AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

This chapter has pieces of Kreegan's experiments and theories. Therefore there's a warning for some pretty dark stuff—rape, abortion, etc. By now you probably know enough about Kreegan's experiment to imagine, but I'm giving you a warning that some of it's being discussed in this chapter.

I hope you enjoy (for what it's worth)! Let me know what you think!

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"You want a snack or something?" Samirah asked Alice as soon as they'd gotten the customary greetings out of the way and the brunette sank down into the couch cushions in Samirah's apartment.

"No," Alice said. "You still smoke?"

"When I need to," Samirah said. "And tonight? I need to."

She got up and brought over an ashtray that she put in front of Alice. It was one that she'd found somewhere. Maybe she'd gotten it at a store. Maybe someone had given it to her. It was an ashtray that advertised a theme park that was long gone—a theme park that Samirah had never even been to before.

"Drink?" Samirah asked.

"Please," Alice said. "I need to drink until I don't know my name."

"Maybe not that much," Samirah responded, headed toward her fridge. The amount of beer that she'd stocked up, though, didn't exactly support the idea that she didn't intend for both of them to drink until they forgot who they were. "All I have is beer."

"Perfect," Alice said. "I'll take two to start."

Samirah laughed to herself. She got two cans out of the fridge, but they weren't both intended for Alice—at least not to start. Samirah handed Alice a beer and took a seat next to her on the couch so that they could share the ashtray. As a sign of comradery, Alice produced a pack of cigarettes that she rested on the table between them and Samirah helped herself. She didn't smoke. Not really. But sometimes she did.

"You sounded panicked on the phone," Samirah said, taking a draw from her cigarette.

"I talked to Milton," Alice said. "Nine times out of ten? That leads to panic and at least one existential crisis."

Samirah laughed to herself.

"I haven't talked to him since lunch time," Samirah said. "And honestly, that was just to tell him that I brought his jump drive and keys back. That's what I needed to talk to you about. I might've done something illegal."

Alice cocked an eyebrow at her.

"You might've done something illegal, or you did do something illegal?" Alice asked.

"I'm pretty sure it was illegal," Samirah said. She shrugged her shoulders. She knew that her apartment wasn't bugged. She'd searched the whole thing over with a detector. Her home was clean. She also knew that she could trust Alice. Alice wasn't exactly above going against the law herself—especially when she had a good feeling she wouldn't get caught. "I jacked some of Milton's files and now I've got to figure out how to tell him I did it."

Alice laughed to herself.

"I mean—are we talking top secret?" Alice asked.

"Pretty top secret," Samirah responded. "I never had access to them before. I know you don't have access to them."

"Shit," Alice spat. "Just tell him. I mean—files like he'd turn you in or like he'd turn a blind eye?"

"Don't know," Samirah admitted.

"Will it shut down the project?" Alice asked.

"No," Samirah responded.

"Then he won't turn you in," Alice said. "If it doesn't compromise Wave Thirty Three, I don't think Milton really cares. He's got a one track mind. You know that. He's entirely focused on Wave Thirty Three right now."

"I didn't mean to steal your show," Samirah said, trying to back away from accidentally dominating the conversation. "What'd you have to tell me?"

"Your illegal activity takes precedence over my flipping a shit over something I can't change," Alice said. "What'd you steal?"

"Files," Samirah said. "Just—files. Just information."

"About the project?" Alice asked.

"Sort of," Samirah said. "It was a knee-jerk reaction, Al. I was saving these files for Milton's meeting with the Governor. I copied them over and then I was just scrolling through the folder. Nothing really meant that much to me, but then I read the title of this—of this one file. I thought it was going to be something related to the project. I was prepared to—I don't even know what I was prepared to do. Confront Milton about his lies? About keeping secret what he was probably sworn to keep secret. Then I opened the damn thing and I realized it wasn't what I thought it was at all."

"Bad news?" Alice asked.

Samirah shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't know if it's bad or good or—just there," Samirah said. "I haven't spent enough time with it to figure that out."

"Share?" Alice asked. Samirah gave her a look and Alice laughed. "If they hang us over the shit we've done? I'm first in the noose. I falsified documents. I've been cheating the system since before the project was in place. I don't make it out of this alive—not if they decide to start killing us." Alice got up from the couch and went to the kitchen. When she returned, she carried two beers. She'd finished her first, so Samirah drank most of her first down quickly to keep up with the woman.

"I'll share," Samirah said, "but maybe you should go first. You sounded like you were about ready to throw in the towel when you called."

"Maybe because I am," Alice said. She shook her head and focused on the cigarette that she lit for a moment. "I don't know how much more of this I can do. I don't know how deep in the bullshit I can go before I just—pull the plug."

"You can't leave, Al," Samirah said. "None of us can."

"I don't know if I can stay, either," Alice said. "Where do I draw the line between—my belief in the project and my need to protect myself? I'm going to lose my fucking mind and Mel can't handle but so many crazy people at one time."

