by C Cato
Wiping her eyes, she rose and returned to the bedroom. A silk gown and skirt, like the one the Mother Superior was wearing, waited on the bed. This one in pure white. A pretty design, but she wondered how they found something in her size so quickly. No one in the city was as tall as her. Did they have a tailor on call?
The fabric was a smooth silk satin, cool to the touch. It glided over her skin as she dropped it into place, and it fit her like a second skin. It had a mandarin collar with a diamond broach at the neck and cap sleeves. Slit up both sides, there was the slightest hint of ombré color starting at the hem and disappearing by the time it reached her knee. By the door to the living room was a pair of silk ballet flats. She slipped them on.
Raising her chin, she stepped out of the apartment, and the guards took up position around her to escort her back downstairs and to the Temple. There was an elevator hidden behind a blooming willow tree, and she was encouraged roughly inside.
It was a blessedly brief ride to their destination.
When the doors opened with a ding, they did so on a lavish open space as impressive as the atrium. It had a glass-domed roof, displaying the clear blue sky above. The floor was the same white marble that adorned the atrium. At the back of the room stood a small dais with a large stone seat. Mother Superior sat in it, back straight and hands in her lap. To her right were the seven women that had accompanied her before. The elevator dinged again, and two women rushed past. One took her place with the seven women brightly dressed women, her more subdued colors standing out, and the other stood behind the dais with the other guards.
Risa.
She brushed the controls, activating her comm, and faced Mother Superior on her throne.
“What are you doing here?”
“I hope the accommodations are to your liking?” Mother Superior asked, her voice pitched higher than before. More girlish. When she didn’t answer, the woman continued. “We have so much to discuss.”
“What do you think?” asked Risa, her face grim, but her tone was light.
“There is so much we can learn from you, Dr. Temple.”
That got Sonya’s full attention. “How do you know my name? For that matter, how did you know where to find us? It wasn’t exactly public record in our time.”
“Do you prefer to be called Sonya? How rude of me not to ask. You can call me Jenna. After your unfortunate accident, you were celebrated as a genius for your contributions to nanotechnology. Of course, everyone thought you were dead. There’s so much about you in our library.”
Sonya crossed her arms, growing tired of the constant evading. “Great. That doesn’t answer my question.”
The simpering facade dropped long enough for eyes to narrow and the corners of her mouth to dip,before springing back, hiding her once again. “Fifty years ago, some information came to light about your whereabouts. Information that alluded to Sentinel One and how it might generate cures for the plague of infertility. We didn’t know it was a human. Let alone someone who was still alive. We searched for the Vault.”
“Fine. You have me. Let the three others you have go. They’ve done nothing to you.”
“But they have,” she said, her voice grew more dark, sinister. “Their people have withheld breeding humans from their rightful place in Haven for a long time. Who knows what they’ve done to them. Those three will help us understand our enemy and when we’re done with them, I’ll personally take their heads to the barrier myself.”
“You have to help them!” begged Sonya.
Risa didn’t flinch. “You’re the mission.”
“Fuck your mission! Help them!”
Risa blinked rapidly, the only indication that Sonya’s words had some effect. “I’ll do what I can, but you’re my priority. I haven’t spent three weeks in this hellhole just to go home empty-handed.”
“I won’t leave without them, so if you don’t help you will be going home empty-handed.”
Jenna had been babbling on while Sonya had held her private conversation with Risa. “I think once you see what we’ve accomplished since the plague, you’ll be more inclined to help us. We are fighting to save humanity. I’m sure you understand how desperate that makes us. Let us show you around, and then you can decide for yourself.”
A woman approached the dais slowly and stood several feet away without saying a word. When Jenna noticed her, she beckoned her closer. She whispered in Mother Superior’s ear, and Risa’s shoulders raised. Before she could ask, Jenna was on her feet and clapped her hands twice.
“Excellent timing! Perhaps you’d like a tour of our Breeding Center?” she said, stepping down from the low platform. “I have just been informed that our wayward Sisters are being prepared for the procedure they need to be proper Haven mothers.
“Procedure?” asked Sonya.
“We have come so far since your time when it comes to childbirth. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”
Sonya didn’t think anything this woman cared to show her would be good, but she followed anyway as she swept by.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Sonya
It was no accident that those women had been searching for them underground. Somehow, they had information about her, and she needed to find out what it was and how they’d gotten it. The fancy-dressed women didn’t come with them on their little tour, but Risa did. She was a silent pillar of strength Sonya drew on.
“They knew where to find us. Where the Vault was.”
“We think she has a journal. Maybe something Ian wrote after locking us away? Who knows.”
She nodded her head automatically at something Jenna was rattling on about. They’d slowly been making their way through the labs as she called them. A high school chemistry class would have put their labs to shame.
“She has all of the journals now. Willow took them when I was captured.”
“Don’t worry about that for now. Help is coming. Just do what you need to stay alive.”
“Just remember your promise. It’s not just me… oh and there are two kids, too.”
Sonya could almost hear the heavy sigh Risa didn’t dare give voice to. “Seriously, Sonya? We can’t save the whole city,” she paused and when she spoke again it was with a bite to her words. “I’m not sure the city is worth saving.”
