AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

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

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Andrea had called for a guard to bring Michonne to the house only to get a call back a few minutes later informing her that Michonne had a job and wasn't in her home.

Michonne had a job. Milton was gone to work. T-Dog, without a doubt, had a job as well. As far as Andrea knew, everyone had a job and everyone had some sort of purpose. All she had was the quiet of her home and the news channel that mocked her by saying that anyone who wasn't currently employed need only be patient. Their time was coming.

Andrea's time wasn't coming.

She could forgive Milton the fact that he rarely engaged in conversation with her or that he wouldn't allow her in many of the rooms in the house that she called home. She could forgive him his preoccupation with her uterus and the fact that, even though she wasn't even certain she was pregnant yet, he kept insisting that she remember that he needed her to produce at least two children—both had to come from their union. Nobody else could be substituted. She could forgive him, honestly, of just about anything, because he wasn't a bad man, but she couldn't forgive him for the solitary confinement that she was now forced to accept as her life.

Milton had left her "homework" to do. That was supposed to give her something to occupy her mind. It was a questionnaire but there was nothing there that she hadn't answered a dozen times. She was asked, sometimes three or four times a day, to answer the same questions. Over and over they were asked to her. Now they were staring at her from a printed and stapled pile of papers. She was starting to wonder if it was some kind of test to see how often her answers would change or, maybe, it was simply to see how long it took to desensitize her to certain questions that struck a nerve with her.

"How was she feeling?"

"Was she pregnant?"

"Did she want to become pregnant?"

"How did she think she would feel upon learning that she was pregnant?"

"What would she do when the child was born? How would she raise the child?"

"How would she feel and react if she were told that she would not raise the child?"

"Had she ever felt violent toward authority? When and why?"

The words changed but the questions never did. Her responses changed, but not by much. There was some method to this, Andrea was sure of it, but she wasn't able to figure out exactly what that method might be. She couldn't figure out the angle that was being worked. She and Michonne had both worked in law prior to the turn, and both of them had decoded difficult documents from time to time, but they weren't trained investigators and they weren't quite able to crack the code of what was happening here.

They needed more to go on. They needed more information. Andrea just didn't want to find out that information, and find that she didn't care for it in the slightest, once her child was outside of her body and up for grabs by anyone that could overpower her. She didn't want to find it out, either, as she drew her last breath in front of an executioner.

If she could figure it out beforehand, she could do something. She didn't know what she could do, but she could do something.

Andrea was scratching out her answers with the pencil that Milton had left on the stack when there was a knock at the door. She put the stack down on the coffee table nearest the sofa and crossed their living room to stand in front of the door. It was far too early for lunch to come and she was certain it wasn't the guard bringing Michonne. Her heart fluttered a little at the thought that it might be a job for her—and maybe she'd judged Milton entirely too harshly in regard to that—but she tried to hold back her excitement over the possibility.

Another knock.

"Andrea?" The voice called from outside. Andrea couldn't identify the voice, but it didn't matter anyway. Asking if she was there was simply a courtesy. Whoever was out there would have a key and could gain access at any time they wanted.

"Come in," Andrea said. She backed up as the door opened and put her back against the small wall that created the entrance hallway. It made her look as unthreatening as she possibly could and she wasn't in the mood to deal with any nervous Nellies if it was a guard.

The doctor stood in front of her. Dr. Walker. Andrea had been introduced to her a couple of times. She was carrying something that looked like a tackle box and she smiled at Andrea.

"House call," Dr. Walker said. "I just came to play vampire and rob you of some of your blood. Is that OK? Can I—come in?"

Andrea nodded at her. She had no choice in anything, so acceptance was all she had to offer to anyone's requests.

The doctor stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Andrea noticed that she didn't take the time to reengage the lock, with her key, from inside the door. She was trusting Andrea not to make a run for it—which she could've easily done, though she'd probably have just been shot down in the street for such a stunt. Still, whether her attempted escape would have been foolish or not, the doctor was trusting Andrea not to try anything.

She gestured toward the table.

"You want to do it here?" She asked. "If you're squeamish, you can lie down. It's all the same to me. Whatever makes you comfortable."

Andrea shook her head and went to sit at the table. She watched as the doctor went through all the normal motions of getting gloves and everything else that she needed to draw the blood.

"I'd hoped I could go to your office," Andrea said. "Get out of the house? Maybe—see the sunlight? I don't see anything without a pane of glass in between."

"Well—I tell you what," the doctor responded, drawing her words out as she concentrated on what she was doing. "I'll have the results of this pretty quickly. And if it comes back positive? In a couple of hours I'll have you down there at my office. In fact, I'm going to be keeping such a close watch on you that you're probably going to get tired of traipsing back and forth to my office."

Andrea put her hand over her face and rested her elbow on the back of her chair. She knew perfectly well what the blood test was for, but it still made her feel a little overwhelmed to think about it. The doctor stopped what she was doing, ready to begin, and called Andrea's name quietly to get her attention. Andrea hummed at her to let her know that he was hearing her, but she didn't change her position.

"Woozy? Did you want to lie down?" The doctor asked. "It's OK with me if you don't like needles. We can do this however you're more comfortable."

Andrea laughed to herself.

"I don't like them," she said. "But—if you had any idea of the things that have been done to me? It's not that that's making me woozy—so if we can just get it done?"

The doctor hummed her acceptance of Andrea's explanation and finished what she had to do. She didn't speak to Andrea to distract her or to ask if she was alright until she was instructing her to keep the cotton wedged in the crook of her arm for a few minutes. Andrea looked at her, then, while she went about packing up her things.

"Do you have some juice or something?" Dr. Walker asked. "Anything you want me to get you? A glass of water?" Andrea shook her head. "Are you OK? You're looking a little pale and—I happen to be the best person around here to talk to about that sort of thing about if you're not feeling OK."

