Wow, thank you so so much for all the reviews last chapter 333 seriously, guys, we're over 50? I love you so much, all of you lovely readers!

...and therefore I apologize for the cliffhanger at the end XD

CHAPTER 19: EVERYTHING THAT WE BELIEVED IN WAS A LIE

October 13, 2013

Hawthorne Towers Apartment Complex, Battery City, California

7:30 AM

Pregnancy was not all it was cut out to be.

With each passing day, Amy was beginning to hate her body more and more. First, there had been the constant vomit, eat, vomit, eat cycle of morning sickness that lasted nearly three months. She'd managed to return to work after the first couple of days, but every day it had been a struggle to hide her obvious sickness from her colleagues. Then there were the headaches and backaches that could paralyze her in fits of pain for nearly five minutes at a time. The worst part, though, was watching her body slowly distort itself to accommodate the thing growing in her stomach. It had gotten to the point where she'd had to quit work because her pregnant belly was becoming all too obvious. She could barely even move these days.

But still, Amy loved her baby with all her heart.

Instead of driving Chester and Amy apart as she feared a child would, the baby had brought them even closer together. Chester was overly conscious of his fiancée's sudden limitations and so made sure to take care of her, coming home every day during his lunch break and even cutting the last hour of work sometimes to check that both she and their child were still alright. His level of consideration for his family was adorable in Amy's eyes. Honestly, she couldn't have asked for a better partner to go through the whole horrible pregnancy process with.

Sometimes, Chester seemed even more excited about the coming baby than Amy did. He would always ask how their child was every morning and every day when he got home just after kissing his fiancée hello. Amy could only giggle and tell him to ask the baby himself, which always prompted Chester to kneel down and start talking to her stomach as if it could actually hear. The child brought out a side of her boyfriend that Amy had never seen. He had always been affectionate, but he was almost childishly exuberant about the prospect of their family. Any loved it—it was possibly the cutest thing she had ever seen him do.

That crisp October morning started the way that mornings in their apartment always did, with Chester waking up at quarter to eight for work and trying not to rouse his still-drowsy fiancée. As usual, he failed desperately. Amy woke as Chester was trying to disentangle his arms from around her.

"Hey, baby," she mumbled sleepily, opening one eye to glance over her shoulder at him.

"Hey, darling." Chester kissed her forehead gently. "Sorry I woke you up."

"It's fine," she yawned, rolling onto her back. He pulled back and got out of bed, smiling down at Amy.

"But you need your rest," he murmured. "You're pregnant, darling."

"All I do is sleep all day, anyway," she laughed.

He laughed too, sitting down on the edge of the bed and laying one hand on her prominent stomach. "I know. I just want to make sure you'll be okay…"

Chester's endearingly overprotective attitude towards her never got old for Amy. She sighed and grinned up at him. "I'll be fine, Chaz, don't worry, and so will the baby. I can take care of it till you get back."

"Don't forget to take care of yourself, too," he told her, pressing a quick kiss to her lips before standing again. "I'd die if anything ever hurt you."

"You worry too much, Chazy," she called after him as he walked into the closet to get ready for work.

"Aren't I allowed to worry?" he shouted back.

She giggled. "Well of course, but you don't have to worry so much! I can take care of myself, you know."

"I know you can," he answered. "But just in case." He re-emerged from the closet, clothed and ready for work, and kissed Amy one last time. "Now go back to sleep, darling—I'll be back before you know it."

"Have a good day, love," she murmured sleepily.

"Love you."

"Love you more."

"Impossible!" Chester called out, laughing.

"You better believe it!" Amy answered cheekily just as the front door slammed shit behind him, signifying the departure of her fiancé for work that day. She sighed and flopped back onto her pillow.

Days without Chester tended to be long and boring. Amy had grown used to his constant presence over the months they had spent cooped up in that basement together, but once they moved into Battery City, she'd been too busy with her new job and her new life to have time to miss him. Now, though, she was spending her days alone with nothing to do.

The break had certainly given her time to think. Unfortunately, thinking was about the last thing Amy wanted to do at the moment. Time to think was also time to reflect on everything that she'd lost in the apocalypse. There was no one left from her old life except Chester and her half-sister Adrienne, who hadn't heard anything about the rest of their family either. Amy had spent much of her time communicating with Adrienne via e-mail, as Adrienne was stationed out of her almost completely destroyed college about five miles away from Battery City. She had been working in the basement on her laptop when she heard news of the fire and hadn't dared to go above-ground until the school's fire alarms quit blaring nearly twenty-four hours later. As far as she knew, only six students had survived as well as a few outlying houses in the area.

