29. Scanning, Scanning, Scanning…
TWENTY-NINE
SCANNING, SCANNING, SCANNING…
Vivian
Ursula doesn’t leave with Syasku; instead, she remains behind with Muffin and one of the soldiers. Unsteady on my feet, I wait for her to tell me what she wants so I can be alone again. I need some time to think. Walking up to me, she scans me over, and even gives me a sniff. I flinch from the blatant distaste etched across her expression. I cross my arms over my chest, uncomfortable with her perusal.
Does she know? My stomach flips, threatening to upend from the thought.
I never breathed a word about it to Syasku. If I am pregnant, I’m the only one who should know unless she’s been watching me closely enough to see the signs. Signs I’ve been trying hard to hide.
“Not only have you been sick, you’re also a mess.” She taps her chin as her eyes travel my body.
I grimace, peering down at my wrinkled white slacks and shirt. Stains mark the cloth, as well as Syasku’s dried seed. “I know.” I’m okay with it.
She reaches up and takes a strand of my hair between her fingers, now eyeing the blanket I have drawn over my shoulders, the edges clutched tight in my hands. “Muffin says you haven’t been leaving to take a shower. Why?”
“I didn’t want to leave Syasku,” I answer honestly, suspecting she’s heard everything Syasku and I have spoken about anyway.
“Or is it that he doesn’t want you to leave him?” She lifts a brow.
“He worries about me, and given the circumstances, he should,” I quip.
She circles me, and it’s then I realize she’s not wearing a mask. “He’s possessive. I know. It’s in his nature.”
“You do?” I turn to watch her.
If I am pregnant… I don’t want her to know. But I don’t have a choice in the end, knowing I’m at her mercy. And if I am… she was always going to find out eventually. Part of me just wants to confess now and get it over with, while another… another wants to run.
“I have dealt with something similar recently. They are… interesting, these nagas.” She puts her finger under my chin and lifts it, studying me. “You might be dirty, but you appear healthy overall. He hasn’t hurt you. Muffin, come take her vitals.” She drops her hand and steps to the side as Muffin joins us. He takes my wrist and begins to check my temperature and then my heart rate.
Hearing blood racing in my ears, my palms dampen with sweat.
“Her blood pressure and heart rate are unusually high,” he announces when he’s done.
Taking back my arm, I cross both over my chest again, hiding within the blanket. “I’m fine.”
Ursula walks away and examines Syasku’s and my abandoned pile of dirty blankets. She shifts through them with her boot, appearing to be searching for something. “You vomited recently. Several times. Why?”
“One of the rations had gone bad. That’s all.”
“Interesting.” Giving the pile a final glance, she strides for the door.
My shoulders sag and some of the pressure lifts. She’s going to let me be.
Ursula pauses at the threshold and I stiffen. “Come, Vivian, we can’t have you being sick. Muffin, you too.”
Muffin and I share a look before he follows after her. My feet don’t move and I stay planted where I am. The last thing I want to do is leave with her, especially since I do feel sick, and I believe she suspects I might be pregnant.
Because… I’m suspecting the same thing.
I peer around the room a final time. The view pane, the muted lights above, Syasku’s empty chains. The floor is covered in blankets on our side and there are wrappers in a pile by my waste bucket by the pane. As terrible as it is, the room has become my home.
“Vivian, come!” Ursula snaps.
I jerk, and seeing one of the soldiers start heading toward me, I rush out of the room, bypassing him out the door. The blanket skirts around my feet as I keep it clutched around me. “I don’t have shoes on.”
Ursula waves me off.
Having no choice, I follow her, shifting closer to Muffin as we walk. She leads us down the same corridor Muffin takes me to when I shower.
There are no numbers or signs on the walls. Still, I take everything in with desperate memorization. Stopping briefly at the end of the hall, Ursula pulls out a keycard. A set of doors open to reveal an elevator waiting for us on the other side.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask as she waves me forward to enter first.
“To medical to make sure you’re not sick.”
“I told you I’m not sick anymore.”
Ursula levels a cold look at me, and I know she’s done talking to me. Not wanting to risk angering her, I watch the elevator doors close.
I’m not a fighter, soldier, or a warrior. I’ve never been in a physical altercation with anyone in my life, but as the elevator hums beneath me, my mind focuses on the guard’s gun positioned at his belt. It would be so easy to reach out, grab it, aim it at Ursula’s head, and demand mine and Syasku’s freedom—if I knew how to use a gun.
But as one minute turns into several and the elevator doesn’t stop, I start to panic. We should’ve arrived at the medical bay by now.
The numbers on the panel switch colors, indicating a sector change.
Glancing at the others, no one looks concerned. Only Muffin seems to be uncomfortable, tapping his foot on the floor.
Drawing my attention back to it, the sector lights on the elevator’s panel switch again, going from green to yellow to purple. Purple: the color for the bridge, flight deck, and upper caste housing units. I stare, heart pounding, waiting for the color to switch once more, but it doesn’t. Instead, the elevator stops.
As the doors open, the soldier moves behind me.
“Where are we going?” I whisper again, a sinking feeling growing in the pit of my stomach.
