Repurposed 11.3

Interval 11.3
August 2, 1996
0530, Fairport AL
Armacham Medical Compound / Exact Location Unknown



"Don't you think she's a bit… young?" Dr. Green said, quietly. Harlan beside her narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. It was Disler who gave a slight grunt at her question.

"You've seen how she still cuddles those dolls, Rose," Marshall said, "she… didn't put up much of a fuss."

"That's because she was unconscious," Rose muttered. "I think it's despicable doing this again."

"Yet you yourself worked with her genetics, and your own," Disler reminded her, "so please spare us the ethics lecture."

He was right, of course. Rose had very little leeway – being five months pregnant with her own genetically engineered child. The second of those she'd assembled with Wade and Disler and the other scientists, the third she'd carry to term. But this time she wouldn't get to be a mother. Perhaps that was what kept her from fully accepting what was happening to Wade's girl. She knew how that went. She'd had the same argument in her own mind: this boy was for the Origin project, he belonged to Armacham. Eden and Deena, they would be her daughters. She had no son.

Adding insult to injury, the baby chose that moment to kick.

They were playing God, indeed. But… She was a mature woman, already had experience with her first daughter. Whenever Rose looked at Deena she smiled, she had nothing but praise and love. And little Eden, currently in her snug crib upstairs, would score higher than Deena on any Paragon tests, the sky was the limit for her.

What she saw in Harlan Wade's eyes as he looked over his daughter Alma bothered her. But she really shouldn't be such a damn hypocrite about it. Rose got to work with the youngest of the students, and some day this boy that Alma had born, her second son, would join them.

Rose just wished the nagging sensation of unease would leave her. She admired Wade and Dissler tremendously, their pioneering works in this field made it possible for her to even have such children as Eden and… well, whatever her boy would be named. Her throat tightened again, when she recalled Harlan's original intent to have neither of his 'grandsons' given names of their own. As weapons, as experiments, they would be best off without a moniker that could allow them to grasp at 'personhood'.

Enough others, though, joined Rose in that heated discussion – and Geoffrey was named. Irony at the least, and as this second boy was named, Paxton continued the trend. Warriors with names meaning peace. What next? Well, Rose would name her next born even if it was against Harlan's wishes.

Alma lay semi-comatose in the room below, while the other scientists worked on stunting the memories she may have formed. Not that she was to forget she'd ever born these boys – but to alleviate some of the pain and anger. So much anger, Rose knew. So much, from this sixteen year old girl that could make the air burn and melt human flesh off of bone. Even if she wasn't the only one who could do such things among all of the Origin candidates (and she wasn't, though she was far and away the strongest psychically) Alma still distinguished herself – perhaps even defined herself –  by her anger.

Other prodigies were healthier, happy, socialized and taking classes in one of the Enrichment Center's labs just now. Alma... would not join them. She'd hardly even been to school in her life, though GLADOS taught her whenever she was in the mood. Alma was extremely intelligent, like her father. They wanted to continue giving her more challenging subjects, she was surprisingly good at math and logic, spatial reasoning, memory games. But that didn't seem to be what she wanted. She had hidden her knowledge and faked bad scores, and Harlan... predictably, Harlan had punished her for it.

Much of Alma's emotional instability, Rose thought and never said aloud while he was there, she'd inherited from Harlan himself. He was a bitter, sometimes brutal man. When he had something to focus on, he was cheery and well-mannered. But if something started to go wrong... The whole place knew it. Not just because he would call others out on their mistakes, but because Alma responded to his energy with angry fits of her own in the Vault – always at the same time or just after his own outbursts. She had to be handled far more delicately than her father, obviously. Since she was pyrokinetic, telekinetic, empathic... and devious by nature.

Rose had done enough research to know that Alma's first venture into madness after delivering Geoffrey had likely been caused by post-partum depression. Whether 'depression' could be the right term for what she felt in her Vault for the next two months, that could be debatable. It wasn't in any way typical of a normal mother's mood swings, even one who suffered from the condition. At least, one which could hold and cherish her child after its birth would grow out of it, one who could be given therapy.