What had Risa seen in her time here that created such bitterness?
“Sonya?” said Jenna, with a touch of impatience.
She coughed to hide her lack of attentiveness. Speaking in her head and listening simultaneously was not a skill she’d mastered. “Thinking of home… before,” she lied. “You were saying?”
“Mm.” Jenna narrowed her gaze, but it was so slight she would have missed it if she’d blinked at the right time. “I was saying we will go to the Breeding Center and then you can see the preparation for the new mothers that Willow and the Valkyrie repatriated today.”
“You mean the women that were torn from their homes? Their children? I’ll assume you killed their husbands. What gives you the right to make those decisions?” Her voice had begun to rise in volume as the heat of her anger swelled. Celene smiling and hugging Elise flashed in her mind, and her hands shook with the desire to throttle the woman.
Jenna’s pleasant facade cracked like a faulty mirror, and her face hardened. “I read the report Willow sent ahead on the unfortunate incident with Celene. It was never our intention to hurt our Sister. Especially one that had proved to be fertile. She could have helped us understand how she was able to achieve something that the rest of us have not.”
“Most of the Valkyrie don’t even fuck men,” said Risa with disdain. “They look down on it, but I’ve heard that some of them do regular treatments of sperm from donors in the hopes it will take. Only Hunters have gotten pregnant in the ranks, though. They fuck their Hounds. All of them.”
“Hounds?”
“The men assigned to them.”
Sonya followed Jenna to the elevator on the far side of the lab.
“We are hoping we will learn something from the other women that were brought back to us. Valkyrie, all of them. We are all tested for fertility at a young age, you know?” said Jenna, conversationally as she stepped into the elevator along with her bodyguards and Risa, then Sonya and her guards, and finally Willow.
“All Valkyrie are infertile. Which makes these women having children a miracle we are desperate to understand. We wouldn’t be on the verge of extinction if we could unlock the key.”
Sonya wanted to scream. Killing people wasn’t the answer. Hurting the A’amoth wasn’t the answer.
“But now, we have you. A true woman of science! I know that once you see the truth, you will be happy to work with us. To save us.”
Sonya held her tongue. She’d dealt with enough mentally unstable people at the hospital to know that it was not a good idea to provoke one.
“They’ll never see reason. Doesn’t matter what you tell them.”
She was starting to think that was true. There was something so creepy and cult-like with the Valkyrie. It went beyond a military presence. Cole and the other Sentinels were military. Some of her dissertation study was with a military research group interested in nanotechnology. It’s where she’d met Ian. They’d been military, too. None of them had the same mindless obedience that these women had.
“You will leave a great legacy behind,” said Jenna. They piled out of the elevator into a circular corridor. “Like our founder. After the Great Plague devastated our numbers, the world was chaos and women suffered. A great woman by the name of Elspeth Lyons gathered other like-minded women and came here. They took over this facility and created the beginning of Haven. It was a place for women to come and be safe from the savagery that had come with the plague.”
“In time, more women came, including those few remaining that had military training. They founded the Valkyrie and decided that any woman should be able to protect themselves. Of course, amendments over the years were made to protect our breeding women. Only non-breeding women can raise the sword. Fertile women are precious.
The hallway was narrow, forcing them to walk in a single file. Strips of light lined the floor on either side of the walkway and above them where the wall met the ceiling. It gave the hall a warm ambient glow. They all stopped when they reached a sliding metal door on the inner wall.
“This is our Breeding Center,” she beamed. “All of our sacred fertile women are here.”
The floor was eerily quiet. Where were the women? Inside was a large open space and in the middle was a control panel with three women in plain white linen gowns stood. The room had to be three stores high and glass windows circled the room, stacked at perfectly spaced intervals to the ceiling high above them. There were hundreds of them.
Jenna, her teeth gleaming, gestured for Sonya to go inside. The women in the center of the room glanced up and dropped to a knee as one when they saw who was with her. When Jenna gave them permission to stand, they went back to whatever it was they were viewing. Sonya crossed to the first window and peered inside. It was a cubby. Empty, but the next one wasn’t. A woman lay inside. Tubes ran to her arms and her nose. Chest rose and fell with steady easy breaths. Why was she on life support?
“Open this door,” she barked, not turning around to verify if they would do it.
A latch at the bottom released, and the door sprang open, almost clocking her in the chin. The woman and the bed she laid on pulled out like a tray in a morgue. Not a pleasant comparison. She listened to the woman’s heartbeat and checked her pulse again at her wrist. Nude, it was easy to see that there was a roundness to her belly. Not enough for her belly button to pop out, but noticeable. Third month, maybe? Head shaved bald, but there was no sign of abuse or neglect. Other than keeping her in a drawer and on a breathing tube.
“Why don’t you allow these women the chance to exercise? It’s better for them and the baby. Keeping them sedated and forcing air into them is not healthy for either.”
“Oh, Doctor,” Jenna said, shaking her head with a mocking smile. “She isn’t sedated. Things are so different now. We know so much more about childbirth than we did.”
