AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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Samirah didn't normally pull people out of work, but with Michonne doing little more than recording inventory at the warehouse, Samirah thought they could do without Michonne for a little while and Samirah needed her help.

Samirah had read Kreegan's book. Everyone had if they'd been inside safe zones since the turn or shortly after. It was practically assigned reading for the times and, like all the classics that had gone widely read before it, it was a pretty dark representation of humanity or, rather, the loss of humanity.

Samirah knew who Wild A was according to the texts. She knew what the woman had become and she still believed her a woman. She didn't believe, as Kreegan seemed to have believed, that she'd somehow become an animal or something much worse.

Samirah understood, too, that Milton needed to recreate Kreegan's findings to a certain degree in order to truly dispute them. He'd chosen Andrea to be his Wild A and, for that, Andrea had to be the one that they took as close to the darkness as they could get her without losing her completely.

It was systematic, carefully planned and executed, psychological torture and it was Andrea's lot whether she'd asked for it or not.

The question was how much could she take? How would she react? What would happen to her at every step?

It was Milton's job to study everything about the woman while he also simultaneously managed the other pieces of the project that Samirah understood only on the surface level. Still, Samirah wasn't under the impression that Milton didn't care for Andrea. He didn't want to torture her. He wasn't heartless, even though some might mistake his lack of outward emotional expression for a lack of feeling. Milton didn't want to hurt Andrea in the same ways that Kreegan had hurt Wild A. Whether or not he acknowledged it, Samirah felt that Milton was aware, too, that the child that Andrea carried was biologically his child. He may not have warm fatherly feelings toward the child—Samirah had no way of knowing if he did—but he didn't want to harm it. Milton didn't want to harm anyone caught up in his experiment. For that reason, he tweaked Kreegan's experiment. He manipulated every facet of it. He decided what enough was and what was too much. For that reason, he had everything about Andrea carefully monitored to make sure that she didn't go so deep into her own darkness that they couldn't drag her back out again.

For that reason, he'd allowed Samirah to take Michonne with her in the middle of the day when she had to make an unexpected house call. Samirah's surprise and unannounced arrival to the house had the potential to throw Andrea into some kind of fit of concern that was unnecessary and undesirable.

"I'm not here for Andrea," Samirah told Michonne as they walked toward the house. "I just need to get the files that Milton sent me to get from his office. All I want you to do is make sure she's calm. Make sure she realizes that it's not a trick. I just need to get them for Milton."

"I can keep her calm," Michonne assured her. "But—you'll never get into Milton's office. He keeps it locked."

"That might be a problem," Samirah agreed. "Except Milton gave me his keys."

She laughed to herself when Michonne found some humor in the situation. They mounted the steps and Samirah unlocked the door. As soon as she stepped inside, she saw Andrea standing with her back against the wall, her hands displayed in the normal stance they were asked to take to show that they weren't holding any sort of weapon. Standing in a similar place in her home, with no more weapons than she was holding now, Andrea had once been attacked and it showed in her demeanor.

"Is it the baby?" Andrea asked immediately, almost on the verge of tears in the short amount of time that it had probably been since she'd seen Samirah and Michonne coming from one of her windows.

Samirah shook her head and let Michonne into the house. Michonne went straight toward Andrea to start to soothe her.

"I'm not here about you," Samirah promised. "I'm just here to get some things from Milton's office that he asked me to get. That's all. I've got to copy over some files."

"Do you have the test results?" Andrea asked. "Is it the baby? Is he OK?"

"I don't know anything about the results," Samirah said. "Alice would be the one to tell you about those. Not me. As far as I know? There aren't even any results yet. I'm just here to copy a few files."

Andrea visibly relaxed. Samirah didn't know if it was her words, the fact that she hadn't so much as touched Andrea and was already locking the door behind her without concern, or if it was the fact that Michonne was already kneading at Andrea's muscles to try to force her to relax.

"Milton's office is locked," Andrea said. "Nobody but Milton goes in there."

"I have the key," Samirah assured her. "Milton gave it to me. And—he told me to remind you that Carol isn't coming today so you need to order lunch. I'm going to leave Michonne here. She'll leave when they pick up the lunch plates."

Andrea nodded at her.

Making sure to speak to Andrea, instead of Michonne, because Samirah didn't want to contribute to the overall sensation that Andrea was either incapable of reason or communication—even if it might sometimes be part of the way they were scripted to deal with her—Samirah continued to address her words to Andrea and remind her that, if she'd forgotten, she was a logical human being.

"Where will I find Milton's office?" Samirah asked.

"At the top of the stairs," Andrea said. "Go to your right. It's—the second door? I don't remember exactly. I didn't ever count the doors. Second door, I think."

"Thank you," Samirah said. "You can do—whatever you were doing."

Samirah started up the stairs. By the time she reached the top, she could hear Andrea talking to Michonne as Michonne engaged her in a conversation about the baby. She prattled off some list of numbers, but Samirah didn't listen too closely to what she was saying. She was keeping a diary. Milton already knew that and he allowed it. He thought it was a good thing for keeping her darkness away and, honestly, for having even more proof that Andrea was hardly an animal. What animal in the history of the world—besides the human being itself—had ever felt the need to chronicle its experiences?

