AN: Another chapter here. Small time jump that's explained in detail in the chapter. There will be several time jumps, but I'll warn you about all of them in case you don't pick up on them in the chapter.

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

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Daryl saw T-Dog working near him and he placed himself in the same job, unloading supplies from the back of pickup trucks. T-Dog looked at him, for a fraction of a second, like he had no idea who he was and then he smiled and dropped a bag to clap him on the shoulder. Daryl returned the gesture. They saw each other, from time to time, but there was no telling how often they'd be in the same area of the construction zone. It had been a little while since Daryl had laid eyes on him.

"Need help unloading?" Daryl asked.

"Need a break," T-Dog admitted. "They should be coming around with water soon."

Daryl glanced around at the hustle and bustle of the area. They hadn't had much trouble finding people that wanted to work construction. Daryl imagined that anyone would take whatever they were given. The houses they were building were going up and they were going up fast. They had a deadline that was quickly approaching and he was certain that they were going to have no trouble reaching it. He felt like he could practically blink and open his eyes to find that another house was standing. He didn't know much about building things, but he could carry anything they needed him to carry, he could dig, and he could hammer. He was also pretty damn good at following directions and he was quick to learn.

"That is one hell of a fence," Daryl said, gesturing toward the chain link fence that was going up around the area even as they were working. It was every bit as high as the ones at Region Thirty Three and he'd already seen the rolls of barbed wire that would be fitted to the top of it as extra insurance that nobody would get the idea to climb it. If it was electric, too, Daryl wouldn't be surprised.

T-Dog hummed his agreement to Daryl's assessment of the monstrosity.

"Damn sure is," T-Dog said. "Right in the middle of our fine community."

The fence wasn't right in the middle of the community—it was more off to the side and back, in Daryl's opinion—but he understood what T-Dog meant. It was a bit of an eyesore and, frankly, it made him wonder what in the world they needed it for around this particular cluster of houses.

"What the hell you reckon they're trying to keep in these houses?" Daryl asked.

"Maybe it's not that," T-Dog said. "Maybe it's what they're trying to keep us out of. You thought about that?"

Daryl considered it a moment. He supposed it was just as possible as his assumptions on the matter. After all, they were all inmates. Every one of them was considered to be dangerous and unpredictable. It was made clear by the fact that there were, at this very moment, fifteen guards that they'd brought in just to watch them while they worked—it didn't seem to matter that he wasn't aware of a single person there having stepped out of line at all.

"What the hell you think they gonna put in these houses that we're gonna want so damn bad?" Daryl asked.

T-Dog laughed and shook his head.

"I don't know, man," he said. "Not much that I do know these days. Just help me unload this truck before Big Red over there comes to start bitching at us for taking too much of a break." Daryl glanced toward one of the officers that was looking in their direction. He watched them as they went back to working, and Daryl kept an eye on him over his shoulder, but as soon as they were clearly moving again he focused his attention elsewhere. "I didn't say it before," T-Dog said, "so I'm going to say it now. Sorry to hear about your—ya know. Your kid."

Daryl was struck by the statement and it took him a moment to remember how he was supposed to react. It had been almost two weeks since he and Carol had told everyone that they'd lost the baby that had never really existed. He was starting to forget about it entirely. In the first few days they'd gotten some condolences from people, and they'd pretended to be pretty solemn about the whole thing, but the fuss had died down now.

"Yeah," Daryl said. "Thanks. But—we're doin' alright. You know? Just—trying again."

T-Dog hummed and grunted under the weight of his load as they reached the truck again to load up once more.

"You got real dedication to this project," T-Dog said. "Trying again already. You're a real MVP for the cause."

Daryl hummed at him, but he stopped a moment in moving toward the "drop off" point. He hadn't really thought about it until just now. Something about T-Dog's words, or maybe just the way that they were delivered, struck Daryl.

He wasn't sure if they really were that dedicated to the project or not. Everyone expected chit-chat about babies to be related to the project—they heard it constantly—but Daryl wasn't certain that was what was really going. He and Carol, when they talked about the baby they hoped to have, rarely ever talked about the project at all. They just talked about the baby.

And now that Daryl was thinking about it, he wasn't sure that the project really registered that much for him when he thought about them actually having a baby. It was what got them started, maybe, but when he imagined it actually happening? He didn't think about getting some kind of congratulations from the community for their effort and hard work.

He just thought about having a kid with Carol.

He didn't know what that meant, exactly, but he knew that, without any explanation at all, his breathing had just kicked up a notch and his stomach had an odd sort of rolling sensation.

"You alright?" T-Dog asked, catching Daryl's attention again. Daryl hummed at him. "Hey—you alright? You don't look OK. I'm gonna wave Big Red down. You look like you could use some water. Go sit in the shade a minute. These trucks'll get unloaded."

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"Alright, Mama," Alice said. "Let's get you set and then I've got to get a couple of things done."

