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NOT MUCH HAPPENED OVER the next five days.
Agent Kennedy summoned us to the White House to brief the President on the status of our investigation, but we had little to report. President Jackson looked disappointed and worn, while Kennedy’s ever-cool attitude toward us turned downright frosty.
Mal appointed Zander to regular turns on guard duty and assigned me to the command center’s schedule. On my first shift, I was under Dredd’s supervision, so he could tutor me on how everything worked. After a few minutes, he sat back in disgust.
“You obviously know your way around surveillance systems, Ripley, although this one is my own configuration. I even built most of the components myself. Don’t know how you figured out my shortcuts so fast.”
“I, um, have a sort of affinity for computers, electronics, stuff like that.”
“Sure, pal. Well, since I’m not needed here, I’m going back to bed. Only got four hours last night.”
“G’night, Dredd. Sleep tight.”
Alone in the command center, I set some of the nanomites to watching the perimeter. They were a far more effective perimeter watch system than what we had in place.
I peeked in on the nanobug arrays we’d planted on Danforth’s NSA SPOs, but they had little to report. The officers were awaiting trial in federal lockup and were being kept in isolation, meaning they had no contact with each other or anyone else.
I also listened in on the four dirty White House Secret Service agents. They had been declared fit for duty and restored to their White House posts, but what the nanomites reported and what I heard myself via their arrays was mostly confusion. Secret Service Deputy Assistant Director, Blake Morningside, conspicuous for his silence, had, I speculated, cut the White House agents adrift.
It seemed to me that Danforth’s death had opened a yawning hole in our opposition’s leadership ranks, a void that no one had stepped up to fill.
And while the nanomites kept working to put a name to the mystery woman, it seemed she had vanished like a wisp of smoke on a breeze. For five days, we caught no scent of her. For five days we fidgeted, spun our wheels, and made no progress. For five days we maintained our vigilance and never once glimpsed any indication, inkling, or hint of the trap she had declared she would devise.
Until its teeth clamped down on us.
***
JAYDA CRUZ, MACY UUMBANA is calling.
“Oh, cool!”
I picked up the call. “Hey, Macy! How are you, girlfriend? How are my sweet babies, Denzel and Deshaun?”
The frantic sobbing on the other end of the line froze the words on my lips.
“Jayda! They took our babies! They took them! They said it’s your fault, that you made them do it!”
She cursed me then, calling down horrible epithets on my head, swearing she hated me and that she’d rip me apart with her teeth and bare hands if anything happened to her babies.
As she dissolved into hopeless and inarticulate sobs, I whispered, “Nano, get Zander. Hurry.”
Yes, Jayda Cruz.
To my weeping, distraught friend, I vowed. “Macy? Macy, we’re coming. Don’t lose hope. We will find your babies, I promise you.”
O God! We need you!
I hung up and used the radio to call for Mal. When Zander and Mal arrived, I tried to explain, but I made a hash of it. I couldn’t form the words, so badly did my throat and chest hurt.
I couldn’t play the stoic role of Ellen Ripley. Not for this.
In the end, the nanomites had to explain the situation to Zander. He passed the information to Mal, and Mal called Dredd to take over the command center.
Then he huddled up with me and Zander. “You guys didn’t remove my memories of what you did to win the battle at our clubhouse. I saw you in action, and I know you have more firepower than Malware has. How do you want to handle this? And what do you need from us?”
“We’ll go the Uumbanas’ first,” Zander answered. “Whoever stole the babies may have left a message for us.”
“Take one of our vehicles.”
“Thanks.”
Zander put his arm around me. “Jay?”
I shoved my anguish into an iron box of my own construction. I slammed the lid tight. Locked it. I sucked up all my tears and hardened my heart against the pain and fear.
“Yeah. I’m ready.”
Zander and I drove in silence, both of us twisted up in our own thoughts, mine circling around a single word:
Bait.
We thought we’d hidden those we loved, but the mystery woman had simply probed our lives until she found another vulnerability with which to bait her trap.
Well played.
O Jesus! O Lord! How could we have been so foolish and blind? Our shortsightedness has caused this heartache. Please don’t let our mistake cause any harm to come to these precious babies.