Amy was forever grateful that her sibling had survived. She'd always been close to Adrienne and their relationship head been closer to that of best friends instead of half-sisters, and she knew people whose entire family had died last December. To have not only Chester but Adrienne with her was something she would be eternally grateful for.

The apocalypse had taken her mother and father, thought—or at least, she had no idea where they were. They had been home alone that night and were probably burned alive, entombed in their suburban LA bungalow. Her house didn't have a basement. She would have died if she hadn't stayed with Chester.

But Amy had survived. She was very much alive…and very much pregnant, her body reminded her as a wave of nausea washed over her and she dashed for the bathroom.

Chester didn't reminisce on the past as he walked to the construction site that his froup had started work on a week ago. He didn't have time to. Instead, all of his thoughts each day were focused on the future.

The baby was a blessing, that was for sure. But it was an illegal blessing. He'd been too apprehensive to actually visit Kanpeki Center and borrow a copy of Better Living's new laws as citizens were allowed to do, worried that the company would notice something was up, but he knew that sex was illegal for minors—and minors was defined as anyone under 21 by Better Living Industries. He'd thought that as long as they told nobody about their, er, activities, they would be safe. But if anyone ever noticed Amy's swollen belly…

That was crazy. Amy was safe at home, and in a few short months, their child would be born. They could pass it off as a younger sibling until one day, when they would be able to finally tell the truth and become a real family.

The teenage boy sighed and smiled, looking up into the gray-blue cloudy sky that always hung over Battery City. Family. It was such a beautiful word. Amy, a mother—him, a father. It was unthinkable and absolutely perfect at the same time.

As he reached the site of the new skyscraper they were working on rebuilding, Chester had to work to push the thoughts of Amy and their baby to the back of his mind. If he continued to dwell on it he felt sure the happiness would flow over and he would end up telling one of the other workers about it. It had nearly happened before, multiple times, but he had always been able to stop himself for the sake of Amy and the kid. They were his number one priority.

"Chester!" a man's voice called out. He looked back down from the sky, realizing he had paused in front of the building site. A trio of men that were a part of his construction team, Tom, Mark and Travis, were waving at him from the opposite direction as they rounded the corner.

"Hey," Chester called back. He smiled at them as his colleagues neared him, joking loudly and shoving each other.

"What's up?" Tom greeted him. The men followed him into the worksite, where nearly a thousand men had already congregated, and sought out their overseer to check in for the day. The man gave them a gruff smile and their work supplies, sending them off with a cheery "See you at twelve!"

"How's Amy?" Travis elbowed Chester's arm and winked as they walked to the portion of the building they were working on. "You two staying safe?"

Chester grinned. "Amy's fantastic." This prompted a chorus of 'oohs' and nudges from Tom and Travis. Mark, however was oddly quiet, looking more serious than he normally was. The teenager made a mental note to ask him about it later.

Soon enough, the four men settled into a pattern of work, chatting freely as they repaired the fifth-floor wooden infrastructure. Mark still seemed oddly uneasy, but Chester was soon able to forget his friend's weird mood among Tom and Travis' witty diatribe and the constant thoughts of Amy.

Amy was thinking of Chester, too, as she finally rolled out of bed. He was never far from her mind during the day, but she was mostly focused on the worse-than-normal sickness on that date. There was definitely something alive in her body, because it had been kicking the inside of her belly all morning. It was taking all her effort to stay on her feet as she moved around the apartment and not to collapse onto the couch, letting the pain and fatigue and nausea overtake her body.

There wasn't much to distract her from the sickness, though. Amy's apartment was slowly turning into a prison for the young girl. Both the television and the Internet were censored by Better Living Industries to the point that there was no entertainment, and there was hardly anything else in the tiny apartment. Even worse was the fact that she couldn't leave the safety of her home. Going outside meant other people and possible interaction with Better Living workers. Interaction led to questions about her obvious pregnancy, which led to questions about her age, which led to background checks. Background checks would turn up the truth about her condition—and that was the one thing people could never be allowed to find out about Amy.

Going outside was not an option. TV and Internet were mindless, pointless distractions. There was no one for her to talk to, so Amy thought.

She missed work. She never thought she'd say it, but she missed the daily routine of the Better Living office. The day she had left was still clear in her mind, especially her goodbye to Sharon, who she hadn't seen in months. Sharon had been a friend, and Amy had trusted her, maybe even more than she should have. After all, she had told the older woman quite a lot about her condition on the day that she quit…

July 14, 2013

The 21st Floor, Kanpeki Center, Battery City

10:07 AM

"You're leaving?" Sharon gawked, watching Amy drift around the small office as she collected her belongings.

