“Okay!” I say, laughing. “I get it. I will work on being well-rounded.”
“How about just working on a C-plus?”
“If Huck Finn will get me to Mars, I guess I’ll read it,” I tell him.
The doc scrunches his mouth to the side. “Mars, eh?” he says.
“Yeah. I’ve been prepping for the Ares Project since seventh grade. I want to go through the whole study program and be one of the first wave of engineers to terraform the . . .” Dr. Marsden seems to be smirking at me. “What?” I say.
“Nothing,” he says, shaking his smile away. But I guess he can tell by the look on my face that his answer doesn’t satisfy me, because he continues. “You’ve got quite a mind, Elvie. Quite a mind, indeed.” He tabs through the chart again, then looks up at me. “Now.” He clears his throat as he settles back into his chair. “I wanted to talk to you about your plans after the baby’s birth.”
I squint an eye at him. “I told you,” I say. “Like a million times. I’m giving it up for adoption. Doesn’t it say that on the chart?”
“Yes. Yes, of course it does,” Dr. Marsden replies. “I just wanted to check with you that that’s still where you’re at. Sometimes, this close to the birth, some mothers change their minds. It’s not unusual to suddenly feel connected to the baby at this stage of pregnancy, Elvie. I would just hate for you to make an irreversible decision because you didn’t think things through.”
“I’ve thought things through,” I tell him, frowning. It’s impossible not to think about what you want to do with a baby when you spend nine months surrounding the thing. So, yeah, I’ve thought about it. I’ve questioned my decision. But every time, I come to the same conclusion. “I don’t want it. I just think someone else will be able to care for it . . . better than I can.”
“That’s fine if that’s what you want,” Dr. Marsden says. But I notice that he doesn’t make a note in his chart. “I just want to be sure that you’ve considered all the opt—”
“Enough with the third degree, all right?” I say. And okay, yeah, maybe I snap a little bit. But sheesh. I take a deep breath and try to sound more rational. “I’m sixteen years old. I’m not ready to be a mom. It’s not that I don’t want to someday. It’s just . . .” I always thought I would love being a mother. When I was a kid, I’d play house, just like other little girls. I’d carry around a baby doll with the bottle, the whole shebang. Wore an apron and everything. I’d be the best mom in the world. Killer, even. The kind of mom mine never got to be. I’d expose my kid to all the right music, straight out of the womb, and make sure the thing saw all the best flat pics. None of this 3-D crap that could screw up its brain. I’d teach it to fix a toaster as soon as it could hold a screwdriver. We’d be best buddies, the kid and me. Inseparable.
The funny thing is, for that first day after I found out I was knocked up, that’s exactly where my brain went. Straight back to playing house—diapers, burping cloths, baby food. Happiness and rainbows and all that crap. This thing in my stomach was like a part of me. And I felt, I really did, for a split second, like a mom.
But when Cole left . . . Well, it was like the world’s rudest wake-up call. Suddenly it all hit me—how young I was, how inexperienced. And other stuff too, like how I had yet to see anything outside of the tristate area, let alone something as exotic as Mars, and how having a baby was going to make that dream pretty much impossible. How raising a kid on my own, like my dad did, might be possible, but it might not be best. How most of the kids at school who were born to teenage parents were absolute shit balls of human beings, and how maybe my kid deserved a better chance at life than I could give him on my own. It wasn’t only because Cole was gone that I didn’t want the thing. Actually, I think I’d only wanted it before because Cole was around. And I definitely owed more to the child I had helped to create than to use it as some sort of human glue to try to bind Cole and me together forever.
Once those thoughts started to creep inside my brain, well, they never really left. They started to creep inside the rest of my body too. Suddenly I felt completely disconnected from the thing inside me in this strange, disconcerting way. It didn’t feel like my baby; it just felt like an object I was carrying around for someone else. I stopped even paying attention to it most of the time. I mean, sure, it’s heavy. It kicks. It stretches out all my best T-shirts. But it might as well be a tumor or a heavy lunch. It’s not, and never will be, my baby. And I think that’s the best reason to give it up. To find someone who thinks differently.