***
WE HAD BEEN SILENT thirty-five minutes by the time we arrived at the Uumbanas’ house near Ft. Meade. Darius met us at the door and, if looks could have killed, Zander and I would have been DRT—Dead Right There—scorched into the cement of the porch where we stood. Without comment, Darius led us into the house.
From within, we heard little Daniel Uumbana sobbing. When we entered the living room, Macy was rocking the boy, her own tears raining down on Daniel’s curly head.
“Mama, want Denz!” Daniel wailed. “Want ’Shaun, Mama!”
I felt lower than dirt and could think of nothing to say by way of greeting that would not pour gasoline on the grief raging over Macy and her son.
Zander took the lead. “Darius and Macy? We’re going to get your babies back. Please tell us what happened—word for word.”
“We don’t need to. They left you this.” Darius’ eyes glittered like hard, black stones as he tossed a weighty, sealed envelope at Zander.
Before opening the envelope, Zander looked at Darius. “I know you have no reason to believe or trust us, but we are brokenhearted that those who hate us have taken it out on you.”
“Save it. We’re not interested.” Anger oozed from every syllable.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Macy, the way she held Daniel. She was terrified he would be snatched from her arms.
Like her babies were.
I was going to be sick. I lurched toward the front door and made it outside before my stomach purged its contents.
Then Zander was there. He turned on the Uumbanas’ hose, helped me rinse my mouth, and sprayed the ick off their sidewalk.
“We need to go, Jay.”
We got back in the car. There Zander opened the envelope left for us. It contained a generic smartphone and a typed note.
The note was short. To the point. Unequivocal.
We have the infants. If you follow the instructions we provide, we will return the children unharmed. However, until you complete the instructions, the babies will not be fed. The longer you delay, the hungrier they will become.
We are monitoring both you and the destination to which the instructions will eventually lead you. We will know if anyone follows you or approaches within two miles of your destination.
Disable your vehicle’s GPS. Toss your phones. Find the closest Taco Bell. Your next instruction is taped under a table.
The nanomites severed the wires to the car’s GPS for us. Then we dumped our phones on the curb. I used the provided smartphone to find the nearest Taco Bell. When we arrived, the place was packed, the lunch rush underway.
We didn’t care.
We went from table to table, squatting and feeling each underside, ignoring protests and rude comments until we found the folded note and tore the tape holding it in place.
“You guys on a scavenger hunt?” an excited kid asked.
Zander mumbled, “Something like that,” before we rushed to our car.
From point to point, the instructions led us, moving us farther north, then west, until we were around thirty miles due west of D.C. wandering down the roads in a wooded semi-rural area where the properties were a few acres each and houses far apart. We were looking for a mailbox with a horse on it.
We found the red box with the black horse painted on it and the note on the box’s underside.
Drive north. Turn left at the third driveway. Follow the drive. Enter the house.
Our destination was a simple farmhouse on the outside. Within, things were not so simple.
Jayda and Zander Cruz, this structure has been subject to extensive modifications and is heavily shielded.
“Is this where Danforth and the woman watched us rescue Trujillo?”
Very likely, Jayda Cruz.
Someone had used painter’s tape to create arrows on the floor. The arrows led down a narrow hallway, turned left, and stopped at a door. We opened the door and discovered steps leading down into a basement. A dotted line of tape pointed the way. A soft light emanated from below.
Zander put his mouth to my ear. “I’ll go first. Don’t come down until I signal you.”
“Okay.”
A minute later, he called to me, and I joined him. The dim light we’d seen from the top of the stairs shone from a corner of the basement.
How can I describe what that light revealed?
Someone had gutted the high-beamed basement and laid bare its concrete walls and floor. In the center of the basement someone had drilled out the floor forming a two-foot-deep pit, perhaps five feet by five feet square, and had poured a new floor and cement sides for the trench. Within the pit, workers had built a room, around six feet high but, I estimated, ten inches less in width than the five-feet-square pit, so more like four feet by four feet.
The result was a cell large enough for two people to stand in but two feet lower than the rest of the basement floor.
An arrow of blue tape pointed to the cell’s small, hatch-like doorway.