Milton believed in locking every door in his "space". Samirah learned that quickly when she'd tried to unlock every locked door that she found with the keys provided to her. Even the bathroom was locked. When she found the office, Samirah closed the door behind her and she sat down at the computer. She moved the mouse around to wake up the device and pulled the list from her pocket where Milton had written his requests.

They'd been in meetings all morning. A meeting was called for him with the Governor this afternoon that he hadn't been expecting. He wouldn't have time to run home, as he'd intended, and pick up his files. He needed someone he trusted to bring them. Apparently Milton trusted Samirah. Of course, Samirah was one of the few people who worked with Milton on a regular basis that believed in the importance of Wave Thirty Three quite the same way that Milton believed in it.

When the computer woke up, Milton was already logged in. There was no need to protect the fact that he had access to every server that even existed when he protected his office so carefully.

Samirah plugged in the drive that she'd been given and followed Milton's instructions to open the folder where she'd find the files that he needed. She picked through the long list of files—most of which had cryptic names that she couldn't even begin to understand—and moved them one by one to the drive that Milton had given her.

It wasn't her job to ask what was in the files. For all she knew, Milton could have her copying overly detailed grocery lists. It didn't matter. She was there only to get him what he needed while he prepared for his next meeting.

Samirah made quick work of transferring the files over, but as she scanned the titles of the documents in the folder, a few of them caught her eye. She stopped and hovered the mouse over one of the documents that was titled "Wild-born rehabilitation and relocation".

Samirah's stomach twisted.

There was so much that they didn't know about the project. Even though she was working with Milton on it and even though she was practically his right hand in the whole thing, the fact remained that she was largely in the dark. Milton was the man behind all of this. He made the orders and he asked the questions. The rest of them simply obeyed.

Together, if they were lucky, they'd save the lives of many prisoners. They couldn't save all of them, but they could save more than if they did nothing.

Everything that had to be done to get to that point, though, was simply a means to an end. They didn't have to like it—Milton himself didn't like it—but it had to be done. Milton had to prove, once and for all, that Kreegan's findings were false. He had to re-write science, to some degree, for those who were living. He had to prove that Wilds were, in fact, people and that they could be rehabilitated. They could be returned to regular social standing. They could function just the same as everyone else. He had to prove that "once wild" meant nothing.

And he had to prove it through whatever means necessary.

Maybe Milton's lack of outward emotion was what made him the right man for the job. Maybe his ability to keep from crumbling under his feelings about things and his ability to approach everything from a strictly practical and scientific position was what was going to save so many people.

Because just reading the title of a single document and letting her imagination run away with the possible things that it could mean made Samirah's breathing pick up and it made her stomach churn.

They promised them all that they'd keep their children. At the end of it all, as long as they did all that was asked of them and submitted without question, they would keep their lives and their children. As long as they followed the rules and performed the tasks laid out for them, they'd be given a future that involved freedom, control of the very community that they were residing in and building, happiness, and a full return to citizenship.

And they would keep their children.

Samirah looked around her. She knew she was alone in Milton's office. She'd left the door unlocked, but she would've heard Andrea or Michonne if they'd entered the room. There was nobody around. There was nobody looking over her shoulder—even if she couldn't shake the feeling of surveillance that followed her from the earliest days after the turn when the Government in place at that time was like an all-seeing eye.

Samirah double-clicked the document and scanned her eyes over the text. The writing was clearly done by Milton or someone as methodical as Milton. Everything written there was taken down without a single emotion coming through in the words.

The more she read, the stranger Samirah felt. Her stomach twisted and knotted itself up.

It was all there—every last detail—and Milton had been holding onto it for all this time.

Samirah heard something downstairs. The door opened and closed. Someone was bringing lunch. Downstairs, Michonne and Andrea were eating. They'd be given time to finish their meal and then someone would come and pick up their dishes to be cleaned. The arrival of the meal reminded Samirah of the hour and reminded her that Milton would be expecting her arrival so he could prepare before his meeting.

There wasn't time for her to read everything.

She closed the document, sat there for a moment staring at it, and then stood up to get better access to the clip of her own keys that she kept hanging from her belt—the so-called "keys to the city" that gave her access to everything she was allowed to have access to.

Hanging from her keys was her own thumb drive. She checked Milton's list once more, made sure that she had everything he'd requested on his drive, and then she ejected it. She quickly replaced it with her own and transferred the document she'd been reading over to her own drive. She ejected it and returned her keys to their normal location before she closed out Milton's files and left his office just as she'd found it.

Samirah was careful to lock the door as Milton normally did, and on her way out of the house she said goodbye to Michonne and Andrea both before she reminded them that Michonne would be going back to work after lunch. She locked them inside as she left the house and double timed her steps back to the area just inside the gates where she'd left her car.

She'd read the rest of the document later, but she already knew that she'd spend the whole trip back to work running over what she already knew in her mind. It would take all she could do not to ask Milton why he'd kept the government secret from everyone and how long he'd intended not to share it with anyone.