Chapter Eighteen

Fourteen Days To Launch

The Porter family’s blond-haired bundle of joy had survived her first year out of the womb, and instead of continuing to hold their breath and cross their fingers for her continued good health, like any reasonable Untouchable would, her parents were tempting fate with a photoshoot.

After a smooth introduction, Mal was cautiously optimistic: she had experience with small children, and the parents seemed to be only moderately out-of-touch, regarding her with distant curiosity rather than contempt or intense interest as she set up her workspace. The optimism lasted for roughly ten minutes before it became clear that Mal was woefully underqualified to deal with an ambulatory baby, especially one who kept pushing herself upright and running over to beg her parents for cuddles. After the third time it happened, she didn’t get up to chase her, too busy trying not to think about how Clover was doing, if she was missing her mother or if Jay was adequately distracting her from Mal's absence.

The father carried her back to the blanket strewn with toys and pillows, telling her firmly to sit still and smile before returning the negotiations. A pulsing headache was taking root in Mal's forehead as the girl began to whine again, and she snapped her fingers once before catching herself — luckily, the parents either didn’t notice or didn't care. She cleared her throat and spoke quietly anyway, trying not to draw any more attention than necessary: “Look here, Miss Porter, look at the lens.” She had been informed at the start that she was allowed to address the child directly, but only by ‘Miss Porter’. She was not allowed to address the four-year-old running around, not unless he spoke to her first.

“No!” the baby shrieked, getting up again. The brother came to the rescue this time, hauling his sister back into frame and sitting down beside her to keep her entertained; Mal managed to get ten decent photos of the two of them before the parents called for their son to step out, to let his sister have the spotlight. The boy’s tantrum was immediate, proving itself genetic when his sister starting angrily crying right alongside him. It took half an hour and several bribes to finally get the shoot back on track, though the son miserably refused to smile when he was called back for the sibling and family portraits. She didn't bother trying to coax one out of him: it didn’t really matter how these photos turned out, when these were not valued friends that Render was intent on keeping happy — if they were, he would have told her to use her own camera, not this electronic device. This was plainly an exercise in keeping her busy, so she wouldn’t have time to conspire with Gwenh.

When the shoot was finally done, Render and the parents returned to their spirited negotiations, throwing around dollar amounts that sounded made-up, their backs fully turned on her and the children. It felt pertinent to keep an eye on them as she packed away her kit, taking the camera in the darkroom for safekeeping and rolling up the backdrop for storage — either the parents expected her to be a babysitter, or they had forgotten she had ever existed the moment she wasn't within their line of sight. Even in Midtown, she had expected at least some supervision, some wariness of leaving their toddlers within easy reach of an unvetted stranger; perhaps it was foolish to expect anything like that from people who relegated precious, hydrogen-rich serpentinite to mere studs in their children’s ears. She wondered what must it feel like, to know with absolute certainty that your children were utterly safe from danger.

A frustrated squeal drew her full attention, and she glanced over at the children. The boy was laughing at his sister’s angry whines as he held her toys far out of reach, teasingly offering them to her and then snatching them away when she reached out to take them. The parents were not intervening: finally she strode over and plucked the toy from his hands anyway, giving it back to the girl. “Don’t be cruel.”

The boy scowled at her. “She won’t remember it.”

“That doesn’t make your behaviour acceptable.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” His brow furrowed in concentration. “You’re just an Un-touch-able.”

She bared her crooked teeth in a humourless smile. “Yeah? What do you think your mommy and daddy will think when I tell them you're being so mean to your little sister?”