Zander and I did not move. We’d reached the trip wire—the trap’s trigger mechanism—and our nerves were jangling. The nanomites were alarmed, too, but their continual clicking in my ear was not helping a whit.
“Nano, stop that, please.”
I scrutinized the cell’s other unusual characteristics: Its walls, floor, and ceiling were made of dual sheets of clear material—not glass, but a type of thick plastic. A cage of fine metal mesh was sandwiched between the plastic sheets. I say a cage, because the metal mesh formed four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. Its only interruption was the little doorway. In all, the ingeniously built cell consisted of three cubes—a metal mesh cage lined inside and out with plastic-like walls, floors, and ceilings.
“Nano?”
Electrostatic dissipative acrylic, Jayda Cruz, encasing a cage of electromagnetic shielding. A sophisticated Faraday cage.
A Faraday cage. Used to protect people and equipment from electric discharge or current. A Faraday cage’s conductive material sends current around the outside of the enclosed space, allowing none of the electricity to enter or pass through the interior.
“Zander . . .”
“Yeah, I get it. If we go in there, we won’t be able to draw down on any nearby electrical sources.”
Oh, and I can’t leave this last bit out: Yet another cage hung suspended from the basement’s high ceiling over the three cubes. I glanced into the shallow pit and saw a metal track on the pit’s floor, running around the three-walled acrylic/metal mesh cell. It looked like the suspended cage was designed to drop over the cell and snap onto the track.
I scanned the basement and found what I was looking for: a power source. An oversized electrical panel was built onto one wall; thick wires led from it . . . into the pit.
Nudging Zander, I asked, “How much you want to bet those wires connect to that metal track?”
“Not taking that bet.”
A second source of light brightened behind us, and I turned my head toward it.
A monitor. No, two monitors—also encased in a cage of fine metal mesh.
I tugged Zander’s sleeve.
On one of the screens we saw Denzel and Deshaun. They were laying end to end, their heads touching, on the back seat of a car. They appeared to be sleeping.
On the other screen, from deep within the shadows a woman’s voice spoke. “Mr. and Mrs. Cruz. I’m so glad to make your acquaintance in person—at long last.”
She moved into the camera’s view: the mystery woman.
She was a tiny thing, her age not easy to guess, but her eyes! I knew them. They gleamed gold and amber in the low light.
“Gemma Keyes. You have led me on a merry chase this past year and a half, I must say.”
The accent, although faint, was still there, of Asian extraction, coupled, perhaps, with a British inflection?
“Please. Do not be alarmed or concerned. I have no intention of harming either of you.”
Neither Zander nor I answered her.
Jayda Cruz, “Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts they harbor deceit. Though their speech is charming, do not believe them, for seven abominations fill their hearts.”
“Yeah, Nano. She has no intention of harming us? Right. We’ve kind of got that one figured out.”
Zander asked, “Nano? Can you piggyback on her feed? Get word to Gamble or Mal where we are?”
Zander Cruz, the monitors are surrounded by a field of fluctuating electrostatic discharge that we cannot penetrate. The cabling to the monitors is encased in a similar field that runs outside this house and extends beyond our reach. We have already lost many members in our attempts to reach her feed. Given enough time we could—
“Wireless access?”
The entire facility is shielded. No wireless signal can penetrate the shielding.
The woman cleared her throat. “I invite you to give your attention to the other screen.”
The camera on the babies zoomed out of the car, looked down the street, and stopped on the Uumbanas’ house.
“As you can see, the children are not far from their home. When both of you enter the cage, my people will return the infants to their parents. You have precisely sixty seconds to comply. If you choose not to, my people will reenter your friends’ home and take hold of the three-year-old boy.
“Listen carefully: At that point, no matter what you do, my people have orders to slit the boy’s throat in front of his parents. The clock starts now.”
A counter reading 00.60 appeared on the woman’s monitor. It began counting down.
00.59
00.58
I started to panic. “How do we know you’ll return the babies?” I shouted.
She shrugged. “I am not a monster. I have no reason to harm them.”
I gasped. “Not a monster? Not a monster?”
“I have seen many children die at the hands of this nation’s military. Does that not make this nation monstrous?”
Zander tugged at me. “Jayda. Forty seconds.”
