"Eggs." Alison repeated, as if she could be unsure of what Scott revealed. Helena too, had escaped their infertile fate. Alison would have been envious, angry, even, once upon a time. Her first diagnosis led to third, fourth, and fifth opinions. All of them agreed she would never be able to have a child on her own. If they could see her now, sitting on a rickety barstool, staring down a canister of eggs that shared her DNA.
"It's stem cells in their purest form." Scott put the precious specimens back on ice. "Could give her immune system a boost, and then some."
"Then, what are you waiting for? How do we give 'em to her?" It was a no-brainer to Felix. They had a solution to help her, and they were still sitting around, talking about it, instead of putting it to action.
"I'm a sequencing tech, I mean, that stuff's way past my credentials." He fidgeted with the latch on the canister. "I can't really do much more for her here." He added softly. The lab was his domain. Codes, patterns and data fit more in his comfort zone. He looked to Cosima, still sedated on the couch, with Sarah right by her side.
Sarah wouldn't let go of Cosima's hand. She brushed her fingers across the creases in a steady cadence, silently pleading for those faded-lined eyes to open once more. Marion was right, Cosima needed more than Felix's dingy loft could provide. Her hand twitched back, showing signs of life for the first time since she'd hit the floor.
Cosima drowsily fluttered her lashes, trying to take a mental inventory of her current state. The taste in her mouth, the needle stuck in one arm, a warm hand gripped to the other. It happened again. "Hey." She broke the silence, groping for her glasses.
"Hi." Sarah let the tears fall freely as she unfolded the frames. "Try not to move too much, yeah? Scott had a hard enough time gettin' that needle in once."
The room came back into focus as she slid the frames on. Scott was there. Sarah decided to trust him after all. Her eyes followed the IV line to the bag balancing on the edge of the couch above, and back to Sarah, covered in a startling amount of blood. Man, was that all hers?
"Cos, I…"Sarah wanted to spill every ounce of apology in her at once.
"We still haven't talked about Castor." Cosima threaded her fingers through Sarah's. She didn't need to hear an apology. It didn't take a scientist to see Sarah was already fraught with guilt. She'd seen that look before when Delphine knocked on her lab door after their fight. Sarah just tried to protect her the only way she knew how, and Cosima was stubborn enough to fight it off like an attack. Hindsight was always 20/20.
Castor. It was buried in the recesses of her memory after all that had happened that day. "Male clones, I wouldn't've believed it if I didn't see it myself."
"It makes sense, when you think about it." Cosima mused, her mental engines humming back to life with the opportunity to share her knowledge. "Leda bore two sets of twins, one male, and one female. Castor and Pollux were the boys, pretty badass warriors."
"And Marion said the military was running the show." It was starting to make a little more sense for Felix.
"Building a perfect solider?" Scott piped up.
"If I had to guess? Yeah." Cosima's lids fluttered. Physical fitness, mental numbness, it was ruthless, but probably effective. At least their motive was more clear than DYAD's.
Alison cleared her throat, nudging the container on the floor with her foot. Cosima's health was a little more urgent than the mythology lesson.
Right. The eggs. "Cos, Helena left somethin' behind that could help you." Sarah floated the notion cautiously. Their fight was a none-too-subtle reminder of how unkindly Cosima took to unsolicited advice. She looked to Scott for a little backup.
"Um, unfertilized eggs. Like, a lot of them." He elaborated. "But, if we want to get a stem cell line out of them, we need a lab." He tented his fingers nervously.
"Marion's got a room all picked out for you." Sarah added quietly. It was entirely hypocritical of her after what she'd said about Scott and Delphine.
"Whoa, no. No way." Cosima shook her head, straightening up on the couch. It was unexpected after Sarah had chided her for sharing the cipher pages. She wasn't going to let herself get mad again. There was no time to be angry.
"We can't help you here, Cosima." Sarah rubbed her temples, trying to keep from erupting again. She was ashamed to make the about-face on her feelings on DYAD, but seeing Cosima take such a quick turn changed everything. The IVs and the oxygen were just a poor stopgap. It was no match for the real medical care she desperately needed. She'd learned the scary truth in her file, and she couldn't stand idly by. "And I know, I know it's your decision, but I can't let you die over this when there's a treatment staring us in the face."
"They kidnapped your daughter. They tried to take your ovary." The scientist in her knew Sarah was right. Breaths were harder and harder to salvage. Every inch of her body ached. Felix's loft was no place for a woman in her condition. Still, returning to a place they'd risked their necks to escaped was wildly counterintuitive.
"Even if we stay away, who can promise it won't happen again?" As Marion, and even Rachel told her, there were other forces at play. Who's to say some clandestine Military strike force wasn't already on their way to break down her door? As long as there were people that saw them as subjects, they were not safe. "We've got an ally this time." Marion was mysterious, but so far, she'd come through on her word.
"An ally we know nothing about." Cosima wheezed. Sarah wasn't going to let this go. She was running out of reasons to protest. She glanced down, fighting off a rising cough storm with sheer force of will. Sarah had lost her daughter and given her own body for her wellbeing. She couldn't send her back into the storm. "I can't ask for that kind of sacrifice again."
