Mother

After I've been in the detention cell under Vought Tower for about two weeks—I can't be sure of the time frame as they keep the lights on all the time to disorient prisoners—I decide to try to kill myself. But that's easier said than done. The people who have designed the cubes have done their jobs well. There are no places to secure a noose and hang oneself, no sharp edges to sever a throat or an artery, no mirrors to break, not even any joins between the slab I am supposed to sleep on and the wall for one to put one's fingers in and pry something loose. The room seems all of one piece, one color, designed to beat down one's morale and will to resist. I can't say my will is unaffected, but I know acceptance is his victory and I will not give this to him. He's taken too much as it is.

I line myself up with the wall at the widest section. As I am CEO of Vought, I know this room has a total of ten surveillance cameras, three of them designed to be seen by the prisoner and the rest to be invisible. I am in the direct line of sight of four of them. How many people are watching from the control room? I don't have any real expectation of dying from what I'm about to do, but I will definitely need medical attention afterward. It's a calculated risk, but I hope it will help me find out what's going on. Whatever the specific reason for my imprisonment is, I know the root of it is Homelander.

Before I have a chance to build up enough fear to stop myself from doing it, I bend my body double and run full-speed headfirst into the wall. A blinding wave of pain hits me and I get the urge to vomit. Tears stream from my eyes as I manage to straighten up and try to collect myself. I wish there was a mirror so I could check my pupils to see if they're still the same size. Nothing happens yet, so I bend myself again and repeat the action on the other wall. And, immediately after that, I hear my first human voice in two weeks.

The PA system in the cell crackles to life and a man says, "Ms. Barrett, we're going to need you to stop doing that now." He sounds a little shaky, but who gives a fuck? Not me.

I can barely see through the tears but run headfirst into the wall a third time. The sound of the knockout gas beginning to hiss through the vents reaches me, and I cover my mouth while clamping my nose shut and manage a fourth run before I'm overcome and black out.

An unknown time later, I float near the surface of consciousness and am untouched by emotion. Voices penetrate the mist and I gather words like flowers for examination later.

"No spinal injury or skull fracture but a concussion for sure. I'll run a CT scan but I want to keep her here tonight for observation." It's a woman's voice, crisp and professional, but there's an undertone of dislike there.

"Is…is everything okay?" I recognize this voice instantly as Homelander's.

"Seems to be. Implantation's taken, but I'd also like to keep her here tonight to make sure the embryo's undamaged."

Embryo? Embryo? But I can't think of this now and keep my vital signs steady, avoid detection, so I let the word float away from me, all fangs and trailing fire. I know it will return.

"All right." Homelander sounds distracted.

"Does she know what's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"With the surrogacy. Did you tell her in advance what you were planning?"

An ugly laugh from the supe. "What do you think, doc? Do you think I could just walk up to Ashley and tell her, 'Guess what? I've decided you're going to carry a baby for me and Maeve.' She'd never stop running if she heard that."

The doctor sighs. "She's a poor candidate for a surrogate. I've seen her medical records. The rock bottom minimum for surrogacy is to have carried and delivered at least one baby with an easy pregnancy and an easy delivery. Not only has she not done that, she's never even been pregnant. We don't know what problems she'll have with pregnancy, with delivery. You're rich—you could hire a surrogate from any number of agencies and bribe them enough to keep their mouths shut. I just don't understand why it had to be Ms. Barrett."

"Because I can do whatever I want, and I want her carrying the baby. That's all you need to know."

I don't hear the doctor anymore, which isn't surprising. Nobody stands up to Homelander after that tone of voice comes out of his mouth. I keep my eyes closed and concentrate on maintaining the thin scrim between myself and consciousness, keeping myself calm to avoid detection. Time enough to realize what he's talking about when I'm back in my cell and can run screaming, bouncing off the walls.

But then the doctor speaks up again. She's braver than I thought. "It might make sense to explain things to her. It might keep her calmer, more cooperative, if she understood. It's not going to be possible to keep it from her after she starts showing, after the baby starts moving. She'll figure it out."

That image of something moving inside me that isn't me, something alien, snaps me into full awareness and I open my eyes. I'm in Vought Tower's on-site clinic, with Homelander and a white-coated fortyish woman with a short black bob and dark eyes standing over me. I open my mouth and mean to say something rational, words and questions and even pleadings, but only screams come out. They hurt my ears but I can't stop them.

"Put her under!" the doctor shouts and some anonymous aide slams a syringe into her hand. I watch her pull the cap off the needle and test for air before shoving it into my arm. Homelander watches me, not the doctor, and there is nothing human in his eyes for me to squeeze a drop of hope from as whatever sedative the doctor's injected takes effect.

When I wake up, I can't tell if it's day or night as the clinic room I'm in has no windows either. The room is darkened, though, which is a relief from the 24-hour fluorescence of my cell. Homelander is sitting by my bed, staring at me. I try to ask for water but my throat is too dry; nevertheless, he hears me and helps me to drink from a glass of ice water, supporting my back and steering the straw into my mouth. I can't do this for myself, as my wrists are bound to the bedrails. "Enough?" he asks.

I nod and he puts the glass on the sliding tray that fits over the bed. He sits back down and this time I can speak.

"Homelander…please. Please let me go."

His face is cold, implacable, and as distant as the moon when he replies, "Never."

I turn my face away from him, feeling tears burning my eyes and blink them back. Can he still sense them even though I do not let them fall?

The doctor—I find out her name is Lynskey—lets me return to my cell the next day. She accompanies me there and is shocked when she looks inside it. "Where do you sleep?"

"There." I indicate the slab protruding from the wall.

"But there's no mattress. There's not even a pillow, or a blanket."

"What can I say? It's a no-frills cell."

Lynskey laughs. "It's good you have a sense of humor. It might help you in the future."

I doubt it, but she must say something to someone because a few hours later two guards turn up with a futon mattress, a comforter, and two pillows. For the benefit of the parasite clinging to my insides, I'm sure, but self-preservation forces me to spread the mattress on the slab and arrange the pillows, then climb in and pull the comforter over me. It is the first warm night I spend in this cell.

I'm making the bed the next morning, or what I've decided to call morning, as best I can when a guard rolls in a television set and leaves. There isn't much chance to stand there staring at the blank screen because I see Homelander through the glass window a second before the door slides open. He walks in, hands clasped behind his back, his cape flaring a little. "Good morning, Ashley. How do you feel?"

I sigh. "As well as a prisoner can. What brings you here?"

My flippancy does not please him but he ignores it for now. "I'm here to bring you some news. You're dead."

The words strike instant dread into me, and he laughs at my reaction. "That wasn't a threat, Ashley, just a statement of fact. As far as the world knows, you died a month ago when a robber broke into your apartment and murdered you. No suspect has been arrested, and none ever will be. You don't exist out there anymore."

"So who died in my place?" Underneath the shock is a delicate regret for the hapless woman who has become part of Homelander's plans.