“I know, I know—but the babies—”
The woman’s voice, sing-song and melodic, continued. “After the boy dies, you will realize that I am a woman of my word. I will give you an opportunity to save the infants before my people slit their throats—one at a time, just like their brother.”
“No! You wouldn’t!”
“Jay! Thirty seconds!”
I shook off Zander’s hand and stuck my face into the camera above the monitor.
“Anyone who would harm a child is a monster,” I hissed, “a monster who needs to be destroyed. If you harm those children, I will kill you.”
I knew I was wrong, that my thirst for “right” was really vengeance masquerading as “justice.” Right then, in my anger, I didn’t care.
I marched to the cell and climbed through the little door, sensing as soon as I stood how claustrophobic its dimensions were. Zander followed me in, headfirst, the hatch harder for his larger frame to crawl through. When he stood, the top of his head brushed the ceiling—and the counter ticked down to fifteen seconds.
Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.
The entrance to the cell did not close. I clutched at Zander’s hand.
Lord! Not little Daniel! Please protect him!
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.
The cell still remained open.
Six. Five. Four. Three.
A metal mesh screen flashed across the entrance and clicked into place. An acrylic panel crossed from the opposite side, completing the inside acrylic cube. A second acrylic panel slid into place completing the outer cube.
Then the cage hanging from the ceiling descended to the cement floor. Its bottom edge locked onto the metal rails in the floor of the pit. Across the basement, the electrical panel came alive and a thrum of current crackled through the cage.
The counter hit zero.
“Keep your word!” I screamed. “Give the babies back!”
“Watch.”
She spoke into her phone and the second monitor went dark. A minute passed, then several, before the screen came back to life. Denzel and Deshaun were lying on Darius and Macy’s front porch. The monitor again went dark, and Zander and I waited, hoping it would light up and would show someone opening the front door.
From far down the street, the live feed reengaged and focused on the Uumbanas’ house. Even at a distance, we could see the outlines of the babies. The temperature was warm, but I worried for the newborns lying on the cool cement porch without a blanket to cushion them.
Oh, Macy, I urged her silently. Open your door!
The feed was without sound, but we saw the moment someone cracked the front door. It was little Daniel who stood there, gaping. Throwing the door wide open, he ran back inside. Moments later, Macy and Darius appeared. They scooped the babies up and disappeared inside.
The monitor went dark.
“Thank you, Lord,” I breathed.
The golden-eyed woman smirked. “Thank you, Lord? Oh, that’s right. You are both quite religious.”
“No, we are not,” Zander answered, “but that’s neither here nor there in this moment. What do you want with us?”
The woman feigned a little moue of surprise. “Why, the nanomites, of course.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
“Hmm. Yes. I’m operating on many suppositions—not that my suppositions are uninformed or baseless. I derived them from the data General Cushing provided, from her first-hand experiences with Gemma, and from my own observations.
“I am,” she said with a modicum of modesty, “a student of the sciences myself with interests in physics, engineering, and material science.”
“Bully for you. Won’t get you the nanomites.”
She chuckled. “Perhaps. My assumptions could be in error, but I am rarely wrong. Shall we test them, my assumptions? Let’s see. First, the nanomites require electrical power to function, and they can draw it from any ready source such as the sun and nearby electrical wiring. Even from you. Am I correct?”
We didn’t answer.
“Your silence is confirmation enough. Thank you. Second, your wonderful weapons—I assure you I was both astonished and delighted by your demonstrations—require electrical power, too, although my calculations tell me that, to wield such powerful weapons, you must have a strong power source on which to draw. Is this right?”
She leaned toward the camera. “Please do me the kindness of testing my theory? I really must know if you can blast your way out of my little structure.”
I slid my eyes toward Zander. He had a hand cupped behind his back and was attempting to pull current into his palm. The harder he tried—with no result—the farther down his mouth turned.
Zander Cruz, the Faraday cage prevents electricity from passing into this box. As you surmised earlier, we are unable to access the house’s electricity from inside this box.
The woman nodded slowly. “May I deduce from your vexation, Mr. Cruz, that you have attempted to draw current into the cage and are unable to? Excellent.”
