah, I'm feeling dizzy so someone needs to take me to bed. I mean, walk me to my room so I can take myself to bed."

"There could be none more enthusiastic about this task than me!" Josephine declared.

Okay, Josephine was probably the most uncool person Angharad had ever met.

"Yeah, I think I'm just going to get Sophie to do it. Enjoy the yellow mush."

*

"So, did you actually need to go back to bed?" Sophie asked. "Because you seem okay now."

"Oh, yeah, I was just overwhelmed. You should show me the rest of the place. I hear people actually have to wash their own clothes here."

Sophie stopped walking immediately. Angharad nearly bumped into her. Sophie seemed to be blinking a lot as she said, "You've never washed your own clothes before?"

"We have a robot maid at home. It's really sweet. I mean, what kind of inventor would daddy be if he didn't use his own robots? And I guess I didn't really need to wash clothes while I was in a coma."

Sophie clapped her hands and jumped a little. "I can teach you!"

*

The laundry room was big and grim and had only one light, which Angharad felt she probably should have expected. Only one other person occupied the room, a boy who looked around their age. Sophie steered them to the machines as far away from him as possible.

They didn't have anything to wash, so Sophie took care to point things out and explain them instead.

"Oh, this is way less complicated than I thought it would be," Angharad said.

The guy across the room snorted. "Great, another dumb bitch. Because this place wasn't crawling with them already."

Angharad felt a little rattled. People usually got to know her before deciding to dislike her.

Sophie clenched a fist and looked even more determined to look away.

"Are you deaf now, too?" he said.

"What's your problem?" Angharad asked.

"Well, I think it's that I'm surrounded by wastes of space like you. The court-appointed therapist disagreed." He slammed something and started to stomp toward them. "Do you want a demonstration of why?"

"U-um..."

"They should have warned a stupid girl like you about people like me."

Light washed over his face as someone threw the door open.

"How about this, mate?" And that was Tsuyoshi's voice forcing its way into the room. "You shut the fuck up and stay away from these girls, and in return I don't beat you to death."

"Whatever. You can't protect them all the time," the other boy said.

Tsuyoshi smiled and said, "Give me an excuse."

The other boy scoffed and raised himself up, like he considered striking at them anyway. Instead he turned and slunk out, leaving his things behind in a still-running machine.

"So," Tsuyoshi said, as he jumped up to sit on the top of a dryer. "What are we doing?"

He seemed in much higher spirits than that morning, his hair artfully arranged and his cheeks flushed. Whatever put him in that mood, Angharad wanted to soak up a little bit of for herself.

"Oh, I was teaching Angharad how to wash clothing. She said she never had to before because of the robot maid," Sophie said.

"Seriously?" He raised both eyebrows at Angharad. "I thought you said you were raised by a single dad. Who needs a maid for two people?"

"Oh, but like, we lived in daddy's offices, so the maid was also cleaning clothes for one hundred programmers and engineers."

"You must be sick of being around men after that!" Sophie said.

"Please, there were women there, too. But, yeah, men are boring. Except for Tsuyoshi, who is my favourite."

He leaned back in a way that seemed designed to show the sharpness of his collarbones and facial features off to most dramatic effect and said, "I assure you, the feeling is mutual."

*

Tsuyoshi seemed happy to walk them back to their room and give them opinions on everyone they'd met – Gemma and Mac rated an eye-roll, Josephine was "really strange", Tabitha rated, "a lot like you; I think you'll like her," and apparently their little settlement included a Buddhist monk and a member of the Catholic clergy that Zelko spent a lot of time conspicuously avoiding.

He and Sophie said something to each other in French at the door that Angharad didn't understand more than two words of, and then Sophie went in the room without them.

Angharad leaned against the wall to wait for him to speak. He touched a piece of her hair first, twined a piece between his fingers, and then rearranged the whole lot of it. She felt herself smiling against her will as she let him.

"You really do have beautiful hair. I liked it golden, the way it glowed like a light in the dark, but this is good, too. Very exotic."

"Oh, yeah, brown, the most common hair colour, so exotic."

He leaned back. "Stay away from Neo. He was on the prison transport for a reason. He really will try to kill you."

She watched him turn and walk away.

*

At night, even with Sophie there breathing loud in the other bed, sleep became hard to slip into. She stayed awake for hours, eyes closed, thinking about the people she'd left behind.

She knew Sophie had to feel the same way, from the way she sometimes cried at night, quietly to herself. Angharad knew she should get up and do something about it, say something to ease the loneliness. But she felt too tired from her own grief to try.