Chapter 5 #4
“Oh!” Crystal said. “Yeah, sometimes. But I haven’t in a…
” She frowned, doing the math in her head, counting back to her last period and her cheeks burned, her pulse racing as she realized just how late she was.
It was the entire purpose of the creche and yet, it really didn’t feel like good news. “Oh hell.”
“What is it?” Alex said sleepily.
“Think I’m preggers.”
“Oh wow,” Alex mumbled. “Well go find Gail—"
“Yeah, yeah,” Crystal mumbled. “I know.”
The pregnancy tests weren’t like regular supplies.
They were kept in stock at all times and brought in regularly directly from the council.
Food was sometimes a problem as were tampons but there was never a shortage of pregnancy tests.
They were considered something close to sacred.
That was why the matrons controlled their distribution personally.
That way, if anyone was pregnant, they knew about it first. Getting caught with a test from outside was considered a major offense.
It meant you were trying to hide something.
The women weren’t trusted not to “take care of” a pregnancy on their own somehow if they found themselves in the family way via Vampyren.
Crystal heaved a sigh and absently rubbed her stomach. She had the considerable advantage of actually liking the father of her potential child. That wasn’t nothing. She only knew of a few other women who had that advantage, Kiera being one of them.
But that wasn’t the only factor. Crystal’s fingertips tingled at the idea of being pregnant. The theory was one thing, reality was another.
“Gail.” Crystal leaned in another doorway, chagrined.
Gail looked up from her little spot by the window that looked out on the nightscape of Chicago.
It looked a lot different now than it had a few years ago.
Many buildings were completely gone and most didn’t light up anymore.
But it still looked like a city at least, just with fewer twinkling lights and more occasional bursts of explosion from some battle somewhere.
“Yeah?” Gail was wearing her little old lady bifocals that she kept on a chain around her neck. Now they sat on her nose and she put down her magazine. “Crys?”
“I need a test,” Crystal said.
“Oh!” Gail nodded. “That’s good.”
“Is it though?”
“Yes,” Gail said, getting up from her seat.
She came around and passed Crystal who followed her back out into the gray carpeted floor with its ripped out cubicles where couches sat irregularly with women lounging or curling up to a few visiting Vampyren soldiers (nobody looked too vicious today so that was something).
“The council always likes to hear about pregnancies. You know there’s a big breeding pit outside town in Urbana.
The university campus. They hold the record on Vampyren pregnancies.
Girls getting knocked up left and right.
Must be something in the water. Council loves them. Anyway. Mark’s a good one.”
“Yeah, he is,” Crystal said. She rolled her eyes yet she couldn’t help but smile as she followed Gail to her private room where she kept her tests under lock and key.
Still, she knew what had happened to the children of Vampyren.
There wouldn’t be any white picket fence like she’d joked about.
The creche would take the child and raise it in a kind of orphanage.
At the moment, Crystal didn’t have any particular thought about that. But she would eventually… wouldn’t she?
Crystal waited outside Gail’s door as she fetched the test. It was a little like waiting for somebody to use an ATM as you politely looked away, making a point of not watching. Gail came back out with a little pink box but she didn’t immediately hand it over.
“Let’s go get you some water,” Gail said. “When you have to pee, we’ll do it together.”
“Right.” She scratched her head, suddenly feeling a little itchy and wishing she had something more important to do to get out of this whole thing.
“Hypothetically, if I wanted to raise my possible Vampyren offspring with my Vampyren boyfriend instead of giving them up to the creche, how would that go over?”
Gail only gave her a withering stare. “Not well.”
An hour later, Crystal was holding a little white stick with a plus sign that meant a little half-alien vampire baby was most definitely on its way.
“Congratulations!” Gail shrieked. They were crowded in one of the bathrooms together.
There were toiletries scattered all along the counter and behind the sinks, and the stalls still had doors though the girls had painted graffiti all over the nice green and white tiles on the walls.
Gail threw her arms around Crystal, squeezing her in a nearly suffocating hug and Crystal shut her eyes, willing herself not to cry.
Am I happy?
Am I sad?
“Thanks,” she murmured.
She wasn’t sure really as she clutched the little white stick in her hand and stared blankly at that plus sign. All she really knew was she wanted Mark.