“If you know so much about the nanomites, then you know they can easily penetrate the walls of this acrylic/metal cage and escape.”
She spread her child-sized hands. Something about the sight seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“If they can escape, why have they not done so? Why haven’t they left the cage, drawn current from the house’s wiring, and broken you free? Is it, perhaps, that the nanomites are susceptible to static discharge—and that they comprehend that the outermost cage is fully charged?”
“Nano?” I whispered.
Jayda Cruz, she is correct. Ordinarily, if threatened by static discharge or an electric pulse, the nanocloud would propel a stronger layer of current ahead of us to shield ourselves and you. We cannot do so in these circumstances. If we were to penetrate the acrylic and mesh layers, we could not draw enough current from the charged cage to shield ourselves before the cage’s discharge damaged us.
Chittering to themselves, they added, This woman has devised a very clever trap.
The woman sat back and tapped her chin. “I believe Colonel Greaves shot you with a Taser, did he not, Jayda? Or do you prefer Gemma? General Cushing was convinced that the Taser destroyed a large number of your nanomites and rendered you powerless.
“My third assumption, then, is that the charged outer cage has trapped the nanomites within the cell just as you are trapped. Do you see that panel on the wall over there? I had my electricians bring a new 220-volt service into the house, one separate from the house’s other service, to supply the outer cage.
“All this leads me to supposition number four: The nanomites cannot survive without electricity, and you, as their host, cannot survive without the nanomites. I’m most interested in knowing the validity of this assumption—because I am counting on them leaving you to save themselves.”
“You won’t get the nanomites. We have . . . a relationship with them. They will not leave us,” Zander insisted.
“Oh, I believe they will, given the right circumstances. You see, General Cushing provided us with a number of Dr. Bickel’s programming algorithms, and I have studied them. The good doctor encoded the nanomites with the mandate to survive at all costs, and no source of electricity exists within the cage—except for you and your lovely bride, of course.”
She mocked us with her next words. “The nanomites will be obliged to drain you to survive, and you cannot feed them forever, can you? Do you know what will happen when they have used you up? I am convinced you do.”
My first experience with the nanomites’ drain came roaring back. I’d woken up because something was stinging me, because my right hand felt on fire. I was disoriented and weak, unable even to sit on the side of the bed without falling to the floor. I’d crawled a few feet to the door and used the doorframe to pull myself up. As I’d reached a little higher, my fingers had encountered the light switch—and my palm had fastened to the switch plate. The nanomites had glued my hand there while they “fed” from the current inside the switch box.
If the nanomites hadn’t awakened me, I would have died in my sleep.
Yes. I knew what would happen when they used us up.
“When your bodies have failed beyond recovery, the nanomites will leave you willingly and enter the human hosts we will provide. By my calculations, twenty-four hours should suffice for the nanomites to use you up. By then, they will be inclined to adopt new hosts.”
The woman lifted a phone and pressed a contact’s number. “You may approach the house now.”
Jayda and Zander Cruz, what that woman says is true. Our programming requires us to survive. That being said, we do not wish to drain you, to kill you. This would not please Jesus, nor would it please us.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Nano. Are you certain you cannot reach outside this . . . this enclosure?”
We are certain, Jayda Cruz. We sent Delta Tribe members through the walls: They did not return. Therefore, to maximize the length of time we can survive without damaging you or us, we will initiate our emergency shutdown protocols and send all tribes but Alpha Tribe into sleep mode.
I sat down. “I suppose we should enter ‘low power mode’ ourselves.”
That would be wise, Jayda Cruz. “The path of life leads upward for the prudent, to keep them from going down to the realm of the dead.”
“You’re so edifying, Nano.” Not.
Zander plopped down next to me. “Nano, I am going to give you an order, and I expect you to follow it to the degree that you can. Do you understand?”
We will do our best, Zander Cruz.
“I want you to put me into a deep sleep.”
I went from desperate to furious in a blink. “What? No, Zander!”
“Nano? I will use less energy while asleep, won’t I?”
This is true, Zander Cruz.
“Then knock me out. Do it.”
Zander laid down and tried to stretch out; the best he could do in the four-by-four cube was roll to his side and pull his knees up.
I took his hand and held it in mine. “Sweetie?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“You know that I love you, too.”
