"... me put away these things," she heard Brin say, her voice sounding strange and muddled to Syl's pounding ears.
"I still can't believe... this much food. My fridge... loaded."
"Your fridge is loaded with boy stuff," Brin chided; they were nearer now. "As in leftover takeout that's too old. Besides, we had to do something while those two had their big talk."
"What's this?"
"What?"
"Zack. He's little."
"Aw, how cute, look at that face."
"He looks serious."
"Well, he's Zack," Brin said. "Syl must have brought it."
"Where are they anyway?" Zane asked.
"Maybe they adjourned to the bedroom," Brin said in a snobby English accent. Zane laughed.
"Syl!" he called. "Krit!" She heard his voice getting louder, cringed as a few especially painful convulsions wracked her body. She heard Zane's footsteps just around the corner. "Where did you guys- Oh, God."
"What?" Brin called; Syl felt Zane drop to his knees beside her and his hands were on her shoulders immediately, gently prying her grip away from her legs.
"Syl?" he asked softly. "Can you hear me?" She opened her eyes to see his worried face, forced a wavering smile and tried to speak to him, but no words could get past the chattering of her teeth. Zane scooped her quickly into his arms.
"Brin!" he called as he hurried her back into the living room. "Tryptophan now, please!" Zane sat Syl on the sofa and reached out a hand to steady her as she almost fell over, convulsing violently. Brin was next to her instantly, pushing several pills into her hand and standing ready with a glass of milk. Syl almost couldn't get the pills down, but finally managed to and took a relieved sip of the white liquid. Zane smoothed the hair off her damp face and glanced at Brin worriedly.
"Where the hell is Krit?" he muttered.
"He's gone," Syl managed as the seizure subsided a little. "He's not coming back." She started shaking even more, thinking about what had happened.
"Okay, don't get worked up," Brin soothed. "Lie down." Syl did as her sister asked, let Brin tuck a blanket around her shuddering body. She smiled weakly at them.
"You know I'll be fine," she said. "It's not your fault you were out."
"Zane," Brin said. "Help me with these groceries."
"Okay," he answered, giving Syl a tense smile before heading back into the kitchen with Brin. She was relieved that her sister had remembered she hated to be seen as vulnerable.
"What's wrong?" he asked; she faced away from him, rifling through the
kitchen cupboard for something to eat.
"Nothing."
"Are you nauseous again?"
"It'll pass."
"This is the third morning in a row. Maybe there's something wrong with you. Food poisoning-"
"Zack, it's not food poisoning," Syl hissed, turning to him where he was sitting on the sofa about to make a call. He frowned.
"What is it then?"
"Zack-" She stopped, bit her lip, put a hand over her flat stomach without meaning to. "I think..." She trailed off, turned away. "Never mind," she said quietly. After a moment she heard the phone being set back on its cradle.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Syl."
"I just thought-" She turned back to him, wrung her hands together, swallowed. Then she started crying. Zack hesitated, waited for her to compose herself, which took a minute or two. "I thought maybe I should get..." She turned away from him, whispered, "A pregnancy test." There was a long silence.
"You didn't take the pill?" he asked quietly. He didn't sound angry and she was glad.
"I did take the pill," she said. "Maybe it didn't work."
"Those things cover 36 hours," he said slowly. "You said you'd only been with him for one when I showed up."
"One hour that day," she whispered. Zack frowned again, struggled with that for a moment. She could see his mind working, could see him kicking himself for the assumption that had been his flaw in planning the mission of not letting Syl get pregnant. He had assumed that he'd saved her the first time it had happened, but in truth it had been going on for months before he came along. She waited for him to yell but it didn't happen.
"Do you really think...?" He trailed off, stood up, ran a hand through his hair. He grabbed his car keys. "Okay, I'll get you one."
"Get two," she said quietly, raising her eyes to his reluctantly. "I want to be sure."
"Okay," he said. "Good idea." He grabbed his jacket.
