Day 182. 06:00 hours.
Forbes Park.
The Peacock Mansion.
The Atrium.
The narra table was not a war table for the first time in eleven days, and the difference was immediately visible to everyone who walked into the Atrium that morning.
The maps were gone, the tablets were gone, the comms rigs were gone, and the table was just a table again — wood and food and the particular quiet of a surface that had held the weight of a war and was now holding rice and dried fish and pickled mango and lugaw instead.
The lugaw had come from the kitchen in a pot that Carmen carried with both hands and a steady stride, because the kitchen did not stop, had never stopped, had run through the entire war and was running now.
The three girls had cooked through the raiders and the minions and the things and the cold and the counting, and they were cooking now, and the smell of the lugaw filled the Atrium with something warm and something that smelled like survival.
Jae-min sat at the head with his dark eyes on the table and his face paler than it should have been.
He had given blood yesterday — to Ji-yoo, to Yue, enough to stabilize both — and the color had not fully returned to his skin.
He was eating rice because Alessia had told him to eat, and the rice was plain, and the dried fish was salty, and he ate both without tasting either, his spatial awareness humming low at the edges, mapping the compound out of habit.
Alessia sat beside him with her indigo ponytail over her shoulder and her blue eyes on the table and her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that the three girls had brewed under Hua's supervision from the stool in the kitchen doorway.
The coffee was hot and bitter and exactly what she needed after a night of sitting at her station with the closed tablet and the data she did not understand.
She drank it slowly, feeling the warmth spread through her, feeling the caffeine sharpen the edges that the night had blurred.
Ji-yoo was not at the table — she was in the infirmary, bedridden, three days minimum, her body healing the old-fashioned way without the Healing Hands and without the biological cost.
Just time.
Yue was not at the table either, for the same reason — the same cot, the same stitches, the same slow natural healing that could not be rushed.
Two women in the infirmary, sitting upright on their cots because lying down was for people who were worse off than they were.
The woman in white was on the east wall.
Standing, watching, the katanas on her back and the Glocks in their holsters and the goggles up and the green eyes on the city.
She did not eat in front of people, did not sit at tables, and did not take off her mask.
She was watching because watching was what she did, and the war being over did not change what she did.
Rico sat at Jae-min's right, and for the first time in eleven days his M4 was not across his chest — it was leaning against the wall beside Paolo's ice spear, two weapons side by side, not being held, because the war was over and the weapons could rest.
Marie was beside him with her notebook open and her pen moving, six months pregnant and still counting because counting was what Marie did.
Hua was in the kitchen doorway on the stool, three and a half months pregnant, her crimson hair tied back, her violet-blue eyes watching the three girls work.
Paolo was at the far end near the kitchen corridor, his Sailor Moon doll propped against the soy sauce bottle, his cracked eyeglasses on his nose, his ice spear leaning against the wall.
He was eating rice and looking at nothing in particular.
The household ate in the minus-seventy, in the mansion, in the morning after the war.
— • • • —
"The count," Rico announced, his voice cutting through the clink of forks and the scrape of bowls with the quiet authority of a colonel opening the record one final time.
The table went quiet.
The particular quiet of a household that had been counting for eleven days and was now hearing the final count — the last time the numbers would be read aloud, the last time the notebook would open and the pen would point, and the colonel would say the names and the numbers and the particular arithmetic of survival.
Rico opened Marie's notebook.
The pages were full — eleven days of numbers and names and additions and subtractions recorded in Marie's steady handwriting because Marie's handwriting did not shake even when the numbers were terrible.
"Ridge group, started at one hundred and eighty-eight, ended at thirty." Rico read, his voice low and even, the voice of a man delivering something he had been building toward for eleven days. "One hundred and fifty-eight dead over eleven days — to raiders, to minions, to the cold, to the things. Thirty survivors. Twenty-five men, five young women saved by the woman in white at the north wall."
The table was quiet.
No one spoke, no one moved.
The number sat in the air like something physical — one hundred and fifty-eight, the weight of one hundred and fifty-eight people who had been alive eleven days ago and were not alive now.
"Coalition, started at thirty-seven, ended at twenty-one." Rico continued, turning the page with fingers that were steady because they had to be steady. "Sixteen dead — to the cold, to minions, to the things."
He turned another page.
The air in the room shifted.
