Jo stays huddled in her apartment for the next few days after she's seen Henry and witnessed his death. But that isn't the death that has affected her most. She mourns the child she didn't think she wanted. It wasn't that her feelings about it were wrong. She didn't want to be pregnant. Not here and now. Not like this. But it was still a loss no matter how it goes.
Her justifiable depression is what keeps Jo away from her regularly scheduled appointment at the Reproductive Center. She doesn't think she should go. Henry won't be there, and she'll have to get a new partner assigned to her anyway. She rebels. Quietly. Desperately.
What she does not expect is Mike Hanson to call her and demand that she get down to the Reproductive Center as soon as possible.
"I don't care that you were at the House of Payne a few days ago. Riots or not, you still have to keep your appointments! If you come now, we might be able to slip you and Henry into a slot at three this afternoon."
"Really," she says flatly. "You want Henry and I to try again? How could I possibly try with Henry?"
"Did you two have a fight or something? He's sitting right here waiting for you. We're all waiting for you, Martinez. Disruptive behavior like this will be reported, and you won't like what happens next," Hanson huffs.
"Wait," Jo says into the phone, definitely not sure she's heard him right. She sits down just in case. "Henry is at the Center with you?"
"Where else would he be?" Hanson rails. "He keeps his appointments. I don't know what's wrong with you, and I don't care. Get over here."
"Right away," Jo says before she throws on some clothes to go to the center.
She doesn't worry about being pretty or clean for that matter since she'll have to take a sanitary shower on site. She just needs to see for herself that Henry Morgan is still alive.
Jo nervously showers and prepares to walk into the room where Hanson and Lucas will watch her and Henry procreate. She's never been this nervous around him before. Oh, she hasn't always liked the audience, but this takes the cake when it comes to nerves.
Lucas immediately descends upon her to put on the sensors, and Jo sneaks glances at Henry. He stares into nothing, but he's definitely there. She wants to touch him and even reaches fingers in his direction. But she retracts them quickly. They'll be skin to skin soon enough.
"It's good to see you're okay," Lucas tells her softly in her ear as he affixes the sensors. "I wasn't sure you got out of the club safely."
"I did, yes," she says. Then she adds, "You're okay, too?"
"Yeah, thanks," he nods and glances at Hanson who looks like he's ready to let loose another diatribe.
"Are you done with her vitals yet?" Mike asks.
"Yes, ready," Lucas says and backs away from them.
Then Henry and Jo begin their dance that they always do. As many times as he is able within one session and as often as she is in the prime of her fertility. It's mechanical and rehearsed, but just this once it's comforting to Jo.
As he thrusts into her, Jo gasps in his ear and whispers that she wants to speak to him in private later. He moves his head with one sharp nod to indicate he's heard her. That's all either one dares in front of Hanson or Wahl.
When they are done, Mike continues to berate them. It is with enough venom that Jo wonders if he secretly likes complaining.
"And by what reason do you have for being late to your session? It is irresponsible!"
"I think I know why," Lucas says before he gives Jo a look that resembles a kicked puppy. "I'm so sorry."
She knows he means it and knows the facts are part of her record now. But Jo doesn't want to hear it.
"Please. Don't say it out loud," she says with a shake of her head. "I can't bear to hear it."
"No, of course not," Lucas says, and puts his clipboard under his arm.
Mike Hanson looks at Lucas and asks, "What is it?"
"Her vitals showed me that she had a medical reason for being late," Lucas tells Hanson without euphemism. "It's... It's since changed."
Lucas passes over the clipboard with her test results that show her miscarriage. Hanson breathes out his regret and sympathy. "I'm sorry, Jo."
She nods to accept his moment of humanity and understanding. Though Henry is an astute man who could potentially read between the lines, he is not paying attention to them. Jo is grateful for the small grace because she doesn't want him to find out like this.
Hanson had worked with Jo when she was paired with Sean, and he knew that she took time off after his death. He subtly mentions that they have another regular session scheduled for tomorrow that could be moved. Instead of taking the out that he is trying to give her, Jo says she will be there. Then she apologizes for being late this morning.
"Of course," Hanson says. "Go take your sanitary showers."
"And don't forget your nutritional supplements," Lucas calls out to them as they walk to the showers.
"Thank you, Lucas," Henry, who had been unusually quiet, finally says to him.
He picks up Jo's dose cup and hands it to her. In his hand he's palmed a small note that he passes to her. She tosses the cup as she normally does, but not without saving his note to look at later when she has some privacy. It's a place and time for them to meet, and it's nowhere Jo has ever been before.
Jo arrives late under the cover of darkness like someone would do in all those spy thrillers that aren't really being published anymore. She doesn't understand why they are meeting on the docks, but it's no surprise how easily her mind goes to the thought of escape on one of the ships.
Henry sits on a pier at the very end of a bench in the dark. He almost looks like a vagrant, but Adam hasn't allowed those in ages. He knows she's coming because he tells her to sit right beside him on the bench.
"This part isn't in the view of the cameras, so we should be safe here for a little while," he says.