It takes me a moment to realize that Dr. Marsden is still watching me, waiting for an answer. I look down, smoothing my hands over my maternity pants. “I plan on being a good mother,” I tell him at last, “when I’m ready.” Then I look up at him, so he knows I’m serious. “But right now I’m not ready.”
“I understand,” he replies, and he makes a note in his chart. He seems to think for a second, and opens his mouth, like he can’t decide if he has something he wants to say, or something he doesn’t. “Tell me, though,” he says. “If this is the only child you ever have, will you still feel the same?”
“Absolutely,” I say. Dr. Marsden’s giving me a look like he wants me to spend more time thinking about the question than that, but I just shrug. “Look, we already know I’m fertile as hell. I did the dirty one time, and I managed to get knocked up. I think my eggs are pretty raring to be fertilized. So I’m fairly positive it won’t be an issue. But . . .” He has that exasperated look he gets when I’m not taking things seriously enough. “Yeah,” I tell him. “I’m sure.”
“Well.” He sets the chart down on the desk. “As long as you’re sure.” And at that he finally gives me a smile. “During your next visit we’ll talk about what the actual birthing procedure will be. Your vitals are all clear, so right now I want to run a couple last-minute tests, and then I can send you back to English in time for that pop quiz I hear Mr. Wilks has been preparing.”
“Joy.”
“Lie back, okay? Head on the pillow.”
I try to make myself comfortable on the table, the paper cover crinkling underneath me as I fidget. I watch as he pulls an enormous needle from a drawer, like the one I just saw him stick Britta with. “What tests are you doing?” I ask. “The Gatling?”
He flicks the syringe a few times and smiles at me. “For someone who doesn’t care about her pregnancy,” he says, “you sure know your stuff.”
“I told you, I’m good at science.” I prop myself up on my elbows. “So, is it the Gatling? That’s usually done at the end of the third trimester, right? Do you really need to do it?”
“This is just some standard blood work,” Dr. Marsden replies, sitting down in his chair and wheeling it closer to the exam table with his feet. “I will be doing the Gatling, but we’ll put you under for it, and you won’t feel a thing. We have to perform the test, as standard school protocol, but I’m certain it will be negative. I’m assuming you’ve never been on fertility meds?” I shake my head. “Then there’s nothing to worry about.”
The Gatling test is probably the most controversial prenatal test developed in the past two decades. With the high spike in fertility drugs came an increased number of chromosomal abnormalities, including Chromosomal Multiplasia Syndrome, a triplicate of one arm of chromosome number eight. Kids with CMS, or “chromers’ disease,” are severely stunted intellectually, and are born with all sorts of physical disabilities too, including, most noticeably, curled hands and feet. They have trouble breathing and swallowing, suffer from chronic pain, and usually live only into their twenties, at most. It wasn’t until Dr. Joseph Gatling developed a test that the presence of the condition could be detected prenatally at all, and still it can only be detected at the end of the third trimester of pregnancy. A special exemption to the time limit for having an unwanted pregnancy “taken care of” was instituted for babies that showed signs of CMS, since the condition was considered so severe as to be almost a death sentence itself. Even so, s
ome people—a lot of people—think that’s too late. Others think it’s the only humane way to deal with such a crippling condition.
“You may choose ahead of time not to hear the results, of course,” the doc continues. “Some mothers do prefer that, given the emotional nature of the situation.”
I think about it. “Actually, I’m not sure I’d want to know,” I say. The doc sticks the needle into my arm and nods. I’m so used to blood work at this point that I barely even feel the thing, watching as the blood bubbles up into the tube. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had to make a decision like that.” When the tube is full, Dr. Marsden pulls it out, pressing a fiber-mesh swab into my skin to stop the bleeding. “What would you do?” I ask.
He swivels around in his chair to catalog the vial. “You really want to know?” he says, face to the wall.
“Yeah.”