"You're going now?"
"Don't you want to find out?"
"I'm afraid to find out," she whispered, hugging herself. Zack put a tentative hand on her shoulder but she stiffened, so he withdrew it. "No," she said. "It's okay." He took her hand, squeezed it.
"I'll be back in a little while," he said.
"Okay," she answered softly, watched him leave. She locked the door behind him and dropped onto the sofa to wait for him to return, wishing that she didn't already know what the result of the tests would be.
"You feeling better, little sister?" Brin asked softly, touching Syl's
face and startling her suddenly out of her reverie. "Sorry."
"I'm okay," Syl said; her shaking had almost completely stopped now and she was exhausted. Zane and Brin, sitting in two chairs facing her sofa, exchanged a concerned glance. "Really," Syl said. "I'm fine. Good thing you walked in."
"Yeah," Zane said gravely.
"What happened with Krit?" Brin asked gently. Syl sat up, fought back dizziness, shrugged. Brin held up Zack's picture. "Did he bring this?"
"Yeah." Syl smiled at the photograph, took it from her sister. "He was so little."
"It must have been right after the escape," Zane said.
"Yeah, he told me 2010," Syl answered. She put the picture down. "I'm hungry. And tired."
"We bought food," Zane said. "But you can't go to sleep. We still have to ring in the new year with champagne."
"I don't drink."
"Come on," Brin said. "Make an exception. For us?"
"Ugh," Syl grunted, but smiled. "Okay, a little champagne. What time is it?"
"Time for dinner," Zane said, rubbing his hands together. "What should we eat?"
"What do we have?"
"Ask Brin, she's the one who bought it all," Zane complained. "I can't even remember half the things you got."
"Liar," Brin said. "You remember everything."
"I've chosen to forget all that healthy stuff you carted in here." He cringed as though 'healthy stuff' was an unimaginable horror. Syl laughed at him, went into the kitchen with Brin to start dinner. She heard Zane dialling the phone in the next room and listened with one ear to what he was saying without meaning to, Brin doing the same. It was hard not to perform surveillance even when they were doing something as safe and un-Manticore as making vegetarian chilli, which is what Brin had settled on.
"Why vegetarian?" Syl asked. "I like my meat."
"I'm a Buddhist," Brin explained.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
In the next room they heard Zane say, "Okay, it's Monday night. I'm alive, all's well, apartment's nice by the way, you should come see me. I'm also checking in for Brin and Syl-" He called out, "Right?"
"Right!" Brin called back.
"Because like I told you they're here for New Year's," Zane continued. "Drop by if you're anywhere in the area." He hung up, added, "Yeah, right," under his breath, and joined his sisters in the kitchen.
"Vegetarian?" he asked when they'd explained what they were making. "What, you mean like no animal? No iron? No blood?"
"Ick," Brin said, then handed him a frying pan. "Here, if you want to grab a pound of hamburger and fry it up you can stick it in your share of the chilli."
"Sounds good."
"Syl and I," Brin said. "Are going to be healthy."
"It's just not healthy."
"But this is how I want to do it, I want to have my baby at home," Syl insisted. No bloodwork, no medical history, nothing that would lead back to Manticore. Beside her Zack nodded, but the midwife shook her head.
"I'm sorry, but you should have thought of that before you got pregnant at such a young age," she said, giving Syl's large stomach a disdainful look, making her stiffen.
"I'll remember to say that next time I'm being raped," she said bitterly. Both Zack and the woman cringed for different reasons.
"I'm... sorry," the midwife said slowly. "But you have to understand that I can't deliver your baby this way. Especially if you've been raped. I assume you had surgery to repair damage? Cuts, tears, that sort of thing?" Syl glanced away from the woman, made a face, shrugged.
"That's right," Zack answered for her anyway.