"Vanguard Six started at twelve, ended at two," Rico murmured, and his voice did not change, but the room did — the air thickening, the breaths shortening. "Ten dead over five months. De Dios, Agbayani, eight others. Two survivors — Elena Vasquez and Reyes."
Elena Vasquez was at the table with her earth-dark eyes on her plate and her hand flat on the wood, palm down, the earth humming through the contact the way a current hums through wire.
"Ten down to two, and the two that are left are me and Reyes, and she is in the infirmary holding a Glock in her left hand because her right hand is gone, and I am sitting here eating rice like the earth does not feel this, like the ground does not know what it lost, but the ground knows, the ground always knows, it just does not break because breaking is not what ground does." Elena Vasquez grieved, her fingers pressing harder against the wood, the earth humming up through her palm and into her wrist and into her arm.
She had been counting since the beginning, since twelve, since before the freeze, since the unit was a unit and the number was twelve and the number was supposed to stay twelve.
The number was two now, and she did not look up because looking up would mean seeing the table and seeing the faces and seeing the faces would mean feeling the number.
Reyes was not at the table.
Reyes was in the infirmary with the Glock in her left hand and the empty right shoulder and the count in her head — twelve to four, four to three, three to two, two.
She was holding the count the way she held the Glock, with her left hand, because her right hand was gone and the right shoulder was empty and the count was the only thing that was left.
"The Hearth, started at thirty-one, ended at thirty-one." Rico offered, and something in his voice eased — not softened, not warmed, but eased, the way a voice eases when the numbers it is reading are not terrible. "Zero dead, all alive, all integrated."
Tessa was at the table with Lianne on her lap, the four-year-old eating rice with the particular concentration of a child who had learned the word home and was home and was eating.
Tessa's dark eyes were steady, and her warm aura was humming low, and Lianne was on her lap, and the word home was in the room, and the words zero dead were in the room, and for one moment the two sat side by side, and neither one was louder than the other.
"The household, started at twenty-six, ended at twenty-six." Rico declared, lifting his chin slightly. "Zero dead, all alive. Yue and Ji-yoo were injured, bedridden for three days, natural healing, no permanent injury."
Rico turned the page.
The numbers shifted from the living to the dead, and the air shifted with them.
"Raiders — sixty-seven, all dead," Rico stated, meeting the eyes of the table before looking back down. "Minions — seventy-nine cleared, forty-seven east, nineteen south, thirteen north, all dead."
"The Snake Woman — dead, killed by Jae-min." Rico intoned, his jaw tightening on the name.
"The big guy — dead, killed by Elena Vasquez," he added, glancing toward Elena Vasquez, who did not glance back.
"The things — twelve killed at the north wall, unknown remaining in the deep snow and the ruins." Rico finished, closing the notebook and setting it on the table with the careful deliberation of a man who had been writing the record of a war for eleven days and was now closing the record, his fingers resting on the cover the way fingers rest on a gravestone. "The things are next."
"The compound, total occupants — two hundred and forty-eight," Rico announced, straightening his back. "Ridge group thirty, coalition twenty-one, Vanguard Six two, Hearth thirty-one, household twenty-six, plus the five children, plus Lianne, plus the three elderly. Two hundred and forty-eight souls in a mansion in Forbes Park in minus-seventy."
He paused.
The pause was not for effect — the pause was for the word.
"The last bastion." Rico proclaimed, his voice carrying across the table with the weight of eleven days and one hundred and seventy-four dead and two hundred and forty-eight living and the particular truth that this compound in this mansion in this frozen city was all that was left.
"The last bastion," the table echoed, the voices low and steady and simultaneous.
"The war is over — the particular war, the raiders and the minions and the cavity." Rico declared, picking up his fork with the resignation of a man who had finished the count and was now going to eat because the count was done and the eating was next. "The compound is safe, the compound holds."
"The compound holds," the table confirmed.
Rico went back to eating.
The household ate.
— • • • —
Day 182. 08:00 hours.
The infirmary. L2.
Alessia came down the stairs with her kit — the black bag that held vials and needles and slides and typing cards and everything else she needed to check on two patients and then draw blood from an entire compound.
She moved with the efficiency of a doctor making morning rounds, except these rounds were not just rounds — they were the first step of an investigation she had been building toward since she discovered that her blood would agglutinate with Ji-yoo's blood on a microscope slide, since she realized that the impossible blood was not one type but at least two, since she understood that the Enhanced body was rewriting itself in ways the medical textbooks had no category for.