He turns back around to look at me. “Well, I think the question you have to ask yourself when making such a decision is, which is more important to save—the individual or the group?”
Well, I wasn’t expecting that. “Sorry?” I say.
“If you save the baby,” the doc continues, “you’re favoring the individual. But you show him mercy to the detriment of the species as a whole. Because in allowing that individual to grow, to very possibly procreate, you are paving the way for those defective genes to multiply. The species becomes weaker. And hundreds, thousands of years down the line, the species may very well die off completely.” I must be frowning, because he raises his eyebrows. “You disagree?” he asks.
I shrug. The species or the individual—I’d never thought about putting it in those terms. Although I’d never thought about the dangers of mass chromer canoodling, either. That line of reasoning could be applied to almost anything. Give a generation of kids a vaccine for one ailment, and you’re ensuring that all those that come after them will need the vaccine too. Allow only the healthy ones to survive, and you’ve created a stronger species. “I just think it’s a very clinical way to think about things, that’s all.”
“True,” he replies. “Luckily, I am certain you’ll never have to worry about such things. As I said, I am one hundred percent positive that you will give birth to a perfectly healthy little baby.”
I smile at that. “I’m going to hold you to that,” I say.
Dr. Marsden pulls another syringe out of the drawer. “Okay, Elvie. This is the last test. Then it’s back to Wilks you go. Now, brace yourself. You’re definitely going to feel this one.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as the needle plunges in, and suddenly my eyelids get heavy and everything goes dark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IN WHICH THE ALIENS STOP BEING POLITE, AND START GETTING REAL
“Tell me what I want to know, or so help me . . .” For the umpteenth time Captain Bob smashes Desi hard across the face. But Desi, who’s currently tied to a chair in the corner of Dr. Marsden’s exam room, isn’t talking. Other Cheerleader is still curled up on the delivery table, tears leaking from her eyes in this way that could probably technically be called crying, although she seems so completely vacant that I’m not sure there’s any emotion behind it at all.
“That baby,” Captain Bob barks, jerking his head toward Other Cheerleader’s little bundle of anti-joy—the one that Britta’s currently holding like it’s a feral raccoon or something—“that thing is not Almiri. It’s Jin’Kai. And I want to know why.”
Desi spits blood onto the floor. “M-m-maybe,” he stutters, as Captain Bob brings his ray gun closer to his nose, “maybe the dad is Jin’Kai. Maybe the girl got here by mistake.”
Captain Bob closes his eyes for a brief second, exasperated, as though he’s never heard such a ridiculous suggestion in his life. He turns to glance at Other Cheerleader. “Who is the father?” he asks.
Other Cheerleader smears what’s left of her mascara across her face and turns to look at Britta, who nods, urging her to respond. “His name was Charlie,” she says, then sniffles. “Charlie Sorley.”
“Well, he’s definitely Almiri,” Cole tells her gently. “You sure it was him?”
“Yeah,” she answers, her eyes unblinking. “Yeah.” Then she sinks her chin to her knees, once again lost in her world of vacant thoughts.
Captain Bob has rounded on Desi again. His face is so close to Desi’s that they’re practically Eskimo kissing. “Every girl here,” he says, “was implanted with an Almiri.” He jabs a finger in Other Cheerleader’s direction. “Including that one. So you tell me, and you tell me now. How did this happen? Are there more?”
I gulp.
More?
“Look,” Desi says, trying to push himself away from Bob. Since his chair is flush against the wall, though, this is pretty ineffective. “I told you, I don’t know anything.” Beads of sweat dot his forehead. “I just work maintenance and run the AV—”
There’s a sudden crackling noise, and a burst of light.
And Desi howls.
It takes me a second to realize that he’s been shot. Captain Bob has blasted him with his ray gun. There’s a hole, straight through his right thigh.
Outside, Kate is pounding on the locked door, screaming to be let in. The creature in Britta’s arms wails.
But Desi still isn’t talking.
“Flip off,” he tells the captain, wincing around the words. The hole in his thigh is letting off smoke.