"Okay," the midwife said, turning to him as Syl continued to not meet her eyes. "Home birth is not recommended for someone who's undergone that kind of physical trauma, especially if it happened this recently. There might be complications that could even lead to internal haemorrhaging and possibly death." Syl squirmed a little as the woman continued, "Even without the rape or the surgery, she's very small. Ideally she should deliver by caesarean in a hospital where they can give emergency care if its needed. Blood transfusions, that sort of thing."
"So you're saying no one will homebirth this baby?" Syl asked flatly.
"Oh, someone will, for the right price," the woman answered, her voice scornful. "But I'm telling you that in my medical opinion you need to go to a hospital to have this child. If you don't there's a chance that one or both of you could die."
Outside, Zack and Syl walked in silence toward the car. Finally she couldn't stand it and turned to him heavily. He glanced at her, spoke first.
"It's okay, I'll figure it out. I'll get some fake histories and try to convince them that I know you and I have the same blood type. If they still insist on a workup or if they find out anything else we'll be long gone before Lydecker gets wind of it, I'll make sure."
"Zack," she said. "I don't want to lose this baby."
"I should have made you have an abortion."
"Please don't start that again."
"I'm just saying."
"Well don't."
"Okay."
"I don't' want to lose this baby," she said again.
"You won't. We didn't go this far to have the kid die, Syl."
"I'm scared."
"Understandable," he said as they slid into the car. He didn't make a move to start it.
"You know, you're nothing like Lydecker."
"Thanks."
"I know you worry about it."
"You're not going to lose the baby, Syl."
"Sure I am," she said softly, not looking at him. "I'm going to give it up." Zack stiffened.
"We talked about that," he said, reaching over to start the car. She put her hand on his arm to stop him; he obeyed but said nothing.
"Zack?" There was no answer. "Zack."
"What?"
"I want to keep it."
"No."
"Zack-"
"You're thirteen, Syl," he said firmly, staring out at the rain that had started falling outside, not looking at her. "You're not ready to raise a baby and neither am I."
"Then I'll raise it on my own."
"No, Syl."
"But I never had a mother." She was crying now; she wanted him to look at her. "This baby deserves one."
"You won't be depriving it of that. Families are always wanting to adopt."
"What if it's a girl? How do you know they won't hurt her like they hurt me?" There was a long silence.
"They won't," he said finally.
"But how can I know they won't?"
"I'm telling you they won't, Syl."
"You told me that we would be safe out here, that I would be happy," she said softly. He visibly cringed but she didn't take her words back because they were true. "You promised, Zack." His car door suddenly opened. "It's rain-" she started, but he was already out, the door slamming shut behind him. She wondered momentarily if he was going to leave her here in this parking lot and never come back, but the thought passed almost immediately. She wiped away the fog from their warm breath on the cold window and saw him standing a few feet away, kicking at a stone, letting the rain fall on his head and not caring. She frowned, wrung her hands together over her large stomach. Finally she leaned over to open his door and the rain pelted in at her.
"Zack!" she called. "Come back already!" He didn't move.
"Close the door, Syl," he said, something gravelly in his voice- was it anger or sadness? She couldn't tell. "It's cold out here." She closed it and then got out of the passenger door instead, walked over to him through the rain, stopped just behind him. It took so long for him to turn to her that she was sure his jaw would be tensed with anger when he finally did. Instead she found sorrow and even a little understanding in his blue eyes. And love. And guilt.
"You're nothing like Lydecker," she said again. His face was streaked with rain, as was her own, but they both had much slower reaction times to the cold than normal humans.
"I'll look out for her, Syl, if you want me to," he said softly, after so long that she wasn't sure she hadn't imagined it. The wind whipped his words away so fast that she almost didn't hear him. Then she started crying, her tears mixing with the rain until she didn't know which was which anymore. He just stared at her, sadly. He was right, she couldn't raise a baby. And even if she could, would she want that constant reminder right in front of her every day of what had happened to her? She put on a small smile, looked up at him after a long moment.
"I think that would make me happy," she said quietly. He nodded.
"Then I'll do it until you ask me to stop."
