Pasha Adderey descends the douser’s piston. The device consists of a rope running through pulleys and attached to a piston contained in a tube. As Pasha falls, the air is restricted as it squeezes by the piston inside the tube, slowing her until she hits the ground softly. The apparatus allows for one-way travel down and is one of several methods she employs to keep anyone from leaving the chamber unauthorized.
“You could be in a theater troupe, high matron,” Pasha says. “You know that?”
Captain Drinnam lands beside her, and the two enter the room’s proper, where High Matron Adina Cobriline lives and works. She is approaching her fourth decade in Pasha’s service, and it was more than sixty years ago when the woman was born under the Second Signature’s watch. Now, the matron paces in a circle of upright cylindrical tanks, gazing at the forms floating inside.
“I had some training,” says the matron. “That you even gave me such an opportunity to deceive that woman feels… liberating. I think she is dull enough to believe it.” The aged woman studies the walls high above. “Beautiful.”
Pasha follows the matron’s gaze to the walls of the chamber. Twenty or thirty pockets line the sections, an incubation vat in each, chains affixed to the bottom of the tanks and the undersides of their lids to bind the young women floating inside. Their mixtures, their worlds of fluid, are a calculated concoction of neutralizer, inhibitor, water, amniotic fluids, and strandular compositions to increase healing and speed up the birthing process. The room is twice as large as the one June-Leckie trusted Pasha had evacuated.
“Maybe we’ll put them in quarters one day,” she tells the matron, “but so long as the maligned encroach, we must protect our birthing.”
“I agree with you wholeheartedly, Signature.”
“How are they faring?” Pasha joins the high matron in front of a particular trio of vats. Inside float the three brunettes from the Debut. Tubes snake from the brunettes to closed cylinders strewn around the room, where funnels jut out, allowing various mixtures to be poured inside. An array of instruments litter the front of each incubation vat, Cobriline making a careful study of them.
“A little bruised,” says Cobriline. “Their suitors were… grateful to have the opportunity.”
Grateful? It takes a moment for Pasha to form the image. She wishes she hadn’t. “Burn them.” The orders come out of decades of protecting incubators. These women are Kaskit’s most valuable resource. If someone even scratches them, they will die.
“Aye,” responds Drinnam, waving to a guard who walks off. “We’ll burn the men.”
“It’s not to say they didn’t enjoy it,” utters the matron, smirking. “I had to turn away for a second because they were so immersed.”
“In that second, those suitors could have slit their throats.”
“Believe me, Signature, men in such ecstasy would never do such a thing.”
“I knew your incubator, and I know what men are capable of.” The matron is a little over half of Pasha’s age and one of the oldest in her employ. “You’re lucky you’re not still in these vats, too.”
Cobriline holds her tongue at that, likely remembering her birthing years spent floating inside the mixtures. “Allow me to be candid then, Signature.”
“Allowed.”
“If you keep this up, we will run out of men.”
“We will never run out of men willing to bed an incubator.”
“Willing, yes, but suitable? We can’t just take any man, especially now. The Corps wants Ox and Ape-infused children, as well as Olm and Corvidae. Maybe some Insom. We must ensure the suitors have low diversity in those specific strands because the incubators inherit all of them. All of them, Signature, not just some.”
Pasha wants to tell her to seek other men in any of the cities in the Smatter Council, but she knows that group hates her. She has yet to attend one of the meetings and doesn’t plan to do so anytime soon. That it holds the name she gave it soon after signing the Decree still perplexes her. “Just see that they continue birthing.”
The matron nods. “Progress on that front, too, Signature.” She flicks her hands up. “Koyle!”
A blonde-haired adolescent boy only twice Pasha’s physical age leaps down from one of the fluid tanks behind the vats. “High Matron,” he rasps and then sees Pasha. “Signature!” He bows.
“How fast are we now?” the matron asks the adolescent.
“Mmm. Our lowest is 160 days.” The boy consults the room, squinting at some of the dials on the tanks furthest away. A strand doubtlessly enhances his eyesight. “Though there is one ready to pop any moment now. It’s at 157 days.”
“See?” the matron asks. “Progress. With some advancements and experimental treatments, we may be able to shorten that to four months, but we’d have to inject the fetus with steroids and other strands immediately after birth. All of this because of our delicate balance with the men.”
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Pasha can’t deny the results, but she doesn’t rescind the order to Drinnam’s men either. It’s better to make an example of those who hurt the incubators. “Can we bring it down to three months?”
The matron scowls. “Not without severe complications.”
“Work on it.”
The woman nods, and just before Pasha’s about to ask more, a rattle sounds from the direction of the douser pistons. Vakye dodges the devices and flies into the room, landing on the floor and rolling before standing beside her. “Pasha! Not once out of my sight, alright?”
Drinnam attempts to size up the beetle. “Made it here before you did, bug.” He smiles and smacks a finger on his flintlock pistol.
“Just testing your response time,” Pasha tells Vakye. “Did you bring him?”
The Entrusted steps aside to reveal the Surgeon Elder descending a douser piston with the finesse of young adult years. Stress and overwork make him appear middle-aged, and his shaved face, head, and scars from experiments don’t help. “Signature?” He asks. “You called me?”
For a moment, Pasha forgets she ever did. “I just wanted your opinion.”
“Certainly.” The Surgeon Elder looks to Vakye and Drinnam, noticing they’re armed to the teeth. He gazes in Koyle’s direction before turning back to Pasha. “On what exactly?”
“On this woman.” Pasha beckons the man toward her until the two stand in front of the tank Koyle had squinted at before, where a long red-haired incubator floats inside. “Do you notice anything wrong with her?”