She should have predicted that he would burst into tears at the threat of getting his parents involved, but she was caught off-guard by the sudden switch and sheer magnitude of the meltdown. She fell to one knee before him, trying to calm him down — and then the little girl began to cry too, a high, keening wail that sounded all too similar to Clover’s hungry voice. Render and the parents looked over, just as Mal registered that her shirt was damp; she glanced down to see two spots of moisture in the linen, and only faintly heard Render asking what was wrong. She abruptly stood and made for the bathroom, arms crossing tightly over her leaking chest, barely ensuring the door was locked behind her before taking off her shirt and flipping the faucet on. Her face burned with anger as she purged, mostly at herself: she had assumed that the morning's low production was a sign of her body starting to wean, and if she hadn't succumbed to such intense panic at the idea, she might have bothered to double-check. She wouldn't be in this situation if she had just double-checked—

Once finished, she braced her hands on the counter and forced herself to breathe deeply, the faucet still streaming cloudy, bubbling water. She couldn’t stop herself from crumbling under the weight of her circumstances, if only for a moment: tears poured from her eyes as she contemplated what would happen now that she was found out, whether Render would go looking for the child she was supposed to be feeding, how she was supposed to escape this place with so much dead weight in tow.

Her head sagged lower, her breath hitching in her chest. Dead weight — when had she become someone who could think so little of her friends, her own child?

She managed to pull herself together after a few moments of heavy breathing, and when she looked into the mirror she hardly recognized her reflection — she had dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, her sallow skin was unhealthily flushed rather than a rosy brown, and by the new angles in her gaunt face it seemed that she had lost some of her hard-earned weight. She pushed back the lank strands coming loose from her braid, staring past her sickly visage to the locked door behind her. All the lies she could tell were lackluster and unconvincing — Render wasn’t an idiot, after all, or blind. There was no question that he had seen the stains blooming on her shirt, the way she covered herself in distress and fled to the bathroom — he certainly knew what a young mother looked like, even if had been twenty-five years.

She bit her lip. One lie was surfacing, but there was a reason she hadn’t used it earlier: some lies were bound to be punished by bad luck, and a lie about a dead baby would certainly manifest one in real life. Even though she knew it was the strongest answer, that it would stop all interrogation in its tracks as Render fell over himself to comfort her, even thinking about it still paralyzed her — it was her last, tiny vestige of control over her daughter’s safety, and she didn’t want to give it up. She'd come up with something else.

A splash of cold water leeched the heat from her face, and two minutes of counting up and down from ten helped to slow her heart and steady her breathing. She doused her shirt in the water and pressed and squeezed and wrung out as much as she could before pulling it back over her head; the damp material would draw questions, but if she answered them well enough she could steer him away from Clover. Maybe she could play it off as a donor situation, that the baby was never hers, or that she was an absent parent — not far from the truth, she thought bitterly. Calling herself a grieving mother would be the absolute last resort.

She quietly opened the door and peered out into the studio, ready to snap the door shut again if there were still people around. The studio was empty except for Render, rising uncertainly from his seat, holding a glass of vitamin soda. “Are you feeling sick?”

She left her sanctuary and took the glass from him, knocking it back in one gulp, grateful for the excuse to stall for time as she wiped her mouth. “Just nauseous. It’ll go away.”

“You should sit for a while; running around will only make it worse.” He gestured to his seat and went to refill her cup. “I’ve always heard that doctors make the worst patients — you certainly prove the rule.”

“I’m not a doctor,” she said absently, taking up the full glass and sipping it slowly, this time.

“A medic, then — I don’t know how Untouchables classify someone who helps out in a clinic, but that’s what we call it.”

“How did you—” She hadn’t seen any cameras between the studio and the bunks, and she had walked that path several times by now; maybe it there were microphones in the hallways? She felt sick. “That was a private conversation.”

“Oh, there are no private conversations while this building. Everything gets back to me eventually.” At her furrowed, somewhat-panicked expression, he added, “It’s just the way things are done around here.”

She bit down on her lip, mentally combing over all of her conversations within the building. She had thought that it was just the public areas she had to be wary of: knowing what she knew now, she couldn’t remember if she had spoken in enough code and quiet tones to disguise her intentions, if she was about to be executed for conspiring to escape—

“All I meant to say is that it’s a good thing that you’re versed in medicine — good to be prepared, anyway. I’ll endeavour to leave you some privacy going forward, especially in and around the studio.”