He shrugs. "No one you know. I had her dental records switched for yours, and there was so much damage to her face that identification was impossible. And, since it was your apartment and the victim was wearing your clothes and the dental records matched, the police saw no need for a DNA test." He gives me a bright, toothy smile.

"Imagine that. What's the TV for?"

Homelander gathers his cape to one side in a gesture I have always found fussy and seats himself on the slab, my bed. "I thought you might want to see your own funeral. That's something everyone wants, right?"

"Not particularly," I tell him. "I hope it wasn't a gaudy, tasteless mess like that circus Vought gave Translucent."

"See for yourself." He pats the bed next to him. "Come here, Ashley. I won't bite." The grin he gives me inspires no faith, but I sit down anyway. We're close enough for me to feel the heat from his body against my side and everything in me revolts against it. "Isn't this nice?" I side-eye him but say nothing, and he clicks a remote at the TV.

There's no sound, but the footage depicts a procession of people into a church somewhere. "I didn't have a church. Where's this?"

"Marble Collegiate. Stan Edgar set it up."

This is a shock. "You guys are buddy-buddy now?"

Homelander puts his hand on my back and rubs it. "Well, you aren't the CEO anymore. He and I have come to an—arrangement that I think will suit me." I don't know how Stan Edgar has bribed him to be CEO again, or how he has bribed Stan Edgar, but it is a bad sign that the former CEO both knows of my imprisonment and doesn't care.

And, indeed, Stan Edgar has attended my funeral at Marble Collegiate, along with A-Train and the Deep, who has Annika from Analytics on his arm. I smile without realizing at that. Other Ashley steps out of a limousine and the caption pronounces her, "Ashley Sobek, Director of Talent Relations."

"Kind of a lateral move for her," I observe.

"She seems happy enough with it," says Homelander. "Notice she isn't wearing black?"

Sure enough, her dress is gunmetal gray, but dark enough not to raise eyebrows. "I wouldn't expect her to. I wasn't nice to her."

The next car disgorges a tall, black-haired man, who helps a small blonde out of the backseat. Her smart black suit displays her pale hair to best advantage. The captioning reads, "Michael and Claudia Crownover, family members." I feel the need to explain. "That's my sister and her husband."

"She doesn't look very unhappy."

"I'm sure she isn't. We never got along." Claudia lets Mike assist her up the church steps. Her heels are both high and spiky to show off her legs. Her skirt is a millimeter too short for grief.

"Why not?"

I wonder why he's making conversation. "It was one of those situations where Mom played us off against each other to get her approval. Claudia won most of the time. She was blonde and pretty and all the boys loved her."

"So she's a slut?" asks Homelander.

I repress a smile. "I don't really know. She was popular. By the time she started dating I was in my first year at college. Then she married Mike, who's rich, and started pumping out the babies." The knowledge of the thing inside me rises and I crush it. I will not fall apart in front of Homelander. "If they get divorced, she's got multiple meal tickets until they hit eighteen."

"Smart. Why didn't you get married?"

"Who says I didn't?" That remark is reflexive, since I never have been married and never wanted to be.

"Your personnel file. Your sister's listed as your next of kin." He settles back a little and I sense he's looking at me instead of the TV but won't look over to make sure. "I was surprised to see your mother's dead."

"I don't know why. It was part of my speech when I became CEO."

"But you were lying. I can tell."

"I know. I tell people that she died of cancer because it sounds better, but really she drank herself to death." Interesting. If part of a statement is a lie, he can't tell which part is the lie. I file this information away for future use.

"What about your father?"

"He was a pilot in the Navy. When I was born Mom wanted him to get a job closer to home—I was born at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan—and he managed to get a job as an instructor at Miramar NAS—Fightertown USA, the Top Gun school," I clarify when he looks puzzled. "When they changed its location to Nevada Mom didn't want to go as she was pregnant with Claudia by then, so he got a job flying commercial with American Airlines. He was the girl-in-every-port kind of guy, to hear Mom tell it."

"You—didn't know him?"

"My parents divorced when I was nine and he died when I was thirteen. We didn't see him much after the divorce. I have more memories than Claudia. He was tall, laughed a lot. He liked to put me on his shoulders and fly me around the room. He liked to read." My throat starts to tighten a bit. I don't want to talk about this, but he does.

"How did he die?"

I swallow. "Plane crash. He moved to Alaska after the divorce and started working as a bush pilot. It's very dangerous. Can we stop talking about this?"

Homelander is silent for a few moments. "What was your mother's name?"

"Gwen. It was short for Guinevere."

It surprises a laugh out of him. "You're kidding, right?"

"Nope. Guinevere Ashley Barrett. My first name is her maiden name. They were both hoping for a boy."

I've given him an opening to discuss what's happening with me and he takes it. "What do you think is going on?"

Panic chokes me at the idea of articulating what I think. "I think you're holding me prisoner. I think you faked my death to make sure no one ever looks for me."

"And why did I do all that, Ashley?"

I try to speak but nothing comes out for a minute. "The doctor said surrogacy."

"That's right." Satisfaction fills his voice. "When Queen Maeve was in this very cell, I managed to have the doctors harvest some of her eggs. Since she can't carry the baby, what with her being dead and all, you're going to do it."

Even though I've already pieced it together, hearing him say it hits me hard. I clasp my hands in my lap and squeeze them together to hide their trembling. "Why would you use me for that? I've never had a baby. Anything could happen, to me or the fetus. Pregnancy is dangerous."

He shrugs. "We have plenty of fertilized eggs on ice. If at first you don't succeed…"

I can't manage to say anything and just watch the funeral footage onscreen, which has switched to the graveside service. Everyone looks properly somber except Claudia. She looks as if she's being inconvenienced and is trying to hide it as she understands the proprieties, but I know her well enough to read her face. I don't know which cemetery it is, but someone has sprung for a huge granite angel to mark my grave. The angel is beautiful and sad-faced and at least ten feet tall. "But why me? Why did you make me do this?"

Homelander looks at me and smiles. "Because I can."

The next day, breakfast arrives through the slot in the door. It's bacon and eggs with a Belgian waffle, orange juice, and milk. They never give me coffee—I suppose it's bad for the parasite. There is blackberry jam for the waffle, and I wonder who it is that knows I like blackberry jam. I pinch off a few squares of the waffle and swallow them before I throw the rest into the toilet and flush it. There is no immediate response.

Lunch arrives: pasta primavera, garlic bread, tomato basil soup, and a piece of chocolate cake, with milk to drink. I taste the chocolate cake by sticking my little finger into it and then my mouth, pinch a bit of the garlic bread and eat it, then dump the rest of the meal down the toilet so I won't be tempted. I'm hungrier than in the morning, naturally. Again, there is no response. I wonder how long this will continue.

And here comes dinner: a chef's salad, pork chops, yellow cornbread, green beans, a slice of apple pie with ice cream, and milk. As with the earlier meals, I pinch off some of the bread and dump the rest of the food down the toilet. I regret the apple pie and ice cream as the hunger is a burning hole in my middle, but I want to know what will happen. The parasite won't have been harmed yet, as any actual fetus in the womb has first claim on any of the resources of the mother's body. I know they won't let me continue until Homelander's precious get has been harmed.