But first, the patients.
Ji-yoo was awake on her cot, sitting up, the arm stitched and bandaged, the kidneys bruised.
Yue was awake on her cot the same way, sitting up with the same defiance of the horizontal.
Two women sitting upright on cots in an infirmary, both injured, both healing, both refusing to be patients while being patients.
"Morning." Alessia greeted, setting the kit on the station with a soft click.
"Morning." Ji-yoo rasped, her voice low and rough with the particular roughness of a woman whose body had been through trauma and was still processing the fact that it was horizontal when it wanted to be vertical.
"Morning," Yue muttered flatly, her voice stripped of everything except the bare acknowledgment that another human being had entered the room and spoken.
Alessia checked Ji-yoo first — the stitches, the kidneys, the color.
The color was better.
The pallor of yesterday was fading, replaced by something warmer, something that said the blood Jae-min had given was being accepted and the body was making more of it.
The bruises under the skin were shrinking, the swelling going down.
"The kidneys are healing, two more days minimum," Alessia reported, pressing gently along Ji-yoo's flank. "Bruising is going down, swelling is reducing, the body is doing its job."
"Two more days, huh." Ji-yoo groaned, letting her head fall back against the wall with a soft thud. "I have been in this bed for one day, and I already want to put my fist through it."
"Minimum — could be three, and if you put your fist through the wall, you will add another week because you will break your hand and I will have to heal it," Alessia stressed, pulling the bandage tighter around Ji-yoo's torso with practiced fingers. "The kidneys are slow healers because they are internal and they do not get the blood flow that the skin gets, so they take time whether you like it or not."
"Copy," Ji-yoo grumbled, accepting it with a closed jaw and a dark look at the ceiling.
Alessia checked Yue — the stitches on the arm, the stitches on the side, the color.
The color was better here too, the same improvement, the same fading of pale, the same return of warmth.
The sutures were holding, and the skin was growing back over the silk.
"Gashes are closing, two more days minimum," Alessia noted, adjusting the bandage on Yue's arm. "Stitches are holding, skin is growing, the body is doing its job."
"Two more days in this bed." Yue echoed tonelessly, her marble eyes fixed on the far wall with the particular fixedness of a woman who was calculating how many hours that was and finding the number unacceptable. "I have a jian that needs sharpening and a hand that needs retraining, and I am lying here counting ceiling tiles."
"Minimum, could be three — the gashes were deep, and the tissue needs to fill in, and the skin needs to close over the sutures." Alessia pressed, meeting Yue's gaze without flinching. "Your jian will still be there in three days, and your hand will be better in three days, and if you get up now, you will tear the stitches and add another week."
"Copy." Yue clipped, turning her head away.
Alessia stepped back and looked at the two of them — two women sitting upright on cots, both healing, both impatient, both refusing to be patients while being patients.
"Rest — the body heals when it rests, so sleep and eat and let the body do its job," Alessia instructed, pointing at each of them in turn.
"Copy," the two women responded together, and the synchronicity of it was almost funny, except that neither of them was laughing.
Alessia turned to go.
Then stopped.
Turned back.
"I need blood from both of you," Alessia announced, her voice shifting from clinical to something more careful and more deliberate. "I am starting a compound-wide infection screening today — everyone, all occupants. The compound has been exposed to raiders and minions and things and acid and cold, and I need to check for contaminants or pathogens."
"Blood?" Ji-yoo repeated, her dark eyes narrowing.
"Samples, one vial each," Alessia explained, opening the kit, the vials inside clicking against each other. "I will be collecting from all two hundred and forty-eight occupants over the course of the day. Standard precautionary panel."
"She is not telling us everything — I can feel it through the bond, the way she holds the kit, the way her voice shifted when she said she needed blood; there is something else behind this, and she is not saying what it is." Ji-yoo suspected, studying Alessia's face with the dark eyes of a twin who could feel when someone was holding something back.
"Copy." Ji-yoo conceded, holding out her arm with the resigned cooperation of a soldier who recognized a medical order. "But you owe me an explanation when this is over."
"I will explain everything when I have something to explain," Alessia promised, drawing from Ji-yoo — one vial, the needle going in clean, the blood filling the tube.
Then from Yue — one vial, the same.
She labeled both and put them in the kit.
"Thank you, rest," Alessia murmured, closing the kit and heading for the door.
