"I am okay. The pull — it is here. It is here, Thaw. Whatever it is, it is in this room."
His gold eyes sweep the room. Crull has come in behind us, filling the doorway. Dean is in front of us at the terminal, already plugging in the small black storage drive he has been carrying.
"Files," Dean says. Quiet. "I am pulling everything on this machine. Two minutes."
"Crull."
"Yes."
"Watch the door."
"Yes."
I turn to the filing cabinets.
The patch is screaming now. Not pain. Direction. Here, here, here. I cross the office in three steps and Thaw is half a step behind me, his hand at my back, and I open the cabinet labeled DONOR PROGRAM — ACTIVE, and I start pulling files.
The files are organized by year. Then by region. Then by name.
I pull active. I pull Pacific Northwest. I am looking for Griggson. I find Griggson at the back of the active folder, my own file.
I take it. I put it in my coat.
I pull the file behind mine. The name on the tab is Hollens, M.
I open it.
The file is the same format as mine. Personal data. Blood panel. Marker score. Cycle schedule. There is a photograph clipped to the inside cover — a young woman with dark hair and a freckle pattern across her nose, mid-twenties, smiling in a passport photo. The photo has a red sticker across the corner that says ACQUIRED.
There is a second sticker under it that says PREGNANT.
I read it twice. I read it three times.
There is a photocopied page tucked into the back of the folder — a Syndicate internal memo, dated three weeks ago — and the memo is a progress report. I read the first line.
Subject Hollens, M. Pregnancy confirmed. Marker score 6.1. Projected donor: Subject Griggson, J., file 47 — selected as cycle pair on basis of compatible hybrid genome.
I stop reading.
I review what I read: Hollens. Pregnant. Donor. Griggson.
The patch on my chest is vibrating.
There is a woman.
There is a woman who was kidnapped. There is a woman whose blood panel scored six-point-one. There is a woman who is currently pregnant in a facility somewhere with a child whose projected donor — is me.
The genetic match is me.
For one second my body refuses the sentence.
It is the same physical refusal as the no I said reflexively to the word queen in the campground yesterday. The patch goes cold. The bonds tighten all at once — Thaw's hand on my back goes hot, Crull's brand at my wrist throbs, Harek's at my throat pulses, the bonds to the twins pull taut, the not-yet-thread to Fen flares — every line in my chest registering at the same time that my body has just been told a thing it does not have a category for.
Pregnant.
There is a child somewhere.
There is a child whose biology is half mine, placed in another woman.