Breakfast the next morning is poached eggs, Canadian bacon, pancakes, fresh honeydew melon, and milk. As is now my habit, I pinch off some of the pancake and flush the rest. Within half an hour, the door slides open to admit Dr. Lynskey.

I'm sitting on the slab with my knees drawn up, staring at the wall. My stomach is still flat enough to allow this. How soon will the parasite make itself known to the point where I can't dismiss it anymore? "Hello, Dr. Lynskey."

"Ashley. How are you feeling?"

"Fine. And yourself?"

She smiles. "I haven't thrown my last four meals down the toilet. Are you feeling nauseated?"

"It's a little early for that, isn't it?"

"Your situation is—out of the ordinary. We can't know what's normal for this pregnancy."

I can't stop some of the bile from erupting. "You're right about that. Nothing about having a supe parasite shoved up me against my will is normal. I should count myself lucky if it doesn't chew its way out of my belly and kill me. Maybe that's normal for it. Who can say?"

Dr. Lynskey laughs. "You've been watching too many horror movies."

"Not lately." I gesture at the bare walls.

She tries again. "It's just a baby."

No, it's a cuckoo, I want to say but don't. "I hope you think the same thing when it claws your throat out as you're trying to deliver it."

With a sigh, she clearly decides to try another tack. "The baby's important to Homelander. The baby is also completely dependent on you. By definition, you are important to Homelander, if only as the mother of his child."

"That's Queen Maeve," I shoot back. "I have nothing to do with any of this."

"Homelander thinks differently. If you—cooperate, if you stay calm and don't do anything to hurt yourself or the baby, you can probably get some concessions from him."

I don't care, but I miss the sound of another person's voice. "Like what?"

Dr. Lynskey pauses. Is she surprised by her immediate success? "Well, you might be able to get him to make the room more comfortable for you. Maybe get an actual bed, maybe a permanent television. He might give you back some of your own clothes—"

"No." The refusal is instant. If I see anything of mine from before this purgatory began, I will not be able to stand it. I will run mad or die of grief for my destroyed life.

"Okay. But I can't think you wouldn't rather sleep on an actual bed than on a fiberglass slab sticking out of the wall."

"Yeah." I keep my eyes down so she can't see that I'm thinking. "I miss hearing people talk. None of the guards will speak to me." Because they aren't stupid and don't want Homelander turning them into piles of cooked meat when he gets the paranoid delusion that they've agreed to help me escape with his supe cuckoo in my uterus. I try to sound pathetic.

But she isn't buying. "You should know that, originally, Homelander wanted to keep you in a medically induced coma for the entire pregnancy, from insemination to birth. I was able to persuade him, after the embryo had implanted, that this wouldn't be good for the baby. If this hunger strike situation goes on for one more day, he won't leave me any other choice but to put you back into that coma so we can feed you through an IV tube. Do you want that?"

I take the time to consider it. In a coma, I wouldn't be confronted with the proof of my unwilling pregnancy, wouldn't witness my belly distending with the alien presence, wouldn't feel its kicking, wouldn't be aware of the use which Homelander has put me to. And I wouldn't be aware of the double tap which would end my life. That was the deciding factor. "No, I don't want to be in a coma."

"Then eat your meals. If you don't have morning sickness yet, you should enjoy keeping your meals down."

"All right." Interesting—Dr. Lynskey doesn't like Homelander. Of course, who really does? His people skills need a lot of work, to say the least.

"I'll have them bring another breakfast tray. I'm glad you're being reasonable about this."

Yeah, I can imagine a comatose patient would be much more work for her. They tray arrives about twenty minutes or so after she leaves, and it's the same as the first meal I threw down the toilet, which makes me think Homelander has been watching this interaction on the security cameras. It's just the kind of jab I expect from him. Is he the one who knows I like blackberry jam? But it doesn't matter—as long as I can make Dr. Lynskey think I see her as an ally, rather than his lackey, I may be able to turn her to my own purposes. I have months to make plans.

That night I have my first hallucination. I know it is a hallucination because my mother doesn't have clearance to access Vought's detention cells, in addition to her being dead, and not the kind of "dead" that Queen Maeve is.

"Stupid child. You're as worthless as your father ever was."

I open my eyes and see Gwen Barrett standing over me. The ravages of the last few years of alcoholism before her death are gone, and she looks the same as after the divorce, when she packs us up and takes off for her family home in Houston. Her parents and the servants at the River Oaks mansion embrace us like survivors of a disaster, and my father's name is never mentioned again, except when my mother feels the need to berate me for something and the occasional rebuke of my mother by my grandmother. "You aren't the first young girl who was taken in by a uniform and a handsome face, Guinevere, but you married beneath yourself. For the sake of the girls, you need to do a better job of choosing next time."

Well, hello, Mom. I have no intention of speaking to her aloud because the last thing I need is for my captors to decide I've gone insane. What brings you here?

Her blonde hair swings around her face as she leans in closer to me. I think the reason for her preference for Claudia is because they resemble each other. I look like my reviled father. "I wanted to see how far you've fallen. You had all the success in the world and you still failed. You ran a multi-million-dollar corporation and now you're just a madman's broodmare. At least the child won't have any of your genes."

It's not a child. It's a monster. With him for a father, it will destroy everything.

She laughs and suddenly she looks exactly like Madelyn Stillwell. Both of them are blonde, but the resemblance should end there. "Don't be so dramatic, Ashley," she says. "Homelander was perfectly manageable when I ran things."

Sure he was. I guess death doesn't improve a person's memory.

Madelyn gives me a quelling look before she turns back into Gwen Barrett. "Don't be sassy, girl. You're not too big for me to put you over my knee."

No, but you're too dead for it. So try resting in peace.

Mom does a weird thing where she splits vertically down the middle so half of her is my mother and the other half is Madelyn. Mamadelyn says, "Your world is pain now. It does me good to see it. It's almost like watching your father die. It's a shame I couldn't do that."

Blah de blah de blah. You bore me. Go away. In defiance of her I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. After a few minutes I open my eyes again and both Gwen Barrett and Madelyn Stillwell were gone. This is nothing I can blame on drugs. This appearance worries me, but I put it aside. I have more pressing things to fear than two dead women.

A few days after my visitation three guards come in and install a big-screen TV on the wall, too high for me to reach. One of them hands me a remote. "They say watch anything you like, even pay-per-view." That strikes me as hilarious but I thank him gravely. It proves to me that my suspicions were right and Homelander was watching the entire discussion with Dr. Lynskey. I wonder if he watches everything I do in here. If so, it was an excellent decision not to speak to my mother's ghost.

