AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl might have been gone an hour or he might have been gone three. Time was a construct and Carol hadn't had much of a reason to count its individual increments for some time. Meals marked the passing time in the same way as sleep marked the change of days.

Whether she'd been reading an hour or three, she'd covered a fair amount of ground in her book and was deeply engrossed in the story when there was a knock at the door that sucked her out of the fictional land and back into the reality of her tiny home. She didn't move off the couch until the second set of rapid knocks finally made her go stand in front of the door to wait for whoever was outside to let themselves into her home.

It could be someone coming with a job for her. If it were simply Daryl coming back, there wouldn't have been a knock or an announcement. The door would have simply been opened and Daryl would have been let back inside the house.

There was one more set of three quick knocks and the lock disengaged. Carol stepped back as the door opened and revealed that the head woman over the project, Samirah, was standing there, just outside, and was holding a large basket. Dr. Walker stood a short distance behind her. Samirah smiled at Carol just as soon as the door had cleared her field of vision and Carol looked to Dr. Walker who also offered her a smile, even if it was a slightly nervous one.

"Carol?" Samirah asked. Carol nodded, even though she was certain that they must know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, which inmates were locked in which houses. "Can we come in?" Samirah asked, nodding to Carol as though she were trying to suggest to her what the right answer was—as though Carol had a choice in the matter. Dr. Walker nodded too and Carol backed away from the door to allow the women a wide space in which to enter the living room.

Samirah went directly to the small table and put the basket down on the edge of it where the beginning parts of a puzzle that Carol and Daryl had started weren't taking over the surface. She glanced around the house.

"I haven't been inside one of these yet," Samirah said. "I saw them while they were being built, but I haven't actually been inside them."

"Do you want the grand tour?" Carol asked. From her spot she could point to everything in her house, so that's what she did. "Around there—that's the kitchen. That's the bedroom over there and the bathroom. That room is—well, it's empty. And this? This is our living room."

Samirah followed her indications with her eyes and then she smiled at Carol again.

"It's nice," Samirah said. "Do you like it?"

"It's much nicer than a prison cell," Carol said. "Or even our bunks. We're comfortable in it."

"Good," Samirah said. "Good. We're—hoping to offer more in the future. Bigger houses. Better ones. Especially if the project does as well as we're hoping. This is only the beginning."

"Freedom, right?" Carol said, her stomach dropping just a little at the mention of the word. That's what they were supposed to be getting out of this—freedom. All they had to do was be patient. They had to be patient and they had to play by the rules. They were doing that to the best of their abilities. Samirah nodded at her.

"Time, more than anything," Samirah said. "But—I wanted to come by and see you. I wanted to congratulate you, personally, on the baby. I brought you a few things."

She gestured toward the basket and, not to be impolite, Carol walked over to examine the contents of it. It was basic baby supplies. Cloth diapers, pacifiers, a few bottles and blankets. It was like an introductory gift basket to having a child.

"Thank you," Carol said. She glanced at Dr. Walker who was about halfway through consuming one of her fingernails. Carol assumed she was worried that Carol was going to give away their little secret. Carol couldn't communicate to her that she had absolutely no intention of doing that. She didn't know what the repercussions might be for the doctor, but she certainly didn't want to find out what they might be for her as an inmate. "It's very nice. But—it's also a little early."

Samirah joined Carol by the table.

"It may be a little early," she said. "But I honestly didn't know what else to give you as something of a congratulatory gift. If there's anything you want or need, you just let me know. I'll make sure you get it if I can. We'll be getting you nursery furniture soon. A crib, changing table, dresser. But, like with everything else, you can make any special requests that you have and we'll do our best to fill them."

Carol nodded at her and thanked her quietly again. She sincerely hated lying to the woman. She hated lying to most of the people around here. She didn't think that Samirah was cruel or that she was even a bad person. Since the first time that Carol had heard her speak, she believed that the woman believed in what she was doing. She wanted freedom for all of them. And, like them, she had to play by the rules to get it, even if her advantage was that she knew a little bit more about the rules than the inmates actually did.

"Really, the only thing that I can think of that I want is a job," Carol said. "Something to—give me a purpose. If I had something that I could do to contribute? I just think—it would make me feel like I was actually helping out here. As it is? I'm just eating food and taking resources and I'm not really giving anything back."

"You're helping us keep going," Samirah said. "But—we're here to talk to you about a job, too."

"That's right," Dr. Walker interjected quickly and with enough enthusiasm that the sound of her voice actually made Carol jump. It had been a few days since anything was barked loudly in her direction and Carol was settling into the quieter tones surrounding her. "We want to offer you a job. Working with me. You'd be a sort of secretary to start off with—until everyone was certain that the requirement of needing an escort could be lifted—and then you'd also run errands for me. There are a lot of people here to keep track of and I'm certain that, within a few months, this place is going to be growing a lot. I could use a hand."

