BREEDERS

Chapter 12

There was a long pause and she eyed me down like I would burst into flames. I laughed out loud.

"I said no more-"

"I had twins," she cut me off. "Dr. Emerson had seen two babies. He was one of the aforementioned friends in high places. I never asked outright if that was where your father got his merchandise, but I always suspected."

"You're lying," I snorted. There was no way. Absolutely no possible way that I was a twin.

But just like that- it fit. It fit so perfectly into place that I almost laughed again. It explained why everytime I went in and got my face scanned my file read 91014 instead of 223696- because it was seeing someone else's face. Why Dr. Emerson just seemed to know things without having being told. Why my mother wanted me to stay in Sector D after the baby were to be born.

My twin.

"Dr. Emerson knew?" I repeated.

"He did your father the favor of keeping it quiet. Arranged for us to be able to give birth privately. He entered your credentials and you have all legitimate paperworks, whereas he could not do the same for your sister. There has not been a set of twins in years, well before I was even born. How was he going to explain an extra baby without an extra mother in the program?"

"So you went to Franky, and he forged papers and he created that extra mother..."

"Your father had come clean to his wife before you were born and they arranged a fraudulent adoption. Franky put everything together, made a fake record of a woman and baby and Dr. Emerson imputed the information into the program. The nurses in the program were well paid off. They said that I only birthed one baby. It was why I could only pass you off as mine, not the both of you."

"Why?" I asked tiredly. "Why go through all this trouble for a set of twins? What would it have mattered?"

"You and your sister would never be free. You would become permanent breeders, with the hopes you each could birth multiples. Some of the experiments that we've read about that they put twins through in the past... You would have been caged-"

"Or glorified," I cut her off. "They could have seen us as medical miracles. We could have had different lives. Instead I'm the one living in shit and my- my sister is in Sector A living her best life!"

"Trust me Salice, You would have been caged. Even Dr. Emerson said so," she retorted.

"How can I trust any of you? You have lied to me my entire life! Sam's in trouble because of you! And Franky- he will never stop. You don't think for a second that he won't use that information against you?"

"He doesn't know you were a twin, just that you were born out of program terms and conditions."

"That makes it any better? That is a life debt. He owns you. He owns everyone. Dr. Emerson knows too. Is that why I'm not pregnant yet? That was supposed to happen weeks ago and I feel like every time I am there it is postponed."

Her silence said it all.

"Because history would repeat itself. This whole time I thought he was injecting me with fertility boosters, and really I'm on birth control, aren't I? You made me think I was going to have a baby-"

"I do not know what he's been injecting you with if anything but should you get pregnant and there were multiples he would have selectively terminated and he would keep it quiet. You could still be normal and still have a place in Project EVE. My generation were prototypes, they made a lot of mistakes." She seemed more snarky as the conversation went on.