“Easy,” Dr. Liok said as he helped lower me back down to the chair.
“I can’t stay here…” I repeated. “I need to go…”
My eyes drifted shut and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep them open.
I awoke, blurry-eyed and unsure where I was. I lay on a floor and pushed myself up, a thick line of drool hanging from the corner of my mouth from where I’d been dribbling.
I was too faint and fuzzy to care. As I pushed myself up off the floor, my arms felt a little distant, as if I’d been injected with anesthetic and it dulled every one of my senses.
My eyesight was fuzzy around the edges like an old movie reel found in a damp closet and a roaring rush vibrated in my ears.
I found myself in a room painted a soft white, the edges bulging inwards like I was trapped inside a monster. I leaned against it and found it soft—much softer than the floor I’d been sleeping on.
I pulled my legs up and hugged them. It took me a moment to recall what happened to me.
I’d been in the science laboratory and I’d gotten the test and… I was pregnant. Yes, that’s right. I was pregnant and I felt a pinch in my arm. I reached back and felt where I’d been bitten and found nothing there.
No blood, no lump, nothing.
Then what was I doing in this room?
“Hello?” I said out loud.
In the middle of the room was a chair—much like the one I’d been tested in earlier. It sat empty and seemed all the more sinister for that reason.
Bright lights illuminated the oval-shaped room from above, the ceiling far too high for me to reach.
There were no windows.
I got to my feet a little unsteadily and leaned against the wall to ensure I didn’t pitch over onto my ass.
The wall.
It shifted. It was the only thing I noticed that changed about this room.
The wall.
I moved around it as much by my hands as with my feet, until I reached the front wall.
Front wall?
Is that what it was?
Yes, I thought. The front wall of the entire accursed room. As I moved, the empty patch of wall shifted my perspective, revealing the scientists working in the lab on the other side.
I was still in the laboratory, I realized. I’d just been shunted into a separate room.
Another prison.
I banged on the invisible wall and hollered to get the attention of the people outside.
There, I made out Junic.
“Junic!” I yelled. “In here! I’m in here!”
She continued with her work as if she couldn’t hear me.
She’d been there with me when Dr. Liok jabbed me with the needle and knocked me out…
Except he had his hands firmly on my arms pinning me in place.
He couldn’t have been the one to inject me. It had to be one of the others. The only one close enough to administer it was Junic.
But why?
The answer was simple when I passed it before the eye of my mind.
They did this to me after they discovered the truth about my pregnancy.
For what purpose?
I shut my eyes and tried to figure it out. It couldn’t be that difficult…
And yet, I couldn’t piece it together at all. My mind was still fuzzy with angry thoughts.
I collapsed in a heap on the floor, the effects of the drug that’d been shot into my system without my permission still having an effect on me.
I was a prisoner—nothing new there—but this time, it felt different.
I was pregnant and I was a prisoner.
And that made all the difference.
Overcome with exhaustion, I lay back down and curled into a ball. Sleep found me.
“Harper? Harper? Can you hear me?”
The voice was familiar but I couldn’t identify who it belonged to.
My arms flew up as I shot into consciousness and batted at the person hovering over me.
“Harper, it’s okay,” the voice said calmly. “It’s me. It’s Lily.”
Lily?
That couldn’t be right. Lily was never nice to me. Never nice to anyone.
Unless she wanted something from you.
“We’ll be all right,” Lily said to someone standing over us.
A guard backed away, just beyond the invisible wall. It shimmered and suddenly the solid wall was back in place.
I got to my feet and banged against it with my fist.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Let me out of here! Let me out! I shouldn’t be here!”
“Harper,” Lily said, groaning as she pushed herself up onto her feet. “They can’t let you out.”
I was taken aback by how calm she was. How relaxed. How could she be when she was in this situation with me?
Trapped in this same room. Together.
I felt a little lightheaded. I took a step backward and my leg gave way beneath me. Lily was there to catch me and keep me from falling.
“They must have given you a pretty big dose, huh?” she said. “Too much for a woman in a state such as yours. Come on. Let’s get you in the chair. It’s no good you being cooped up on the floor.”
She angled me toward the chair.
I grabbed the arms and kept myself from falling into it. I was damned if I was going to sit in that thing again!
I collapsed to the floor, backed up to the wall, and hugged my knees.
“What’s going on here?” I said.
“Didn’t they explain it to you?” Lily said.
She muttered something under her breath and cast an angry look in the direction of the laboratory outside. She sighed and got down on the floor beside me.
“They’re keeping you here to keep an eye on you and make sure you and the baby are healthy and safe,” she said.
“The baby? So, it wasn’t a dream.”
“No, it wasn’t. There’s nothing so much of a blessing than having children.”
“Not in here. Not when I’m forced to sleep with fighters. Not when our birth control pills are taken from us and we have no choice. And what if… what if it’s a girl?”
That thought more than any other terrified me. It was one thing for me to be