Once the guards leave, I stand there with the remote in my hand, paralyzed by the taste of normality I've been given. How many times in my life have I pointed a remote at a TV set and pushed the buttons? It's the first real connection between what came before and the now. Am I going to be smacked in the face with what I can't have anymore every time I get the power to do a shiny normal thing? I shrug off my thoughts and turn on the television. There's a news show on, which has the date displayed above a chyron, and I realize I've been in this cell for two months, if they have brought me here directly from my apartment. My apartment is gone now, rented to someone else. I feel a bolt of loss but put it aside. There's no time for it.

So I am a maximum of two months pregnant with Homelander and Queen Maeve's cuckoo. I try desperately to remember what Claudia has told me about her pregnancies: when she started showing, when she got morning sickness, anything to help me now. But nothing comes to me—I was uninterested in her pregnancies as I have never planned to get pregnant. I am sure, however, that if anything unusual happens, Dr. Lynskey will be happy to tell me about it.

That night I have another hallucination. This time it isn't my mother or Madelyn, but Queen Maeve. This rings a warning bell; I might pass off Mamadelyn's appearance as a previously undiscovered ability to see and converse with ghosts, but Queen Maeve is alive. Is this some trick of Homelander's? If so, I can't give any indication that she's alive. We have never liked each other, but I will not give another woman back into the clutches of this man.

"You're a whore, Ashley," she tells me. "And a cheap one at that, if a big-screen TV is your price."

A little gratitude, please, I tell her in my mind. I'm carrying your cuckoo.

"Cuckoo?" She seems genuinely confused.

A bird that lays its eggs in the nest of another bird and the other bird cares for it like the cuckoo is its own. A parasite, in other words. A thief. In Japan, it's a symbol of unrequited love.

Queen Maeve snorts with laughter. "If that's not poetic, I don't know what is. But it changes nothing. You've benefited from this whole situation."

How? By being stripped of everything in my life and trapped in a prison cell? By being forced to give birth to the fertilized egg he stripped from you? Homelander even told Dr. Lynskey I'd never have stopped running if he'd just made me the offer. And he was right.

"Get over yourself and try being a human being for five seconds."

Like you'd know what that is, bitch. You'd better keep a civil tongue in your head or I'll rat you out to him. Modesto, California, right? Hometown girl. I doubt if it would take much work to find you. And you're powerless now. What would he do to you for running?

"The same as he'd do to you for lying." She was unimpressed, leaning against the wall in her costume. "Did you know this was my cell? The very same cell that you gassed me unconscious in."

Yes. Yes, I do. It must please you to see me here.

"It does." She bared her teeth at me in a smile. "You're nothing but a corporate tool, a soulless little anonymous cog, and it pleasures me to see you get your comeuppance."

Christ, you're a cunt. But I knew that when you told me to be human, you and Starlight, like you privileged little bitches had the faintest fucking notion of what that is that you didn't get from television. I never will understand why you threw away the only protection you had from him.

"Someone like you could never understand."

Anyway, I hope you're enjoying your ordinary human life. If I'm any judge, it isn't all you thought it would be, but you'll never tell me that. Not some jargon-spouting woman in a gray flannel suit who's so far beneath you, so much less worthy than you are with your supe powers—oh, yeah, I forgot, those are gone. You're down here in the mud with me now.

Queen Maeve shrieks and crosses the room in a flash, hands aiming for my throat, and I jolt upward from the bed, arms raising to block her attack, but she isn't there anymore. I have trouble thinking this could be some scheme of Homelander's, if only because I can't figure out how he could do it, but I promise myself that I will never speak out loud to any of my phantasmal visitors.

The next visitor that shows herself also isn't dead: Starlight. I turn over in bed to face the wall and do not acknowledge any of her hateful words. Let her take herself back to her merry little band of killers and offer up another stupid plan to kill my captor. If I'd had a sliver of hope that she could get this job done, I might look at her, but she's far too stupid for that.

Starlight never reappears. Her failed visitation seems to trigger something in me, because the next morning, as soon as my feet hit the cell floor, I feel bile rising in my throat and rush for the toilet. Morning sickness, I realize. This will most likely go on for weeks, but at least it has happened before breakfast arrives. I rinse my mouth and squeeze toothpaste onto the brush they've given me. It's a baking soda toothpaste, which I hate. Since I don't have a job to go to or anything to do with my time, I go back to bed and try to sleep until the slot opens for the breakfast tray.

After I've eaten dinner, which mercifully stays down, Homelander appears in my cell. He's carrying a wooden futon frame over one shoulder and sets it down on the floor. "You've graduated from the wall slab."

I brace myself and get up. Since I've thrown up earlier, a headache has taken up residence behind my eyes and I move carefully to try to ensure the morning sickness doesn't return. "I had one of those in my first apartment, when I was in college."

"Then it should feel just like home." He gives me a bright white smile and takes the bedding to arrange on the frame. So now I have a place to sit and a place to sleep, as well as a TV. Three hots and a cot, as they say.

"To what do I owe this?"

"The morning sickness you just had. The doctor tells me that's a good sign for your not having a miscarriage. The baby's producing plenty of pregnancy hormones." The idea makes me feel sick, but he doesn't seem to notice anything. "You'll go in tomorrow afternoon for a check-up with the doctor, just to make sure everything's okay. Maybe she can give you something for the vomiting."

I pull something out of my memory, a piece of motherly wisdom. "My mother said she ate saltine crackers in the morning when she was pregnant with me. Maybe that would help." I didn't tell him that she has sworn the morning sickness never bothered her during her pregnancy with Claudia.

"I'll see you get some."

"Thank you." The words gall me, but I must keep somewhat friendly with him. Even if I am pregnant with his cuckoo, he may take it into his head to kill me and try again with some safe, anonymous woman, maybe some gullible normie who's bought into Vought's PR image of him. Maybe he will marry this normie and she will believe the parasite is hers. I do not know why he didn't do that in the first place. Why even involve me? He must have some deeper reason for this.

Once the bedding is arranged on the futon, he sits down and pats the seat next to him. "Come sit down. We can watch a movie."

Bizarre, but I see no need to argue with him. "Anything in particular?" I ask as I take my place next to him.

"I think Rio Bravo's on. Have you ever seen it?"

"I don't think so. It sounds like a Western?"

"It is. John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan. If you're a John Carpenter fan, it was sort of the inspiration for Assault on Precinct 13."

"The one with Ethan Hawke?"

He snorts. "I see you have a lot of learning to do. The next movie we watch is the original, which has nothing to do with Ethan Hawke."

"Okay." Watching movies seems like a hazard-free way of keeping myself occupied, even if Homelander was going to be around for them. I wonder why he wants to spend time with me. Maybe it's a reward for still being pregnant.

Sometime during the movie I fall asleep and don't wake up until I feel something falling over me. I wake up with a start to see Homelander spreading the comforter over me. "Do you like it this cold in here?"

Does he think I have access to the thermostat? "No, that's why Dr. Lynskey got the comforter and the mattress and the pillows, so I could be warm while I sleep."

Homelander looks disturbed. "I'm sorry about that. I'll have them turn up the heat in here."

"Thank you. Would it be okay if I asked for some things?"

