“THIS IS YOUR NEW home.”
Serassi rested a hand on the knob of the red front door of a two-story house.
Nok placed her palm flat on her belly. With the other, she squeezed Rolf’s hand. They stood in a cavernous warehouse so large that the walls were hidden in shadow. It was nearly empty except for two structures: the house with the red front door, and tiered rows of theater benches facing it.
Serassi twisted the knob.
The house was filled with heavy wooden furniture, a blocky television set, cabinets that looked painted on. Nok got the sense that she and Rolf had been brought to an enormous dollhouse, or maybe that they’d been shrunk down to doll size. She pushed back the paisley living room curtains, expecting to see opaque observation panels instead of windows. But here, the windows were real transparent glass, though beyond was only the empty warehouse.
The house is perfect in every way, she thought, except one.
There were only three walls.
She turned to where the fourth wall, the front of the house, should be. Open space gaped, facing the tiered spectator seating in the same way that a theater was open to the audience. Carefully, Nok walked to the edge of the living room, where the floor ended abruptly. It was about a four-foot drop to the warehouse floor below. From the house’s upstairs level, the drop must be closer to fifteen feet. She let her bare toes curl over the edge. She could jump off, but where would she go? Wherever the warehouse doors were, they would be locked.
Bright lights suddenly turned on from the direction of the seating area, and she shaded her face. Who exactly was going to watch them?
“Nok.” She turned at Rolf’s call. He stood at the top of the living room stairs. His fingers were holding the handrail tightly, but they weren’t tapping. He’d shaken that bad habit during their time in the cage, and for a second, he looked like an entirely different person than the twitchy genius she’d first met. “You should come see this.”
She followed him up the stairs, so nervous that her own fingers nearly started twitching. The entire house consisted of only four rooms, stacked two on two like a perfect cube, with a small cutout for a bathroom. Downstairs was a living room and a kitchen large enough to fit a dining room table. Upstairs there was a bedroom and a spare room, mostly empty now except for a rocking chair and a few boxes.
She paused in the open doorway.
Unassembled parts of a crib were leaning against one of the boxes. A tangled mobile of stars already hung from the ceiling, perfectly still in the windless room. She took a shaky step inside, touching the mobile to make it spin.
A nursery—or at least the start of one.
The mobile spun faster, or maybe the spinning was in her head. She suddenly felt like she was back home in London, trapped in front of flashing camera lights, a too-small dress riding up her hips. She felt sick and turned, but jumped to find Serassi blocking the door.
“I don’t understand,” Nok said, breathing hard. “You said we weren’t capable of raising our own young. You said you were going to take away the baby.”
Serassi eyed her calmly. “That was my original assessment, yes. We reproduce by collecting Kindred DNA and matching it for optimum genetics. The offspring are not born, but raised in communal grow houses from infancy through first-decade aging. As chief genetics officer, I have been working to engineer a similar system with humans. Soon, natural reproduction will be as obsolete for your kind as it is for ours. Your child might very well be the last born of natural means.”
She almost looked pleased with herself, but then she blinked, as though she had forgotten something important, and cocked her head. “Though after observing you in your previous enclosure, I realized I might be missing a valuable opportunity to study authentic prenatal care in its natural habitat. Our knowledge of your child-rearing culture has heretofore been collected by studying artifacts: instructional books, videos, and recordings. I’ve learned that your kind has traditions that are never written down. It is my intention to observe these informal practices here.”
Nok stumbled through her words. “So . . . we can keep the baby?”
Serassi’s dark eyes swiveled to Nok’s belly. “As long as you prove yourselves useful to our research purposes.”
“And if we don’t?” Rolf asked tensely. “You cut the baby out of her belly and kill us?”
“The moral code prevents us from killing you,” Serassi answered, though from the way her voice lingered, whatever the alternative would be didn’t seem much better.
