“Did someone dress me while I was asleep?” I asked, thinking, just give me an excuse and I’ll knock your lights out. My eyes were scanning the faces accusingly.
Joseph’s face flushed red. Then he grinned. “Ha! I would have offered, but someone beat me to it!”
I glared at all of them, hoping I could sear them in half with my vision. When no one confessed, I awkwardly tried to ease myself down onto a log. It was getting harder and harder to do even the simplest of things without the leech getting in the way. Joseph reached out to help me but I smacked his hand away. I felt like I needed a force field around me, no one touching me until I knew what they really wanted. Ungracefully, I levered my form to the ground and sat facing him.
Everyone was watching us. I noticed a familiar face in the group. Apella was there, and a man was sitting with her, his hand on her knee. She was leaning her head on his shoulder. Clara was leaning back on her elbows, looking as wistful as ever. Nothing ever seemed to get to her, at least, not the way it got to me. Then there was Joseph and his friend, who was nursing a cut on his left forearm courtesy of me knocking him over a rock. He didn’t seem too affected either. Joseph was the only one who looked concerned, no, more than concerned. He look genuinely in pain, his face flickered back and forth between relief and anguish.
“So…?” I challenged, “Tell me! Tell me the truth.”
“What do you remember?” he asked.
“I remember working at the Classes, doing well in my class. I remember....” I touched my hand to my face. “Getting in trouble. Then waking up in a room, drugged and pregnant. Oh, and I remember your letter,” I replied.
“Oh. I guess it was too much to hope that had been erased from your memory. I’m sorry, Rosa, I thought it was the right thing to do. I wanted you to be happy and not hold onto something we could never have. I shouldn’t have done it, but by the time I had decided to tell you the truth, you had disappeared,” he confessed. I wanted it to be true, my whole being ached for it to be true, but there was so much unexplained.
“You know, he never gave up. I tried to tell him it was no use but he risked everything to find you,” the boy with the needle interrupted.
I glared at him.
“Deshi, will you shut up!” Joseph sounded frustrated, his voice strained. Maybe he was hanging by the same thin thread of sanity that I was clinging to.
Deshi shut his mouth and kept it that way.
“Well, working forward from what you remember, I can tell you what I know.” He took a deep breath and launched into the story. “You know I was accepted into Medical, right?” I nodded. I remembered seeing him hanging around outside the medical building with his white coat on, talking to other Uppers. “Well, Deshi and I and a few other kids were pulled into a specialist group, dealing specifically with infertility. It was all very secretive and we were required to supply a DNA sample at the start of every morning as a security clearance.” I recalled the two men in white pushing their fingers into the goo when they were trying to release the security doors. “We were being allowed access to all sorts of information but were told our lives were over if we told anyone what was going on. Apella here was one of our teachers.” I looked over at her. She smiled shyly. She seemed too lacking in confidence to be a teacher or a doctor. I had always assumed she was just a lackey in our situation. The deceptions were unfolding, like a tightly crumpled letter, each crease revealing a new unknown, scrawled part I thought I had read but now, no longer understood.
Joseph spoke.
“Apella had developed a way to synthesize genetic material in order to artificially impregnate a woman. She was teaching us this process and getting us to synthesize our own DNA and other kids from the Classes. We were to collect samples from every male we could. Just a strand of hair was enough. Soon we had about three hundred samples. I wish I had known what they were planning, but I didn’t, I swear,” he said, clearly upset, clearly trying to purvey his own innocence.
“So you did this?” I aimed my accusation at Apella. “You’re responsible for what they did to me, to Clara?” I was disgusted with her. She was obviously brilliant but had no morals.
“You say it like I had a choice, Rosa,” she appealed.
“You always have a choice,” I said.
“Even if the choice is dying, or someone you love dying?” she said, looking to the man next to her.
“Yes.” I knew what I would do. I would never have done what she did.
“That’s what I love about you. You are nothing like anyone else in Pau, you do believe in a choice. You always do what you want and to hell with the consequences!” Joseph said. I was offended. I didn’t think that was true, but I would like to think that I would make the right choice, if I had to.
Apella looked devastated by my response. Clara shuffled over and patted her back. It made me sick that she would even touch her after what she had done to us. I felt like I had heard enough. But Joseph continued.
“Shortly after the samples were created, we were told that they had been destroyed, that someone had left the fridge door open and they had all expired. We were moved onto another program and we were told Apella had taken a leave of absence.”
“Pretty stupid to believe that,” I snapped.
“I know,” he admitted, “but I swear we thought it was all for practice. We never dreamed that they were going to use them for anything.”
I was starting to put it together myself, “And then I disappeared.” I felt cold. Worn down to a point, a speck. Was there ever any end to it?
“Yes.” He looked at the ground, tracing patterns in the dirt with a stick. “You disappeared; you stopped walking to the construction Class with your friends...” he stopped on that word, setting his mouth in a hard line, like it was difficult for him to say. “You weren’t exploring the Arboretum.” So he was watching me. “You were gone without a trace. Every day I snuck into the lab after hours and searched for any information that might lead me to you. Every day for about a month I would type your number in, or your name, but there was nothing.”
“It’s true!” Deshi chimed in. We both shot him a look.
“Then one day I typed in your number and all that came up was ‘matched’. That’s when Apella caught me. She found me sitting, staring at the computer. I had just about given up hope when she leaned over and typed in a password. There was your name Rosa Bianca matched Joseph Sulle. Apella explained it to me. Although I think she had to explain it about ten times. The Superiors had taken you and used my sample to create a baby. Our baby. She told me that they had taken her technology and were using it to begin a repopulation plan for the Woodlands. They would eliminate the need for families. They could control the genetic mix this way. So we were matched to create a particular genetic composition.” He sounded like a scientist, like one of them.
I yawned, stretching my arms. The leech kicked me and I jumped, instinctively touching my belly. Joseph looked at me longingly. “Did it…” he didn’t finish. “You’re tired. Maybe you should sleep and we can finish tomorrow.”
“No, keep going. I want to know how this fantastical story ends,” I said sarcastically.
He ignored me. “Apella asked for my help. She said she would help me find you, if I helped her and Alexei escape from their life also.” So that’s why she was helping us. To protect her love. My opinion of her lowered further.
“I’m sorry it took so long but we had to make sure the plan was perfect before we tried. There were so many things that could go wrong and we only had one shot at it. I’m sorry for…” he said, leaving it hanging.