by Sylvia Ryan
He thought of Laila as he toured the home in the light of day. The kitchen was twice the size of his in the Emerald Zone, and that one had been huge. He imagined her sitting there at the island, chatting with him as he cooked, as was their routine. She was never far from his mind, and as he took in the details of the house, it was Laila he wanted to please. He could live in a hut for all he cared, but he wanted a castle for his queen. It looked as if she’d get it.
He walked through the living area. The room was sleekly modern in white and pale blue, colors reminiscent of the sea. Hanging over the mantle opposite the ocean view hung a seascape in watercolor, with white sand and turquoise water.
Rock inspected the fireplace and found it was in good working order, looking as if it had never been used. On the far side of the living room, he took the hallway to the master suite. The view was the same with another wall of windows. The bed was gigantic.
Rock smiled. The headboard and footboard were brass in curly designs. Perfect for ropes. “Absolutely perfect,” he announced to the empty room.
He took the steps to the second floor. A common area gave access to all the rooms on that level and held the spiral staircase, leading to the lookout. There were four bedrooms, one of them decorated for a young boy, with trains and cars littering the floor. Rock climbed the stairs, curling his way up to the next level and emerged into a round cupola. It was about ten feet in diameter and, after spending more than an hour trying to get the metal shutters open, gave a breathtaking three hundred sixty degree view and easy access to the roof.
He imagined their children in there, with toys littering the floor. Yes, a perfect little clubhouse for his babies.
Rock grabbed his toolbox, made his way to the kitchen, and sat at the island, swinging the box onto the light gray granite.
He took out his list. He’d had a lot of time to think about what he’d need to do in order to make the home he chose livable. He’d had to bring the important things with him, not knowing if he’d be able to find what he needed in Onyx.
The list was extensive, but when he was done, they’d have some electricity, a place to go to the bathroom, and fresh water. He’d made the plans and learned the skills. Now all he had to do was put them in motion.
Chapter 27
Laila awoke in her isolation cell and groaned. Her head. She pressed her fingertips to her temples, trying to rub out the throbbing that seemed to center there.
When she forced herself to swing her legs over the side of the cot, she found she was nude. With great effort, she wrapped the sheet around her and walked the few steps toward the door. Grasping the handle, she attempted to turn the knob. Nothing. Still a prisoner.
She scanned the room. There were no clothes for her.
She lay down and limped through her memories of the night before. They were like impressionist paintings, giving her a general sense of what had happened, but the details were missing.
She examined the crook of her arm. Three needle marks. She worried for the baby she was almost positive she carried. Whatever they put into her system last night couldn’t have been good for the tiny life inside her.
The third injection had been something different. It had gripped her differently and the following hours were filled with snippets of bright lights, questions, and…she gasped. There was some kind of medical procedure. She remembered screaming, screaming for Rock over and over as she was restrained. They had done something to her. The vague memory spiked her heart rate.
Opening her eyes brought her out of the disjointed memory. She looked around the sparse room again and realized she wasn’t in her old isolation room as she’d initially thought. This one had a slightly different shade of paint. No water stains over the door. The rest was the same. Cot, sink, toilet, and four blank walls to stare at.
Laila closed her eyes and allowed her world to crash down around her. Rock would return. Wouldn’t he? The drugs, combined with Morgan’s insinuation she was naive and stupid to believe Rock would be back for her, had chipped away at her certainty.
She turned to face the wall with her back to the door and vowed to keep her promise to remain doubtless about what she’d built with him. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. It had been sixteen days since she’d walked up to re-enter the gates to New Atlanta. She pictured him, walking through the house he chose to spend their lives in. Something with lots of windows letting in a daily dose of feel good rays of sunlight to warm their skin and their home.
Her heart clenched as the reality of her situation intruded on her daydream. Would he even be able to find her when he returned?
The metal door opened behind her and Laila sat up to face the woman who’d just entered. It was the same woman from her hazy memories of the night before. The blue of her scrubs was several shades lighter than the tattoo around her wrist. Her no nonsense expression pinched her face and thinned her lips. Her hair was pulled back tight into a bun at the back of her head. “I’m Nurse Pritchard.” She threw a small bundle of clothes on the end of the bed and spared Laila a glance before referring back to her tablet. “Miss Lewis.” The woman picked up Laila’s wrist and glanced at a watch, holding that position for several seconds.
Laila stared at her Sapphire tattoo while the woman counted her heart rate. When the nurse allowed her to pull her hand away, something remained, flattened in her palm. She sandwiched it between her hand and thigh as the nurse entered her information.
“Listen closely,” Nurse Pritchard snapped.
Laila jumped at the terse command.
“Without dissent, you will eat all the food given you, submit to all medical exams and procedures, and participate fully in your daily exercise program. Aside from your daily work duty, exercise will be the only other time you’re released from this room. Please don’t try anything stupid. The room is monitored through a camera in the ceiling.
“As of today, you are a vessel. Nothing more. If you think you’re too good to carry one of the future leaders of our nation, I will be glad to notify General Morgan, and he, I’m sure, can persuade you otherwise.
