✅ The Baby Makers

Country House

It was a grand old house, in the middle of nowhere. Not like a country estate owned by some old, rich person. No, this was literally in the middle of nowhere; as far as it was possible to get from a public road. There were disused quarries in between, forests long since given back to impenetrable walls of thorns, and acres of scrubby grasslands where the quality of the soil was too low to make commercial farming worthwhile. It wasn't even high enough, or pretty enough, for hikers to come and trade footprints for photographs.

They had to have chosen the place deliberately.

Ana walked slowly up to the front doors, looking all around her as her shoes crunched on the gravel. Long lines of trees. Formal gardens, which must have cost a fortune to maintain, made a three-acre island in the middle of the wilderness. The grounds were immaculately set out, but there was no sign of gardeners tending to the displays. The house itself rose up ahead, three floors of impressive red brick. As she came closer Ana took a look inside, to find out what exactly these people were doing. She couldn't sense anything, though. The whole place was screened, and locked down tight. That wasn't exactly a surprise, but from everything she'd heard it was rare for anyone outside of the Order to mask their business so effectively. That was more grounds for suspicion; she would have to go inside.

Eventually, Ana came to the front doors. They seemed built to a slightly larger scale than normal, so the ornate brass knocker was at eye level. In fact, it seemed like the entire building was constructed a little larger than the usual size.

She could immediately see a couple of reasons someone would go to the trouble of making a large house like that, and she ran through them in their mind as she waited for a response to her knock. The first reason, and the most likely, would be to intimidate potential visitors. Ana wasn't intimidated; she was here on behalf of the Supreme Order, and no initiate of the Order was ever afraid. They had absolute control of their own minds and responses before anything else.

The larger door could also be to make the building suitable for people larger than a typical human. Maybe for a yeti, or bigfoot. Maybe for genetically engineered giants, or the rangy physique of alien visitors. Ana didn't find that at all likely, because as a member of the Order she had access to the Black Library, and so knew the facts of cryptozoology with a certainty that even the most die-hard sceptic could never aspire to. And even with screening this good, there was no way some mad scientist could have developed a growth serum without the Order knowing.

The last reason that came to mind was that it would make people approaching the door feel small and weak, possibly embarrassingly so, and would thus place them at a psychological or emotional disadvantage in the coming negotiations. Ana already knew she was small and weak, but she'd never let that make her feel inferior. She might not be as strong as many of her classmates, but she knew that her intelligence, her understanding or tactics, her quick thinking, and her reflexes more than made up for any lack of raw power. And as far as embarrassment was concerned, she considered that growing up around her parents, and with a name like Andromeda Anastasia Fairchild, had inoculated her against any future self-consciousness. Whatever their tricks, they would not work today.

She judged two minutes had passed now, and still no answer. She reached up to the knocker again, and slammed it down hard. It was polished brass, old metal, and heavy enough to leave you in no doubt about its purpose. Ana liked that; so much more reliable than many of modern society's ephemeral creations.

Eventually, the door started to open. Ana reflexively stepped back, not quite sure what she was expecting. She was sure they wouldn't attack her right away. Or almost sure. The Order of Supremacy wasn't widely known, and they didn't make many enemies. Ana was the first representative who had been dispatched to this remote house, so in all probability the people inside had no idea what she was here for.

The door creaked, but only slightly. It looked like the door that would give a long and ominous creak, almost like the timber was screaming. But the sound was just a little whine of metal on metal, a hinge that might not have been oiled quite as recently as it would like. The space beyond the door was bright and airy, lit by windows somewhere higher up the building. The lobby seemed to extend all the way up to the roof, and sunlight flooded in to create a golden haze at the top. Heavy wooden staircases coiled around the edge of the room, and there was a desk in a similar dark and expensive timber in the centre.

Behind the desk was a middle-aged man wearing glasses. His hair was shot through with grey, with just enough speckles left to let the careful observer know it had once been red. He was dressed in a white shirt today, with a tie that would have passed as formal attire were it not decorating with lurid yellow smiling faces. In one shirt pocket he had three pens, and the end of a chain which surely led to a watch in the opposite pocket. A bizarre clash of casual and formal, traditional and modern.

Ana didn't give him her full attention yet. She was more concerned by the person behind the door. It didn't seem like the kind of place that would have automatic doors, not if that one weighed as much as it looked and sounded. A quick glance to the side confirmed this. She saw a rather old-fashioned lever lock that probably hadn't been changed in half a century. Something like that would require a human being, or at least a servant more sentient than a simple motor to lift the latch.

There was a person standing behind the door, but he was simply a servant. There was no hostility or aggression coming off him at all. So Ana turned her attention back to the figure behind the desk. A bureaucrat, she was sure. Not an owner, not a villain. The kind of mind that would happily count the number of paperclips it used each day, and would be proud of balancing the books.

The kind of person who would be very easy to get answers out of. Although for an operative as skilled as Ana it rarely mattered; there was no way a human would ever be beyond her ability to manipulate.