Jo sits and realizes she'll have to be constrained even in this place. After a moment she asks Henry, "Do you like the water?"
"When I was a boy I did. After I died for the first time, I didn't." The way he says it so plainly tells her that maybe he has died more than once, whatever dying means for him.
"You've died?" she asks, wondering if this was the last piece of Henry's puzzle.
"Many, many times," he says tiredly as if each death wears on his soul.
"Did you die a few nights ago?" Jo asks, controlling her voice so there will be no tremor of emotion.
"Yes, I did," he says as he looks out to the dark water instead of at her. "Whenever I return, I come back in water. I don't understand that part, but it is consistent."
"Maybe it's because there is no other place that could birth a full grown man," Jo says somberly. It's the only logical thing she can think to say, and she desperately wants the world to make sense right now.
Henry looks at her in surprise. Jo is intelligent, but her type of intelligence doesn't normally line up with the sciences. He concedes, "Maybe."
"So how does it work?" she asks, catching herself momentarily clutching her belly where the baby is no longer growing. She moves her hand away so as not to telegraph the signs.
"My body is full of nanites. So is Adam's. Whenever one of us dies, the nanites scavenge the area for viable biological material to rebuild us. They work very diligently to leave no stone unturned, or more accurately, no fetus unharvested," he says.
Henry sounds sad and guilt-ridden. He has known all along that he had his hand in the plague. He'd been dropping hints for as long as they'd been partners. This time he holds nothing back and does not wait for questions to prompt his answers.
"Many, many years ago, long before you were born, I was working on nanotechnology as a cure for diseases, especially tumors and cancers. I found the breakthrough that would take the body's bad cells, like the ones found in tumors or other damaged cells likely to get cancers, and repurpose them to make a healthy body. I thought I found the cures to diseases and the key to the longevity to the human race. Instead, I doomed it," Henry says.
He doesn't look at Jo as he tells his tale. He's already resigned to the movie of the past that is in his head.
"Abigail, Adam's wife, was my assistant at that time. The reason you don't know about her was that it was too long ago. Adam was a scientist then, too. He understood my research. He came to confront me about Abigail as I was about to test the nanites on a live test subject. We fought in my lab, and he stabbed me. It would have been fatal and final.
"Before I could die that first time, the only thing I had to save me was the nanite injection. I dosed myself, but Adam had an open wound, too. The original set of nanites infected both of us. I died, but not without taking Adam and Abigail's unborn child with me. That was the first of many children I killed at the beginning of this plague," Henry admitted.
He heard Jo's hiccup, but only glanced at her, determined to tell the rest of his gruesome story.
"My age is frozen as it was at my first death, and I've died several times since then. Whenever I die, the robots harvest unborn fetuses because that's the easiest place to find biological material that is still malleable. And it does the same for Adam. You were not wrong about the waves of miscarriages after the assassination attempts. There is direct correlation."
Henry sees Jo wipe at her eyes, and he gets the first clue that she's been crying while he's told her his truth. "Did you do it on purpose, Henry? Did you make the nanites take cells from unborn babies?"
"No! It was an accident. The worst accident," he says.
"You are a murderer, Henry Morgan," Jo says. "You killed us all. You killed my happiness in so many ways. You killed my choice. You killed Sean. You killed. My baby," she says, standing up from the bench like a rocket about to go off.
"What?" Henry asks her, standing up with equal urgency.
Jo's face is a twisted mask of hate. "I was pregnant. When I saw you at House of Payne, I was pregnant!"
Henry has come into her personal space, and Jo pounds her fist on his chest. She hits him again to make him feel pain here and now. "Everything I hate about this world is because of you, Henry Morgan!"
Jo hits him again, making him retreat backwards toward the building. "You died, and you took our baby with you! I never wanted your baby, but you gave me one. Then you took it away!"
Jo speaks faster and faster as if she cannot block the flood of words. "You will never know the sheer terror of watching someone you thought you cared about die in front of you and then waking up in a pool of your own blood. You. Will. Never. Understand."
She punches and slaps Henry, raging to let her anguish out, and he takes it because it is he feels he deserves. He wishes she could harm him so he could do penance for his sins. Jo falls apart and into his arms where she wails from deep within her soul. She begins to scream her sobs, but Henry stops her sound with his mouth over hers.
It is not a kiss. They have never shared anything as tender as a kiss. It is the mouth to mouth transfer of raw grief as if he is an incubus stealing her life force away from her. In a way, he is.
But he covers her mouth with his as a way to muffle her screams and contain her as well as he can. They might be in a private place, but no place is truly safe for long. Henry knows he has to get them both out of there soon.
After minutes uncounted, Jo slumps limply in his arms, too tired and broken to fight any more. It is too close to the curfew, and Henry worries about Jo being alone. Henry calls for a cab and reports with the driver that the woman is going to stay with him instead of her own place after curfew.
"Who is she staying with?" the driver asks as he makes the necessary notes in his passenger logs.
"Abraham Morgan," Henry quickly supplies. If he uses his own name, he knows this will spell disaster.