A pain shot through Nok’s belly. Was it true? Would they really take Sparrow away before she was even born and raise her in some alien incubator somewhere, watched and documented just like Nok had been for all those photographers back home? “You’re monsters!” She lunged toward Serassi, but Rolf held her back. His muscles had grown from all the sledding and gardening in the cage, and he stopped her from clawing at Serassi.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “She’s stronger than us. Think of Sparrow.”
Nok let out a frustrated cry and spun away, breath coming fast. She pressed a hand to the base of her neck. The Kindred had fixed her asthma when they’d abducted her, but she still felt the ghost of tightness in her lungs.
She stormed into the nursery. Rolf followed her, glancing back at the open door.
“At least we’re safe for the time being,” Rolf said.
“Until when?” she asked. “Until we can’t teach them anything they haven’t already learned from books? Rolf, I don’t know anything about raising a baby. It won’t take them long to figure that out. A month, maybe two, and they’ll take her away as soon as she’s developed enough.”
She glanced over at the crib and felt sick all over again.
“I won’t let it come to that.” Rolf rested his hands on her shoulders.
They went back into the hallway, but Serassi had vanished. They found her downstairs, inspecting a microwave oven that kept dinging despite the fact that nothing was cooking. If she was upset that Nok had nearly tried to claw her face off, she didn’t show it.
“Do this for Sparrow,” Rolf whispered.
It gave Nok something to hold on to, and she took a deep breath and turned to Serassi. “What about the others?”
Serassi straightened. “None of the others are expecting a child, so there is no reason for them to be here.” She nodded toward the staircase. “You will find suitable clothing in the bedroom upstairs. Try to ignore the observers and act as naturally as you would if you were in your former lives. This habitat has been left open so the observers can ask you any questions they might have about what you are doing and why. Answer their questions promptly. Otherwise, you are free to live as you choose.”
The tight walls of the living room pressed in toward Nok.
“Where is Cassian? Can we talk to him?”
Serassi returned to inspecting the microwave. “If you believe that Cassian will take you away from this place, you are mistaken. He needed to hide Cora’s escape attempt and his own role in it from the Council. Tessela and Fian are two of his supporters, and thus they agreed to lie. But I care nothing for his mission. And so he offered to give me the two of you and your baby for my own research purposes, in exchange for my silence.” Serassi closed the microwave door. “I am the one you answer to now.”
Nok closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her throat.
“We have simulated day and night for you,” Serassi continued. “I will return tomorrow to perform the first round of tests, along with my fellow reproductive scientists. We expect you to comply with the mission of this facility and act in a way befitting parents-to-be. Cook meals and dine together. Prepare the house for your coming child. Follow whatever customs you would on Earth. And, most importantly, focus on your health. For the baby.”
Her eyes, once more, went to Nok’s belly.
Nok pressed her hands tighter to fight against the sense that Serassi was already communicating with her child; that Sparrow somehow already belonged more to this creature than to Nok.
Serassi left through the red front door, which seemed a bit farcical; she could have stepped down through the missing wall. Once she was gone, Nok threw her arms around Rolf. She wanted to burst into tears, but they didn’t come. “How much time do we have until Sparrow is developed enough that they could take her away?”
“I can’t be certain,” Rolf said. “Their time works differently. In the cage, I had started to work through the calculations—it’s an algorithm based on the speed of the rotations of this station and the gravitational pull of nearby planets. But then . . . Well.” His face went dark. “It didn’t seem to matter anymore.”
Nok didn’t need to ask him what he meant. She and Rolf had both gone a little crazy in the cage, convinced that the unlimited candy and video games were paradise.
“Can you try to figure it out again?” she asked, squeezing his arms. “We need to know how much time we have to . . .” Pressure built behind her eyes but she still didn’t cry. This time, she wasn’t going to go along blindly, letting people order her to pose this way and that. She was done being a living doll. “. . . to escape. Sparrow is not going to grow up in this dollhouse with an alien for a mother. She’s going to grow up with you and me—far away from here.”