Mari caught them and sank down onto the cot again. “How did all this happen, Sean? When did it all go to hell?”
“Just put the socks on.”
“If Brett comes back here, I swear one of us isn’t going to walk out of this room alive.” She paused, the sock hovering near her toes. Her gaze met Sean’s. “I mean it. I can’t let him touch me ever again. I hate it that much.”
“I’ll take care of it. I’ll find a way.”
“You’ve been saying that for weeks now. I’m not the only one being forced into something disgusting, Sean. We talked about this and you said you’d get Whitney to listen to you, but he didn’t. Would you honestly want to live this way?” She donned her socks and stood up, following him out the door.
“Is Brett the reason why you did it? Are you hoping Whitney will keep him away from you if you’re pregnant with Norton’s baby?” He led her down the hall to the elevator.
Mari shoved her fingers through her hair, betraying agitation. “I’m not accepting him. One way or the other, I’m not accepting him.”
“Whitney told me he doesn’t want the women to feel the same way over the men, because if the pairing doesn’t work—if for some reason she doesn’t get pregnant, or the baby isn’t what he’d hoped—then he can send another partner.”
She stiffened. “The baby isn’t what he hoped? What exactly does he plan to do with a baby that isn’t what he hoped?”
Sean frowned. “I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe adopt it out?”
“Adopt it out?” She dragged her feet, slowing as they made their way down the corridor toward the laboratory.
“Well come on, Mari, you can’t tell me you want to sit around with a crying kid hanging on you.”
“If it was my kid, yes. Is that what you’d want? Your child sent away?”
“I don’t know what I want. When Whitney talks about how genetic enhancement can save so many lives and if we just developed a group of soldiers with superior skills, so many young men and women would never have to lose their lives or have catastrophic injuries, it makes sense. I can go out and do what I’ve been trained to do and know that someone else, someone not nearly as skilled, might be killed—would probably be killed—if I wasn’t doing my job. Doesn’t it make sense to work toward finding a solution to war?”
“The babies are still our children, Sean,” she pointed out. “They aren’t robots; they deserve to have the same choice you as an adult have. They deserve the same rights other children have.”
Sean pulled open the door to the medical laboratory and waited for her to enter first. “If you could just hear him, Mari.”
“I have heard him. He raised me. He found me in an orphanage, and facilities and laboratories like this one have been my home since that day. I didn’t play like normal children; I didn’t even know there was a normal. Martial arts and shooting guns were normal to me. I’ve never been on a swing or gone down a slide, Sean. I was out in the field playing battle when I was six. I never had a holiday. No one tucked me in at night. Is that the kind of life you want for your son or daughter?”
Sean shook his head. “I’ll talk to him again.”
“It won’t do any good. You know it won’t. He’ll just present his ‘this is for the good of mankind’ argument, and no one can get around that. He doesn’t think with emotion, Sean. He discounts emotion altogether. When he pairs a couple, it’s just physical attraction. Or that’s what it seems to be. He doesn’t want to run the risk of emotion, because then the parents might care about each other as well as their child. What would happen when he decides to experiment on the child—or he doesn’t think the pairing was what he wanted after all and he wants to break the couple up?”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“No? I think you’re deluding yourself, and I don’t understand why. We had hundreds of discussions about this and you always agreed with the rest of us. What Whitney is doing is wrong, Sean.”
Mari looked around her at the cold stainless-steel counters, sinks, and gurneys. She hated this room. It was so cold, yet when they turned on the spotlights, it was glaringly hot. Surgical instruments lay like torture implements in neat little trays. She tore her gaze from the knives and forced herself to smile at the small, thin man waiting for her. “Dr. Prauder, I’m reporting for a checkup.”
“So I’ve heard. Whitney wants a full report on you.”
“I’m here to give you whatever you need,” she said, forcing a cheerful tone. Her stomach knotted up at the thought of what was coming. She didn’t look at Sean. He knew her well enough to know she detested the poking and prodding. Whitney even tried to extract memories. Everything, no matter how humiliating or private, was recorded.
She took the gown the doctor gave her and changed in the small alcove, counting in her head to control shivering. Ken, where are you? If she ever needed another human being to get her through something, now was the time. She didn’t want them to give her a morning-after pill. She didn’t want them touching her body or deciding she needed more shots or another tracking device.
She detested the lack of control, how vulnerable she felt when she was strapped down helplessly and the doctors were able to do whatever Whitney decided was her fate. Most of all she detested the sneaky, very personal way Prauder touched her when he was pretending to be impersonal. Whitney often came for the exams. He stood on the other side of the glass with that terrible little half smile staring at her as if she were a frog he was dissecting.
How far away were the Nortons and their team? Had they lost track of her? Had Sean managed to throw them off and now she was trapped here alone? And what if she was pregnant? Whitney would take her baby and she’d never see it—not if he knew it was Ken Norton’s. He’d looked too pleased, and it was rare for Whitney to be pleased.
“You ready, Mari?” Sean asked.
“In a minute.” She folded the shirt carefully, running her hand over the material in a small caress. It was stupid and girlie and made her want to choke, but she couldn’t stop herself. They’re going to examine me. Do you know what that entails? And while they examine me, they have a guard standing right there, watching the entire thing. And a camera records it and Whitney stands outside the glass staring in at me.