No one answers.
We enter an open atrium filled to the brim with trees and sculptures on pedestals. The people nearby are all dressed nicely, laughing and talking. Hallways break off from the atrium to lead to other parts of the ship. Across from us, a large elevator awaits, surrounded by guards. Knowing what the elevator is, I hesitate.
It leads to a place I thought I would never go.
Father’s quarters.
People stare at us as we pass through. Barefoot and huddled under my blanket, I don’t look like someone who belongs here. Far from it. I’m the only dirty thing in the entire room, every inch of me marked by Syasku in some way. I can smell him on my skin, my clothes, and even the blanket.
The guards let us through to the elevator. The atrium disappears beneath us as we ascend. When the elevator stops, we step out into another much smaller atrium with two other elevators on either side. Across from us is a pair of gold-rimmed double doors. The soldier trailing me remains behind as Ursula scans her card and leads us through the doors.
My father’s home is exactly as I imagined: lavish, excessive, and rich. Across a room of marble floor and plush furniture is the largest outlook to space I have ever seen. Awed by the moon and stars, I falter, briefly forgetting what’s happening and the other beautiful things in the room around me.
Muffin gently clasps my elbow. “Come, Vivian.”
He leads me down a hallway directly to our right. Ursula is already waiting for us at the end where she stands at the open threshold to another room. Letting us through, I look around to find myself in a hospital room, much like the ones in the medical bay. State-of-the-art medical machinery lines the room from wall to wall. None of it Yulen. In the middle of the space, a nurse is waiting for us. She takes in my state of disarray with a purse of her lips.
“Are you ready?” she asks, reaching her hand out to me.
I stare at her.
“She’s ready,” Ursula snaps. “Get her in the machine.”
“Wait what?” The nurse takes my other arm. “What are you doing?” She and Muffin lead me to a podule ultrasound machine that’s up against the back wall. Terrified of what Ursula might find with a scan, I tear my arm free from the nurse. Muffin lets me go. “You can’t do this. I’m not getting in that machine.”
The blanket falls off me as I bolt for the door.
The nurse grabs me, stopping me in my tracks. Hauling me back, she pushes me toward the machine where Muffin retakes hold of my other arm. “It’ll be okay, Vivian,” he says, trying to placate me.
I dig my feet into the ground but it makes no difference. “I don’t want to do this! Take me back to Syasku.” I struggle harder as I’m tugged closer to the machine. “I won’t do this!”
“If you don’t, they’ll force you,” Muffin huffs, barely keeping his hold on me. “You know this. Do it for Syasku’s sake, if not yours.” I yank my arms out of his and the nurse’s grip and twist around, bolting for the door again.
Ursula is standing in front of it.
Throwing me a look of annoyance, she pulls a needle out of her lab coat’s front pocket.
“No!”
The nurse retakes my arm as Ursula glides forward and stabs me in the neck, injecting me with whatever she’d put in it. Pushing her away, I tear the needle out just as my veins start to burn. The room begins to spin and, feeling faint, Muffin catches me before I fall. My strength diminishes as my head fills with fog, and I sag into his arms.
“No,” I breathe the word, but the fight leaves me when a sweet numbness takes hold.
I’m hauled onto a bed and strapped down. Not caring what is happening, the panic within me now entirely gone, I look around, barely able to lift my head, let alone my arms. The nurse cleans my arm with a cloth and injects me with contrast material. I smile as I watch her.
I see Father enter the room out of the corner of my eye. Not even glancing my way, he heads straight for Ursula.
“Father?” I chirp, my voice breathy and sharp.
Muffin moves to stand in front of me, blocking my view.
I blink at him and his blurry face. “I want to see my father,” I whisper. “Can you move?”
“You’ll see him soon.” He rests his hand gently on my brow, worry clouding his eyes. “You’ll be okay, I promise. I promise,” he says again like it’s now up to him to keep me safe. He takes my hand with his free one and squeezes it. Confused by his actions, my brow wrinkles.
Over the next couple of minutes, I fade in and out, losing focus on my surroundings. Eventually a bright white light blots my vision, and I’m forced to shut my eyes.
“Everybody except Ursula leaves!” Father orders.
My body jerks in reaction.
Reopening my eyes, Muffin’s still in front of me. His hand squeezes mine once more.
I search his face as my world swirls, but it remains blurry and out of focus. All I know is that I don’t want him to leave. I want him to stay. At the same time it becomes harder to think a coherent thought. Feeling heavy yet weightless, I try to stop the spinning in my head before it makes me fall.
He releases my hand and I try to hold on. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.” But his fingers slip from mine.
He walks out of the room without looking back. Watching him leave, I remember I’m supposed to be afraid. Just as the door shuts, my shirt is pulled up and something cold and wet is rubbed over my stomach. I feel a hard pressure there, sliding around.
“She’s pregnant, sir,” Ursula says, her tone grave.
Shifting my eyes from the door to the ceiling, the spinning worsens .
Pregnant.
I’m pregnant .
I was right.
Syasku will be happy.
“That’s impossible. Could she have had intercourse prior?” my father asks.
