Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (48 page)

Niklaus felt like he was drowning.  It had happened too fast for him to stop it, and
now it was done. 

“Look at her brains all over the sink!” Alise cackled.

Niklaus ran into the room, dropping to his knees next to Evelina’s body.  Horror filled
him, and then agony, as it sank in that she was gone.  He cradled her bleeding head
in her body.  A look of hurt and betrayal was etched into her lifeless face.  He’d
said he would watch out for her.  He’d lied.

“Gross, you’re getting her all over you,” Alise said. “Let’s go tell someone to clean
up this mess.”

As she turned away, Niklaus reached for his holster and found it empty.  Alise still
held his gun.  If he’d had it, he would have shot her right in the back.

Instead, he knelt in the cell, clutching Evelina’s body, and he began to sob, mumbling
curses down on himself and his wicked cousin.

“They tell me you’re ready to deal.” Ward grinned as he approached the clear wall
to Jenny’s cell.  Behind him, the projection screen had gone mercifully blank, and
the recorded screams had been silenced.

“I don’t think I have any choice.” Jenny spoke in a quiet, defeated tone.  She was
less than a month from giving birth, and she’d found no way to ever escape without
using the pox. “It’s time to stop thinking about myself and do what’s right for the
baby.”

“And that is?” Ward folded his arms, still grinning.

“I’ll do whatever you want, if you guarantee the baby’s safety.”

“Not a problem.”

“I just have a couple of conditions.”

Ward smirked. “And those are?”

“First, the birth has to be done in a very specific way.  I can explain the details
to Dr. Parker, but it has to be done right, or the baby will die.”

“As long as Dr. Parker agrees, and nothing violates our security.”

“Second...I need the baby to stay here with me.  Live here with me, if this is where
I’m going to live.”

“I’m not so sure about that, Jenny.” Ward’s face hardened, his smile gone.

“She’s my own baby.”

“And we have to think about her health and safety, don’t we?  You could be deadly
to her.  Like you were to your own mother.”

Jenny wanted to snarl at him, but she kept herself looking calm. 
Nothing for me, everything for the baby
, she reminded herself. “But I can’t just give her up.”

“I’ll tell you what, Jennifer.  You behave yourself, follow orders, and don’t cause
trouble, we might set up a spot for her right here outside your cell.  You won’t be
able to touch her—we can’t have her dying, can we?—but you’ll be able to watch.”

Jenny nodded.  Her baby did need protection from her.  The thought broke what remained
of her heart.

“Is that all?” Ward asked, and she nodded again. “Good.  We’ll plan to start your
tests after you give birth. You won’t have that baby to hide behind much longer, Jennifer.”
He glanced at her huge belly. “You’re making the right choice here.”

Jenny frowned, and soon he walked away, leaving her alone with her thoughts and the
growing baby kicking and turning inside her, eager to be born.

* * *

Juliana stood in the laboratory looking down at the young man on the stretcher, bound
by straps and gagged, straining helplessly to pull free, looking up at her with fear
in his eyes.  She couldn’t move from where she stood.  A leather collar and cuffs
bound her neck and wrists, each mounted on the end of a long pole, and three guards
in gas masks stood behind her as puppeteers, controlling her movements.

“No!” Juliana shouted, and the middle guard jabbed his pole into the back of her neck,
making her stumble forward.  The other two pushed and turned their poles until Juliana’s
hands landed on the man’s bare chest.  He convulsed, dark lesions opening all over
his abdomen. “Stop it!” Juliana screamed, but they ignored her as always. 

They’d been forcing her to continue the tests against her will for weeks.  She wished
they would just shoot her, but they were far too interested in the baby growing inside
her.  It had a been a very hard pregnancy, being pushed around by guards, examined
by doctors in gas masks, never seeing Sebastian or anyone else who cared about her. 
She tried to keep her sadness buried deep inside where no one could see it.