The hard, guarded look returns instantly. "Like what?"

"I'd like to have the kind of soap and shampoo I normally use. And maybe the kind of toothpaste I used to have. The one I have now has baking soda and I don't like the taste."

It doesn't take any time for him to say, "That's fine. Just tell the guy who brings your breakfast what you want and that I've okayed it. You should have your stuff by lunch."

"Thanks." The word remains hard to say.

"You know none of this is for your benefit, right? It's all for Jonah."

My brow wrinkles. "Who's Jonah?"

Homelander reaches out and rests his hand on my stomach for a few moments. "The baby."

"How do you know it's a boy?"

"You can test embryos to see which ones are male or female. We used a male embryo with you." I get a vivid mental image of Homelander's sperm and have to swallow hard so as not to vomit. "His name is Jonah Vogelbaum."

I nod. "That makes sense. You wouldn't see any value in a daughter."

He kneels by the futon to look at me and is not pleased. I'm not scared for now, since I'm carrying his cuckoo and he probably won't hurt me for my smart mouth. He decides to ignore my words. "You can do his middle name if you want."

"I don't have anything in mind." It should be enough that you've forced me to nurture this thing in my body. Don't try to get me to feel anything other than loathing and rage for how I'm being used.

"What was your father's name?"

"Alec. Not short for Alexander, just Alec."

"Then he'll be Jonah Alec Vogelbaum. How does that sound to you?"

'It sounds fine." Is he trying to give me an emotional stake in his and Maeve's cuckoo so I'll accept my fate? So he's rewarding me for not miscarrying and being polite to him? It's better than being cut in two by his heat vision, though.

He puts the back of the futon down to turn it into a double bed and I stretch out for the first time in months. I have not realized how cramped I've been on the slab. "This is what you make of it, Ashley," he tells me. "There's no going back. The baby will be born."

"I never thought anything else." As if he would allow anything else to happen.

Homelander leaves without any further conversation and I fall asleep again. Sometime in the night I wake up and Claudia is sitting on the side of the futon. She's wearing the same clothes from the funeral and her mouth is screwed up in disgust. "At least get him to marry you," she tells me. "What's everyone going to say about your bastard child?"

It's not my bastard child, sis. It's Homelander's and Queen Maeve's. Why do I have to keep reminding all you apparitions of that?

Claudia is not well pleased with that. "It's your belly that's going to look like you swallowed a beach ball. It's you that's going to have to push it out."

So they both stole my labor. This has nothing to do with me.

"You keeping telling yourself that. If I'm any judge, that man's not going to let you go after you deliver the child. He's not a married man, right?" I move my head back and forth on the pillow. "Then he at least needs someone to take care of it. Men don't know the first thing about taking care of an infant. He has another son, though."

I don't know what happened there, but the mother took off and he had no idea she was alive for eight years, or that there was a baby. As soon as he found out where they were he went to them and tried to be a father.

"Yeah, then you'll definitely be the baby's mother, as far as he's concerned. The work of a baby doesn't end when the baby's born, you know."

When I deliver this baby—if I deliver this baby—he'll have gotten all the work out of me that he's ever going to. I doubt if I'll survive the birth.

"You tell yourself that, sis. Maybe, if you're lucky, it'll even turn out to be true."

And just like that she disappears. I want to compare their departures, but they all seem to go the same way—there, then not. They don't fade away or dissolve. For the first time, I wonder if this has something to do with the cuckoo. It is a supe, conceived from two supes like Homelander was himself, and it may have powers that neither of them manifested. Could it be that one of those powers is to generate images in a person's mind with enough substance for them to seem real? But it is still an embryo, and the idea that it can pull images out of my mind—none of the visitations have been people I don't know—and make them dance like puppets to manipulate me is terrifying. More terrifying than Homelander, in fact.

Based on his abilities, I think it's possible for a supe child to express powers the parents didn't have. Where did Homelander's heat vision come from? Neither of his parents, that's for sure. His strength was from Soldier Boy, his flight from Stormfront, but the heat vision is his alone. I wonder if he knows that Stormfront's egg was used for him or if that's something he protects himself from with denial. Dealing with it would involve acknowledging that he has slept with his biological mother, and I'm not sure he's strong enough for that.

In my next check-up, Dr. Lynskey switches my meal schedule to deal with the morning sickness. "It can help if you have smaller, more frequent meals, so we're going to switch you to six smaller meals rather than three big ones. Since you said eating crackers in the morning helped your mother with hers, we'll try that too."

It eases the nausea somewhat, but it doesn't go away fully until after the third month. This is also when I begin showing the presence of the cuckoo within. Since I am thin, with a narrow frame, the doctor has advised me that I will begin showing sooner rather than later, and it seems she is right. I pass my hand over the swelling and shudder with revulsion. There is no denying it now, no more ignoring and pushing its presence away. It is here, it will grow, and it will force its way out of my body. What happens to me after that remains a mystery, although I suspect I won't live long.

The days go by in a blur of sameness, marked only by the cuckoo bulging out against my belly more and more. Homelander comes by my cell two or three times a week to sit on the futon with me and watch movies. I can't understand why he's doing this. Never before my unwilling surrogacy has he shown any urge to be in my presence. One night, though, as we're watching Leon, I realize what he's doing. He's creating memories to talk about with the cuckoo. Your mother and I loved to watch movies together. She cried at the cutthroat scene in Rio Bravo. She never would watch The Exorcist because it was too scary for her. She liked laughing at bad special effects and plot holes. Her favorite movie was Romancing the Stone. And, in my mind, this proves my case that he will kill me once the cuckoo's born, if the birth itself doesn't do the job for him. The only real question I have is whether he will simply substitute Queen Maeve's name for mine in these memories, and I think he probably will. Humans are insects—why would he want the cuckoo to know he was nourished in the womb of a lesser being?

After the fifth month Dr. Lynskey tells me something's wrong with me. "You have gestational hypertension. That's just high blood pressure that develops as a result of pregnancy. It should go away after the baby is born. We want to get it under control now as this may be a sign that you could develop preeclampsia. Did your mother or your sister have it?"

I shake my head. "I don't know. I was never interested in my sister's pregnancies and all my mother ever said was that I almost killed her. There were never any specifics so I just thought she was running me down—she liked to do that—but she did say her pregnancy with Claudia was a breeze compared to me. What's preeclampsia?"

"That's a condition that can complicate a pregnancy. We don't know what causes it, but it can be life-threatening—yours as well as the baby's. It can lead to organ damage for you, restriction of the baby's growth, and we may have to induce labor early. If the condition isn't controlled, you may start having seizures. But it hasn't appeared yet, and as long as we get the hypertension under control, you should be fine. Getting more exercise should help. Have you been doing any exercises?"

"Does pacing my cell count?"

Dr. Lynskey doesn't like this and ignores it. "I'll have them put a treadmill in your quarters. For now, I'm recommending that you do twenty minutes walking three times a day. I'd like to get this under control without medication if that's possible, as that could affect the baby."