The Surgeon Elder frowns, pausing to check the gages and instruments fixed to the tank. “It’s hard to see, Signature, given all the fluid.”
“Try your best.”
Behind Pasha, Vakye steps closer, forming a door that could close around the Surgeon Elder at any moment.
The man seems to detect this and practically presses his eyes to the glass as if he could flee from the Entrusted through the tank’s walls. He scans the woman inside, but not with the energy of a vigorous search. He is as still as a statue, but as Pasha leans closer, she can see his jaw clenching.
The man relaxes. “No, Signature, she seems alright. Maybe she could use more amniotic fluids.”
Pasha sighs and is about to dispel a hunch when the matron steps over. The older woman reads a dial on the tank. Her eyes widen. “Too late for that.” She finds Koyle. “Get ready to open the lid, boy.”
The two spring into action, the young assistant scaling a ladder behind the tank and the matron moving to a lever almost her size. “Ready?” Cobriline asks.
“Ready,” says Koyle, speaking for everyone in the room.
Cobriline pulls the lever down. The lid rises, lifting the incubator out of the vat mixture upon the chains holding her. The tubes affixed to her orifices and mouth pull slightly free to allow her to breathe. As soon as her head clears, her eyes shoot open. She thrashes, kicks, notices the party arrayed beneath her naked body, and screams at them. “Help! Get me out!”
“Now, now,” says Cobriline. “Just do your job, and the pain will be over.”
The incubator screams again, clenching her teeth and puffing her cheeks. Spittle flies from her mouth. Seeing this, Koyle jumps into the tank of mixtures, carrying a sling with a sack in front of his chest.
Something shoots out from underneath the incubator, the woman sighing as it comes. Koyle swims down to catch the thing, cuts the umbilical cord with a scalpel, and rises to the surface. He throws the knife outside the tank, swims to the tank’s edge, and climbs over the lip, the baby in the sling.
On the floor now, soaked head to toe in the vat mixture, Koyle quickly hands the sling to the matron, fitting it onto her shoulders so the child can get a good look at her guardian. Once done, he pulls the tank’s lever back to its starting position, closing the lid and forcing the incubator back down into the mix. The woman thrashes and bubbles as the tubes close into her, returning to their default configuration. Moments later she is still.
“A baby girl!” Cobriline proclaims. “A beautiful baby girl. Look at her, Signature. Please.”
Pasha does, and she is as wonderful as any other child emerging straight from the vat. Her eyes blaze a bright green, her skin a shining shade of auburn. Pasha resists the urge to hold the child, to imprint it on herself.
“A little over seven pounds,” the matron says, weighing the thing just by holding it. “Perfect.”
Pasha silently shares in the joy while the baby cries, filling the room with laughter as if completing a grueling task. This child will go on to accomplish great feats, putting those thrashing arms and legs to good use. Its hands are almost the size of her face, Pasha sees, which means she must be Ox-infused, or Ape, or something else she’ll learn soon. Her fingers, too, are long and slender, reaching out to the matron’s chest and staying there and not moving. They grasp the woman’s exposed skin. Then, they dig.
The matron’s head flinches. Her back straightens. Pasha sees it, and so does Koyle.
“Vakye!” Pasha calls, but the beetle is already there, throwing Pasha back into Drinnam’s arms.
The guard captain deposits her next to the Surgeon Elder and turns his flintlock pistol on the boy, who throws his arms up. “I’m sorry!” Koyle screams. “I’m sorry!”
His apologies drown against Cobriline’s screams. Vakye throws the matron onto the ground, the child still fixed to her, attached to her, crawling out of the satchel and digging its hand into the woman’s chest, elbow deep. Pasha runs to the vat’s lever, where the incubator sleeps in the mixtures. “In here!” Pasha yells.
The Entrusted obeys as Pasha cranks the lid open. Vakye lifts the matron and child attached to her and throws them into the vat. In the seconds the vat is open, the incubator wakes again, screaming, kicking, and smashing into Cobriline’s convulsing head. When the thrashing bodies of the matron and the child sink to the bottom of the tank, Pasha closes the lid, Vakye helping her.
“Back!” Drinnam yells, stepping to the center but keeping his pistol trained on the boy. His gaze turns to the tank and he stares in horror.
Inside the vat Cobriline thrashes, but her human features remain the same. Her face doesn’t warp, and her screams while drowning in the fluid do not belong to a maligned, despite the creature’s hand digging into her. The baby and its incubator kick and push as their bodies meld together, membranes bridging the gaps. Cobriline stops her thrashing, maybe drowning or dead, just as feelers sprout from the stomachs of the baby and the incubator, but not the matron.
“Oh my fucking Hells,” says Drinnam. “What is all that?”
“Full neutralizer!” Pasha screams.
Drinnam gets his wits about him, training the pistol on Koyle.
The boy runs to a tank at the side of the room and cranks a dial. Pink fluid travels down a translucent tube and shoots into the vat with the force of a broken dam, quickly filling it and dousing the tangle of things inside.
The neutralizers eat away the high matron like she’s a charred leaf, but not the baby or the incubator, at least not entirely. They shrivel, but a part of them remains, and it’s then that Pasha remembers what the Surgeon Elder told her about injections being the only way to spread the Inciter strand within Kaskit’s atmosphere.
Everyone transfixed in horror, Pasha turns her attention to the Surgeon Elder, who stands straight-backed, teeth clenched and breathing slow. It’s hard to tell if he’s upset, but his eyes betray a certain shock.
“Hold him,” Pasha tells Vakye as the beetle jumps on the man.