Page 110 of Death is Familiar

While Warden White readied the machine, powering it on and clicking through some settings, the child started her non-sensical singing, “Your loss is felt, but you will be found. Happy, content, with belly round.” Then, “Mark each face, telling one from the other. For there can be only one virgin mother!”

It sounded like she was mashing two parts of a song together. And I was not a fan of the lyrics, which were feeling more and more like lines to a manufactured prophecy.

“This might be cold,” Warden White warned. There was a squirt of jelly on my scarred stomach, and I had no time to adjust before the ultrasound wand was placed over my skin, and circled until… “Oh my lord. God is good.”

There was an audible thwump, thwump, thwump, of a heartbeat on the monitor.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. This was too much. This wasn’t the right setting. I wasn’t in the right place. I wasn’t being given an option.

The ultrasound wand still pressed into the soft muscle of my belly, Warden White whispered, “It’s true.” There was an audible click, as the metal table at my back started to rise until I was sitting upright, hands and feet still secured. “Look, take a look at your beautiful creation. God is good!”

Thwump, thwump, thwump, thwump.

I looked everywhere but the ultrasound monitor.

For the first time since I’d been in the Seal’s possession, I was able to get a good look at the room below table level. And I was right.

To my left there were floor-to-ceiling bars that ran the length of the room. There were two cells. One sparse, with a bare mattress, a toilet, and a drain. The other was more like a nest, with bright blankets, pillows, comforters, and stuffed toys, all different colors, textures, and shapes. An old box TV was secured to a shelf I was fairly certain was made by cementing four cinderblocks together.

However, the person inside the nest was not a child, but rather a woman, singing loud and off-key. And she had a very prominent scar on her face.

Thwump, thwump, thwump.

The woman’s singing stopped. “Do you hear that?” Her voice was young, her actions even younger, as she held onto the bars of her cage and wiggled back and forth with an energy that rivalled a five-year old on a sugar high. “You’re going to be a mommy, Two!”

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Two.

“Tell me everything, Two. Everything.” Warden White was talking to me, but—No. No. No fucking way. I flashed my eyes over the scar on the child-sounding woman’s face, oh my god, it was a three. And he’d called her Three, like it was her name.

Which meant⁠—

My world tilted on its axis. Up was down. North was east.

The scar on my face was a fucking brand. My whole life, I’d been walking around… numbered. Catalogued like the cattle once traded at the Greenwood hotel back home.

“I’m going to be sick.” I turned my head to side hoping to limit the mess, but Warden White was already there with a pail beneath my chin.

“There you go, my love, just let it all up.” If I’d been able to move my hands I would have shoved him away. I didn’t want his words of comfort. What I wanted was to disappear, turn invisible, and get rid of the rising tide of disgust and anger that rose in my throat.

The woman-child took the situation as an opportunity to resume her singing, “Two, Two, curious, Two. Taken away from the family you knew.”

I didn’t want this. Any of this. Whatever the hell this was made prison look like an all-inclusive.

“Your loss is felt, but you will be found!” Three was now skipping around her cell, her volume only growing louder. “Happy, content, with belly round!”

They were going to lock me in here. With her. Until they had what they wanted. Until they took my passenger from me.

“Two is the longshot to give us an heir!” Three grabbed onto the cell bars and squeezed as much of her face through as she could manage. “But you know what they say about grey eyes, dark hair!”

Any doubt, any sliver of hope, that I was more than a number disappeared. There was no mistaking it. My eyes. My hair. To them, to the Seal, I was Two. Me, my body, didn’t matter.

The whole of my identity reduced to a number carved into my face.

Maybe that severe woman working with Warden White—Madame—was onto something. The reality of my situation was too much for anyone to face, maybe it would be better for me to be unconscious. On my own terms.

So, for the first time in my life, I shut myself off.