Like a hamster on an exercise wheel. "Is there anything else that can be done?"

She shakes her head. "Most of what I'd advise would be regarding your diet, which we're already controlling. The only other thing would be to cut down your stress level."

"Not much chance of that."

"No." She sighed. "Okay, we're going to go to weekly check-ups now until I'm convinced we have your blood pressure under control and that preeclampsia isn't going to appear. I wish I had your mother's medical records."

"She died when I was seventeen. I can't imagine her doctor kept them around."

"No, they wouldn't have." She sighs and puts on a smile for me. I appreciate the effort. I don't think she's a fundamentally bad person, but Homelander has a corrupting effect on everyone he's around for long. "But there's nothing to worry about. You couldn't get better medical care than you're getting from us. Is the baby moving yet?"

"I'm not sure I'd know what that feels like. I've never had the experience." And never will again.

"It would feel like a fluttering. It's probably happened and you didn't notice. You're at twenty-one weeks, so if it hasn't happened already it will be soon."

Homelander comes by that night to watch His Girl Friday, the choice of which I'm sure is to keep me calm. I notice for the first time that we don't watch any of the movies he's starred in, and in fact don't watch any Vought movies at all. Maybe he thinks it would be a tasteless reminder of my imprisonment, as if I need to be reminded. I try to pay attention for the flutters the doctor mentioned but don't feel anything. What will he do to me if the baby dies before it's born? It doesn't bear thinking about.

That night Becca Butcher appears to me. I recognize her even though I've never met her because I have seen plenty of pictures of her from the time when Hughie Campbell and her husband did their supe killing legally and I researched them. I am still unsure whether this is some trick of Homelander's, some power of the fetus, or just me going insane. The continuing visitations from Mamadelyn, Queen Maeve, and Claudia back up that theory. I'm in what's essentially solitary confinement and that has a bad effect on mental health. "How are you feeling?" she asks.

I'm fucking terrified. What do you think? I have a supe parasite inside me that's probably going to kill me when it's born or get me killed if it dies before birth. Things couldn't get worse if they tried.

She shakes her head. "It's not impossible to survive giving birth to Homelander's baby. I did."

Part of Ryan was you. I have no genetic stake in this. My body may be trying to expel an intruder. I'm sure the birth will kill me. What if it chews its way out?

That gets her to smile. "You've watched too many horror movies. I can't prove this because you can't access my medical files with Vought anymore, but my pregnancy was uneventful. Ordinary. Ryan didn't start manifesting his powers until after he started talking."

I think the cuckoo is different.

"Why do you call it that? It's just a baby."

Because that's what it is. It's taking what should have gone to another baby, one that's part mine, and it gives me nothing back for what I've given it. It's grown from an egg ripped out of Queen Maeve against her will that was shoved into me against my will. Nothing good can come from poisoned roots.

"Homelander calls the baby Jonah."

I know. He has a different view of this entire experience than I do.

"He does care about you, apart from the baby. He's trying to build something with you. He's trying to make a family for himself."

The kind of family he wanted with you?

Becca's head snaps back a little and she looks annoyed. "That's apples and oranges. He didn't know about the baby at these stages. I'm sure, if I had allowed it, he would have been there for Ryan and me. It's the one thing I can't fault him for."

Anything he wants to have with me—and I don't believe he does—is dead on arrival because I'm a prisoner and I never had any say in anything.

"You'll love the baby once they put it in your arms. I was afraid of everything you're afraid of, including the baby killing me to get out of the womb, and none of it came true. Can you try to take some comfort in what I'm telling you? I am the only other woman who's undergone what's happening to you."

Thank you. Why am I thanking a hallucination for trying to console me? Maybe I am going insane.

Later that night, when I'm on the verge of falling asleep, I think I feel something inside me, like a butterfly's wings, and am paralyzed with fear. It's quickened, and I don't know what it can do, what it knows. It's a creature like Homelander—it can burn the world.

It takes a few weeks for me to get up the courage to speak to Homelander about what's troubling me. I don't even know if he will tell me the truth. He seems to worship it, but that doesn't keep him from lying whenever it will serve him better. And I don't want to look weak in front of him. I don't want to look frightened. It will give him strength.

We're watching the original version of Rollerball with James Caan and I wait for a quiet scene before asking. "What do you plan on doing with me after I give birth?"

He looks at me as though I'm speaking Etruscan. "What do you mean, what am I going to do with you?"

"I mean that, Homelander. You haven't discussed anything about this with me and I really feel like I have a right to know what's going to happen to me."

"What do you think I'm going to do?"

I've walked into that one. I can't lie to him because he'll detect the lie. "I think you're going to kill me, if the birth itself doesn't."

He is silent for several moments. "Why would I do that?"

"Because you think humans are insects and I'm human. Once I've served my purpose, I'm of no further use, and you don't keep anyone around who is useless." And you've gotten rid of people who were actually useful to you, like Black Noir, who was your best friend. We have never even been friends.

"You're wrong about this, Ashley. I'm not going to kill you. You're going to be Jonah's mother. I wouldn't have chosen you as the surrogate if I didn't intend you to be his mother."

This is worse than when I thought he would kill me. At least with that I have a deadline, the point where I won't have to suffer anymore. As the cuckoo's mother, my pain will stretch out over the horizon and absorb the rest of my life. "I can't do that. I can't be its mother."

"Don't call Jonah it."

I know I'm in dangerous territory but I keep pushing. How much damage can he do to me without endangering his precious fetus? "It's better for you if you just marry some gullible normie who's bought Vought's PR line and thinks you're a Boy Scout. Or find some female supe who's willing to do the job. Why does it have to be me? Why can't you just let me go?"

"Because I won't. And you are going to be his mother, whether you like it or not."

"Why, because Vought wouldn't let you have a mother? Do you even know the name of the woman who carried you for nine months? Do you even know what happened to her? Let me guess—two ounces of lead in the back of the skull right after the birth. After all, we can't have the truth embarrassing the company so they can't make those propaganda movies of you taking about baseball and model airplanes."

Homelander's eyes glow red. "Stop this, Ashley."

In a wave of madness, I don't heed the warning. Maybe it's better to die here and now, cleaved in two by those burning eyes, than wait for his cuckoo to do it for him. "I have to know, are you at least going to keep me around for the breast-feeding? Not the baby, of course—you."

The glow of his eyes hits a flashpoint and a cold-water tide of sanity reminds me of danger. I hold up one hand in a gesture to stop, to calm down before anything happens that can't be undone, but it's too late. The heat vision flashes out a laser line of red and at the same time my hand explodes with pain I see fingers fall to the ground. The image is engraved in my mind—one complete finger and parts of at least two others.

It seems like minutes before I begin to scream, but time has slowed with the adrenalin rush of pain. I run from him, as far as I can in this cell, and jam myself and my clumsy pregnant belly into the space between the toilet and the wall, cradling my injured hand against my chest, and keep screaming. I can see him, trying to speak, but my screams drown out his words. What can he say, anyway? Sorry I've cut off your fingers? Sorry I've mutilated you? Sorry I didn't just kill you and let them remove the baby to take a chance on a premature delivery?