She left the infirmary with the kit in her hand and two vials inside and the weight of a scientist who was about to spend the day collecting blood from two hundred and forty-eight people and telling all of them it was for infection screening when it was also for something else.
— • • • —
Day 182. 09:00 hours.
The kitchen.
Carmen was at the stove, Esperanza at the ladle, Sofia at the plates, Hua on the stool in the doorway with her crimson hair tied back and her violet-blue eyes watching the three girls work.
The three of them moved through the kitchen with the rhythm they had developed over eleven days of cooking under pressure — a rhythm that did not require words, communicated through glances and gestures and the particular way Carmen tilted her chin toward the rice pot when she needed more water and Esperanza was already reaching for the ladle before the chin tilted.
Alessia came in with the kit.
"Hua, I need a blood sample," Alessia called, pausing in the doorway. "I am running an infection screening on everyone in the compound — contaminants, pathogens, standard precautionary panel after everything we have been exposed to."
"From me?" Hua questioned, tilting her head as she looked at her cousin holding the kit. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong; it is precautionary," Alessia reassured her, holding up the kit so Hua could see the vials and the labels. "The compound has been exposed to acid venom and minion biology and whatever those things from the deep snow carry, and I need to screen everyone to make sure nothing got into the population."
Hua held out her arm without hesitation — the holding-out of a pregnant woman who knew that infection was dangerous for pregnant women and was not going to argue with a doctor who was screening for infection.
Alessia drew one vial, labeled it, and set it in the kit.
"Carmen, Esperanza, Sofia — I need from all three of you too," Alessia added, turning to the three girls. "Same panel, same precaution."
Carmen held out her arm first.
Alessia drew, labeled, and set the vial in the kit.
Esperanza next — slightly afraid of needles, holding out her arm anyway, looking away when the needle went in, her jaw tightening but her arm staying still.
Sofia last — holding her clipboard in one hand and holding out her arm with the other, logging the draw on the clipboard as it happened because logging was what Sofia did and Sofia logged everything.
Three vials.
Three Baseline women.
And Alessia noticed something as she drew from each of them — something she might have missed on any other day, on a day when she was not already looking at every face in the compound with the particular attention of a doctor who was also a scientist and was also collecting data.
Carmen was cooking slowly — not the steady, efficient pace she usually kept at the stove but something slower and heavier, as if the spatula weighed more than it should.
Her dark eyes were slightly unfocused, and her free hand was on her stomach, pressing the way a person presses when something is wrong in there and pressing feels like it helps.
Esperanza was stirring slowly, the same heaviness, the same lag.
She was pale — not the pale of blood loss but the pale of nausea, the particular gray-green that a person's face turns when their stomach is sending signals the brain does not want to receive.
Her free hand was on her mouth.
Sofia was plating slowly, the same drag.
Her dark eyes were slightly squinted, the way eyes squint when the body is fighting off something, and the face tightens around the effort.
Her free hand was on her stomach.
Three women.
Three hands on three stomachs.
Three faces that were pale and green and unfocused.
"How long have you been nauseated?" Alessia asked, her eyes moving from face to face with the sharpened focus of a doctor who had just noticed something she should have noticed sooner.
Carmen looked at her.
"I don't know what you are talking about." Carmen deflected, her hand pressing harder against her stomach.
"Carmen, I am looking at three women who are green and holding their stomachs and stirring rice like they are dragging it through mud." Alessia pressed, stepping closer to the stove. "How long?"
Carmen looked at Esperanza.
Esperanza looked at Sofia.
Sofia looked at her clipboard.
"Three days, every morning," Carmen admitted, her voice dropping low. "The nausea hits me the moment I get near the stove, and the smell of the rice — I can't handle it anymore; it turns my stomach before I even pick up the spatula."
"Same for me, three days." Esperanza choked, her hand pressing harder against her mouth, her skin graying another shade. "The fish is worse — I can't even look at it without my mouth filling up."
"Three days, same symptoms, and I logged it," Sofia confirmed, her pen already moving on the clipboard. "Morning sickness, nausea, aversion to smell — all three of us, same onset, same timeline."
"All three?" Alessia repeated, her gaze sharpening.
"All three, and Lina too," Carmen confirmed, nodding once. "She is in the greenhouse — she told me this morning, same thing, three days."