I gripped his hand. “I’m sure the Lord has an answer. We just need to trust him. Call on him.”
“I trust him, Jay. I do. And if we don’t make it out of here alive? I’ll still trust him, and I’ll . . . see you . . . in . . . heav—.”
“Zander?”
He is sleeping, Jayda Cruz. May we suggest that you lie down and rest, too?
But I couldn’t do that while that evil creature, from a safe distance, observed us like bugs under glass. I curled up to Zander’s back, but I kept my eyes on her. Soon I started feeling sort of “funny.” Hollow inside. Empty-ish.
Oh. The tribes. Going off line, going into survival mode.
That warmth in my lower abdomen where I’d taken the round intensified momentarily, then faded to less than I’d been accustomed to. But it was still there.
“No sense wasting resources on my wound, Nano. Send those nanomites into sleep mode, too.”
They didn’t answer me.
I blinked, my eyes suddenly heavy, and wondered if I was already feeling the drain. Then I heard footfalls overhead and pushed myself up to sitting. Four booted men clomped down the basement steps.
The woman noticed, too. “You have arrived. Good.”
She spoke to me. “I do apologize, Jayda, but I have pressing duties to attend to, so it’s goodbye, I’m afraid. When I return, I anticipate that both of you will be drained.
“At that time, we will open the box and insert two human hosts of our choosing. If you are not yet dead, we will dispatch you quickly. Out of necessity, the nanomites will migrate to the new hosts who can offer them the electricity they need to sustain themselves. When the nanomites have moved to the new hosts, we will allow them to leave the box.”
I pushed myself up to sitting. “I want to say something to you.”
She smiled. “Last words?”
“No, a warning.”
She laughed low in her throat. “Please, say on.”
“Earlier you said we were religious. Well, we’re not—because religion is a box very like this one that only serves to separate people from the living God, the Creator of the universe. We aren’t religious because we know the living God and because he dwells within us through his Son, Jesus.”
“Fables. Myths. Religious claptrap.”
“I said I had a warning for you, and I meant it. Zander and I belong to the Lord of heaven and earth, which, according to the Bible, makes us his children. God Almighty does not take lightly the ill-treatment of his children.”
“I see. Should I be worried?”
“Yes, you should. On the day of your death, you will come face to face with God Almighty. If you stand before the Lord without Jesus, you will face his righteous justice. I’m warning you now to confess your sins and turn to Jesus—before it is too late for you.”
“How considerate of you, Mrs. Cruz, but I will take my chances. In the meantime? It is you, not I, for whom it is too late.”
I turned my face away. I’d been obedient. I’d warned her. Now I refused to give her the pleasure of seeing the tears running down my face.
Lord?
She must have dialed her phone again and not felt it necessary to move away from the camera. I heard her whisper, “Everything is in order. Yes. Proceed as planned.”
Then she addressed her men. “I will return tomorrow evening. Until then, set and maintain a perimeter about one hundred feet out. I charge you with protecting this house and, most importantly, the contents of this cage from any outside intrusion.”
The contents of this cage.
She meant the nanomites, not us.
She already considered us dead.
***
THE WOMAN’S MONITOR went dark, and the guards went upstairs and outside to take up their posts, leaving us alone. I laid down against Zander’s back a second time. That warmth in my abdomen reminded me that I had asked the nanomites to stop worrying over the wound.
“Nano? Don’t you need to conserve as much power as you can? Please send the members around my wound into sleep mode.”
We have sent all we can, Jayda Cruz. Members of Alpha Tribe have taken their place and will maintain their position until it is no longer possible.
I drew in a shallow breath, sensing a creeping weakness stealing over me. “I don’t understand. Why? What’s . . . so important that you can’t let it go?”
I should have automatically known the answer to that question, but I didn’t.
The nanomites were hiding something.
When they didn’t respond to me, I probed the nanocloud and found a sliver of Alpha Tribe’s library that I was unable to access.
It wasn’t the first time the nanomites had hidden things from me. When they had blocked me in the past, their actions had resulted in all-out conflict between us. But today, in our desperate situation? I didn’t want to fight with them. If Zander and I were going to die here, I didn’t want to die with contention between me and the nanomites. Instead, I just continued to ask them.
