He made his way back over to his seat. All eyes were on him as he sat himself down at the end of the table and a slow grin worked its way onto his face. This moment was all his, and they were all waiting for him to speak. He kept them waiting as he strafed across each of their faces, letting his eyes rest for just a little bit longer on Cecil before moving on.
When he was satisfied that he had kept them waiting long enough, he placed his hands before him on the table and threaded his fingers together. His back was straight and his shoulders as broad as he could make them. He spoke.
“Ladies and gentleman of the council, it is a beautiful day, and it is truly an honor to have the opportunity to serve the people on a day such as this. Shall we proceed?”
Chapter Seventeen
Claire had never known pain like this.
While it did feel more or less like the Program’s literature had explained it would, her ability to imagine the depth and intensity of the pain had fallen far short of encompassing the real thing.
And she was very tired. Exhausted. Eight hours had passed since she was first brought to this room. Her dilation had been sluggish, and the agony of each passing contraction had continued to intensify well beyond the scope of what she could ever have imagined.
Another one pulled and twisted within her now.
She tried to breathe though it, but ended up inhaling and then holding her breath for most of the contraction before erupting in a low, throaty bellow.
“You’re doing great, sweety. I know it hurts, but there’s no changing our minds now. The epidural offer is off the table. It was a brave choice to tough it through like this, but it will pay off soon. Let me see how we’re doing down here.”
Laetitia slipped a white sanitary glove over her right hand and examined Claire.
“I have good news,” she said, throwing the glove thoughtlessly into the waste bin beside her. “You are ready. You can start pushing now, on this next one.”
Claire’s entire body tightened as another contraction riveted through her. She pushed with her eyes squeezed shut and her teeth pressed hard together, and the terrible ache in her lower back would not relent.
About a minute after the contraction let up another one began, and then another shortly after it. It kept on like this for the better part of an hour as the baby was pushed down into her cervix. And even though the child was steadily working its way out, Claire would not have known for certain that she was making any progress if it weren’t for Laetitia’s assurance that she was. Everything just felt torn and stretched, and a burning pain throbbed everywhere from her abdomen to the spot where her thighs began.
And then came Laetitia’s voice, this time filled with a seemingly more genuine vigor.
“I see its head! You’re doing great, sweety! It won’t be much longer now!”
Claire grunted and screamed through the coming contraction, and then let out a word between panting breaths.
“Her,” she grunted.
“I know it hurts, sweety, but it will all be over soon,” Laetitia responded in an unconvincing, overly affectionate tone.
“No. Her. You see HER head!”
“Oh. Ok, sweety. Is this another one coming now? Give me a big push! Push! Push!”
Claire pushed and screamed and agonized her way through the next half hour, and then she heard it crying. It was the sweetest sound Claire had ever heard, and she held her arms out to receive the child.
“Are you sure?” asked Laetitia. “I don’t generally recommend it, especially for first-timers. It can be very hard to let go again.”
Claire nodded, waving inwards and toward herself with the fingers of her outstretched hands. Laetitia complied, laying the naked little girl onto Claire’s bare chest and then covering both of them with a thick, soft blanket.
Claire closed her eyes, sighing out a low hum. This warm little body on top of hers, cooing and wiggling, filled her completely. Never had she known true comfort before this moment. Never had she been truly content, or known what it is to love quite as she did right now. She cried with a soft smile resting on her lips, and found that she was suddenly filled with a calm energy of sorts. Sleep was far from her mind.
Laetitia clamped and cut the umbilical cord as the mother and child lay cuddling, and then walked over to the panel on the wall and pressed a little yellow button. Having done this, she walked over to where her glass of water waited on the counter to take a sip before returning to her seat. A minute passed, and then another as she looked down at her watch.
“Hmmm… they’re usually here by now. Oh well, we can just get started on the afterbirth now. I’m just going give you a little belly massage to loosen things up in there. I know you are tender, but bear with me just a little longer.”
She pressed Claire’s lower abdomen for a few minutes and then looked over at the button again. It was still blinking bright yellow.
“This is really strange,” Laetitia said to herself. “Maybe I should call them and…”
The door opened abruptly and a large man in navy blue walked in. His skin was dark and his head freshly shaven. He closed the door behind him as he entered, and then approached the two women.
“Is it just you?” Laetitia asked him, wearing a confused look on her face.
“Yeah, it’s busy today. I’m sure I can handle this one, though.” He smiled, looking over at Claire. “She doesn’t look so tough to me.” Claire’s smile broadened.
A cold shudder ran through Laetitia. Something wasn't right. The retrieval men usually came in twos, and she was certain she had never seen this particular man in all her life. Aside from this, she had absolutely never seen one of these men smile or emit anything more than monosyllabic grunting sounds when he came in to retrieve a child.
Even more off-putting was Claire’s reaction to this man’s arrival. This was normally the moment when the new mother’s cocoon of bliss would be shattered and replaced with horror and agony. With screams and protests and pitiful begging. These two just gazed at each other, smiling.