"Not here, not in the kitchen, not in front of Hua, who is already pregnant and already on the stool, not in front of three girls who are already looking at me like they know exactly what I am thinking and are waiting for me to say it." Alessia decided, her jaw tightening as she did the math — Day 161 to Day 182, twenty-one days, three weeks, early for symptoms but not impossible, not for four pregnancies at the same time.
"Come to the infirmary after the morning meal, all four of you." Alessia directed, her voice calm but carrying the particular calm of a doctor giving an order. "I will run a full panel — blood and urine."
"Tests," Carmen repeated, and the word sat between them like something solid and heavy.
"The tests a doctor runs when four women have morning sickness," Alessia confirmed, nodding once.
"Four women," Hua observed from the stool, her violet-blue eyes moving from Alessia to the three girls and back. "Four women with morning sickness at the same time."
"Yes," Alessia confirmed, meeting Hua's eyes.
"And you want to run tests." Hua continued, her hand resting on her own stomach.
"Yes," Alessia said again.
"She knows. Hua knows — she is three and a half months pregnant herself, she knows what morning sickness looks like, she has been watching these three girls for three days, and she knows." Alessia realized, seeing the understanding in Hua's violet-blue eyes, the particular understanding of a woman who had been where these four women were and recognized the road.
"I will be collecting blood from everyone in the compound today," Alessia announced, addressing the room. "All occupants, infection screening, precautionary."
"Copy." Hua agreed from the stool, waving her hand in a gesture that was both permission and dismissal.
"Copy," Carmen mumbled from the stove, her hand still pressed against her stomach.
Alessia left the kitchen with the kit and four vials inside and the beginning of a collection that was going to take all day.
— • • • —
Day 182. 10:00 hours.
The compound.
Alessia went from room to room, from post to post, from person to person, the kit in her hand and the vials filling up.
The ridge group first — thirty survivors on the walls and the gates and the courtyard, each one given the same explanation and the same cover.
Thirty vials, thirty labels, thirty names, all Baseline, all human blood.
Then the coalition — twenty-one, same process.
Twenty-one vials, all Baseline.
Then the Hearth — the Enhanced first, then the Baselines.
Five Enhanced vials that were going to the typing kit.
Twenty-five Baseline vials.
She did not draw from the children.
Then the household Enhanced — Jennifer, Mark Jordan, Gabriel, Elena Cortez, Mei, Aiko, Paolo. Seven more vials.
And the woman in white.
Alessia went to the east wall where the woman in white was standing and watching the city.
The woman in white did not move when Alessia approached — she had been standing in the same position since before dawn, her body still, her weight centered.
"I need a blood sample — infection screening, everyone, all occupants," Alessia stated, stopping beside her and holding up the kit.
The woman in white did not move, did not speak.
The green eyes were steady behind the goggles.
"One crack is all it takes — one crack and the armor fails and he sees and he knows and every wall I have built between myself and the truth comes down, and I cannot let it come down, not for a needle, not for a vial, not for anything, but the doctor is not asking and the doctor is not going to stop asking and the screening is real and the precaution is legitimate and refusing will draw more attention than cooperating." the woman in white calculated, her green eyes holding steady behind the goggles while something behind them weighed and decided.
She held out her left arm. She had decided. She pushed up the sleeve of the white coat, exposing the forearm — clean, healed, unmarked, the skin smooth and whole in a way that no adult human skin should be, because adult human skin accumulates marks the way a table accumulates scratches, and the woman in white's skin had no scratches at all.
Alessia did not look for marks.
She looked for the vein, found it, inserted the needle, and drew the blood.
One vial.
She labeled it and set it in the kit.
The woman in white pulled down the sleeve and went back to watching the city.
The collection was done.
— • • • —
Day 182. 12:00 hours.
The infirmary. L2.
Alessia was at her station with the kit open and the vials inside — two hundred and forty-eight vials, two hundred and forty-eight labels, two hundred and forty-eight names.
The blood of every person in the compound is sorted, labeled, and ready for testing.
She sorted them first.
Baseline to one side, Enhanced to the other.
Twenty Enhanced vials.
Twenty Enhanced individuals whose blood was not human anymore and whose blood type did not exist in any medical textbook.
She started with the typing kit.
One by one, each Enhanced vial on a card with three circles — anti-A, anti-B, anti-D.
The same impossible result, every time.
No clumping in any circle — not A, not B, not AB, not O, not positive, not negative — and the shifting, the slow impossible movement of blood that did not fit any category.