"We thought you might like the position," Samirah said. "And it's one that we can offer you that's more baby friendly. We're establishing a line of jobs that are a little lower impact for our expecting mothers and Alice—Dr. Walker—thought that you might enjoy working with her since she can use the extra hands."

"There's also built in skill training for the future," Dr. Walker offered. She nodded at Carol, the same way both of them had done at the door, as though she were trying to demonstrate for her the correct response.

There would be no way, if it were an option—though Carol wasn't actually sure that she had any choice in anything—that Carol would turn down the job. It was the first thing she'd been offered since she'd arrived and, if she turned it down, she had no way of knowing when she'd be given something else or what her new job might entail. The position, as well, would put her in close proximity to the doctor with whom she already felt a certain connection given their involvement in the baby related plans that nobody besides Daryl even knew about. Carol enthusiastically nodded her acceptance of their offer.

"Yeah," she said. "Absolutely! I can start whenever you're ready. Now, if you want. Daryl went with the construction crew and—I'm really just here. Sitting around, reading a book. I could start typing things or filing things or whatever it is that you need me to do."

The women exchanged glances, but Carol thought that they were both simply pleased that she'd accepted. If there was any hidden meaning behind their glances, they were experts at keeping it hidden.

"Tomorrow," Dr. Walker said. "In the morning. I'll send a guard around when I get here and you can start then. Today we're still handling a few things and I don't have everything ready for you."

Carol nodded her acceptance.

"I really do want to congratulate you," Samirah repeated. "I know—I understand—that it's something of a leap of faith to have a child here."

Carol nodded at that as well.

Samirah looked genuinely happy. But more than happy, she looked relieved. That's what Dr. Walker had suggested, in some words, would happen when Carol told her that she could make the false announcement. They would get something that they needed to keep the government from putting pressure on the project. Her pregnancy—even if it didn't really exist—was something like an insurance policy that the project would go on.

"I know that I've asked Dr. Walker this," Carol said, taking a chance that she could speak freely to Samirah at the moment, "but I want to ask you too. There's no trick to this, is there? I mean if I—when I have a baby? It's mine and Daryl's? Free and clear?"

Samirah exchanged a glance with Dr. Walker that made Carol more uncomfortable than the previous exchange had. Then she renewed her smile and nodded at Carol.

"If everything goes as planned? It's your baby," Samirah said.

"And that's the part that makes me nervous," Carol interjected quickly. "The 'if' part."

"All Sam means to say," Dr. Walker offered, "is that we have to have certain clauses in effect. If any parent should turn...violent? For the safety of the children, we have to remove them from the danger."

Carol's stomach turned and she shook her head at her.

"What makes you believe that any of us would harm our own children?" Carol asked. "A lot of us lost our children. Before we ever got here. But it wasn't us who hurt them and it wasn't us who—killed them."

The women exchanged a glance again. Dr. Walker nodded, but Samirah responded by shaking her head. It seemed that whatever her decision was—and more than likely it was the decision over whether or not Carol could expect some kind of direct and honest answer—it was the decision that won out.

"Carol," Samirah said, dropping her words off for a second at Carol's name and shaking her head in her direction. She stepped toward Carol, hand out, but Carol backed away from her enough to indicate that she didn't particularly want to be touched. Samirah accepted by dropping her hand and ending the attempt to catch Carol's shoulder. "It's nothing that you have to worry about. As you said, you're not violent. You weren't violent toward your child before. There's no reason to suspect that will change and so there's no reason for you to worry."

There was no reason to worry.

They could tell Carol, until they were all blue in the face, that there was no reason to worry, but without some kind of concrete answer as to what might happen, why it might happen, or even why they believed it was possible, Carol was going to worry. They were all going to worry.

But she didn't argue and she didn't press the woman any further. Tomorrow morning she would start working with Dr. Walker—the woman who had nodded her quick decision to tell Carol more than Samirah was allowing—and she felt that Dr. Walker was more interested in being open about what she knew if it might be something that helped move things along. Left to work with her, Carol was confident that she could get something out of the woman. She could get some of the answers that she wanted. She could get the answers that she needed.

For the time being, she plastered on her best smile, despite the fact that she wasn't feeling any emotion that might stir it up, and she nodded at Samirah.

"I understand," Carol said. "I guess I'm just..." She broke off. She was just reasonable. She was just remembering her daughter. She was just a mother that had lost her child to the government once. A mother that was hoping to become a mother again, even if it meant that she might have to work for it. She was just a mother that everyone else thought was already in the process of becoming a mother again. "I'm just a little emotional," Carol said. "A little hormonal, maybe. I just—want to be sure."

The same look of relief that Samirah had worn earlier came back over her features and she smiled again and nodded.

"I understand that, too," Samirah said. "You have nothing to worry about. I promise. You and everyone else here? You're in the best hands you can be in."

"Let me show you the—nursery?" Carol offered, deciding to try to make peace and re-cement her position as entirely on board with everything that was happening around her. "Maybe we could talk, for just a moment, about—what I'd like in there?"