Alma had had her son taken from her, so she took someone else's. That had not ended well for the lab worker's family, Armacham's generous pay-out not withstanding. How do you break it to someone that their child, supposedly safe in the Enrichment Center's toddler-care unit, had been abducted, brutally killed, and eaten by Alma Wade? The answer was you didn't. And you didn't bring it up again, ever.

It seemed though, that after taking out her anger directly on another living thing, Alma's greatest madness passed. Then...Then, Harlan and Marshall and the others... They chose to do it again, within another month. Risking everything in the Center for the sake of another Origin subject. Geoffrey would be fine with the surrogates upstairs for the time being, he didn't seem to be bothered by anything. He would be one year old within three weeks of Paxton's birth, they would be raised together with an assortment of others including Rose's own children.

Alma had seemed much more passive this time, during her whole pregnancy as well as this birth. Something was different about Paxton perhaps. She slept lightly, a network of electronic devices placed over her head, chemicals churning through her blood. She didn't look angry, just at that moment. Paxton was being whisked away for all the measurements and blood samples that would dominate his first days of life. At that time last year, Rose recalled, Alma had been furious, frantic, screaming and causing the room to be filled with angry energy that blew beakers and equipment off the shelves.

Perhaps it had been Harlan's doing then too, he was the one leading the natal team and had personally collected the newborn. The boy had given off a healthy squall of noise, and though this second son was far from quiet, he did seem more or less calm, like his mother. Geoffrey's birth triggered something in her that Paxton's had not. Perhaps Alma just thought she'd bide her time. Perhaps they were missing something, Rose wondered. What about the babies' own emotional input? Had that affected Alma? Or she affected them? They lacked the ability to compare mental signatures, at least in this lab. Rose would want to look into that.

Still. It was incredibly dangerous to keep her away from her children; it was vital that she was kept from them. From the standpoint of observers and the science teams interaction, she would not be encouraged – if it came up at all – to call them her sons. Harlan Wade never referred to Alma as his daughter. He had a daughter: a blond, pretty girl named Alice that he purposefully refused to allow into the Enrichment Center. Private tutors and a pampered existence for her...

While Alma lay here in a sterile room being subjected to any number of humiliations at the whim of her sire. The other donor parents had been very carefully plotted out for both Geoffrey and Paxton. It was not haphazard breeding that went into them, not at all. They were masterpieces of engineering, not the first, but surely not the last that Harlan Wade had created. He'd been right, however, when they determined that most psychic energies needed to be passed through a proper mother. The Armacham line of clones hardly ever bore any activity psychically, even if they were made from Origin genes. So Alma would carry her children. She was so young, though. Not immature, surely her body was capable of it. But her mental stability had never been good, worse while she was being examined or cornered for implantation.

The first time they had to do that, Alma erupted into a literal firestorm. They had – wisely – chosen expendable resources for her 'capture', ELLs that were quick on their feet, dying to her hands and her power, a dozen or more of them. But they kept her busy enough that the professionals could get Alma subdued properly. Afterward though, she'd managed to kill five of the orderlies that dragged her into the lab during Geoffrey's birth, and that was aside from what her contractions did to the place at large.

Rose knew perfectly well all the different ways that Geoffrey and Paxton could follow in her bloody footsteps. They both had the potential for her level of psychic power, with the other donors perhaps changing which specific ones might show up, or to greater or lesser extent. And now they were planning on making weapons of her offspring.

That shouldn't have surprised Rose either, given who had helped pay for their creation. Hoyle and Carver, Aristide and the rest – a mob of greedy killers, in Rose's mind. Best not to think on them. Because Alma down there could at any moment be listening in on her thoughts. No wonder Harlan looked so tired all the time: Alma haunted him, day and night for weeks on end sometimes.

Payback is a bitch, Rose thought to herself, a black-haired, blue-eyed wraith who could have been beautiful and loved. Slipping out and back to the childcare center upstairs, Rose began making notes to herself about what kind of ironic name her son would have.