She felt deathly ill as she watched the blisters and sores spread out across the man’s
body, rupturing him open.  He coughed up a mixture of stomach acid and blood, and
some other sticky black fluid drooled from his nostrils.

In less than two minutes, he was dead, half his flesh eaten away, his bones swollen
out of shape. 

Juliana swayed on her feet, feeling dizzy.  A deep cramp seized her insides, and she
thought she would vomit everywhere.  The cramp turned more painful, tight enough to
choke off her breathing, and then it released.  Her thighs felt hot and damp.  She
looked down to see a small wet spot on the front of her gray dress.  It grew larger
as the wet heat spread down her legs, and drops fell from under to her dress to land
on the concrete floor between her ratty prison slippers.  The drops were bright red.

“The baby,” Juliana whispered.  Her legs crumpled under her, but the guards held her
up with their poles.  “Please help the baby.”

The steel door opened, and three medical staff in gas masks ran into the room.  With
the guards’ help, they loaded her onto a stretcher, strapped her down, and removed
the leather straps from her wrists and neck.

She felt increasingly dizzy as they rolled her down the wide corridor between the
labs.  They brought her to the clinic area in the northwest quadrant of the base,
and into a surgery room.

Juliana felt her stomach heave, and then a tremendous pressure built inside her. 
A rush of blood and water spilled out from her, fanning out across the bed, and then
something else, a solid mass.

The nurses cut away her dress.  Juliana watched as they reached between her legs and
pulled it out of her.  Her baby, a girl.

The baby was curled up, dripping gore, and not moving.  Her skin had a gray pallor.

“Is she all right?” Juliana whispered. “Is she...”

Nobody spoke to her.  They deposited the cold, unmoving baby into a steel pan, then
dumped the placenta on top.  They sealed it with a lid and carried it away, and she
never saw it again.

A pained wail emerged from deep inside of her, through her clenched teeth, startling
the guards, nurses, and doctors around her.  She’d lost the baby, and it was gone
forever.

Every imaginable kind of pain overwhelmed her, and then she blacked out under the
bright lights.

Jenny lay in the hospital bed in her cube with her hands cuffed to the bed rails,
with the entire lower half of her body missing, as far as she could feel.  The epidural
had kicked in, and she felt a little panicked, knowing she wouldn’t be much good if
she had to run or fight.  A nurse in a hazardous material suit rigged up a green surgical
curtain to shield most of her lower body from her sight.

“Don’t bother,” Jenny whispered. “Whatever you’re gonna do, I’ve seen worse.”

They put up the curtain anyway, ignoring her.  Jenny looked out through the clear
wall.  Ward stood just outside, smoking a cigar, accompanied by several researchers.

“Seth,” Jenny whispered to Dr. Parker. “He’s supposed to be here...I told you.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Parker said, her voice fuzzy and mechanical through the tiny speaker
on her hazmat suit. “They decided it was too much of a security risk.”

Jenny looked at Ward again. “Seth needs to be here.”

“I’m sure Dr. Parker can manage just fine without him,” Ward replied, blowing smoke.

“We had a deal,” Jenny said.

“To be honest, Seth isn’t that interested in you anymore,” Ward told her. “He’s been
shacked up with your pal Mariella for a few months now.  They’ve been having a good
old time together.” He winked.

Jenny didn’t believe him.  She pushed back any memories of Sebastian and Mia’s relationship
in their last life.  She was already surrounded by enemies at this most vulnerable
moment in her entire life.  She had plenty to worry about without letting Ward get
under her skin.

Nobody spoke much while they made their preparations.  Jenny could feel the thick
tension weighing down the room.  The doctor and the two nurses were clearly afraid
of coming into contact with her flesh and blood, even in their hazmat suits.  The
two guards flanking the airlock door kept their hands on their stunners, as if Jenny
were going to lash out while her womb was cut open in the middle of a cesarean delivery.

The room became very quiet.

“Jenny, we’re making the first incision,” Dr. Parker said.