Suddenly the room is filled with other people, medical personnel and guards, and Dr. Lynskey enters at a run. "Tranq her down!" she screams. The cuckoo kicks hard at my insides to punish me for endangering its existence. My temples throb from the volume and force of my screams. Homelander goes unnoticed by everyone except me when he leans down and scoops up the severed parts of my body before retreating in a flare of his blood-red and bone-white cape. What will he do with them? Eat them? Frame them as trophies? Clone me? If so, I'll be far too dead to worry about it. Then I feel the now-familiar jab of a hypodermic needle as one of the orderlies finally obeys Dr. Lynskey and welcome the oblivion of the drug. Hello darkness, my old friend…

I wake up later in the on-site clinic to Dr. Lynskey sitting next to my bed. My left hand is bandaged and has taken up my screaming in waves of pain. "We can't give you anything for the pain because of the baby," she tells me. "You've lost your left little finger. The left ring finger is gone to the second knuckle, and the middle finger is gone to the first knuckle. Are you left-handed?"

"No," I whisper.

"Then it's not as bad as it could have been. Even if we had the missing parts of your fingers, we wouldn't be able to reattach because Homelander's laser vision cauterized the wounds. What possessed you?"

Queen Maeve is standing behind her, in costume, grinning at me. "It's about time you got what you had coming to you, you shitty corporate sellout. You enabled him to do everything he's doing. You deserve all the pain you're feeling. You deserve to die for taking the job. You could have quit anytime. He would have murdered you, but you could have quit. You worthless cunt."

The worthless cunt that's going to pop out your get, remember? And I know you're alive. I can punish you more than you can ever punish me. You remember that, you hypocritical drunken bitch. If I'm a sellout like you say, you'd better believe that if I see you one more time, I'm selling you out to Homelander and he won't give a shit about me anymore. It'll be all about his precious Jonah having his real biological mother in his life. If you don't want that, if you want to keep your ordinary human life with Elena, you will never trouble me again. And Queen Maeve vanishes to protect her secret, just like the coward she calls me.

This is the last of my defiance.

I do what Dr. Lynskey tells me, walking dutifully on my treadmill three times a day, eating the healthy meals that come through the slot in the door, sleeping when I am told, rising when I am told. I have no further interest in anything. I feel happy about the thick glass wall that's come down between me and the rest of the world. I live, I die, it's all the same to me now.

Homelander doesn't appear in my cell for weeks, the reason for which I can't decide. Is it because he's acting like a little boy who doesn't want to face punishment for wrongdoing, or is it because Dr. Lynskey forbade him to come near me and framed it as due to the danger to the cuckoo? Either way, it protects my glass wall and I am glad of it. I spend the following weeks watching movies even though he isn't there. I've discovered Vought's included a subscription to Shudder and watch all the pregnancy-based horror movies I can find. I'm about a third of the way through It's Alive III: Island of the Alive when the door slides open and Homelander walks in like nothing ever happened.

I expect to feel a blast of terror but the glass wall blunts the impact. He looks at the movie and asks, "Can we watch something else?"

"Sure." If he thinks I'm going to risk more injury to finish a movie I've already watched five times, he's as crazy as I'm becoming.

He settles down next to me on the futon and takes my hand. It's the perfect right hand, not the mutilated left, and I know he has planned it that way. "How about something light?"

"That's fine." It occurs to me that I have never touched him, other than shaking his hand at Madelyn's introduction. He's touched me rarely, a pat on the back here and there. Vision-Becca is crazy for thinking he sees me as anything but a broodmare for his foal. But his holding my hand now is okay because he's still wearing his gloves. I've never touched his skin. He's never touched mine.

He takes the remote and flips through the channels before stopping on Meatballs. "Is this one okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine." I don't care—it is the glass wall's gift. But I do curl my left hand into a fist so he can't see my damaged fingers. It may set him off.

After the movie he does something I don't expect. "I'm going to sleep with you tonight."

I feel some faint concern and irritation. "I'm almost eight months pregnant. Sex is out of the question if you care about the baby." My throat spasms on the word, but I won't call the thing he's put in me what I normally do for my own safety.

He waves a hand. "I don't want sex. I just want to sleep next to you. In case there's an emergency or anything."

Can I say no and make it stick? The question is stupid as I know the answer already and I say, "All right then."

I sleep in the scrubs they've given me and he strips naked before getting under the comforter and cuddling up next to me. The cuckoo kicks hard, but I don't know whether it recognizes its father or is just mad at me for my spinelessness. Homelander doesn't make any moves and I've been tired since my injury, so I fall asleep in short order.

And wake up to Claudia, looming over the bed and sneering. "You little toad. Look at you, you're every bit the whore Mom always said you were. Did you know he forced her to get pregnant with you? Not like your new lover here, just took away her birth control pills, but it did the trick. You always wondered why she hated you. Well, now you know."

I rack my brains but can't find any hints that this is true, except the fact that it explains everything about the way my mother felt about me and that Claudia would take any chance to hurt me. He's not my lover. He will never be that.

"Listen to you. All he'll have to do is threaten you and you'll spread like peanut butter. Anything to stay alive—you've never been anything but a coward."

Why is loving my own life, trying to protect my own life, so contemptible to all of you when I do it? Like you or Queen Maeve would do anything differently. Scratch that, you'd be on your knees sucking his dick and thanking him for the opportunity he's given you because he's got beaucoup money, way more than Mike. You'd throw away your husband and your children for the chance to rub up on some other man with this kind of money. I think you're the whore around here, sis.

Claudia slaps me but my head doesn't move with the impact. "I'm the good one, you bitch! I'm the one who gave her grandbabies!"

And so will I—in about a month.

She slaps me again and again, and although I feel the pain there is no physical impact. "You'd better stop," I say aloud, and she vanishes.

I've woken Homelander, who pushes himself up on one elbow. "What's going on?"

I hold up my mutilated left hand in front of him and he flinches. I feel a distant satisfaction at this. "I'll forget all about what you did if you'll kill my sister for me."

It takes him a while to respond. "Why do you want me to kill your sister?"

"Because she keeps coming in here and calling me names and being hateful and I'm sick of it. She was hitting me just now and it hurt and I don't think I should have to put up with this."

"So she was in this room while I was asleep?"

"Unless it's some trick of yours or something the baby is doing, yes." I deliberately leave out the possibility that I may be insane. He'll think of it anyway.

"It's not a trick of mine. I can't say what Jonah might be doing." He looks at me—before the incident, he'd had the room darkened at night so I can sleep—and I think I see wetness on his face. Is he crying? I want to assure him that it's unnecessary. The baby will see that it's born. I'm sure of that.

"I just don't want her coming back anymore. Like I said, I'll never mention what happened to my hand again if you kill her for me. It isn't like you've never killed anyone before. And I want proof. I don't want you to tell me you killed Claudia and be lying."

