--Vocal recording 66408--Cell 84--
21:45pm
[click]
[pause 19.5s]
"Now that I know I'm pregnant, I'd swear I can feel the baby... kicking. Moving around. Which is probably impossible, because it's only been...
[pause 4s]
"...what, nine weeks..."
[pause 15.5s]
"...at the most. But... Is that normal...? I don't know. I don't know what to do..."
[pause 17.5s]
"I've been thinking a lot about names, too. If it's a girl, I think I'll call her... Maira."
[pause 15s]
[prolonged outletting of breath] "That's a nice name. Why Maira? Oh, thank you for asking. Named after the poet, you see. All of her poems and stories were banned by the Manuductive, but I still like the name."
[pause 27.5s, voices]
"Alright, OK. I just wanted to be asked, so I..."
[pause 19.5s, voices]
"Anyway... I left off last time... just after Six had, had killed that girl. I remember she.... sort of... twitched, and then went... totally still..."
[pause 17s]
"Six said to me - exact words, I have a good memory for that sort of thing - he said,
"That's all we could have done. She was beyond help. It's kinder this way... I know I'd rather die that way... quickly, painlessly... than any other way."
[pause 13.5s]
"He was talking as if... he was remembering something. I don't know, I never found out, but..."
[pause 20.5s]
"Anyway... After saying all that, I remember that... Six said,
"you ought to go back to that other room, you know. I don't know if they saw you; they might think you ran away in the night."
He didn't wait for me to answer. He started to... he started cleaning away the blood from the girl.... fresh blood and dried blood."
[pause 18.5s]
"I did what he said, I went through to the next room. I remember seeing that some of the members of the D.E.M. had moved out of there, so it was quieter. Two had gone, as well."
[pause 10s]
"After... after a few seconds, I looked around for Eight, and I saw... he was staring at me. A little. Just out of the corner of his eye. Actually, he saw me, he saw that... that I'd seen him looking, and... he turned away, quickly. He looked angry, all of a sudden."
[pause 19s]
"I... walked over to where he was. I suppose I just wanted to talk with someone, and... Six had scared me a little. I know that he'd killed the girl... out of, out of mercy, but..."
[pause 9.5s]
"Anyway, Eight was still staring down at the map he and two had been looking at earlier. I remember that it showed New 10 Downing Street, and the Bureaux surrounding it... there were little notes scribbled in pencil around the edges... all in... well, later I got to know it as the form of shorthand the D.E.M used. At the time, none of it made any sense to me."
[pause 12.5s]
"Eight... he sort of confirmed what Six had thought, because he said to me,
"I thought you'd have run away, you know. You wouldn't have gotten far, but I'd have expected you to have tried. You're still scared of us."