“I want to make this perfectly clear.” She stepped forward and stuck something in Laila’s ear for a second and then stepped away to enter more information. Then, she leaned in close so they were nose to nose. “Being here, being the vessel for a Diamond child is a privilege, and you’ll behave as such. If you have any thoughts of running, you need to know you’re on the Peacekeeper’s Compound in the Emerald Zone with only one way in and one way out of this section of the building. And, as you can imagine, General Morgan’s Birthing Corps and the children we raise here are well guarded.”
“So, I’m pregnant?”
Nurse Pritchard cocked her head and her brow furrowed. “The procedure was last night.” She stood silent for several seconds, looking as if she were choosing her words carefully. “You don’t remember?”
Laila shook her head.
Pritchard turned her attention to her tablet again, entering something. “You were implanted with several diamond embryos. In ten days, we’ll test you and confirm the pregnancy.”
“My baby—”
Nurse Pritchard cut her off and shook her head. “No, not your baby. General Morgan’s baby.”
Laila gasped. What about my baby? An avalanche of despair smothered her as her stomach twisted and the rest of the world fell away. Nothing else was important anymore. She’d failed to protect their child. Laila curled up on herself and sobbed as the full implications of what was happening to her set in.
“Stop it!” Nurse Pritchard grabbed her hair, raised her up to a sitting position, and slapped her face. “I will not allow your sniveling to endanger the new life inside you.” She tilted Laila’s head to face her by twisting the grip she had on her hair. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered. Tears still ran out of the corners of her eyes, but the shock of the slap had snapped her out of the momentary emotional free-fall.
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“You won’t be assigned job duties or an exercise program until we’re sure the embryos have been successfully implanted.” She entered more information on her tablet and then looked up at the camera, signaling. The light buzz, indicating the cell door was unlocked, sounded.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Then, she was gone.
Laila curled her fingers around the item in her hand before she rolled over to face the wall again. The fact the nurse gave her so much vital information in the few sentences she’d snapped out was not an accident.
Nurse Pritchard presented as nasty and crude, but the woman was on her side of this war. She didn’t need to read what was written on the paper cradled in her hand to know that fact.
The irony, that she’d wound up a prisoner in the place where she’d snooped, didn’t escape her.
Because of her, Morgan knew Rock was alive, and she was the bait to catch him. Then, Morgan would annihilate him by revealing it was his child inside her, not Rock’s. She would kill herself before she’d let that happen.
She waited to look at the message in her hand, wanting to give the eyes on the other end of the camera time to get bored and look at something more interesting. Finally, she began to move, bringing her hands up so slowly she hoped the movement wouldn’t be tracked by the casual observer.
The paper was not the easy half-fold repeated a few times. No, this was round, almost the size of a quarter and oragamied within an inch of its life.
Unfolding the paper puzzle became a game as she lowered her hands into the cradle of her hips and worked sightlessly, trying to unravel the folds. Finally, the small square of paper lay flat between her palms. She held her breath as she tilted her head downward toward her hands and read the miniscule writing.
You were already pregnant.
The embryos implanted will not take.
You are not forgotten.
Journey
Relief clogged her throat, and her nose burned as she held in the tears that threatened. Not Morgan’s child. Rock’s child. That nugget of information changed everything.
Laila put the scrap of paper into her mouth and swallowed it quickly.
Before long, she realized the activity she’d just completed was the only thing she’d have all day to occupy her mind from its ruminations.
The silence and isolation were mind numbing. After three days, she welcomed the verbally abusive and glaring Nurse Pritchard simply for the stimulation of it alone. The noise of conversation and the tantalizing knowledge that, when the woman left, she’d have a tiny oragamied message of hope in the palm of her hand propelled her from one day to the next.
With the exception of the first one, the notes were never signed. But she knew they were from Journey because they sometimes contained vital Resistance updates. Most of them, though, were messages of encouragement.
Between the highly informative, if not brutally presented, information from Nurse Pritchard and the daily notes, Laila was able to maintain hope. She could lie there as long as she needed to, percolating Rock’s child. In a bizarre twist, she realized her baby was probably safer where she was than anywhere else in New Atlanta.
After nine days, Laila looked forward to the appointment scheduled with the doctor.
She would test positive, pregnant. She still couldn’t believe it. When Pritchard arrived, they left her room together. The nurse curtly instructed her to keep up as she walked briskly down the long hallway lined with closed doors. The nurse identified the floor as the maternity floor. They traveled one level up. The numbers on the stairwell door indicated they were exiting onto the ground floor. As they stepped from the echoing stairwell, Prichard continued her informative commentary identifying the level as the children’s floor. Laila recognized where she was when they passed the exit door she’d so stupidly wandered through months earlier. It led to the lobby…and freedom.
As she was directed into the exam room, she was shocked to find Morgan and the doctor conversing in low tones. When Morgan noticed her entrance, he smiled. Malicious glee emanated in strong waves from his direction.
