Terrors in Subnautica II; Humanity Reconstructed(Complete)

Part 18: The Escape

After saying goodbye to N/N, we walked back to the anchor point Duke made at the far end of the new base. I listened to the girls idly talk as we went while I gently rubbed circles into  Marzia's hand, hoping to comfort her.

I feel her suddenly squeeze my hand, stopping in her tracks.

"Are you okay? What's wrong?" I ask, taking both her hands in mine.

"I dunno.. I just got a sudden wave of pain." She breathes.

Seeing the fear in her eyes, I motion for us to move to the side so she can sit down when she falls to her knees. She screams out in pain and I collapse beside her, frantically trying to figure out what's wrong, when one of the medical staff runs up and calls out for extra help!

"It's okay Mar, I'm right here. It's gonna be okay."

I try my best to stay calm, gripping her hands and holding her close as she continues to cry out. I can feel my mind racing through the worst possibilities when more members of the medical team come running up with a gurney!

"Don't leave me!" She cries as they start running her to a private room.

"I'm not going anywhere!"

Running to keep up, they lead us through to the nearest private room and quickly close the door behind our friends. Seán looks her in the eyes and promises to take care of her before jumping into action with the other medical staff.

"What's happening!?" I try not to scream, as tears start brimming my eyes.

"She's going into labor, and she's fully dilated. We need her to start pushing now."

I feel myself completely freeze as I stare back into the eyes of the doctor. She's isn't due for another few months! How is she already in labor? What's going to happen to our babies? Are they going to survive this? How did she go into labor so quickly?

"Felix!"

I jerk my attention back to Seán, a serious look in his eyes.

"You can do this. I promise everything is gonna be okay, but we need you to focus on helping your wife."

"Okay..Okay I can do that!"

Grabbing the nearest chair I sit myself close beside her, once again taking her hand. I look her in the eyes and start comforting her as best I can. A constant stream of 'I Love you's and encouragement pour out of me as she starts pushing. Her grip on my hand is painfully tight, but I try my best to ignore it and keep encouraging her.

Hours that felt like minutes flashed by when suddenly everything became quiet.

For a moment all I could hear was Marzia's ragged and exhausted breathing, before the quietest echoes of crying started to fill the room. Looking over to Seán I felt my whole body become overwhelmed with indescribable emotion at the sight of him gently cleaning off one of our children. I watched as he and two other doctors finished cleaning our quietly crying new borns before walking them over to us.

Seán gently placed one of them in Marzia's arms as she began to cry with the biggest smile I've ever seen. Relief and joy washing over her. As she's handed one of our other children Seán takes the third and carefully hands them to me, all words escap me as I felt them breathing in my arms.

"Congratulations, you have two healthy daughters, and a healthy son." Seán smiled.

A million emotions swirled around inside of me as I cradled our son. I gently kissed his fragile head, not caring that a few of my tears would drip down his cheeks. Carefully sitting beside my wife we held our children close, filled with emotions I could never describe in words.