“I’m already pregnant with your baby, freak,” she says, her voice softer and not as bitter as before despite the name she calls me. “I think that makes us friends.”
I can’t help but grin at her as I stroke her stomach again. “You hear that, little one? I’m going to get to see you a lot more.” When I lean forward, nuzzling her stomach with my face, she pops me in the back of the nog.
“Too soon, freak.”
But she didn’t say never…
3
Grace
“You all right, sugar?”
I turn away from the window to the sound of the twangy accent and find the curvaceous woman I had yet to meet standing in my doorway. Molly. The talkative one. Aria had issued a special room for me in the area of the facility with the biggest window, her concession for my raging about being locked up—and knocked up—against my will. I don’t like being pitied and loathe gifts with strings. Clearly this was meant to rugsweep my complaints and assuage their guilt, but I wanted the view, so I let them baby me.
For now.
“I’m fine,” I answer.
What is it with everyone in this place trying to make friends with me? This isn’t some big old happy family.
They took me.
Took everything from me.
And I’m going to take it back.
I turn away from her and back to my window, hoping she’ll take it for the dismissal that it is. Her friendly smile only makes me want to grind my teeth. I detest friendliness. It’s usually a disguise for condescension.
From my vantage point, I can see a rise of mountains in the distance. I make a mental note of their location in reference to the facility and the trajectory of the bright sun. I don’t know how I’ll use them to get out of here, but as I’ve always known, information is the key to escape.
Information is what got me away from my lonely past and it’s what will get me out of captivity.
“You don’t seem fine. I know I sure wasn’t when they pulled me out of that thing.”
I roll my eyes. “So, what? Are we supposed to magically forget what they did to us? All of you make me sick. Their twisted experiments are psychotic and you’re delusional if you think any differently.”
She says nothing, only sits at the foot of my bed and studies me like I study a printout of data or a sample under a microscope. My skin crawls in response. How ironic that I’d be so unnerved being the subject instead of the observer.
“You can leave,” I say bluntly.
But she doesn’t, at least not for a while.
The same routine happens daily for two weeks. Molly drops by, not always in the morning, the schedule varies, but the only constant is the script. She’ll ask me how I’m doing, I’ll reply, “I’m fine,” then she’ll sit with me for a time, sometimes an hour or more, until I’ll get frustrated with her constant scrutiny and bark at her to leave. The duration varies and even when I’m downright hostile it doesn’t deter her from coming back the following day.
Until one afternoon when I realize she hasn’t come to visit.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Her giving up is the best outcome for everyone. Nurturing ties to these people will result in nothing good. As soon as I get their spawn out of me, I don’t plan on staying long anyway.
But that logic doesn’t deter my mind from wandering and wondering.
Has she finally given up on me?
Everyone does, sooner or later.
The thought shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I’d grown used to having her chattering about nonsense as I stared resolutely out the window. Sometimes she’d talk about her mate, Draven, or the goings-on around the facility that I was so determined to ignore. Without her bright voice to fill the nothingness, my own loneliness seemed to press in on me. The window doesn’t even seem to help.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say to myself. “You don’t need her.”
But what if something is wrong?
The thought is pervasive.
I shouldn’t care, not after what they did to me. They don’t deserve my concern since they certainly didn’t show me any when they pulled an immaculate conception. But…what if the aliens hurt her? Of course, they say the big, hulking freaks dote on the women and wouldn’t harm a hair on their heads, but I know better. Words are just that, words. Actions matter, and so far, their actions have only proven consent is far from the top of their priorities. It will take a lot more than their pretty words to convince me otherwise.
I tell myself this for over an hour past the usual time Molly visits. I say over and over, but that doesn’t stop the nagging worry that something is very, very wrong. What if she’s being held against her will? She’d made it a point to explain how much the women love their mates, but it could be a lie. They could be fed those ideologies like some sort of freakish sex-cult.