A condescending tone always put her on edge. She was a fucking genius compared to these women. That was always going to be a hot button. As for their knowledge on childbirth and women’s health, Sonya seriously doubted that. If the birthrate was still dropping and they had inadequate medical care, they’d probably regressed, but she couldn’t deny the woman in front of her was healthy. She tapped her cheek slightly in the hopes of waking her up. It would be easier if she could get some answers directly from the woman herself.
“Miss?” she said, giving her shoulders a shake.
“We sought to eliminate the horrors associated with carrying and delivering a child long ago. In this way, we have ensured their safety and that of the unborn. She won’t answer you. Come with me. I’ll show you.”
Reluctant to leave her, Sonya straightened and one of the white-clad women pushed the sleeping woman back inside and closed the door.
Raising her eyes higher, she viewed the little windows with new concern. How many women were in those chambers? Pregnant and trapped. Was this what Connie’s mother had been afraid of?
Mother Superior went to a door Sonya hadn’t noticed, that opened into an observation room. A large glass window gave Sonya a clear view the room beyond. It might has well have been taken from a picture of her old emergency room. The equipment all appeared weathered and old, but well-cared for. Several cardiac monitors were pushed against the wall, and there was even a small ultrasound. In the middle of the room was a large standard hospital bed. A cart and suture tray sat next to it, covered with a white cloth. Was this where the women gave birth?
“Do you need me to help with a birth?” asked Sonya, truly confused. What were they going to watch?
Jenna giggled. Sonya shuddered. “No, no. That would be much too mundane for you, I’m sure. I wanted you to see our Pacification process.”
Ice broke out across her body like a frost creeping over a pond. Pacification?
Malik’s mother came through side door, kicking and screaming. She was fighting with everything she had. It took five women to pull her inside. One of them punched her in the face, hard. It only seemed to fuel her rage.
Sonya took an involuntary step toward the glass. “Stop this! What are you doing to her?”
“It’s part of the process. Some women just don’t understand how honored they should be. It’s hard for them to make the transition. Doubly so for women that used to be Valkyrie. Poor dears.”
Sonya wanted to slap the insincerity out of the woman, but she could only stare in dawning horror as they slammed the shrieking mother onto the table and held her down while straps were applied to her hands, ankles, and head.
Still she struggled, straining against the cuffs until Sonya thought she was going to injure herself. One of the women in white linen strode into the room, and the Valkyrie backed away to give her room. The bound woman increased her fight to free herself, her eyes growing so wide the whites were clearly visible.
Sonya’s stomach rebelled, and she swallowed the rising bile. “Stop,” she said, but her voice sounded far away. The doctor, and she hated applying the term to this woman, pulled the cloth off the tray and everything seemed to stop. Time stuttered. Snapshot moments of horror.
Hands reaching for her. Her own glowing with fiery blue inner light. Fists hitting the glass. The doctor raising a silver mallet and long sharp spike from the tray. The woman’s desperate howl for help as her back bowed. The spike centered over the inside corner of her left eye. A slight spark as metal struck metal. The doctor removing the bloody spike to observe the now immobile mother.
Time resumed.
Someone was screaming. It was more chilling than anything she’d ever heard in a scary movie. A heavy weight pressed against her back, but her light was gone. Her throat was raw.
Am I screaming?
“Sonya!
God. Please, Sonya! Stop resisting!” Risa sounded desperate.
Nothing seemed real. It was all so far away. They didn’t just lobotomize a woman to breed her body, did they?
In full rebellion, her stomach emptied its contents, and the weight on her back was suddenly gone and light returned. No one touched her as she heaved again and again.
All those windows. The same?
Even after she was empty, she dry-heaved.
This was atrocious. These women were atrocious.
“Take her to lab two. I want skin samples, blood, and urine, maybe get a marrow sample, too. Can’t be too careful.” Jenna’s hot breath tickled her ear. “I’ll take you apart piece by piece if I have to until I’ve found the answers I need. You’re the key, Sonya. The answer to our dying race, and I will unlock it.”
“You’re right, Risa,” she said finally. Someone hauled her to her feet. “There’s nothing worth saving here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Cole
“So, this is where you live when you aren’t playing underground railroad with refugees?” asked Cole. He dismounted from his horse and scanned the surrounding hillsides for trouble. The sun was high in the sky, and lush green hills shone like blankets of jewels in the distance. “I can see why you like the place.”
Ray shrugged. “Far enough away from Haven to receive little notice, but close enough we can still offer aid.”
They’d used vehicles to make most of the journey back to decrease the travel time. A three-week trip by horseback was cut down to one.
Once Zaro had agreed to work with them, the planning had gone much faster. He promised two hundred warriors and vehicles to transport them. Since a smaller force could move faster, and Cole was anxious to find out how Sonya and Risa were, he left at the end of the week as soon as Soren finished his charging device. Lifting his arm, he gazed at the black plastic bracer that covered his left forearm. The prototype. So far, it had worked. He just needed to get the sister device to Sonya.
Soren had stayed behind to come with the larger force of A’amoth, but Cole suspected that was because he had a crush on Eudala.