"It's not about me." Sarah coaxed her eyes back into contact, and took her hand once more, rubbing her thumb against her palm. "It's about all of us, Cos." Everyone in that room had lost a piece of themselves to this cause. She wouldn't allow it to be in vain. "Please, be bloody selfish for once."
"They're not my eggs to take." She couldn't in good conscience claim Helena's eggs for her biology without her permission. It was the kind of violation she'd clashed with Delphine against time and again. Even on death's door, she couldn't cave on her morals.
"Give yourself a chance to live long enough to apologize, then." Sarah was making her last stand. She couldn't sit there watching her sister suffer any longer. "Because I swear, Cosima, if you won't go, I'll drag you there myself."
Cosima exhaled slowly, in that way she did to cover up an oncoming cough. Sarah had drawn her line in the sand, and was sticking to it. This was her chance to make the right choice for herself. Cosima nodded softly, and the room seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief.
Sarah leaned in till their foreheads touched. "I trusted you with the science, yeah? I need you to trust me with this."
Marion's heels clacked on the linoleum floor of the sterile ward. The doctor had been waiting for her arrival. "How's our Rachel?" She asked, folding her arms as she stared through the glass window of the recovery room.
"Resting comfortably." He consulted the notes scrawled in the chart. "Eighteen hour surgery in a delicate area on a prominent member of the DYAD board. Amazing any of us survived." He quipped dryly.
"What's her prognosis?" She pursed her lips. Her superiors had their concerns.
"There wasn't anything to salvage from her retina, but she was the perfect candidate for our Oculast prosthetic." It was one of the crown jewels of their research and development collection.
"Pity to have to use it on one of our own." Marion's feigned sorrow was downright Oscar-worthy. She glanced at her vibrating phone. Cal. Hopefully Sarah was finally taking her up on her offer for Cosima. "Do call me when she wakes up." She excused herself to take the call.
"Driver's on the way." Sarah pocketed her clone phone while Alison busied herself with folding as many things for Cosima as possible. "Anything else you need?"
"Just for this crazy idea to work." Cosima backed up the latest data on her laptop for the umpteenth time. There was no room for error here. Just as she was about to clamp it closed, a Skype call popped up. She quickly clicked it open, her eyes scanning the screen impatiently for the video feed to start.
"Cosima…" The relieved Frenchwoman kept her hand to the screen, yearning for the moment she'd be able to hold her again. "I'm sorry, I can't linger, I just needed to see your face." Her lip quivered, taking her in. The IV dangling behind her was a new development.
"We're going back, Delphine." Cosima broke the news. "We might have a treatment to tide me-"
"Please, don't say any more." Delphine waved her hands in front of the camera. "This line, it isn't secure, I don't know who could be listening." She couldn't put her in more danger. She had enough frustration bubbling beneath. She couldn't ask her about her return, she couldn't tell her what they wanted from her in Frankfurt, and worst of all, she couldn't talk about her theories of the cipher. The secrecy was tearing her apart.
"Right. No, you're right." Cosima cleared her throat. "Just uh, don't worry, okay? We've got a plan." She gazed longingly into the camera. A short skype chat was no substitute for her touch on her skin.
"I…" Delphine looked off for a moment. "I have to go, there's another transport arriving."
"Yeah, go do your thing." She swallowed the lump in her throat, trying to slip on a smile.
"J'taime." She kissed her hand to the camera before it faded to black.
"Love you too." Cosima said softly. The message would find a way to its recipient somehow.
"Cos…" Sarah felt like she was intruding. It was time for them to make their move. "We gotta go."
Scott offered his hand and pulled her up. "Easy, easy, no rush." He reminded her and she steadied herself on his arms, waiting for the room to stop spinning.
"One step at a time, the car can't go anywhere without you." Alison took Cosima's bag on her shoulder as she followed behind.
"Gimme five, I'll meet you down there." Sarah closed the door behind them.
"Tell me you're not really goin' back there." Felix crossed his arms. Her last visit was anything but cordial.
"I'm not lettin' her go alone, Fee." She grabbed her leather jacket off the wall. "We're all she has, if this doesn't…." She couldn't finish the sentence. She didn't want to give it a voice, but if this plan didn't work, she wasn't going to let Cosima die alone in the Clonestitute with doctors waiting to poke and prod. "Marion made some kind of deal, they can't do anything to me, 'least not yet."
Felix knew he wasn't going to win this one. Once Sarah was invested, there was no swaying her. "If they try anything, promise me you'll get the hell out." He looked down to his shoes, tapping his heel against his ankle. "I'm not making another bloody trip to the morgue for you."
"You came highly recommended, ma'am, we're glad to have you on board. 'Bout time we had somebody who knew what in the Jesus H. Christ they were doin.'" The gruff seargant led Delphine down the maze of stairs to the hangar.
"Whatever I can do to help." She followed close behind, sticking to the old talking points on a DYAD script from once upon a time.
"Looks like the bird's landed." He leaned against the railing as the belly of the cargo plane opened wide. Several soldiers filed out, each blending into the next. Delphine didn't see the importance of this seemingly routine affair, until a different set of boots hit the ground in front of her. Her eyes scanned upwards, befuddled by every detail they absorbed, until they hit that unmistakable face. "Merde"