Twenty Enhanced.
Twenty impossible blood types.
The same impossible blood type on the typing kit.
But the cross-match would tell a different story, and she ran them by hand, one slide at a time, because there was no machine that could do it faster.
Jae-min against Ji-yoo: compatible.
Jae-min against Yue: compatible.
Jae-min against Alessia: incompatible — the agglutination, the lysis, the destruction she had seen yesterday.
Jae-min against everyone else: incompatible.
Ji-yoo against Yue: compatible.
Ji-yoo against everyone else: incompatible.
Yue against everyone else: incompatible.
The three of them formed a cluster — a closed circle of compatible blood that excluded everyone else.
Rico against Alessia: compatible.
Rico against Jennifer: compatible.
Rico against the woman in white: compatible.
Rico against Jae-min: incompatible.
Another cluster.
Mark Jordan against Elena Vasquez: compatible.
Mark Jordan against Aiko, Gabriel, Elena Cortez, Paolo: compatible.
Against Jae-min: incompatible.
Another cluster.
Tessa against Kiko, Father Emil, Jomar: compatible.
Against everyone else: incompatible.
A fourth cluster.
The pattern emerged from the slides like a photograph developing — slowly, then all at once.
Four groups.
Four blood sub-types.
Four sets of compatible blood that were incompatible with every other set.
Group one: Jae-min, Ji-yoo, Yue, and, surprisingly, Elena Cortez.
"Elena Cortez? What the hell?" Alessia bewildered, staring at Elena Cortez's name.
Group two: Mark Jordan, Elena Vasquez, Aiko, Gabriel, and Paolo.
Group three: Rico, Alessia, Jennifer, Lena, the woman in white.
Group four: Tessa, Kiko, Father Emil, Jomar, Sarah.
"Four groups, four sub-types — the impossible blood is not one type, it is at least four, and I can see the pattern right here on these slides but I cannot name it, I cannot see what connects Jae-min and Ji-yoo and Yue, I cannot see what puts Mark Jordan and Elena Vasquez in the same group, I cannot see what links Rico and me and Jennifer, I cannot see what binds Tessa and Kiko, and the connection is there, the data is right here, it is sitting on these slides staring at me and I cannot see it." Alessia agonized, staring at the four columns of names on her tablet, her blue eyes burning from hours at the microscope.
Six pieces of the puzzle now.
The DNA divergence.
The impossible blood.
The blood sub-types.
The compatibility numbers — seventy, ninety-five, seven.
The contradiction — Enhanced and Baseline was ten percent, but Hua was pregnant immediately.
And now the four groups — a classification she could observe but could not explain.
She filed it.
The filing of a scientist who had data and did not have interpretation and was going to keep collecting data until the picture appeared.
— • • • —
Day 182. 14:00 hours.
The infirmary.
The four women came.
Carmen first, sitting on the cot with her dark eyes steady and her hand on her stomach.
Esperanza next, her hands in her lap, her jaw tight.
Sofia, after that, clipboard ready.
Lina last, sitting quietly at the end, her dark eyes on the floor, her hands folded, not speaking because Lina did not speak.
Carmen was first in the tests.
Alessia drew blood, took urine, and ran the analysis.
The test was positive.
Carmen looked at the test — the single line that said pregnant — and her dark eyes went wet.
Her hand was on her stomach, and she did not speak because there was nothing to say.
She had known before the test, had known for three days, had known when the rice started making her stomach turn, and the smell of the fish made her mouth fill with water.
"It is real — the test says it and the test does not lie, and I am pregnant, and the world is frozen, and the war just ended, and I am pregnant, and I do not know if I am happy or terrified and I think I am both at the same time." Carmen realized, her dark eyes filling with tears she had been holding for three days, her fingers pressing into her stomach as if holding something in place that was already in place.
"Carmen, you are pregnant," Alessia murmured, her voice dropping to something soft and careful.
"I know," Carmen whispered, her voice cracking at the edges. "I have known for three days, I just did not say it because saying it out loud made it real, and I was not ready for real."
Esperanza next.
Same tests, same result.
She was clutching her own hands — the clutching of a woman who was scared and holding herself because there was no one else to hold.
"Esperanza, you are pregnant," Alessia informed her, her voice steady and warm.
"I know, I know." Esperanza stammered, her whole body trembling, her fingers interlocking and squeezing until the knuckles went white. "I am a nursing student. I knew what it was the first morning; I just kept hoping I was wrong."