Oh shit, she thought to herself. Oh shit, oh shit! This is not right.
She eased slowly over to the phone on the wall and gingerly lifted the receiver from its cradle. There was no tone.
Oh shit! Not good!
The man turned to her now.
“It seems that the phones are down.” His voice was calm and low, nearly soothing. “Also, I locked that door, and your print will no longer open it. What I recommend is this: remain quiet and finish your job here. Anyone who might respond to your cries for help will just end up in the emergency wing of this hospital, or worse.”
Laetitia had backed herself up against the wall without realizing it. Her eyes refused to blink, and went from Owen to Claire and back to Owen again.
“You’re… the father…”
Owen nodded.
“I’m nothing you need to fear, so long as you keep quiet and finish what needs finishing with Claire. Is the afterbirth out yet?”
She looked puzzled, as if she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Is it out?” he repeated, still in a very placid tone.
“Yes!” she spurted. “I mean, no. No, not yet.”
“Well?”
Owen could see that she was terrified, and more than hesitant to approach.
“If it helps, I could stand over there,” he suggested, motioning towards the wall opposite her. She nodded yes and he took a few steps away, leaning into the corner where the wall met the counter.
Slowly, Laetitia worked her way back over to her patient, who lay blissfully with her child upon her and seemed strangely oblivious to the tension that filled the room.
Claire still lay with her feet flat on the table and pulled slightly towards her butt, her bare knees raised as they had been when she delivered. Without thinking about what she was doing, Laetitia gently placed her hand on Claire’s thigh. For some reason, she always thought that this would add some comfort to her words. She had picked
this habit up from her mentor, as she had picked up her mostly affectionless use of the word “sweety.”
“Ok, sweety. We’re going to get the placenta out now.” She glanced nervously over at Owen and then back again. “What I’ll need from you is just one good push when I say. Maybe two. Ok?” The words came out in autopilot, and in surrendering to this routine dialogue which she knew so thoroughly, she felt that her heart rate was just starting to ebb.
She pulled steadily but lightly on the cord and asked Claire to push. After the placenta was out, she wheeled her small table over and took up the suture kit.
“Just a few stitches and we’ll have you out of here, sweety.”
Laetitia nearly forgot that this was no longer a normal delivery. That there were certain looming complications. That there was a muscular menace of a man watching from the corner.
After setting the last stitch, she stood up and returned the kit to the table. She looked down at the new mother and her child, and realized that she was smiling down at them.
It didn’t seem so long ago that the presence of these retrieval teams, or carriers, as they were commonly called, had sent chills through her. To this day they still made her uneasy, but she had learned to ignore them. She remembered how wrong it all felt that first time with Muriel, when the carriers had come and plied the baby from its mother and then disappeared without a single word.
A child should be with its mother. She remembered thinking that, though years of lecturing and a number of very carefully phrased, frequently repeated passages in her textbooks had told her she ought to think otherwise.
She turned her head to Owen. The fear was gone now.
“You will need formula, bottles, blankets, clothes. And breastfeeding can be tricky for some. And normally they would get vaccines in the nursery.”
“It’s all taken care of,” replied Owen, smiling kindly and bowing his head in a bow.
“Let me get the wheelchair,” she offered.
“No.” The voice was Claire’s, soft and serene. “No, I don’t need it. It will just get us spotted. I need your clothes.”
“My… clothes?”
Owen reached down into a duffle bag and came up with a woman’s pair of pants and a shirt. She thought it strange that she hadn’t noticed the bag when he first came in, although he certainly must have been carrying it with him. He stepped forward and placed the clothes onto Laetitia’s small operating table, turning himself around to face the wall while she changed into them.
“Ok,” she said when she was finished.
Owen came over to Claire and carefully wrapped the blanket snug around the child before lifting her up. He cradled her on his forearm, looking down into the blue eyes that wandered around him and through him, unable to focus. He laughed, and felt his eyes growing warm.
“She is beautiful. Perfect.”
“Yes. She is,” smiled Laetitia. She supported Claire as she lifted herself from the delivery table, and then helped her into the operating scrubs, which had a few smears of her blood on them. When Claire had both of her white nurse’s shoes on, Owen lowered the baby down into the duffle bag, where two more thick blankets served as a cushion. He pulled the flap down and zipped it closed, and Laetitia noted the large round holes that would allow for an ample supply of air.
He lifted the bag and bounced it lightly as the baby cooed softly within. Then he took a step towards Laetitia and held out his hand.
“Thank you for doing what you do,” he started. “I do not envy you your job, and I’m sorry to have put you in this situation. If you were a man, I’d leave some damage on you, like I did with the two goons who were nice enough to give me these clothes. At least some bruises, so they’ll know that you put up a fight. But they will know who I am, what I am. And you must weigh, what, fifty, fifty-five kilos? They’ll know that you had no choice. I threatened to kill you. I had a knife.” He winked.
She reached out and shook his hand.
“Good luck. I hope you make it. I really do.” she said. “I’ll wait a while to call for help.”
