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“He was an Alpha, but nothing like your dear Rhys.” She slows her peeling and lowers her gaze. “A brute, if I’ve ever seen one.”
“You didn’t want this pregnancy.” I’d venture to say half the pregnancies of my generation have been unwanted, many the result of rape, due to the scarcity of my gender.
“It shames me to speak of an unborn child that way, but no. I didn’t ask for this.”
“Mara, have you had any pain?”
“Every day. This child stretches me in ways that don’t feel natural, and it’s as if my body is desperate to accommodate it. Unbearable, at times.”
Perhaps that’s why Haseya wasn’t troubled by the small bit of blood. It’s possible everything I’ve suffered, she’s seen before.
Mara pops a piece of potato peel into her mouth and shakes her head. “Nothing compared to what I suspect the birth will be, though, so there’s no point in complaining.”
“Having babies is a different experience to what I remember,” the elder woman says, tossing another potato into the pot of water. “I feel for you both.”
Beyond the older woman, I catch sight of Kenny, sitting off in a small clearing with objects laid out in front of him.
“Excuse me.” I clamber to my feet and cross the camp toward him. I need to take my mind off the worry that hasn’t lessened by chatting with Mara. Plopping on the ground across from him, I examine what appears to be parts of some gadget he’s disassembled, though I don’t have a clue what it might’ve been before he took it apart. “What are you doing?”
“Tinker asked me to look at a circuit board for him. To see if I can get this thing working again.”
“What was it? I mean, before this.”
He snorts, lifting one of the parts before tossing it back to the ground. “Junk. But if I can get it working again, it’ll be a camera that feeds into a small hand-held TV.”
“TV?”
“Television box.” He lifts another object with a black screen. “It’s a closed circuit television camera, which basically converts light to an electrical signal that can be displayed on this box. Theoretically.”
“Right.” I have no idea what he’s talking about. I’ve read a number of books on the world prior to the Dredge, and none of the technical stuff seemed to stick. “You don’t think you can get it to work?”
“No. But it gives me something to do while we’re sitting here.”
“Does it require electricity?”
“This one is solar powered.” He lifts yet another puzzle piece from the mess of parts laid out in front of him.
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“An illustrious career working for Calico. I studied computer and electrical systems for Szolen from the time I was young. My father was a physicist before the Dredge hit.”
The lack of branding at his neck and telltale scars of an experimental subject begin to make sense. “You’re the one who sealed the hospital.”
“Well, I’m the one who programmed it to automatically respond to a breach. I’m the only one who knows the computer system there.” There’s an air of arrogance clinging to his words, like he’s proud of that fact.
“Everyone left behind. Can we assume they’re dead?”
“I would venture to say. One might survive a short while on the food supply. And water. But those mutations … they hunt and feed on human flesh. Just like the Ragers. Whatever’s left probably isn’t alive.”
Once again, I’m left with the visuals of imagining Six and I trapped inside. I stare down at my belly and place my hands where his child grows inside of me, one that would’ve been ripped from it’s womb by those things. Torn apart just like the soldiers we stepped over in our desperation to escape.
“Are you okay?” Kenny’s voice breaks my thoughts, and I give a slight smile, nodding back at him. “Yeah. The seal on the door … it’s completely impenetrable, right?”
With unwavering attention, he stares back at me. “There isn’t a chance of anything getting in, or out, of that hospital. I promise you.”
Nodding again, I take a deep breath and turn to find Six entering the camp, with Rigs and Tinker trailing after him. The mere sight of him sends a flutter through my chest, tamped down only by the visuals of him fighting those mutations to the death. “I pray you’re right.”
Chapter 9