He sounded mildly put-out about it, but not murderously so. She let herself relax by degrees; it was for the better that Render had bought into the lie, better that he had one less reason to connect her to her uncle's home and the child sheltered within. "Thank you. I appreciate that."

He hummed, twiddling his thumbs and looking around idly for a while before finally clearing his throat. "The Porter heirs can be a bit of a handful. Children usually are at that age, you see.”

“Mm.”

“They remind me of my son, Ben: he was a bit of a brat at that age, and he kept me pretty busy.” He huffed a short laugh and continued, beating back the silence, “You remind me of him, too — just the good parts, of course. He was a good kid, some days."

"Where is he?" Now that she thought of it, she hadn't seen anyone in the building that had looked strikingly like Render: with her luck, it was someone she had already been rude to. She couldn't recall if any of the guards were named Ben.

"He’s somewhere in France, I think: his mother’s family had some connections there, and it's good and far away from me.” He had that bitter tone of his again, half-lost in memory.

“Why’d he leave?”

“We had a fight.” His answer was simple, and left no room for follow-up. “You know, it doesn’t mean anything that you lost your temper. Most parents do, from time to time.”

Her grip creaked around the empty lass. “What are you talking about?”

He reached over and took the glass from her hand before she could shatter it, a kind and patient expression on his face. “I don't know what kind of rumours are bred in your world, but I would never force you to terminate a pregnancy. Children are a blessing, after all, even Untouchable children. You're very lucky to have dropped into my lap, on that front: many of my contemporaries are not nearly as sentimental.”

She was barely listening, had lost track of his words the moment he mentioned pregnancy. She could be pregnant — he would be more invested in her safety and wellbeing, it would neatly explain much of her behaviour to outside observers, and it might even lead to more meal scrip. She could most definitely be pregnant. “I didn't mean to lie,” she said thinly, staring down at her hands. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dryer than ash around the improvised lie. "I just— I want to protect it."

He folded his hands together with a gentle smile, inclining his head. “When is the baby due?”

Her brain short-circuited. “Erm— three months.” Her hand settled uncertainly against her stomach, as though the memories and postures of pregnancy weren't fresh in her mind. “Three months along, I mean. Almost four. I’m due in the summer.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask for anything more specific, since she only knew the Kanien’kéha words for the months of the year, and not always in the right order.

He hummed thoughtfully, looking preoccupied with something mildly troubling. “Your first?”

“No.” That was more honesty than she had ever given, to anyone: outside, Clover was her first child, but here, she couldn't help but remember the baby she would have called Olivier. She smoothed over her awkward pause with as much poise as she could muster, and morosely continued, “I was pregnant, once before, but I lost the baby in the second trimester.”

“Ah.” He grimaced and knocked three times on the tabletop. “Best not speak of it, then — it’s bad luck. Is the father involved?”

“Yes.” A possibility had occurred to her, forcing the answer out before she could consider the consequences. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to tread more carefully as her heart tried to crawl out of her throat. “I mean— he was, but he took off a few weeks ago. I heard he might have gotten a job somewhere in this building, to pay our way onto Ni— I mean, the Page.”

He hummed, again seeming preoccupied. “If that’s the case, maybe I can track him down for you.” He pulled out a miniaturized console from his pocket, a pale light shining from the screen as he turned it on. “What’s his name?”

“Tai-Song.” Her mouth was dry with nerves. “Yeung Tai-Song.”

His slight hesitation gave him away, along with how he keyed in a six-digit number instead of a twelve-letter name, not even pausing to ask how to spell it. “No one here by that name, I’m afraid,” he said, showing her a blank screen.

She shook her head, too close now to back off. “But he was here recently.” She couldn’t hide the edge of desperation in her voice. “Please, I know he was here — where did he go?”

The edge of irritation crossed over his face, there and gone again before Mal could pin it down. “I’ll look into it,” he promised tonelessly, barely meeting her eyes. He quickly rose and gathered his jacket, movements awkward and stilted; it was clear that she had rattled him. “You're free to return to the gardens, Miss Y — but pace yourself, and no lifting heavy things.”