Claire threw her arms around Laetitia, whispering hot breath into her ear.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
And then they opened the door and stepped out, Owen offering his free arm to Claire, Claire refusing.
Chapter Eighteen
Kale scanned the bedroom around him. There wasn’t much to see; a bed, a nightstand with a moderately sized vanity mirror, a few ventilation ducts, and a single large bulb emanating soft blue light. The room smelled like stale sweat.
The chatter continued. Roberto was nervous, talking very quickly, and Kale could practically hear the man’s heart racing in his voice as he sat there on his bed and spoke to the two other men who hovered over him. He rattled out the few bits of information that were his to relay.
“There was this guy in the hall behind me when I was coming home. He was big, dark-skinned. Dressed like one of our building’s maintenance crew. I guess I didn’t pay him any mind, and then suddenly he’s pushing me into my flat the second I unlock the door. I tried to talk, to ask him what was happening… to ask what he wanted from me… but he hit me before I could open my mouth. He hit me here…”
The man reached back and wrapped his hand over his side, just beneath his ribs on that soft spot of flesh that covers the kidney. He cringed at his own touch, sucking in air through his teeth.
“…And he hit so hard. Then he dragged me in and tied me to this chair here. He told me he was sorry… I thought that was strange, that he apologized for it… Anyway, he had something with him, some sort of scanner, and he scanned my thumb with it. It freaked me out a bit, though I’m not sure why. He told me it was either the scanner or he would have to cut my thumb off. Then the scanner wasn’t so scary anymore. And then he brought me a glass of water and told me that he would be back later and that nothing more would happen to me if I just stayed put and kept quiet.”
“But he didn’t gag you? Nothing like that?” asked one of the men, busily typing notes into his tablet.
“No. He didn’t have to. He just set that thing over there on my dresser and told me he would be watching me with it. I think it’s some sort of camera thingy. Small and black, shiny. Looks pretty advanced.”
“A small, black shiny thing. Got it,” the man nearest him said with a chuckle as he jotted something into his tablet.
“Wait…” The second of the two men, who had been pacing back and forth for lack of any real assignment to pursue, picked the small black box up off the nightstand and held it up for Roberto to see. “You mean this?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Heheheh! Hey Theo, check this out! Looks pretty advanced, right?”
The man who was interviewing Roberto looked over at his partner. He flashed a painful sort of smile and sank his head down into his hand, cradling his forehead and covering his eyes.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” he said, shaking his head in sad disbelief. “Please tell me that you weren’t being held captive by an alarm clock.”
“Wha… Is that what that thing is? But… Oh, c’mon, give me a break… it’s dark in here.
The room filled with coarse laughter as Theo and his partner split their sides. But Kale’s face remained straight, and he picked up the interview where Theo had left it, stepping towards Roberto and squatting halfway down to meet his eyes.
“We’re losing time, Roberto. Talk faster. This man attacked you, tied you up, and then he just left?
“Yes, but he came back. He was gone for two or three hours, and then I heard him coming in through the door again, only this time someone was with him. I heard a voice. A woman’s voice.”
“But you didn’t see either of them?”
“Naw. They didn’t come back into the bedroom, and this door was closed. It sounded like they were in the bathroom mostly, and I heard the water running in there quite a bit. They were here for maybe thirty, forty minutes, and then they were gone again.”
Kale rose up without a word and made for the bathroom. It was spotless; cleaner, he wagered, than it had been this morning. He reached up to his earpiece and depressed the small red button, and then he spoke. “Call Cecil.” He pulled his hand back down to his side and walked into the main living space of the flat. A few seconds passed, and then a voice was in the earpiece.
“What do we got, Kale?”
“I’m at the apartment, sir. They’ve been gone almost an hour. Sounds like they cleaned themselves up, probably a change of clothes and whatever else they could think of to look less like themselves. I’d venture the girl is sporting a different color now. My guess is blonde. But I’ve missed something here… why this flat in particular?”
Kale replayed Roberto’s words in his head. Kidney punch, tied to chair, finger scanned… the fucking scanner!
He walked to the bedroom threshold and waved to get Roberto’s attention.
“Do you drive a car?”
“Yes. Of course I do. I need it for my work. You see, I’m a structural engin…”
“Fuck. Sir, they took his car, and they’ve got an hour on us. I’d say track the son of a bitch, but Owen’s been planning this for months. He wouldn’t miss such an obvious detail.”
“Aw c’mon! They took my car, too?!” Roberto muttered to himself. “This just gets worse.”
“Just a second, I’ll pull it up on my screen,” said Cecil. “You’re right. He didn’t miss it. The tracker on Roberto Granada’s car switched itself off an hour and seven minutes ago. Strangely enough, all of the city and motorway surveillance cameras for ten kilometers were disabled at exactly the same time.
“And would you care to guess what Owen’s partner, our dear Claire Venezia, does to earn her quota, Kale? She is a developmental programmer here in the same building where I am sitting right this second. More specifically, she is one of the leading programmers in our domestic security team… you know, the people who handle little things like video surveillance and beacon tracking.”
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