"No." She answered immediately. "At least, I don't think so. She's just sedated. She like... okay, I don't understand quite how, something to do with the Chill I guess, but she gave herself frostbite, like through her hips, so they have to like, do surgery or something. She also managed to like, cut some guys's hands off." She snickered a little as she said the last bit.

"Cut their hands off?"

"She froze a radius around her." My friend explained. "And that radius happened to include some guys's hands. And feet. And one guy's face, I think, because he was also pretty badly hurt. Like in the facial region. But yeah, what's left on their body is necrotic tissue, and therefore useless amputation fodder. Reportedly, one guy's hands fell off all on his own, just slid right off the bone or something."

Patience is the name she chose for herself. Just Patience, no first, last or middle name. "Nothing can be first, last, or middle if it's just one alone." She'd say. She preferred her Inheritance to be called Patience also, rather than the boring-sounding "Waiting." I think, deep down, she wanted to morally contradict her arch enemy, the guy who Inherited the Acceleration. Not all Inheritances have opposites, and even those that seem to have opposites don't work in opposite ways. The Acceleration caused the Heir to be able to move through time more quickly than normal people. He was off somewhere, pretending to be a rock until the world ended, since he had nothing to lose. It would seem like seconds to him, and he'd wake up after everything was suddenly better. But the Patience, or the Waiting, whatever, caused time to move slower around its Heiress. So she had to wait longer than anyone else for things to happen. Functionally, it was insanely useful, as, if she could control it correctly, she could effectively stop time, moving faster than everyone and everything around her. Inheritor's Valley prevented her from doing this, and she was stuck simply with moving in slow motion. Her reaction speed was sharp, though. She never missed anything.

She was sometimes called by the suits to do time-sensitive work. Saving and diagnosing Margo, for instance. Not that they cared about Margo as a person dying, but if she died, they'd have to run and find the next Inheritor of the Chill and it would be a grand inconvenience for everyone. Maybe more appendages would be lost to frostbite. That might be why they were keeping South East locked away still, in case they needed to go out again.

It would be a real shame if Margo died though. Obviously I didn't know her, but dying is just unpleasant to think about. I still missed Adelaide Summers, even if she was a cantankerous asshole.

"Was it hard?" I asked.

"Was what hard?"

"They made you do doctor stuff, right? Was it hard?"

"Yeah." She looked at me as if I'd just grown a second head. "Obviously. I haven't been trained in any of it, and they still keep making me do it anyway. Luckily I don't get as squeamish anymore, but it's still awful." I got the sense she would rather be talking about anything else. She liked to pack as many words as she could into just a few seconds, but these were spaced out to normal-human speed for emphasis.

"Sorry." I said sheepishly.

"It's no big deal. It's just weird, cause everyone asks me if doctor stuff is hard and like, yeah obviously it is. I was never trained in it, they just thrust me into it assuming I'd be good at it. I'm not good at it, and they don't understand that, no matter how many times I fail to accomplish anything. But they had actual doctors there, they do right now too, so you know, I didn't end up killing her."

"That's good."

"Yeah. I'd hate for her to get here and just be dead in the process. Imagine the first life-threatening thing she encounters and it's before she even gets to this dump. She did it to herself too, they said it was on purpose, but it obviously wasn't, if you're trying to hurt yourself you'd go for the neck or something, but that's probably one of the justifications they use for keeping us trapped here. That we might hurt ourselves, I mean."

"I don't think most of us are more capable of hurting ourselves than a regular person."

"Oh certainly not. It's only a an excuse, one of the public justifications, along with us being a danger to society. Seriously, do you think society would actually be any worse off if you or I or Harriet were let loose on the world?"

Before I had time to respond, she answered: "No. The most I could do is cheat at tests and think of good comebacks. I'd be disabled, if anything, since everything just drags by for me. Take the test for example, I could finish it in record time maybe, or what seems like record time to an observer, but I'd just be trapped in the exam hall, bored out of my mind. Do you know how much time people spend waiting at the DMV? I don't either, because I've never been to the DMV, since I Inherited when I was eleven, but I've heard it's a long time. And it would kill me. Metaphorically, I mean."

She was still complaining, but it wasn't about a life-or-death situation like Margo's, and it was clear she was much more comfortable rehashing this conversation we'd had a thousand times already. More comfortable, but not-

"I've ranted this rant before." She sighed. "Tell me about you. What's new with you?"

I blinked. What's new with me? What could possibly be new with me? When I didn't answer at first, she prompted. "Come on, out with it. Are things working out with Harriet?"

"How do you mean working out?"

"Like does she like you?"

I rubbed the back of my neck. "I mean, I dunno. I'd like to think so. She hangs out with me. We folded laundry together yesterday."

Patience nodded. Her nods seemed inhumanly fast. I guess they were. "That's good, that's good!" She congratulated. And then, as a joke, "But it may be a bad thing ultimately. She only hung out with creeps before you, you know. The Armaggeddon and the Pollution."

The Armaggeddon was what she called the Acceleration, the one that caused the Inheritor to move more quickly through time. She hated him, the guy hung out under the tree at the edge of the ridge in a semi-eternal sleep waiting for the world to end. The Pollution was another name for the Salt. It was actually the old name, coined before pollution became a more pressing problem. The Pollution actually just controlled salinity content, but if course, in the hands of a monster, it could make fields barren and water undrinkable. Patience didn't have hard feelings for these people just because they Inherited Inheritances she thought poorly of. The Heir of the Acceleration was a misanthropic sloth waiting for us all to die, and the Heir of the Salt was... well, he was certainly something.

"She's making an exception against her creeps policy for me." I laughed, conveniently leaving out the bit where I manipulated the time I left in the morning just so she'd see me more. And that I might have supernaturally manipulated the time she left too.

"Well that's good. I don't think you're actually a creep, if you're worried about that." Patience laughed. "You know, this might be good for her. I've always liked her because you know, everyone does for some reason, so I'm happy to see she's finally making some friends. And you too of course, but you already have friends." She pointed at herself at giggled. "And who knows, maybe you could be more than friends one day?"

The thought aroused a dull ache in my chest. "That would be nice." I lied.

Harriet and I were only three years apart in age: she was 25 and I was 22. Among the Inheritors, the two of us were a clear candidate to be a couple, inevitably break up, and then reform as a couple because there was no one else available. Her body was lumpy and angular all at once. Her face was stern and stoic, in a perpetual frown. Her curly black hair covered her eyes, and was unkempt. She didn't put any effort into it and she didn't have to. I did like her, I was attracted to her. But there was something terribly wrong with the thought. Not because I thought she was ugly or mean or dry, but because she was a woman. It wasn't like there were any better candidates to partner with, but... I didn't want her. Or I didn't want to want her. Or something. I had no idea what I wanted. She had a strong effect on people.

"Honestly, she's just really cool." Patience went on. "I know she's a girl, and that she probably hates me, and that it's just her Inheritance talking, but I would totally go gay for her. Like without a second thought."

Why did I have second thoughts about going straight for her though? It felt like a betrayal of my identity, but it's not like my identity mattered when someone like Harriet was involved. So why did I care? I didn't know why I cared.