"We have to have someone who cares," Samirah said. "No matter what you have to do, at least they know you care. Do you know how much of a comfort that has to be to them? To know that you care? Can you imagine some of the other assholes we've seen in there?"

"Does it matter if I care?" Alice asked. "Does it matter if it kills me to do what I have to do? Fucking hell, Samirah—I have to sleep at night."

"What's wrong?" Samirah asked.

"Kreegan," Alice responded. "May he rot in hell."

"He already is," Samirah said. "What special way did he find to curse us this time?"

Alice groaned to herself.

"His whole damn study—it's a nightmare," Alice said.

"So we've seen," Samirah said.

"You don't know the half of it," Alice said. "How much of his shit have you read, Sam? Really read?"

"The book," Samirah admitted. "And I skimmed that because it was like reading Stephen King without the benefit of knowing it was fiction."

Alice hummed at her and nodded her head. She took a long drink from the can of beer and then a drag off her cigarette before she spoke again.

"First kid that he got from Wild A was from an insemination," Alice said. "Wild A and another unnamed Wild that they had—I don't know—somewhere."

"There were two, weren't there?" Samirah asked.

"You want to know the story, or you don't?" Alice responded. Samirah waved her on.

"First kid was born a mutant—Kreegan's word, not mine. I never saw the kid or even any of the documentation surrounding his so-called defects. Kreegan studied the kid—well, theoretically thoroughly. He determined that the mutation was a genetic mutation. Some—some different mutation or other of the virus," Alice said. "So—the only logical thing to do was to destroy the child and carry on with the experiment."

"The second child," Samirah offered. Alice nodded.

"The second child," Alice said. "But he experimented with this one—his words again, because I swear you don't want to know my opinions on his shit. It's all sick, Sam. He was telling the world it was the Wilds that were sick, but it was him...you know that? He was a twisted son-of-a-bitch."

"What happened with the second child, Al?" Samirah urged.

"He impregnated her himself," Alice said. She laughed to herself, but it wasn't fueled by genuine humor. Samirah could tell that. Alice's focus on the beer she was quickly draining and the cigarette that she was smoking like it provided oxygen was all that was keeping her from being upset at the moment. She wore that clearly on her expression. "That's all he really said about it. He impregnated her himself—directly—to ensure that he controlled all aspects of the pregnancy. You know what the hell he did. You know she..."

Samirah reached her hand out and touched Alice's shoulder. She shook her head at her when Alice looked at her.

"There was another baby," Samirah offered. "And it was his."

"And it wasn't a mutant," Alice said. "Kreegan's word..."

"Not yours," Samirah filled in. Alice nodded her head. The tears she'd been trying to choke back were showing up now, though they weren't escaping her lower lashes just yet. "What does it mean for us? Andrea's already pregnant with Milton's child. He's running both pregnancies with her as his offspring."

"Because he's got a whole other community to test the rest of the theory," Alice said. She wiped her nose with her sleeve and Samirah got up to bring her a box of tissue. Alice breathed out a thanks to her as she accepted the box and blew her nose. "Um—see...the problem is that with Kreegan? You're pissed because he created all this scientific fact off of—off of an experiment that any idiot can see is wrong and incomplete on so many levels. And now what he said is just fact, you know? It's just—the law of the land. For Milton to undo it, though, he's got to have such a wide-scale experiment. He's got to be more thorough just to say that maybe Kreegan didn't have a fucking clue what he was talking about."

"I know all of this, Al," Samirah said. "I have since the beginning. You have too."

Alice nodded her head.

"Yeah—but—Kreegan? His so-called fact states that the genetic abnormality of the kid he called a mutant was caused by being Wild. Two Wilds make a Wild genetically, according to him. So—these Wilds could just be producing other generations of Wilds. It's in the blood. It's in their genetics. Their DNA. And maybe we don't pick it all up via testing, but it certainly gives us some ideas before all these little Wild babies are born and we find out then that they're Wild," Alice said.

"And the order is to do away with any of the babies that test positive for being Wild in utero," Samirah said. Alice nodded.

"But since Kreegan's genetic theory was just some half-baked pile of shit," Alice said, "it means that any genetic abnormality is means for suspicion and the pregnancies must be terminated. It doesn't matter what the abnormality is—we don't know for certain that anything proves they'll be Wild, but we also don't know that it doesn't. So we have to—what did Milton say his orders were? We have to err on the side of caution."

Samirah nodded.

"Yeah," she said. "I know. Have any of them come back abnormal?"

"Nothing's come back at all," Alice said. "Not yet. I guess I'm just—horrified over even thinking about it. Just imagining it makes me—it makes me sick, Sam."

