Immortal Mistakes

what could go wrong

Gabrielle was smiling when the scanner lid slid open. She tapped the back of her right hand and a heatmap of Chloe's DNA projected up against the red sand walls - a black outline of Chloe's body with a tiny green spot in her abdomen. 

Gabrielle's voice trembled. "You see the DNA concentrated there? That is extraneous to your DNA."

Chloe sat up and pushed herself off the scanner. "I'm pregnant?"

"Yes. That is DNA from another human, a female human."

There was a human inside her. And shame and fear. Pregnancy was dirty and old fashioned. And the thing in her belly would grow and grow until it burst out of her body, maybe killing her. Chloe had never feared death before.

Gabrielle clasped her hands together. Chloe recognised the look in her eyes: the excitement a scientist feels when her experiments are working, when she is trying something no one has done before, pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

"I'm the first person you've made pregnant, aren't I?"

The excitement rolled off Gabrielle, electric, a shock to Chloe. "Yes. This project surprised even me."

"Why does the Minister want someone pregnant?"

"I do not know why, I never know why, I only know what. Now we must move to the second experimental stage and treat you with the gene editing immortality treatment."

"Immortality treatment? I'm already immortal."

Gabrielle waved her hand. "This is not for you Chloe, this will be directed at the embryo."

"The baby won't inherit immortality from me? I thought that was how mortal style reproduction worked?"

"Oh yes she will, but this treatment will give her improved immortality."

More immortal than immortal? Chloe was falling, through the red earth, out to whatever was there on the other side. She took quick sharp breaths to combat the nausea and hoped the impact wouldn't be too painful.

Gabrielle came at her with a pill and a glass of water. She forced the pill in Chloe's mouth and handed her the glass. "Drink this."

"Fuck no, what is it?" Chloe said, taking the pill out of her mouth.

"It will not affect you. This treatment does not work on adult cells only on developing cells."

"I want to know what it is." Chloe did not want to put something in her body that she did not understand. She was a scientist. She knew what could go wrong. 

"This is not optional."

Chloe turned the pill between her thumb and forefinger, staining her fingers red. "If I do this for you, I want something in return."

"You are not in a position to bargain."

"Yes I am, I could crush this pill into the sand. I could refuse to eat. I could run into the desert and never return. If you want this experiment to work, then you can't imprison me here alone. It's too much." Being alone in this compound, alone in the desert, was suffocating Chloe.

"You won't be alone anymore," said a voice filled with the strength of decades of power. Octavia strode into the room, a shorter, thicker version of Gabrielle and much more of a problem. Octavia was now the Minister for Science, Chloe's boss in a way. But before that she had run this compound. Back when Chloe was a child, when the Immortals were hidden away from the rest of the world, Octavia protected them from the war. At least that's what she'd always told them. Chloe didn't know whether to believe it or not, now. It had been so easy when she was a child. Reality was real.

Gabrielle melted away leaving Octavia, Chloe and the red sand and the anger.

"Have you come to stay with me? To watch your pet project blossom?"

Octavia reached out as if to touch Chloe but stopped before making contact. "No. I've come to show you what it means to be a mother."

"How would you know?"

"I was mortal before I was immortal, unlike you and your friends."

"I'm not here because of what happened to Henry, am I?"

"Yes, you are here because of Henry, because of what is happening to all of us."

"The Network?"

"Yes."

"You're part of the Network?"

"I started the Network."

Chloe shut her eyes and re-opened them slowly, expecting to see that the whole world had changed, had shifted and re-settled but Octavia still stood before her surrounded by red sand walls and red sand floor. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. The Network wasn't Chloe's and Henry's, it wasn't secret, it wasn't fighting for freedom, standing up against invasion of their minds. It was...

Chloe didn't know what it was.

She gripped the pill in her fingers, feeling it's smooth edges, feeling it resist. She let it slip down into her palm, leaving a red smear, and held her hand out to Octavia. "What is this?"

"The future."

"My future?"

"And mine. And Henry's and Susan's."

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"Because I have a present for you. A gift from the past."

"What is it?"

"Pill first."

Chloe knew there was no point. Octavia had won. She would always win. Chloe sucked the pill off her palm and swallowed it. Octavia pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. Chloe hadn't seen paper since she'd left the compound.

"A letter. From your mother," Octavia said.

"I don't have a mother."

"Yes you do. We all do. We all came from somewhere. You had a mother who loved you very much. Just as you will love this baby. You were the key to immortality for your mother and this baby is key to immortality for you." Octavia held up the letter. "Chloe, believe me, this experiment is as important to you as it is to me." She handed the letter to Chloe. It was cream and soft and crinkled when Chloe opened it. Chloe sat down on the scanner to read.

"There are more of these from the rest of your family."

Chloe looked up from her mother's words. "Where?"

"You'll get them if you do as Gabrielle asks."

If the baby was key, then Chloe was key. She would lock them all out, somehow.