Alexander shouted into the crowd, “Shut up Amos, we aren’t killing anyone that wants to be peaceable, you know that. Don’t make me remove you from these proceedings.”
The voice gave a loud harrumph but didn’t shout any more after that. I told my story, timidly at first, but emboldened by the smiles and kind faces I saw. Most of the creatures in the crowd wanted to live their lives, and were happy to let me do the same. But first we had to deal with the Leyak.
As I spoke about the babies, people gasped, covered their mouths, and cried out. I saw a few tears. Shouts rang out from the masses.
“It’s barbaric!”
“We must go save them, now!”
“And that settles the case for why we should stay away from science! Look what it leads to!”
Alexander held up his hands. “Unless you’re hell bent on world domination, studying science isn’t going to cause us to clone dozens of babies. Let her finish.”
I told everything else I could remember, and then stepped back. Alexander pointed to his seat at the council table. “Go sit, this could take a while.”
He turned back to the crowd. “We can’t storm in there. Do any of you know how to care for infants still essentially in the womb?”
A thin woman with long white hair stood. “No, but the humans do.”
Alexander’s eyebrows flew up. “The council recognizes Oryx, speaker for the Weres.”
“You all know we live much of our lives as humans. We have no powers besides shifting.” People around the room nodded. It was common knowledge. “We follow human news, learn in their schools, and there have been breakthroughs recently. Humans grew a lamb in an artificial womb. There was much talk about possibly being able to save prematurely born babies soon.”
The woman sitting beside me leaned over and whispered, “Hello dear, I’m Cindy. I’m friends with Riley.”
I tried to listen to both her and the conversation in the room. “Nice to meet you. Can I ask, what was that woman?”
“The Were representative? Her name is Oryx. She’s a unicorn.”
Hell yes.There were unicorn shifters in the world. My day got a little brighter.
“She’s one of only three left in the entire world. Poor dear.”
“Maybe when all this is done, we can clone her.”
Cindy gasped. “Don’t let some of the old ones hear you say that. They’d try to kill you on the spot.”
I shrugged. “She talks about being integrated into human life, but Iwashuman until a few weeks ago. It doesn’t seem so outlandish to me. Inhumane what the Leyak are doing, absolutely. But not outlandish.”
Alexander turned around and gave us a dirty look. Whoops. I grinned at Cindy and turned my full attention back to the room.
“So we take a human scientist. Implore their help. Cindy, how close are the witches to finishing the spell to prevent humans from speaking out about our secrets?”
“Any day now. We’re testing for any sort of loophole. At this point we’re trying to break the spell, trying to think of creative ways someone could tell a secret to see if the spell will fail.”
“Excellent. So it could in theory be used now, and extra layers added in the future if a way to get around it was found?”
Cindy tapped her fingers on the table and didn’t reply for a few ticks. “Yes, I’d say that’s a possibility.”
“Excellent. Oryx, please gather a team that is the most knowledgeable about science.”
She nodded. “We have many that went to advanced classes in high school. It didn’t break our laws, but it’s the best we’ve got. We couldn’t allow them to progress their scientific knowledge in college.”
“For now,” he replied severely, eyeing the crowd before turning back to Cindy. “Please provide a magic user to create gateways. Someone strong, as this will ultimately be a kidnapping mission.”
“Hold up,” I said, raising my hand like a child waiting to be called on in grade school. “I highly doubt there’s any need to kidnap anyone. First of all, you need to do some research. Not every scientist is going to know how to do this. There will only be a handful in the world that can successfully navigate the complicated pods I saw in that portal.”
Alexander nodded. “You can help us find the appropriate people.”