"Sofia, you are pregnant," Alessia confirmed, glancing at the clipboard where Sofia was already recording.
"I know, I logged it three days ago," Sofia replied, her voice flat and clinical and controlled in the way a voice gets when the person behind it is using control as a shield. "Morning sickness, day one. Morning sickness, day two. Morning sickness, day three. Positive pregnancy test, day three. Logged."
Lina last.
Same tests, same result.
Lina was looking at the test with her dark eyes, her hand on her stomach, not speaking because Lina did not speak.
She looked at Alessia and nodded.
"Lina, you are pregnant." Alessia breathed, her voice barely above a whisper.
Lina nodded again.
The second nod was the same as the first — steady, certain.
"Four Baseline women pregnant by an Enhanced man — ten percent compatibility, nearly impossible, but Hua was pregnant and now four more, five conceptions that should not have happened and did happen, and either the ten percent number is wrong or the ten percent number is right and I am missing something fundamental about Baselines and about the compatibility and about what the Enhanced body is becoming, something I do not have a word for yet." Alessia calculated, the seventh piece of the puzzle settling alongside the other six.
Seven pieces of the puzzle now.
Seven pieces and no picture.
"Congratulations." Alessia offered, and the word felt strange in her mouth — not wrong, not insincere, but strange, because she was saying it while also thinking about blood sub-types and compatibility numbers and a puzzle she could not see.
She was being a doctor and a scientist at the same time, and the two roles did not always fit in the same mouth.
"Congratulations," Alessia repeated, because the word needed to be said twice — because the word was the word a doctor said when four women were pregnant, and the world was frozen, and the war was over, and life was continuing.
The four women looked at her.
Four faces — one crying, one shaking, one logging, one silent.
"Thank you," Carmen responded, her voice thick but steady, speaking for all four of them because Carmen was always the one who spoke first.
"Thank you." Alessia returned, nodding once.
The four women left the infirmary.
Four pregnant women.
Four Baseline women pregnant by an Enhanced man.
Four conceptions that should have been nearly impossible.
Four conceptions that had happened.
Alessia sat at her station with the seven pieces of a puzzle she could not see spread across her desk like shards of a mirror that had not yet been assembled.
She opened the tablet and started logging — recording, not interpreting, collecting, not guessing.
The investigation continued.
— • • • —
Day 182. 18:00 hours.
The narra table.
The household ate.
Carmen at the stove, Esperanza at the ladle, Sofia at the plates, Hua on the stool.
The kitchen was running the way it always ran, but now the three girls were cooking and pregnant and cooking anyway, because the kitchen did not stop and the compound needed to eat. The nausea was there — a wave now and then, a pause at the stove, a deep breath through the nose — but the cooking continued.
Lina was in the greenhouse with Kiko, sitting in the warmth among the growing plants, her hand on her stomach, not speaking, resting.
The kitchen smells were too much for her now.
The greenhouse was better — warm, green, alive.
Paolo was at the table with his Sailor Moon doll propped against the soy sauce bottle and his cracked eyeglasses on his nose and his ice spear leaning against the wall.
He did not know yet.
The four women had not told him — they were going to tell him tonight.
"The cold came out, and the spear came, and Lina was behind me, and the raider was on the floor, and now I am sitting here eating rice, and the war is over, and I do not know what comes next, but it feels like something is coming, something I cannot see yet, something that is already in motion." Paolo pondered, turning the Sailor Moon doll slightly so it faced the rice pot.
Alessia was at the table beside Jae-min, her indigo ponytail over her shoulder, her blue eyes on her plate, her hands around a cup of coffee.
"Seven pieces — DNA divergence, impossible blood, four sub-types, compatibility numbers, the contradiction with Hua and now four more, and the pattern is there, it has to be there, the data does not exist without a pattern, I just have not found it yet." Alessia deliberated, turning the coffee cup slowly in her hands, the warmth spreading through her palms while the seven pieces sat in the closed tablet on her desk in the infirmary below.
The household ate.
The war was over.
The compound was safe.
The compound held.
Four women were pregnant.
The investigation continued.
The puzzle was building.
The picture was not there yet.
But it would be.
The would-be of a scientist who was collecting data and was not going to stop collecting until the picture appeared.
The compound held.
Life continued.
The investigation continued.
Seven pieces.
No picture.
Not yet.