“Okay,” Jenny whispered.  Everything in the world fell away except her absolute terror
at what was about to happen.  She looked toward the wall of her cube again, some part
of her half-expecting to see Seth, but there was only Ward and his hateful sneer,
flanked by guards, scientists, and a nurse watching the row of monitors.

Jenny watched the women working on her, barely able to see their faces behind their
biohazard masks, clear shields that reflected the bright lights above.  She couldn’t
help thinking of alien abduction stories from the History Channel, people waking up
under bright lights to find strange extraterrestrials performing unknown operations
on them.  That experience, hallucinated or not, was probably about as emotionally
cold and inhuman as this surgery.

She had no way of seeing what the doctor was doing beyond the screen, and she didn’t
dare speak or ask questions that could distract them.  The medical staff didn’t speak
to her at all.  Jenny might as well have been a farm animal getting a veterinary visit. 
A cow, maybe, because her body felt so swollen and heavy.

She waited and waited, listening to the electronic beeps echoing her pounding heart.

“Uh-oh,” the doctor whispered.

“Uh-oh?  What’s uh-oh?” Jenny asked, imagining the scalpel stabbing the little baby
through the foot, or the arm, or the head.

“Please be quiet,” the nurse closest to Jenny said, scowling at her.

“Clamp,” Dr. Parker said, ignoring Jenny altogether.

Jenny heard her heart beep even faster.  She was sweating, barely able to think, her
head swirling with nightmares and the memories of countless bloody miscarriages and
heart-ripping stillbirths.

An eternity seemed to pass, then another, then another.

“Breech,” Dr. Parker said quietly. 

Jenny didn’t dare ask another question of the semi-hostile medical staff, but she
remembered that a breech meant the baby was positioned backwards, and it was considered
not good.  Her sweat felt like ice, and her heart beat even faster.

She had no idea what was happening beyond the green sheet of plastic.  She could distantly
feel movement and pressure, but couldn’t tell what any of it meant, and the doctor
and nurses weren’t talking.

After another thousand eternities, Dr. Parker stepped back, holding what Jenny first
saw as a strange, dark sea creature, wet and dripping in the doctor’s gloves.  It
took a moment to resolve into the shape of a baby.  A gray, unmoving baby.

She felt a grieved sob building inside her chest.  It had happened again, just like
all the other times, despite their precautions and the help of modern science.  Seth
should have been there.  If Seth were there, he could have helped.  Maybe he could
still help.

“Seth!” Jenny shouted. “Get Seth!  Now!”

“Afraid not.” Ward chuckled over his cigar.

Jenny shot him a look of pure hate.  She was going to kill him, she realized.  She
would hunt him down in every incarnation, killing him again and again, maybe for all
of eternity.  She would never forgive, never stop wanting to punish him.

The doctor massaged the baby, and as if by magic, the baby’s gray skin gradually grew
pink and warm.  The baby’s mouth opened, and she let out a powerful scream. 
Hello, world.

Jenny gasped, then whispered, “Hi, baby girl.” Tears filled up her eyes.  Her arms
tried to reach for the tiny girl, but of course Jenny’s wrists were still handcuffed.

I can never touch her
, Jenny reminded herself. 
Never.
  The word “never” seemed painfully cold and heavy enough to crush her. 
Never
.

Jenny gaped as they clamped and cut the cord and cleaned the baby, then weighed and
measured her.  The baby was tiny, as Jenny must have been when she was born, her eyes
clenched shut as she howled and cried.  Jenny winced as they stuck her foot for a
blood sample.

“It’s okay, baby,” Jenny said. “You’re okay.”

Hearing Jenny speak up, the baby stopped crying for a moment and opened her tiny,
crystal-blue newborn eyes.  She looked in Jenny’s direction, and Jenny’s heart both
melted and fell to pieces.  This was her, the little one who’d been stirring in her
stomach for so many months.  A complete little person with little ears and feet.