"Not permanently," Amy clarified. "I'm just taking my six-month break early."

"But that's the only break you'll get in the next ten years! Why would you use it so early?"

"Chester and I wanted some time together before we get married," the younger girl explained, feeding her friend the carefully constructed lie she and her fiancé had dreamed up the night before. She slid her laptop into her bag and set it on her office chair, turning to her older coworker. "I'll be back, Shar," she promised.

Sharon regarded her curiously. "Are you sure that's the only reason?"

What? Amy froze, not sure what to say. She and Chester hadn't planned for this. She'd thought everyone would accept their story, too unobservant to dig deeper…

But this was Sharon she was talking about, Sharon who saw everything and let nothing slip past her. Sharon had seen her throw up, had seen her stomach grow over time, had seen her awkward mood swings. Sharon had told her everything about herself, and Sharon understood her.

Amy came to an important decision in that moment: Sharon could be trusted.

"No, you're right," she sighed. "That's not all. I'm pregnant."

Sharon gasped, her hand flying to cover her mouth. She stared at Amy, eyes wide and bemused. "But—but you're seventeen," she murmured, her words muffled by her hand.

Amy nodded stoically. "It was after Chester and I got engaged. We may be young, but we're going to be together for the rest of our lives. It was our decision. And then…" Her hands moved to encircle her slightly bulging stomach caringly, and an adoring look spread across her face. "This happened," she shrugged.

"But Amy, that's illegal," Sharon hissed.

"It's not hurting anyone," the young girl protested. "Nobody will care if they don't find out."

"You know they could execute you if they hear about this," Sharon said grimly.

Amy smiled weakly. "But they won't find out."

Sharon watched her face for a moment, staring at Amy as if calculating something. Then she stood up and embraced the smaller girl, folding Amy into a warm hug.

"Stay safe, Amy Lee," she whispered. "See you soon."

"Thanks, Shar," Amy murmured. She pulled back and looked up at her friend. "You won't tell, will you?"

"Not a soul," Sharon promised.

Amy hadn't seen Sharon since, but she was sure her friend was doing just fine. As long as Better Living existed, they would need secretaries like her, and she would keep getting her supplies from the company. Amy's own pay rations had been stopped after her final bundle of food and clothes she had received on her last day. The clothes didn't fit her now, and the only things that fit over her pregnant stomach were Chester's t-shirts and some of his jeans. But she had found something unusual among her final group of supplies: a small clear plastic pill bottle, labeled simply with BL/ind: The Aftermath is Secondary. The instructions on the back of the bottle were to swallow one pill each day, but there was no other information—no drug facts, no surgeon's warning, no side effects.

After a long discussion, Chester and Amy had decided it wasn't safe for her to take them—they had no idea what their effect on Amy's pregnant body might be. But Chester had taken a few after he hurt his hand at work, and he'd told her they worked incredibly well. Amy wasn't so sure—Chester had acted abnormally for the next couple days, compliant and tired, almost uninterested in everything. It wore off, and he hadn't had a need to try them again, even though he began to receive them in his payroll bundle, too.

Those pills had begun to appear on the television recently, too. Quick advertisements asking "Have you taken your pills today?" flashed in between shows, as well as cartoons and news segments talking about the 'new miracle pill' that Better Living scientists had discovered.

Amy was beginning to wonder about Better Living's pushiness pertaining to not only the pills, but the utter compliance they required to the law. It seemed like every day they came out with a new, nearly meaningless rule for society with a disproportionately harsh punishment: being out alone on the streets after 10:00 PM was forbidden, playing or listening to rock music was forbidden, entering the Mojave Desert was forbidden. And the people listened. Many were putting all of their faith in the company, trusting blindly that it would do what was best for them. Amy thought she had a little more sense than them—at least she still had her own mind.

Regardless, Chester still worked for Better Living, and technically, Amy did, too. She didn't have to trust them explicitly; she just had to pretend to.

"Darling, I'm home!" Chester's voice rang through the apartment, startling Amy out of her thoughts. She peered over the back of the couch to watch him quickly shed his coat and make his way over to her, smiling.

"Hey, Chazy," she grinned. "How was your morning?"

"Would've been better if I was with you," he teased, flopping down onto the couch next to her. He reached over and embraced her lightly, kissing her forehead. "But it was fine. We got most of the structuring for the fifth floor done; we can probably finish it off this afternoon. How are you?"

