“What number was it again?” Jade asked as she skipped down the hall, examining the shiny silver numbers on each of the doors. Behind her, albeit with nowhere near as much enthusiasm, the rest of the group followed in silence. The awkwardness from the car ride still shadowed them despite Jade’s attempt to lighten the mood, and Nina didn’t think that it would be leaving any time soon either. Despite the tension, she had remained under Svanda’s wing for the time being. Maybe Reina would see it as her picking a side, but Nina still thought that she was doing the right thing. Even if she didn’t necessarily agree with everything that Svanda had said, Svanda was clearly isolated and in turn needed support.

“Nineteen,” Reina replied, hands in her pockets and she led the remainder of the group.

Contrary to just about everyone’s expectations, Reina had organized for them to stay in an apartment. Nina had almost groaned when she first heard about it, but fortunately she managed to shut her mouth before her displeasure was vocalized. Space to collect their thoughts was what they needed right now, and so squeezing them into an apartment was a simple yet effective way of denying it. Perhaps it was an intentional decision. If it was, Nina didn’t know if she should praise Reina’s foresight or curse it. It wasn’t lost on her that their new arrangements would also make it easy for Reina to keep an eye on them, and the fact caused her to wonder if Svanda would really persist.

Apart from developing an irrefutable argument, Nina didn’t see how Svanda was supposed to break through Reina’s stubborn streak and change her mind.

“Keys!” Jade said as she turned to face them, pointing at the door she had stopped beside. With a wry smile, Reina pulled them from her pocket before tossing them in Jade’s direction, watching as she snatched them out of the air before unlocking the door. Everyone knew that Jade’s current mood was just a veil over her desire to snatch a good bedroom, yet nobody complained as they watched her disappear inside. As for Nina, she didn’t really care. She still viewed herself as being at the bottom of the pecking order anyway, so she was happy to simply take what came her way. It would probably be slim pickings anyway, considering that the two best rooms were already gone. Jade would have picked her room of choice before they even set foot inside, and it didn’t even need to be said that Reina took the best for herself.

“Not bad,” Trim said as the rest of the group filed into the apartment. Immediately to their left was a small square kitchen, while behind it sat a living room with floor to ceiling windows which looked out onto the street. A few streaks of orange were littered through the largely grey and white space to provide it with some contrast, and the modern touch was something that Nina didn’t mind. The hallway that sat in between the two spaces, however, was the focus. Stretching away into the depths of the apartment, it housed the bedrooms which would serve as their private spaces for the next three days.

In a surprise move, Svanda quickly stepped around Trim and Reina before walking to the corridor, disappearing down it before either could say anything. The decision caused the two to take a second glance at each other, although they only shrugged before following her. Nina, who was at the back, frowned at her prospects. After Reina took a room to herself and Jade shared with Aline, Svanda and Trim would almost certainly share another room which would leave her with Saela. It wasn’t ideal, but it was manageable. Waking up in the middle of the night when Saela returned from whatever she usually got up to was a bit of a pain, but at least the evenings were peaceful when she wasn’t around.

“I’m sharing with Nina,” she suddenly heard Svanda say from the hall, her attention drawn by the words. Stepping into the corridor, she saw Svanda leaning against the doorframe closest to them with her arms crossed, Trim standing before her with a thin frown across her face. Pausing where she was so that she didn’t get involved, Nina stood where she was for a moment until she saw Trim’s expression finally reset.

“Fine,” she said before continuing down the hall, pushing her way into the final room on the left which sat opposite Reina’s. Saela, who was last, followed Trim before disappearing inside, the door closing behind her to leave the corridor in silence.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Svanda said as she scratched her head before disappearing inside, leaving the door open for her.

Nina didn’t mind at all. In fact, she was rather glad that she didn’t have to share a room with Saela. Stepping inside before tossing her jacket over the end of the available bed, she sat down on the thin mattress before laying back. The ceiling, like in the rest of the apartment, was a boring grey. Not that Nina cared, but her sensitivity to detail had definitely reached another level since she had joined The Cloud Orchestra. How many different interiors had she even seen since they had started their tour of the plates? Considering that her previous life had consisted of her home, her office, and three or four different takeaway shops, her recent experiences were something that was sometimes difficult to put into perspective.

She was also beginning to find it much easier to deal with.

“Got any ideas?” Svanda asked, causing her to feel a little guilty. Svanda had clearly been racking her brain for a solution ever since Reina had denied them, yet Nina’s thoughts had often been elsewhere. She had, of course, tried to think of something, but she would also be lying if she said that she’d put real effort into it. To her, Reina was undefeatable. Any attempt to change her mind would be a futile exercise and therefore a waste of time. The result was that she’d usually ended up with her mind elsewhere, ideas fluttering through her head before disappearing as though they were dreams. Funnily enough, her mind had often ended up on Svanda’s own thoughts. Nina knew that she was at least trying to hatch something, but after all her guesses as to what it would be she couldn’t even come up with something feasible.

“Sorry,” she eventually replied, wondering if Svanda would feel let down.

“It’s fine,” she replied with a light smile before placing her arms behind her head, staring at the ceiling. “There’s still time.”

Not that she would tell Svanda, but even without considering that she hadn’t come up with a way to change Reina’s mind, Nina didn’t know if she even wanted to do so in the first place. Rucille was a touchy subject for her, and a small part of her hoped that she could just leave the plate to never see her again. The woman was whimsical, and as terrible as it sounded, Nina thought that maybe her newfound toy would cause her to forget about the old one. Even if she didn’t, there was always Caecus below them which was full of capable replacements for her tests. The entire ‘mass genocide on the other plates’ thing was obviously still something that needed to be addressed, but it was also a problem that could be passed on to people who were a lot more capable than she was. Ultimately, The Cloud Orchestra was relatively small in the bigger picture. They were simply trying to climb a few rungs on a ladder which stretched upwards to dazzling heights, but Rucille’s goal to tear the entire thing off the wall had much broader consequences. She was SuTSU’s problem, not theirs, and if Rucille could also find a replacement for her on Caecus while she was at it, Nina might stand a chance of shrugging off the demons that still clung to her after all.

“What about you?” she eventually asked absentmindedly, her thoughts wandering between her sense of guilt and apprehension. What role was Svanda expecting her to play over the next few days, and could she even fill the shoes required? Svanda might be tough, but Nina wasn’t. A little tougher than she had been when this had all started, sure, but she wasn’t about to get carried away just because she’d dodged a few bullets either. Complacency was something that she strived hard to avoid, but sharpness could only do so much when the foundation you started with was poor.

“I might be able to do something, but I’m not sure,” Svanda said with a sigh before rolling to face the wall, pausing for a moment before turning back over to face her. “I don’t know how much trouble it will make for us, but Reina will eventually understand that we did the right thing.”

‘Eventually’ was not a word that Nina wanted to hear. Svanda might have had her longstanding friendship with Reina to draw on as insurance if they pushed the envelope a little too far, but Nina didn’t have the same luxury to fall back on. It didn’t sound like Svanda planned on achieving what she wanted to just by throwing a good argument down either. Everything was pointing towards action, and despite the alarm bells going off in her head, Nina was still torn. Svanda was alluding to insubordination, and Nina knew Reina well enough to know that she didn’t want to end up on her bad side.

“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” Svanda said before Nina could say anything, sitting up before pushing herself off the bed. Reaching for the door, she turned to give Nina a smile before stepping out into the corridor, leaving Nina to stew over her thoughts once more. What was Svanda thinking?

More importantly, would she agree to it?