Carol leaned against the exam table and waited for the injection that she knew she was going to get. She was used to it by now. She'd been doing this for a while and all she could do was hope that it was going to pay off. So far she hadn't noticed any real reaction to the injections besides the fact that she had discovered that she could go from perfectly fine to crying without a single bit of provocation at all. She'd actually found herself crying without realizing that she was doing it—and she was almost positive that it had happened without her having any reason at all to be upset.

"I checked the calendar while I was in there," Alice said, going about preparing everything. "So—starting the day after tomorrow? You let Daryl know that there's no action in the love shack. Not between the two of you and no solo acts either."

Carol hummed at her.

"He won't like it," Carol said with a laugh. "He hasn't been restricted at all since we got here."

The sting of the medicine didn't even phase her this time. The first day she'd wondered if this was going to be something she could really be dedicated to doing, but by now? It was just a regular part of her routine. Alice rubbed circles over the spot, massaging the liquid into her muscle, when she was done.

"Well, he's on restriction soon," Alice said.

Carol sucked in a breath.

"And then?" Carol asked.

"I give you the trigger shot," Alice said. "And we load the basket up with eggs. He comes in with you and makes his contribution. He can stay with you or he can leave—I'll leave that up to you two. And then? I'll put his little guys right where they need to be. Take the guess work out for them so they don't get lost or anything."

"It's so romantic," Carol teased.

Her time working with the doctor was doing very little to reveal a great deal of classified information about the Wave Thirty Three project. The woman didn't seem to know that much about it, beyond what her role in the project was as a health care provider, but every now and again she gave Carol some nugget of information. More than anything, Carol was starting to develop a friendship with her, to the point that the doctor now insisted that Carol call her Alice and Carol couldn't imagine going back to the way it was before. There was, between them, a comfortable back and forth and she thought the familiarity might end up being worth a great deal.

If nothing else, the familiarity would make it easier, eventually, to find out anything that she might want to know. Girlfriends, after all, told each other everything.

"It's pretty romantic," Alice said. "Especially if you'd seen the earliest plans for this place. Originally? Before the whole project was fully developed? It was literally going to be set up like breeding pens. It was horrifying. All of them in a row. Just like a—farm or something."

Carol's stomach turned.

"Why'd they change it?" Carol asked. "Not that I wish they hadn't or anything..."

"You can't very well prove that people are human if you aren't going to treat them like they're human," Alice said. "Can you? It was worse than the current prison system, really. And that's not what Wave Thirty Three was supposed to be about. So—they did some work. They made changes. Milton Mamet volunteered to take on the project as his pet project and, when he did, he hired some people who were interested in the way that it was done—not just the outcome."

Carol swallowed. Free from the "procedure," she walked around the small office in which she worked doing very basic tasks when she wasn't out carrying things from one location to another. She was one of the few inmates allowed to roam about without escort.

"What's the outcome, Alice?" Carol asked. "The hoped for outcome?"

"Freedom," Alice said. "You know that. Everybody does. Freedom for all of you."

"And the babies?" Carol asked.

Alice shrugged gently.

"Freedom for them too," she said.

"They're born into freedom," Carol said. "Or—as close to it as we can come."

"Captivity doesn't only take place within physical structures," Alice said. "Freedom. From the prisons. From the camps. From the stigma. That's the outcome. At least it's the one that we're working toward."

Carol nodded her head. She could tell, any time she pressed Alice, when she'd gotten about as much information as she was going to get. She was learning to read the woman's face and there was a certain look that Alice got when she closed down and locked up for the time being.

The one thing that Carol was certain of, even if parts of the project still made her uneasy, was that Alice believed it was a good thing—and she was in it for the right reasons.

"I guess it's not that unromantic," Carol said. "Even if we do the—thing—here? At least we go back to our house, right? I'm not in some bitch pen somewhere."

"You can go right back to your house," Alice said. "You can do the whole romantic thing there. As much as you want. We'll never know, one way or another, when it really happened. You still get the good stuff."

"And if it doesn't work?" Carol asked.

"Then we keep trying," Alice said. "I've got several possibilities up my sleeve before I throw in the towel. You'll learn that I don't give up easily. But don't worry about it. It's going to work. Right now? Focus on relaxing. Get Daryl satisfied enough he can make it through about a week. This'll work out."

"What do you need me to do?" Carol asked. "While you're gone?"

"Pull files for the list on the table," Alice said. "Just stack them up. I'll get them when I get back. And—not much else, really. Read a book or something? Just remember to answer the phone if it rings."

Carol nodded.

"That I can do," she said. "Another pregnancy?"

Alice shook her head and walked around the office packing items into the small bag that she carried around with her when she went to make house calls.

"Trouble in the mansion on the hill," Alice said with a laugh. "From what I was told, Andrea has a really wicked case of morning sickness and, well, Milton needs personal reassurance that she isn't actually dying. Because that would be tragic—on a lot of levels."

Carol might have been uncomfortable with the statement, but she heard the teasing in Alice's voice so she laughed too.

"Good luck," Carol said, escorting the doctor to the door of the office.

"Morning sickness I can handle," Alice said. "Besides—I need the practice. It's gonna be you next. Hold down the fort."