I’ve had my fill of watching Bob pound the bejesus out of Desi, and the smell of burned flesh is threatening to make me ill again, so I try as best I can to focus my attention on Dr. Marsden’s computer. I’m searching for medical records on the girls, or something, anything, that might help fill us all in on just what the hell is happening here. I have a rock in the pit of my stomach, located right where the Goober normally kicks me, that makes me think the surprise enemy baby in Britta’s arms may be just the tip of the alien iceberg.
A glance out of the corner of my eye tells me Bob’s got the gun aimed at Desi’s temple now. I suck in my breath as I click through Dr. M’s personal files. My palms are sweaty and my fingers feel twitchy. I click on the suspiciously named PROGRAM 80 X.
“Go ahead and kill me,” Desi tells the captain. There’s a calmness in his voice that wasn’t there before. He almost sounds like he’s smiling. “I won’t tell you dreck.”
Bob puts his gun up. But rather than holstering the weapon, he walks to the door and yanks it open. Kate practically spills into the room, and Bob slams it shut behind her. He grabs her by the arm and presents her to Desi.
“Tell me what you’ve done,” he says, ice in his voice. He points the gun at Kate, who promptly turns a shade of white usually reserved for vanilla yogurt. “Or it won’t be you that I shoot next.”
From the look on Desi’s face, I’d say that Bob’s scare tactic is very clearly working. But when I turn to Cole, he looks just as terrified. That’s when I realize Bob might actually have lost every one of his marbles.
Fortunately for all of us, Desi immediately loses what little resolve he had. The poor schlub begins to squeal.
“All right! All right! Please, just . . . put that away.” His words are spilling over one another in his rush to be heard. When Bob lowers the gun, Desi lets out a long breath. Then, his voice slow and deliberate, he starts to talk.
“We perfected a new procedure,” he begins. “One that allows for the very rapid development and birthing of our young.” He sounds less like a maniacal evil mastermind spilling his diabolical plans to the heroes, and more like a five-year-old explaining to his parents how he broke their favorite lamp. I’m only half-listening to Desi’s speech as I open up the file on the doctor’s computer. It’s not as bad as you think it is, I tell myself. It can’t be. “A Jin’Kai embryo, genetically pre-engineered to adapt instantly to a human host,” Desi continues, “can go from inception to full term in thirteen to sixteen days.” From the delivery table Other Cheerleader moans softly.
The file I open is a lot of medica
l gobbledygook that’s hard to make out. But the phrases “genetically engineered,” “accelerated development,” and “re-fertilization window” make me think that this is indeed where I want to be searching.
“At this stage in the research, however,” Desi says, his voice halting every few words as he swallows, “the embryos develop so rapidly that they need an environment already prepared to nourish a much older fetus. So they are inserted into a host that is already to term.”
In front of me on the lap-pad is a chart, tracking each of the girls in the school over the period of their pregnancy, along with the obligatory corresponding lists of vitals and test results. The information gathered from each and every “checkup” with Dr. Marsden.
“You son of a bitch,” Bob says in a haunted whisper. “You swapped out our offspring for your own.”
My stomach flips as the Goober kicks me again. It can’t be true. I won’t let it be. A link along the side of the document reads 80 X A, and I click on it.
“A human female whose body was already housing a Klahnia,” Desi says. “Can you think of an environment more suitable to handle a Jin’Kai child?”
On the lap-pad in front of me, another file pops open.
“What’s a Klahnia?” Ramona asks softly.
But Desi ignores her. “Our genetic code is not so different from yours, even after thousands of years and billions of miles of separation. These girls were known to be incubating Almiri offspring, so—”
“So why not kill two birds with one stone?” Cole’s voice is so harsh, so jagged and fragile, that it jolts me. “Propagate your own kind and—”
I look up from the lap-pad just in time to see Desi’s eyes dart to Kate, still tangled with Bob’s ray gun, but she’s staring at her feet. “Rid ourselves of an enemy,” Desi finishes for Cole. “Yes.”
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