ARC10

Chapter 32.4

Waking is slow. An ambush of silver, orange, and black splotches overrun my vision. When the spots recede, the sterile edges of the lab sharpen as the haze melts away.

What am I doing here?

The evacuation. Warren. The decision.

It pummels me in a single swing. Stemming from somewhere I hadn't thought to check before making this rash decision, I crack.

It's gone.

I masticate on the words, pushing them around my mind, tasting their implications.

It's gone.

I am empty. Emptier than I felt after each failed test at the HHP. Emptier than those weeks with Simon and Dean missing from my life. It's gone. I'm empty.

Curling to my side, I grab my shoulders to contain the surge of anger that erupts as a solar flare.

What have I done?

"How are you feeling?" Knuckles asks from behind.

"What have I done?" It doesn't feel any better to say it out loud.

"You asked me to—"

"What have I done?"

"Are you experiencing any discomfort?"

Unbidden, my dream resurfaces—the one from last night with the man who held me steady. The green eyes, the gentle face. The familiarity. The knowledge that this person is someone I've known forever. It clicks.

It was me.

And him.

I dreamed of my child as a man. I dreamed he saved me. What have I done?

Knuckles appears above me again. "That bad?"

I can't speak.

What have I done?

The first time a life is put in my hands—a real life is entrusted to me—I kill it. I end it because I am scared, nervous, and too dense to search farther than an imaginary future concocted from a dull imagination.

In five years from now, Dean might have already moved on. In five years from now, Warren might be dead of natural causes.

Why didn't I stop to think? I could have done this. I could have taken care of this like I told Dean I was capable of doing all those months ago.

This might have been my one chance to be a mother.

Knuckles rummages around his box. "Would it make you feel better to know I didn't do it?"

"What?" I lift off the bed to face him.

"I gave you some light sedatives to let you sleep. You look like shit. I figured you'd make clearer decisions if you took a fucking nap."

I am going to kill him.

Or kiss him.

A burst of joy erupts as a supernova.

"Stop making such rash decisions. I might not be there next time to catch you, you idiot." He wanders around the room, haphazardly dropping tools around, making little busy-bodies of his hands. "But if you take the time to consider it and decide it is truly what you want, I will help."

"Knuckles," I say firmly, drawing his attention. "Thank you."

He wanders out of the room, abandoning me on the table.

I peer at my lap, lift my shirt to stare at the tiny pouch of belly I never bothered to check before.

Tentatively, with the bravery I can muster, I touch the protruding lump for the second time that day. I expect to outline its hands, feet, head, lips, eyes, elbows, and ears, but I don't. The little mound is solid like tightly packed dirt beneath my skin.

"Interesting," I say to it. "That's not what I expected."

I remain in this exact position for a long stretch of time.

When I leave Knuckles' lab, the party still raging around me. Civs hold hands, lean on shoulders, raise glasses, and praise the Lady on mute. All these people, their 2012— no, 2013 lives—will be the reason I strap my boots on each morning.

When I wander the halls after the commotion settles, I retreat to the brig where the little window still presents a clear view of Earth below. The prisoners sleep in their straps with their arms dangling in front of them.

The tiny gray-and-blue sphere floats alone in a net of darkness. It hovers as a ball in the air suspended by invisible strings. It reminds me of my primary-school project Simon and I worked tirelessly into the night to scrape together.

I have no real attachments toward the little globe in its emptiness. I feel for the Earth how I feel for my biological mother whose hair and complexion Simon said I had inherited. It would have been nice to know her when she was glorious, but I have been stripped of that chance by some force I suspect is different from what I was originally led to believe. It seems lonely in the black sky.

"Where are the stars?" I ask the bump. "I always expected there'd be a bunch of them everywhere."

I search my PAHLM for the new icon hiding amid the cluster of other applications.

"I won't be held responsible for being a shitty mother," I say. "Once I open this, there's no turning back. We're stuck together, you and me."

With a heaving sigh, a similar one more noted as being part of Dean's quirks than mine, my little finger wavers above the star.

"Here we go."

I press it. The icon fades from view. It reappears, pulsating rhythmically, beating brighter, sharper, and a little more pink.

End Book 1