She stopped short. “Please go in, Miss Lewis,” Pritchard gave her small shove to get her moving and closed the door behind her.
“You look surprised to see me,” Morgan said.
“To be honest, I am.”
He leaned forward in his chair and pegged her with a hard stare. “Let me make this perfectly clear, Miss Lewis. If you’re pregnant, you’re carrying my child. I am not irresponsible. I love and care for all my children. I’m involved in their lives. I spend most of my time here.”
Rock had never been able to figure out why the General spent so little time in his office, and from what Garret had reported, Morgan had not been spotted leaving the building in months. The Resistance suspected his new quarters were housed in the building somewhere. Now, she was sure of it.
She sat on the crinkly white paper of the examining table and the doctor approached.
“The urine she gave nurse Pritchard yesterday indicated the embryos implanted ten days ago took. She’s pregnant.”
Morgan smiled ear to ear.
“Now let’s see if we can find out how many of them are viable. Lie back on the table,” the doctor said while he put gloves on.
What if he could tell during the examination the fetus was older than it was supposed to be? Laila readied herself to run away. If the doctor discovered her secret, she wouldn’t let them take Rock’s baby without the fight of her life.
The doctor lifted the hem of her institutional blue dress and placed the cool disk of his stethoscope on her abdomen, moving it around until he found what he was looking for. He stilled. His brows furrowed. In the interminable seconds that followed. “I only hear one, but this baby’s heartbeat is strong. Everything looks good.” The doctor referred to his hand-held. “She’s finishing meals and resting normally. I don’t see why we can’t slot her into the rotation. Get her familiar with the routine and how things work around here.” The doctor was neither looking at, nor speaking to her. He addressed Morgan. She was considered nothing more than an incubator.
Morgan considered her. “If you behave yourself, I’ll inform your nurse that you may interact and help care for the children here until you deliver.” He stood and grabbed her chin, turning it so they were eye to eye. If there are any problems from you, I have no compunction whatsoever about keeping you locked in a room for the next nine months. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
The doctor opened the exam room door and Nurse Pritchard stood waiting for her in the hall. She looked nervous, and Laila registered the moment when the nurse realized the exam was over and their deception wasn’t discovered.
On the way back to her cell, they passed by two barefooted girls dressed in the same plain shift dress as she’d been given. She’d thought the absence of shoes was an oversight. It seemed it wasn’t.
Prichard didn’t speak to Laila during the trip to her room. There was nothing to say. Fully aware they both had just cleared a hurdle, no words were necessary.
Days passed and Laila’s routine was established.
Her latest message had instructed her to count steps. She was to learn the hallways and their relation to the exit door during her new job of changing diapers and giving baths to the twelve to eighteen month-olds. There was only one exit to their part of the building, and by the end of the following week, she could get to that exit with her eyes closed from practically any place on the children’s floor.
The rescue was close. She felt the mix of fear and anticipation in the air. Everybody held their breath while waiting for the opportunity to escape to present itself. Laila was painfully aware how secure Morgan’s underground fortress holding the Birthing Corps was. The building was the most highly guarded place in all of New Atlanta. This supremely twisted program was unreachable to practically everybody.
She was going to die there, shot in the bac
k while trying to run away. What was the alternative? If she delivered Rock’s child here, how safe would their baby be after it was born with brown eyes and dark hair like his father and mother? Morgan would kill their baby and, most likely, kill her, too. If she was found out, death would be the easy out. The other path, being impregnated over and over again until she wasn’t useful to Morgan anymore seemed like a fate worse than death.
She couldn’t bear the thought of Rock coming back to get her and finding out she was a prisoner here or worse, that she and their baby were dead. He wouldn’t survive it. She couldn’t let that happen. He’d made a judgment call, a hard one, returning her to New Atlanta to keep her safe from the unknown. He’d never forgive himself if that decision resulted in her death and the death of their child.
As she thought options and scenarios through, and calculated the odds of her probable demise while in captivity, she realized this was not a hard call. She would get back to Rock, or die trying.
Chapter 28
Two weeks later, Laila was alone in the nursery and very close to the exit of her prison, when the lights went out, throwing the room into complete blackness.
This was it. She placed her hand on the doorknob. Adrenaline screamed through her veins, making her entire body throb. She was one rapid heartbeat, existing in a pitch-black void.
She knew the way. Right out the door, thirty-two steps, turn left. That corridor dead-ended into the exit.
When she opened the door to the nursery, Laila heard the slapping of bare feet on the tile all around her. She wasn’t the only woman running for her life tonight. She however, had a definite advantage over the others. She knew the compound, knew where she was going, and wasn’t in her third trimester trying to waddle to freedom.
She burst through the heavy exit door, scrambled through the lobby and walked into the night. They’d met no resistance. The group of women moved silently, the ambient light from the partial moon and stars glared brightly in comparison to the absolute black of their prison. Once Laila gained her bearings, she ran toward the front of the line of women who’d exited before her and led them toward the tree line.