"Yeah. I understand that," Samirah said. "And I know that you don't want to do that. But Al? If you have to terminate the pregnancies? You can do that. I know you. You can do that and—you'll...you'll figure it out. You'll figure out how to handle it. You'll figure out what to say. I know you. You're good at that. You're good at connecting with people. And that's what they are, right? They're people."

"They're people," Alice echoed. She wiped at her nose with the tissues again and Samirah got up from the couch. She tested the weight of Alice's drink and then she went into the kitchen to return with two more beers. It wouldn't be the first time that she'd had to call Melodye to come get her partner, and she knew that Melodye wouldn't mind. Sometimes she appreciated the time off from being a psychiatrist. Samirah put the beer down on the table in front of Alice and drained the last of her first beer. She had some catching up to do. "You know that's not the worst part, right?" Alice said after a moment.

"You mean there's something worse than the forced termination of pregnancies that—that these poor people were practically forced into in the first place?" Samirah asked. "I'm not sure I want to know, to be honest."

Kreegan's findings suggested that Wilds would always produce Wilds—at least with other Wilds," Alice said.

"Right," Samirah responded.

"If Andrea successfully produces a child without a genetic abnormality, it proves only that Wilds can produce non-Wilds when their partner is non-Wild. Which is what Kreegan already stated to be true. If some of the Wilds have non-Wild babies? It proves that Kreegan's theory was, at least, poorly created. It proves he lacked evidence," Alice said.

"Right," Samirah agreed, pushing the woman to continue.

"Until then? If any of the Wilds produce—if they have..." Alice stopped and sucked in a breath. She closed her eyes to center herself. "I have to turn them in if the pregnancy is terminated," Alice said. "They haven't decided, but they're either going to move them back to the prisons or they're going to sterilize them. Make sure that they're not producing more Wild offspring."

"Most of the prisons are shutting down," Samirah said quickly.

"And you and I both know that they're never making it back to them anyway," Alice said. "They want me to sterilize them—and then they'll figure out what they want to do with them."

"Fuck," Samirah muttered. "I thought they'd wait until the whole experiment was run. I thought they'd wait until Milton presented his facts."

"The Government doesn't want to take the chance of having even more Wilds than we have now at the end of it all," Alice said. "I asked. It's non-negotiable. And those are some documents that I can't falsify. They made sure of that. I just get one copy of the results and the orders—not the originals. Not the only copies."

"Shit," Samirah responded. "Drink up. Have all that you want. You can crash here tonight if Mel doesn't want to come get you."

Alice laughed to herself.

"Mel's coming," Alice said. "Still—I plan to get shit-faced. I just—need to not remember who the hell I am or...what I've become. What they're making me become. Just for a little while."

"You're not becoming anything," Samirah said.

"A monster," Alice said.

Samirah shook her head at the brunette.

"A person who believes in these people," Samirah said. "A person who believes in them enough to try to save them—even if it means having to do some horrible things along the way."

"We'll still lose them," Alice said.

"Some of them, we might," Samirah said. "But—we knew that from the beginning. The means to an end."

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few," Alice said. "Isn't that what they say?"

"We save who we can," Samirah said. "It's better that than—than losing them all."

"We fucking save who we can," Alice said, acting like she was angry with the beer can in her hand for a second. "The rest? I guess they would've died anyway. When the prisons closed. I guess there's that."

"There's that," Samirah said. She sucked in a breath and let it out. "My news is almost good news in comparison to yours."

"I could use some happy news," Alice said. She belched and excused herself, helping herself to another of her cigarettes before she offered one to Samirah and lit it for her when she accepted it between her lips.

"The Wild born babies?" Samirah said. "The ones that were captured and brought in?"

"I remember them," Alice said.

"Well then you remember that we were told they were dead, right?" Samirah asked.

Alice laughed to herself, that same nervous laugh that had a tendency to escape her whenever things were just a bit too much.

"Seems like I remember hearing something about that," Alice said, her words practically dripping with sarcasm. "Killed is more like it. Or terminated. Destroyed. Those seem to be preferred words when it's done in the name of protecting us all from all the vicious Wilds—even if they're just infants and toddlers."

"You would think that's what happened to them," Samirah said. "But that's not the truth. And I'm not really sure if it changes anything or how it changes anything—because I haven't had the time to sleep on it—but it turns out they're alive, Al."

"Alive?" Alice asked, raising an eyebrow at Samirah. Samirah nodded.

"It's all in the document," Samirah said. "The one that I stole. They're alive and re-homed."

"That's impossible," Alice said. "They don't have any files."

Samirah hummed and nodded.

"It's because they were given new identities," Samirah said. "The whole Wild-born thing was a bit of a stigma and it turns out that they were the original pieces to the test to see if Wilds really could be assimilated. Nature versus nurture and what have you. They stopped using their tags and gave them identities. They're in the system, but not as what we thought they were."

"They're not dead?" Alice asked.

Samirah shook her head.

"At least, not all of them are," Samirah said. "It's all there in the document. They're all there."