"The baby's being active again," she laughed.

Chester grinned and laid a hand on her stomach. "I bet it'll be a soccer player when it grows up," he chuckled. Amy felt a hard jab on the inside of her abdomen, as if the baby was agreeing with the statement. Chester smiled, but Amy's small wince didn't go unnoticed.

He frowned and leaned down. "Baby," he said seriously, "you can kick as much as you want when you get out of there, but right now, you need to hold off a bit. Your mom's being very nice and carrying you around, but it hurts her sometimes, so calm down, okay?"

His speech set off a small flurry of kicks, and Amy gulped, wrapping her arms around her stomach. "I think it just likes your voice," she said weakly.

Chester frowned, looking deflated. "I'll be quiet, then," he murmured.

"No, no, that's not what I meant," she protested. "It doesn't hurt that much—" her words were cut off in another wince, and she gasped.

"It obviously hurts that much," Chester said, watching her worriedly.

"Well, the baby's not the only one who likes its' daddy's voice," she murmured, looking up at him from under her eyelashes. "I'm not gonna put a gag order on you while you're around me, Chester—I'd miss you far too much."

"But if it hurts you like that…" he gestured helplessly.

"You worry about me way more than you need to," she giggled. "It's sweet, but I'll be fine. It'll all be worth it in the end."

"When we're a real family," he whispered, pulling her closer.

"I can't wait." Amy leaned her head on his shoulder, looking up at him with wide, frosty blue eyes. "What do you think it will be like?"

"Well, I'm not sure what gender it'll be, but I hope it'll have your eyes," he murmured.

She smiled gently. "As long as it gets your voice."

The peaceful moment was broken by Chester's phone going off loudly, blasting a tune from his pocket. He frowned and glanced down at it. "I've got to go back, Ames," he said regretfully.

"Have a good afternoon," she smiled. "Stay safe."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

Chester waved to her as he opened the door, stepping out into the chilly hallway again. He knew he didn't need to worry about Amy as much as he did—she was an independent girl, and she'd never needed to rely on anyone before. But still, he couldn't help but want to make sure she stayed safe during the pregnancy. Not only was it a danger to her health, but if anyone ever found out…

They wouldn't. He knew that well. The pair had gone to every extreme to make sure that all three of them would come out of the situation completely fine. They'd told no one that Amy was pregnant, and no one was going to know.

Chester neared the now-familiar construction site once again, quickly finding Tom, Mark and Travis again at the same place he had left them. They were just throwing away the remains of their lunch as he located them, sitting atop one of the fifth-floor wooden beams.

"Hey, lover boy!" Travis shouted, his mouth full.

"You and Amy have fun?" Tom added.

Chester nodded, grinning. He grabbed a hammer and began to work, glancing over at Mark. "What's up with you?"

"Not much," Mark mumbled, staring into his lap. He twisted his hands together nervously. "Just, you know, work."

"Dude, what's wrong?" Travis asked.

"Nothing," Chester's friend muttered. "I'll just—work."

Mark was acting weird all afternoon, but it was more noticeable than it was in the morning. Chester suspected it was because he was attuned to his friend's odd behavior, whereas he hadn't paid attention to it that morning. He decided that if Mark wanted to tell him, he would, but the older man seemed pretty quiet about it. It seemed like he was having some sort of internal debate throughout the day, judging by his constantly fluctuating expression and mood while he worked. Travis and Tom worked to get the reason for his strange mood out of him, but Mark remained silent.

At four o'clock exactly, a loud bell pierced the air, signaling to the workers that their day was over. Tom and Travis sprinted off, yelling over their shoulders "See you tomorrow!" at their fellow workers. Chester began to follow them, but Mark shouted, "Hold up, Chester!"

The teenager paused, looking back at the man. "Hey, Mark," he called. "What's up?"

Mark caught up to him, huffing from his small sprint. "I need to tell you something," he said in a low voice.

"Shoot," Chester said, leaning in curiously.

The man glanced around them at the flow of people surrounding the pair, watching the hundreds of workers walk past them. "Not here," he hissed. "It's too crowded."

Mark led Chester to the back of the construction site, ducking behind a cement pillar and pulling the younger boy with him. "There's no one back here, is there?" he whispered cautiously.

"I don't think so," Chester said, growing impatient. "What is it?"

After one last glance around the area to make sure, Mark turned back to Chester, staring him in the eye. "Ches," he said, "I don't know what illegal activity you and Amy are planning up in your apartment, but Better Living Industries knows about it."