Milo Skart had a terrible decision to make.
"Help me."
The pregnant teen girl stumbled into the lobby of the Atraville Hospital. Barefoot and tattered, she appeared ready to give birth.
"Help my baby."
However, the girl and her unborn child carrie...
Milo's roommate, Alexei, slammed an open hand down on the mushroom-shaped button, shutting down his air blanket. With a quiet whoosh, the warm gas dispersed into the small boxy room.
"That thing kept me up all night. Does it ever stop crying? I have a test today. "
Sleepy darkness shadowed Alex's face as he climbed from his lofted bed. He studied incessantly, pursuing a degree in quantum brain design, and didn't like Milo much. They hardly ever talked.
"Why are you here if you aren't even going to-"
Alex gasped. His eyes widened as his mouth flew open. He put both his hands up in the air in a fighting stance as if to shield himself from some unseen attacker.
Milo knew why. Bright red welts moved across Milo's body. They appeared at some point during the night when he rose to quiet the baby. They weren't actual welts, of course, they were photonic projections superimposed over his clothes, like red bubbles that moved constantly around in haphazard trajectories.
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Alex recoiled backward, covering his open mouth. Milo feared he might hyperventilate. "Why do you have that baby?" He pointed at Milo with his other arm, the one not covering his mouth. "Did you steal it? Are you in some kind of baby-stealing crime ring? Are you going to eat it?"
Milo suspected either Dr. Chocka, Axion, or likely both knew his location, and the welts proved it. Axion knew what he had done. Didn't Axion know everything? Weren't its particles everywhere?
He didn't have a mother or father like some of the wealthier kids. He had been born in a public incubator and raised by robots. With nowhere else to go, he brought Cale Vals to his room in the Atraville dormitory towers. There he washed the infant, fed him from some formula he found in the school cafeteria, and took care of him.
Cale didn't like his compression chamber, though. That's probably how Axion found him. Whenever Milo tried to place him back in the box, the kid reflexed with his arms, screamed, and then cried. He heard the infant even after shutting and fastening the lid. The box made a lot of noise too. Its Higgs mechanism wasn't exactly quiet for sleeping or studying.
He fed him more baby formula, but the infant continued to cry. Even after he added some towels along with his blue blanket to make it more comfortable, the kid still cried and reflexed when he lowered him down. It was only when he held him that the baby quieted for a time.
And he loved to hold him. More precisely, he loved the energy that flowed from the infant through him, like a warm electric current juicing his bones, stimulating his muscles, and exciting his brain. It was the best drug in the world. He never wanted to put the baby down.
So, he wound up sitting with Cale for much of the night, sleeping with the babe in his arms. That was when the welts appeared. Now he sat holding Cale in a chair at the far end of the dorm room he shared with Alexei.
