UNTITLED
Chapter One
I turned around in the Junta amphitheater and there he was, floating in the jelly-like pod on the stage: an unborn baby, a fetus really. A rotund, wrinkled thing with a puckered mouth, ten fingers, and ten toes. The incubator that held him was made of some sort of metal, and in this light, the whole thing glowed pink. A placenta-like structure was attached to his body, connecting him to the contraption that held him. Holy crap what do we do with a baby?
Alexander paced back and forth in front of the incubator, which the doctor studied closely without touching. He stared at it as if he could will it to move. "We're taking the baby with us. Doctor, you can come as well. We'll take care of it until it's ready to be born."
"He," the doctor said softly. "He'll be ready soon if I'm not mistaken. This is... this is like nothing I've ever seen before."
"The baby should stay here, in the Junta headquarters." Some old man stood and waved his hand. "We can keep it safe."
Pfft. Yeah right. They'd probably kill it the very second our backs were turned. I wasn't so sure I wanted to take a baby home with us, but we certainly weren't leaving it here.
"We should take him home," Alexander said. "Or at least take him to a hospital or something."
"Or something," I said. I felt bad for the kid. He was just floating there in that pod, sucking his thumb, and waiting for the world to come for him. He was probably going to be very confused when he got older, and he wouldn't know why. It was just a very human thing to do, to want to save this kid. I couldn't help but feel a surge of affection for Alexander. He was this big leader, king of the Fae and all that, yet he was being so protective over a baby he technically didn’t have to be loyal towards at all. He had a good heart. I couldn’t deny that.
"No hospitals," the doctor said. "We'll have to get any equipment I need to help this marvelous creature to your home."
Alexander and I looked at each other, surprised. "What do you mean, help?" I asked. "You mean, like, help him to be born?"
The doctor nodded. "Yes, of course. As I said, he's going to be ready soon. But I need to prepare him first. You'll need to be ready to have an infant in your home."
"I can help," Riley said. My cousin had babies of her own, young ones. "Let me take him."
That was a pretty good idea. She already had Linna and Michael, still infants, so she knew how to take care of one. Alexander and I could help her with the baby and make sure he was all right.
"I'll go get my supplies ready," the doctor said, and he hurried out of the room.
We walked back over to the incubator, and Alexander stared at the baby. I couldn't help but stare too. The baby was so... perfect. He had a little halo of dark hair on his head, and his skin was bluer than ours, and he was absolutely gorgeous, even through whatever the gook was.
"Look at his little face," Alexander said. "I just want to hold him."
"We have no idea what would happen if we attempted to get him out of that jelly," I said.
Riley shook her head. "Heck, no. That's his womb. For all that baby knows, he's in his mother's belly."
"This poor little guy," I whispered.
"Poor?" Riley smiled at him. "He's got the best of both worlds. He's going to be immortal and he's going to have superpowers. What's not to love?"
"I don't know," I said. "He's going to have a very strange life. That's a lot for a little guy to handle. He needs real parents."
"No," Alexander said forcefully. "I have no doubt you'd provide a wonderful home for him, Riley, and later on, down the road, perhaps we can discuss that. But if Jen and Roan are willing to help, I believe we should take this child ourselves. We can keep it safest." He chuckled. “Besides, you do seem to have a penchant for collecting children.”
Riley laughed, too, because she had to know that was true. She opened her mouth to give Alexander a hard time but was interrupted by someone in the crowd.
"This is a fallacy." The same old man, who looked to be a Supay, stood and waved his hand. "We should kill the child. We should be sending bombs through the portal right this minute and destroying every single one of the twisted, test-tube babies!"
A few people cheered. I glared at the crowd, trying to find out who had been happy to go kill dozens and dozens of defenseless unborn babies.
"Chill, dude," Riley muttered. "Don't overdo it."
I felt my face getting hot, but I refused to back down. "I agree with Alexander. These babies deserve a chance, and they deserve parents who will love them and not just use them to turn into super soldiers. Even if they won't be normal, they should still be able to enjoy life."
The man glared at me. "You're so young and naïve. The world doesn't work that way. If the other side is using these children to make super soldiers, we need to do the same. We need to be better than them."
"You know what?" I said, my voice shaking. "I'm not going to let this happen. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that the babies in the other dimension are just as safe as this one is. They still deserve to live."