Andrea wondered if the woman only cared because it was her job to care or if she actually cared. It wasn't that easy to tell these days.

"I'm not sick," Andrea said. "I'm—I think I'm pregnant. But I guess I'm going to find out for sure."

The doctor pulled the other chair from the table around and sat right in front of Andrea. Their knees were practically touching and Andrea looked at the small distance between them. The doctor touched Andrea's leg with her hand and when Andrea didn't move away, she rested her hand there.

"I'm going to let you know as soon as I find out, OK?" Dr. Walker said. "I will come back here and I'll tell you. One way or another. And if it's positive? I'll take you to my office and—then? I'll take you to lunch. We'll go by the warehouse? Maybe see if there are a few things you'd like to get to start making things feel comfortable? Let you start—nesting? A little?"

"If it's not positive?" Andrea asked.

The doctor glanced around the room.

"Then I'll take you to lunch anyway," she said. "I can't do it often. OK? It's part of your role here that you—well, that I don't even understand. But it's part of your role that Milton will let us know when it's time to give you the wider freedom that everyone else is getting. It'll come, but it's not coming until it's right for the project. You have a very, very specific role. And we've got to follow those rules."

"What do you understand about it?" Andrea asked. "Can you tell me that? Can you tell me anything? Because—I woke up sick today and yesterday and I don't know if it's because I'm pregnant or because I'm scared of being pregnant. My son? Was just a baby. He wasn't even crawling. When we got to safe places? Places I could put him down? He was just starting to push up a little and rock like he might crawl soon. We were sure that he'd start crawling soon."

Andrea stopped and swallowed, focusing on not choking on the lump in her throat. She shook her head at the woman.

"He was so good," Andrea said. "So good. Like he knew he had to be quiet. But the last thing I remember about him? Was him screaming and crying. And now? I can't even remember, for sure, if it was him that I could hear or if it was me that was screaming and crying."

Dr. Walker's face showed that she wasn't entirely unfeeling about Andrea's situation. She nodded her head at Andrea and, this time, moved her hand from Andrea's knee to catch her hand. Andrea let her have it. She let her hold it. At the moment it felt good to simply have the woman that she barely knew holding her hand.

"I can't do that again," Andrea said. "I can't lose another one. They'll have to kill me this time."

Dr. Walker nodded her head.

"How about—we don't let anybody die? OK? How about—we just let everybody live?" Dr. Walker offered. Andrea shook her head at the woman and the doctor audibly sucked in a breath. "What if I tell you—all the ways that you could lose your baby? All the ways that this could happen? And then you know them—and you know what you won't let happen?"

Andrea nodded at her. She didn't trust her voice at the moment, so she simply nodded. Knowing anything was better than knowing nothing at all. And this was the first time that anyone was offering to tell her anything right now instead of telling her that she had to wait. The doctor mimicked her nod and licked her lips. She took a moment before she started.

"You'll lose your baby if you push it away," Dr. Walker said. "If you—push it out of the nest? Reject it? We'll take the baby to raise it correctly." Andrea didn't interrupt her. She could tell her that this was something she wasn't going to do, but that wasn't necessary. The doctor wasn't accusing her. She was creating a list. "If you threaten the baby or try to harm it? We'll take the baby away. If you should become violent? And you harm anyone or become a threat? You'll be put under arrest or...detained. You'll be removed from the community, and we'll take the baby. Of course, there are natural ways that the pregnancy could terminate, but I'm going to do everything I can to ensure against that. Still—nature could always take the baby away."

"I understand that," Andrea said quickly. "I'm not worried about accidents. Not real ones. I mean—I don't want them to happen. I don't want anything to happen but...I can understand why they happen."

Dr. Walker nodded at her again.

"If the baby is born with any—mutations? If it's—something dangerous? If it's not well? Then we'll have to handle the situation," Dr. Walker said.

"Why would it...what would it...?" Andrea stopped. She found that she couldn't even formulate the question that she wanted to ask but, apparently, the doctor could read her mind because she squeezed Andrea's hand and shook her head at her as she leaned forward.

"It's not something you need to worry about," Dr. Walker said. "But—you said you wanted to know the reasons we have in place to remove the children from their parental units. I'm giving you the list. If the child is, somehow, a danger to the community? The child has to be removed. But it's not something that you need to worry about. OK?"

Andrea nodded and swallowed, this time against the feeling of wanting to run for the bathroom. A few more swallows and she felt that she had it somewhat under control.

"What else?" She asked.

Dr. Walker shook her head.

"That's it," she said. "There's nothing more that I know about."

"So if the baby lives and is healthy," Andrea said, "then I just have to—not reject it or hurt it, not be violent, and follow the rules. Don't get arrested. And everything's fine? It's mine?"

Dr. Walker nodded again.

"It's yours," she said. "You just have to—be a good mother and a...good citizen. You have to cooperate with the project so that we can keep everything moving forward." She squeezed Andrea's hand again. She offered her something of a soft smile. "And you have to play nice with Mr. Mamet because—he's going to save you all. He's going to get you freedom. Real freedom. You and your babies included—because I know he's said there's at least going to be two of them over time. OK?" Andrea nodded and focused on her breathing for a moment. She didn't want to admit that she wasn't in control of her emotions at all. "You OK?" Andrea nodded again, still not daring to open her mouth to speak. She had full intention to try to get the woman out of the door without having to speak to her so that she could lose control in the privacy of her solitary little home. "Are you going to be fine if I leave you here? To go get this test going?" Andrea nodded again. Dr. Walker smiled at her. "Good," she said. "Save up your appetite. We'll go to lunch. I promise."