“Nano? What are you keeping from me?”
No answer.
“Nano?”
Nothing.
“I’m not going to let this go, so you might as well spill it.”
Jayda Cruz, we did not want you to find out under these circumstances. We wished it to be a happy occasion.
I sighed. “If wishes were horses . . . Circumstances being what they are, what we wish doesn’t much matter now, does it? Why don’t you just tell me. I’d hate to die with secrets between us.”
We would not want that either, Jayda Cruz.
I waited, knowing they would tell me soon.
Whatever it was.
Jayda Cruz, we have made many mistakes in our time with you.
“Water under the bridge, Nano. Forgiven. Forgotten.”
Yes. Nonetheless, we looked for opportunities to restore what our unintended consequences took from you.
“Okaaaay.”
Not okay, Jayda Cruz. We took something precious from you, something that broke your heart—and your grief became ours.
The nanomites lacked the capacity to sigh, but if what I heard (or sensed) at that moment wasn’t a sigh, I don’t know what else it could have been. Well, I also thought they lacked the capacity to empathize—and I was wrong about that, too.
We told you how our joining with your body impacted your endocrine functions, that our merge sped up your metabolism, enabling you to become an optimal fighter.
“Yes, I remember.”
Your accelerated metabolism increased the rate at which your ovaries produced fertile eggs. We told you that your ovaries had depleted your supply of ovum by 91.7 percent.
“I accepted your explanation, Nano, and I forgave you. We don’t need to rehash an old offense, an old mistake. It is over. Forgiven and forgotten. I’m asking you to, please, let it go.”
We cannot let it go, Jayda Cruz, if we have the ability to make amends.
“Amends?”
After we told you that your ovaries were nearly depleted, we searched for and located your last viable eggs. We assigned Omega Tribe to defend and preserve them, to surround them and prevent your endocrine system from expending them. Unfortunately, that clutch of eggs resided in your right ovary.
I was thunderstruck. “What? What are you saying?”
When you were shot, the bullet burst your right ovary, destroying it. However, Omega Tribe was able to save and preserve a single egg. Our conundrum was that your ovary was damaged beyond our ability to repair its functions—and yet we were unwilling to allow your last remaining egg to die. Omega Tribe has, therefore, been acting the role of surrogate ovary, cocooning your egg, keeping it safe and viable until you are ready to use it.
Jayda Cruz, we wished to rejoice with you and Zander on the day when you told us, “Lights out, Nano,” and entered into that sacred time and space shared only between husband and wife. When you and Zander came together to create a new life.
When you and Zander came together to create a new life.
I squeezed my eyes shut and sobbed against the curve of Zander’s back.
I had relinquished the dream of having children! I had surrendered the hope of giving Zander a son or a daughter of his own. I had given it up and made my peace with it.
The possibility of a baby? The joyous wave receded as quickly as it crashed over me.
I shouldn’t have pushed the nanomites into telling me their secret. Why bring it up now when it no longer mattered?
Zander and I wouldn’t live long enough to bring a child into the world.
And, I realized . . . all things considered? I was good with that.
“Nano, thank you for . . . telling me.”
We did not intend to wound you again, Jayda Cruz. That is why we kept this information from you.
“I understand, and I’m sorry I pressed you. Yes, the knowledge hurts, but, on the other hand, I’m grateful that you tried so hard. Thank you. It’s just . . .”
Yes, Jayda Cruz?
“It’s just that, with monsters like her in the world—an unfeeling, uncaring adversary who could snatch a baby from its mother without batting an eye? And with Zander and me being the target of such a monster? Well, I don’t think I’d want to bring a child into such jeopardy. It . . . it wouldn’t be right.”
No. I didn’t want to suffer Macy’s horror and heartbreak.
I cried a little more against Zander’s back. Oh, I wished he were awake! I wanted him to hold me and grieve with me. At the same time, I didn’t want him to hurt like I did. I didn’t want him to mourn our unborn child . . . so I let him slumber on, ignorant of this fresh pain.
As I lay against my husband, I grew weaker. I could feel the drain, pulling on me, wicking away my life.
~~**~~
