Dangerous by Default

67. You mean it's...

The water sprayed Mina's hair and she opened her eyes.
"That feels deliteful" she whispered to her husband whose hand coursed the feint surgical scar that was barely visible under her close-cropped pubic hair.
"I'm not used to the water being warm." The sun streaked in through an open hatch and the two lovers swayed gently on the still Carribean waters. He sat up and ducked through a narrow passageway to the galley where a bottle of champagne waited in a bucket of ice. His eyes scan the half-built wooden cabin of the sailboat they had taken ownership of on whim back on the Gulf of Mexico. Cabinets and benches hung tenuously to the bare fiberglass hull. The boat was in a state between past and future. A new beginning. He wasn't ready to shape what it was yet to become. It's ok, they spent most of their time lounging in the sun on the deck, or in their bed.

He carried the bottle back, ducking his head to avoid the sharp nails that protruded errantly throughout the short passage to the captain's cabin. Mina was sitting up, a concerned look on her face. Her hand was clutching her stomach.

"Mina! What's wrong?" His mind immediatley raced back to that day, plunged by the torrential storms into the frigid bay. Saved only by the random decision (it seemed random at the time, but perhaps it was meant to be) to don their wetsuits before ascending the sewers into hell. Into that place. God knows what the Doves were doing with it now. It didn't matter. He had never shaken the fear that something had happened to them in the waters that night, they couldn't have walked away so easily, not considering the cost to.. Ami. A lot happened that he couldnt' fully explain. He hadn't been a religious person since leaving the Shakers so many years ago. But the chances of a stone cold killer landing his 9" blade into the one part of Mina's body where she was fully protected - by a bulletproof and apparently knife-proof artificial womb no less - was not something he felt he had the spiritual tools to deal with just yet.

"Is it something from the surgery? I knew we shouldn't have made our way down to the Caribbean so quickly after it was over." Caine didn't realize but Mina's face had shifted. From a look of fear, to astonishment, to something he didn't quite recognize yet. Caine started to hyperventilate.

"I'm going to tell Artemis to steer us back North. We need to get you seen by a specialist." Mina was now starting to giggle.

"Baby, baby, stop. Everything's perfect. I just felt, my stomach got suddenly warm and then cold, warm and then cold again. I thought I could be sick, then I remembered, this is exactly how Ami and I programmed it. It's..."

"You mean it's.."

"Yes, we are going to be..."