He doesn't react to my snappishness. "What would you accept as proof? Her head?"

"That would be too messy. I read somewhere that Mafia killers bring back the target's driver's license as proof, so you can just bring me her driver's license."

"Does anyone else come to see you in here?"

"Yeah, but they're all dead, so you can't do anything about them."

"Who are they?" He does his best to sound normal but his voice shakes.

"My mother, Madelyn Stillwell—but Mom likes to appear as half herself and half Madelyn. They were both blondes but they didn't look alike otherwise. Queen Maeve—she's a bitch. And Becca Butcher—she tries to be nice. I don't mind her."

"That's good. It's good she tries to be nice." I'm sure he's crying now, but he makes me lie back on the futon and spoons with me so I can't see it if he is.

"Will you do it?"

"Yes. I'll do it tomorrow so you can sleep."

"Okay, thank you." With Claudia's death secured, I'm able to fall asleep again and she doesn't return to bother me with her hatred.

After dinner the next day Homelander brings me her driver's license and I study it for a few seconds. I have no way to know if this is a forgery from Vought that he may have requested so he can tell me my sister is dead without having to kill her. The square of plastic lists Claudia A. Crownover as her name, five feet three as her height, and 120 pounds as her weight. A stands for Annabel. The license will require renewal in two years. The photograph is the usual DMV bad picture. I look up at him and smile. It's maybe the first time I've given him a genuine smile. "Do you want me to wear a glove so you don't have to see it?"

He shakes his head. "No. You're fine." But I'm not and we both know it. I visualize Dr. Lynskey scribbling a note in my file, "Mental health deteriorating rapidly, patient experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations vivid enough to mistake for reality."

After this we return to our normal routine of nightly movie-watching, with him careful to sit on my right so he won't have to deal with my damaged hand. None of the visitors trouble me after Claudia's presumed death. He looks worried all the time, as if he's just realized what a broken, mad container he's chosen for his precious pure supe son. Now he sleeps next to me every night, spooning up to my back. He must be very afraid I'm going to find some way to hurt the baby, stop the pregnancy train rolling to forsake his comfortable bed and apartment upstairs in Vought Tower for a futon in a detention cell.

"We can call him Alec instead of Jonah, if you want. Alec Jonah Vogelbaum," he whispers to me in the depths of night.

"That's fine." It's my canned answer for everything now. I will not take any more chances.

"We can get married, if you want."

It's the only proposal I will ever get. "If you want, that's fine."

"After Alec is born, then," he tells me.

"Okay." But I will not be there for the afterward. I trust in this the way I trust the sun will rise.

It happens at night. I wake up with the bottom of my scrubs soaked, and at first I think I've pissed myself in my sleep. Homelander's already awake and thinking much more clearly than I am. "Your water's broken. The baby's coming." I stiffen in fear, a montage from every pregnancy horror movie I've ever seen playing in my mind's eye, but he puts a hand on my back and rubs it. "It'll be fine. Becca lived. So will you."

But do I want to? I keep the thought to myself as he calls for help and orderlies bring a wheelchair for me to take me out of this room. I take a last look around as I will never come back here. He can be as hopeful as he likes, but I'm the one who's sensible. I'm realistic. He has not been brought up to be that way.

Dr. Lynskey has told me that the labor will probably take a long time, as this is my first pregnancy, and she proves right. It's a long, hard journey of bloody red heights of pain and bruised aching valleys between the contractions—such a clean word for a clawing monstrous thing. I scream, of course, but nothing like the heights of sound from my mutilation by Homelander's laser vision.

He's there to witness the birth of his son, the way he must have wanted to be for Ryan. I wonder if he would have offered to marry Becca if she hadn't already been married to Billy Butcher. But, like she says, that's apples and oranges. He looks frightened, like a man who's never been in a delivery room, and there's anger there, but he has enough sense not to injure or kill any of the people who are trying to bring his cuckoo into the world.

I hear someone say, "It's crowning," and then Dr. Lynskey tells me, "This is it, Ashley. One big push and it should be over. When I tell you, you bear down with everything you've got. Push!" I obey as best I can and suddenly the pain shuts off like someone flipped a switch. "It's a boy!" she tells me.

"As if there was any doubt," says Homelander.

But she doesn't hand the baby to me. Instead, she cleans it off, wraps it in a blanket, and puts it into Homelander's arms. He looks down at his son with all the love in the world in his eyes and walks out of the room. The doctor and the others in attendance follow him out, leaving me on the table, alone.

I let my head fall back. It's best this way. I can't bond with what isn't mine. Would he even have wanted me to? "You got yours, Ashley," says Queen Maeve from my left side, the damaged side. "All your toadying, all your crawling on your belly, and what did it get you? Dead."

"Maeve's alive," I whisper. I don't know if he's listening, but fuck this bitch. "Maybe she's stupid enough to go home to Modesto."

She looks alarmed and I smile. "I keep my promises, you fucking worthless supe, I hope he brings you back and makes you marry him. I hope you raise your fucking child and drink yourself to death, just like my mother did." And she vanishes again, so she just popped in for a gloat.

And now Becca is here, on my right. "It'll be okay, Ashley. You gave him his son. He loves you for it. He said he'd marry you. You're safe now."

I may have intended to say something, but the tidal gush of blood from between my legs cut the words off. From the materials Dr. Lynskey gave me to read, I know what this is: post-partum hemorrhage. Depending on how heavy the blood flow is, and this feels heavy, it can cause death. If even one person would have stayed in the room with me, this could have been dealt with and I would most likely have lived. But who wants that? Not me.

"Call for help, Ashley," Becca tells me. "Please call for help. Alec needs you!"

Out of stubbornness, I turn my head away from her and concentrate on the life flowing out of me. I visualize the etheric cord coming out of my belly, the thing that tethers a human to life, and mine looks like something took a big black bite out of it. There are some silver strands remaining to connect me, and I watch the darkness eat through them. It's a relief, really. No more fear, no more pain, no more hate and violence and powerlessness.

"Please try. He needs you." I don't know if Becca means the child or Homelander. For the first time since I woke up in the detention cell I find a thin sliver of compassion for him. He's a single father with a preteen son and a newborn baby that he has no idea how to care for. The next months will be rough for him. If he has heard my earlier whisper, he'll check Modesto for Maeve and drag her ass back to New York to raise her hellspawn, and she should not have spewed such hate at me if she wanted me to keep her secret. But it's as it should be, mommy and daddy and baby, and I do not belong in it. I watch the silver strands of the cord part.

"Please, mama, please try," Becca pleads, and I finally realize this is the baby, this is Alec speaking to me.

Like a sensible mother, I tell him, "No."

There is one strand left, and as I wait for it to go Alec gifts—or curses—me with one last hallucination: Homelander walks into the delivery room and takes in the lake of blood around me at a glance and his mouth opens in horror. My eyes drop from the face of his vision to the etheric cord, and as he moves forward, screaming for help, the last strand snaps in two.

I don't want to watch the world burn anyway.