Jenny Plague-Bringer(106)

“Why would Kranzler care about my baby?” Jenny asked.

“Who?”

“Whatever his name is now. General Ward Kilpatrick. Is he trying to breed more of us again?”

“I...don’t know what you’re talking about. I was brought in to focus on you. I had to sign multiple confidentiality agreements under threat of God knows what. But your case does interest me.”

“Where did you work before this?” Jenny asked.

“Yale University, most recently. And I move around the country, several research hospitals. I specialize in unborn children with severely ill mothers.”

Jenny nodded. That sounded promising, but she still wasn’t sold. “What did the general tell you? Why did he bring you here?”

“I told you why, Jennifer. To care for your baby. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’ll have to discuss it with him. We’ve brought an ultrasound machine. Don’t you want to make sure your pregnancy is progressing well? Don’t you want to see your baby, and learn whether you’re having a boy or a girl?”

Jenny didn’t know what to think. In their last life, Kranzler had been obsessed with breeding those who had a supernatural touch, some kind of Nazi eugenics thing. In this life, maybe he was just curious about her pregnancy with her pox, and probably saw Jenny’s baby as a future test subject for himself. She knew that the baby did need care, and she was dying to know whether the baby was well or not.

“Okay,” Jenny said. “We’ll do it. Just don’t try to hurt me, or...”

“Lie back on your bed and don’t move,” one of the guards instructed. Jenny did as she was told. They would shackle her first thing. In the couple of weeks she’d been here, they’d started letting her wander around her cell, but if anyone came in, she had to submit to being chained down again.

The four guards passed through the outer door to her cell, then the inner door. They approached her cautiously, but she didn’t give them any trouble as they cuffed her wrists and ankles. They stood aside as Dr. Parker entered, followed by the other man in the hazmat suit with the medical markings. Apparently he was some kind of technician, because he set up the equipment cart next to Jenny’s bed.

“Just relax, Jennifer,” the doctor said, smiling slightly behind her clear face shield. “I’ll have to lift your hospital gown.”

Jenny glanced at the four guards in black armor, all of them male. Dr. Parker followed her gaze, then said, “We need the four of you to look away.”

“Sorry, doc,” one of the men said, his voice coming from an electronic speaker on the front of his mask. “We have to keep our eyes on her anytime someone is in the cell. Specific orders.”

Dr. Parker sighed, then moved to block their view with her own body.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Jenny as she raised the hem of the gown up to Jenny’s breasts, revealing her pale, swollen belly. She squirted some kind of shockingly cold gel onto Jenny’s belly, and Jenny hissed a little. “The gel can feel a bit chilly,” the doctor warned her, a few seconds too late.

“It does,” Jenny said.

“This is the transducer.” The doctor held up a plastic wand about the size of a flashlight, but flat and wide at the end. “This will take an ultrasound image of your baby, which we’ll see here.” She gestured toward a small monitor.

Jenny’s heart raced, and the beeping heart monitor announced it to everyone. She was finally going to see her baby. For a moment, she almost forgot about being a prisoner.

The doctor pressed the transducer against Jenny’s belly and moved it back and forth. Jenny watched, first excited, then frustrated as meaningless gray and black blobs filled the monitor, appearing and disappearing.

“I don’t see anything,” Jenny said.

“One second.” The doctor moved the transducer again, then gestured at roundish blobs on the monitor. “You see? There’s the head, the curve of the back...”

Jenny blinked. It was like an optical illusion—one moment, it was just shifting blots. The next, it was obviously a baby, the head curled inward toward the chest, legs tucked up toward the belly.

“Oh!” Jenny said. She bit down and forced herself not to cry, knowing her captors were watching. It was almost impossible, because the grainy image was ripping her heart open. Then it turned over, swimming like a little fish, and Jenny gasped again.

“Looks like she’s awake,” the doctor said.

“She? It’s a girl?”

“That’s right.”

“Does she look...is she...healthy?”

“Head to body ratio is good, spine developing correctly...and there, can you see that?” The doctor pointed to a pulsing shape near the center of the baby-blob. “She’s got a strong heartbeat.”