“No. We checked and Muffin verified. She is untried in such matters.”
“The child… it looks?—”
“Like one of them.”
“So it’s true…”
“It seems so. Based on what we could retrieve from Laura’s computer and the intel we’ve received from our troops on Earth, as well as the rumors of what’s happened to the women that have been traded, humans and nagas can procreate.”
“This is unprecedented.” I can hear the scowl in Father’s voice. “Their females die in labor. We can’t let that happen.”
“Naga females, not human females. And if something goes wrong, we have the technology to abort the fetus whereas they did not.”
Listening to them speak, even if it seems far away, keeps me from falling unconscious. I focus on their voices with every ounce of my willpower.
Father huffs. “Can you tell the gender?”
“Not yet, at least not until it has a chance to develop further. Based on the size it is now, she is three months along.”
“Three months? She hasn’t been with the naga that long.”
“Perhaps nagas gestate faster?”
There’s a short silence.
“How is this possible, Ursula?” Anger simmers Father’s words and I’m glad they are not aimed at me. Even so, they make me nervous. “Is this why you insisted the naga have a woman with him? To breed? You were supposed to study him, see how he ticks, find out his weaknesses, and get answers from him, not fucking breed him! This is a military colony ship, not a goddamn zoo!”
“Sir, you knew there was a possibility?—”
“Possibility? The Sovereign has already launched several ships, sending their best adjudicators. How are we supposed to hide the evidence of an alien-human hybrid, one born from my daughter?” His voice rises into a shout. “What have you done?”
“What we’ve done, sir,” Ursula snaps. “This child, your grandchild, will have Genesis-8 flowing through their veins. Untapped power, at your disposal, for the taking. It’s already working on me from the short amount of time I have been with Asera. I’ve tried to contract the virus in less messy ways, but it becomes unstable?—”
“Your obsession with these aliens is not the answer to the Sovereign’s problem, let alone mine. We need something useful now, not something potentially viable, through breeding no less. We’re fighting a losing war! The Sovereign doesn’t give a shit about fringe science.”
“Sir—”
“Shut up before I have you stripped and thrown to the core’s roaches.”
“If I may, sir?—”
“You may not!”
“—Genesis-8 and your grandchild are exactly what you need to solve your problems with Sovereign. They sent you here in a desperate hope that there may be something on Earth from the time before its fall to save us, and we’ve found that! You’ve found that.”
“How in the hells do you think a virus helps us?” he bites out.
“It helps us become stronger, more intelligent, and durable, removing many of our natural weaknesses. It allows us to heal and regenerate at the same rate as a Lurker. If you want to win a war against a powerful enemy, you have to circumvent our biggest obstacle—our inability to defeat them.”
As I listen to them, I begin to think they’ve forgotten I’m here.
“How, Ursula, do you think we do that with this ?” Father waves his hand over me.
“Genesis-8 gives us the opportunity to breed Lurker DNA into us.”
“Fucking babies. I hate babies. And the nagas, what of them?”
“They’re how we do it.”
“I’m not convinced of that.”
“My time with Asera has already produced positive results, but there is still a significant amount of data still missing. I need more time. Sir.”
“Of course there is,” he drawls. “Of course you do. Too bad you don’t get any more time because I don’t have time to give. Every day the roaches infesting the ship’s core grow more demanding, taking larger risks. They need to be dealt with before the adjudicators arrive because if they get what they want, it will be chaos, and we’ll lose all control. I’ll lose control. We don’t need another war on our hands. Get this mess cleaned up and erase all the evidence of it?—”
There’s a loud beeping sound that cuts him off. It’s all I hear until it grows distant like everything else. Afterward there’s a brief silence.
Father curses about an emergency after I hear a click. “There’s been a breach in your new lab space, Ursula.” His arm shoots over me and Ursula’s choking fills my ears. “Fix it! Fix it now or suffer the consequences.”
A breach?
The air in my lungs stifles.
Could it be… Syasku? Has he been returned to the cell?
Uncertainty plagues me as worry returns to the pit of my stomach, and all I know is that I need to get back to him, now more than ever before he gets himself killed. But when I try to move or speak, no words leave my mouth. Both Ursula and Father are nowhere to be seen, and as I’m lifted and carried to a bed by the nurse, I realize I’m not being taken back to the cell or Syasku.
Settled gently on a cushioned mattress, I try speaking once more, hoping I can get the nurse’s attention. “Wait,” I call after her, my voice too weak to hear as she walks out of the room. She closes the door behind her, leaving me alone. Trying to shuffle off the bed and stand, I collapse onto the floor as a lock clicks in place.
Easing onto the floor, I rest my cheek on the rug and close my eyes, allowing my tears to fall. Syasku’s in trouble because of me, and there is nothing I can do—again. I can barely speak or lift my hand. I told him that he needed to be strong, when in truth it’s me who needs strength. Strength that’s all mine and no one else’s.
Sliding my hand down and under my stomach, I make a vow to my baby. My baby.
I close my eyes.
Whatever happens, I’ll die before letting anyone harm you.
I’ll kill anyone who tries.