Chapter 9: Chapter 9

Beth is so tiny and delicate, I’m scared I might break her.

She’s not Alexandra, the name Master Eric gave her. She’s Beth. She even looks like a Beth, with her slightly upturned nose and eyes that almost close completely when she laughs.

Beth laughs a lot. I love making her laugh. All I have to do is tickle her belly and nuzzle my face against her small chest, and she’ll giggle so loudly that the other mothers scold me for waking their babies.

The other babies don’t laugh as much as Beth. I love holding her in my arms, curled up, gazing out the window. She’ll nurse or sleep peacefully while I take in the ash-covered landscape.

I don’t have friends anymore. I haven’t really talked to anyone since Beth died.

I watch girls come and go. For the first time, I see girls screaming in pain from miscarriages and being sent away to establishments the same day.

I see the number of girls and their newborns loaded into tanks and taken to factories to work because their babies are Cripples, making them Defectives.

I’ve seen a Cripple child; he was beautiful. His skin was like Beth’s, and his hair too. But his eyes were such a light color, almost green, almost golden. The nurses called it hazel.

He and his mother, Ursula, were sent away even though he was her fifth child and she was clearly a Perfect.

I don’t tell people about these things that I see. I tell Beth, but I know she won’t remember any of it. She won’t even remember me.

She’ll grow up in a school with so many other girls, and one day in seventeen years, she’ll be back here, having a Perfect child of her own. Seventeen years.

Some nights I dream and wake up screaming. It worries the girls around me. They tell the nurses, who check on me. But there’s nothing physically wrong with me.

I just keep seeing her face—Beth’s—as she dies. And I see her child dying, and I see the blood. Then I see my Beth dying in a pool of blood, and I scream and scream.

I don’t like to let other women handle Beth. She’s my precious child. She’s all I have. I feel that she’s not yet Albion’s, that she’s still mine, and I plan on holding her and never letting go.

Sometimes I wonder if my mother held me like this, tightly in her arms. Did she sing to me? Kiss me?

For some reason, I don’t think so. I don’t see many mothers who do. Most are glad to give their child to a nurse to take care of, then go help Albion stitch clothes as much as they can.

Maybe they’re smarter than me. At least they’ll be able to leave their child without much sadness. I stop counting the days because I don’t want to be reminded that Beth will leave me in a few months. I can’t bear the thought.

I watch her grow before my eyes, doubling and tripling in size, flipping herself over, pulling herself up to stand, falling down and crying.

I spend nights lying by her side, listening to her cry, carrying her around my room, cooing to her, singing to her. Nights just watching her sleeping, hiccuping, frowning at her dreams.

I watch her in the nursery with the other babies, crawling toward the brightly colored toys, smacking the leg of another who was crying.

I keep my eyes on her constantly, watching where she crawls to in my room. I feed her on my lap, spooning food into her mouth and getting annoyed when she spits it back out.

I want to share her with Beth. I dream of what could have been, of the two of us with our babies on our laps, laughing as they played.

Eric visits me sometimes. He and I sit across from each other in the main hall and sip drinks.

I always keep Beth on my lap and feed her small pieces of food. She doesn’t laugh much when he’s around. She just watches him with her large brown eyes and then looks up at me.

“How have you been?” he asks me.

“Well, I’m enjoying motherhood,” I say quietly.

He nods and gazes at Beth. “She’s perfect,” he tells me.

“I know she will serve Albion well,” I reply, though the words sound fake and I don’t know why. Eric doesn’t seem to notice.

“I know that too. You will be returning to the establishment in a few months, won’t you?” he asks.

I nod, stroking Beth’s soft white hair. “Yes, Be—Alexandra is almost eight months old now. I only have four more months left with her.”

Eric nods with a small smile. “You must be looking forward to returning and creating more life for Albion,” he tells me.

“Yes, Master, of course I am.” My grip around Beth tightens.

“I’ve in fact come here to inform you of some arrangements I’ve made for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I’ve decided that the next seven children that you have shall be mine. It’s a great honor.”

“Yours?” I stare at him.

“Yes, I will father them. We will create life together. You will be mine exclusively, and you will create seven more Perfect children with me. All of our sons will become Masters. Do you understand what an honor this is?”

I stare at him wide-eyed. “But…Masters don’t create life. Soldiers do!” I can’t help sputtering.

“I want to.”

“Can you?” I ask.

He casts me a small smile. “Why couldn’t I? Did you not see that night that I also have the ability to create life?”

“I did see,” I reply, frowning slightly. “But soldiers create life. Not Masters.”

“I can do whatever I please, Alexandra. I would have expected some joy from you,” he tells me pointedly.

“I’m so overcome with emotions now. I’m just trying to control them,” I reply quickly.

“Of course you are.” He smiles at me.

“How can I be exclusive?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “I belong to Albion. How can I be yours?”

“Masters are special. I choose you to be exclusive to me because I like you. In the past, most women were exclusive to one man. They formed a couple and stayed just the two of them.”

“You already told me, but that is why we’re strong. Because we have Albion, we are all together. The old way didn’t work out.”

“You don’t understand because you are ignorant,” he snaps back. “You being exclusive to me makes no difference. You will still be bedded every night. Only each night, it will be me,” he says.

“Yes, I understand, but…” My voice trails off, unsure of how to convince him that being exclusive is wrong.

Perfects aren’t exclusive. That’s what makes everything work. We all belong to each other; we all work together.

I know that Eric desires me not only for my ability to create life, he wants me. I don’t understand why or even what he’ll do when he has me. But I know he wants me and nothing will stop him from having me.

Because, apparently, Masters can bend all the fundamental rules of our society.

I stare at him. Something inside me stirs.

I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve only just discovered an emotion recently after Beth died. I felt that my heart was torn into pieces, and my Beth has slowly been putting it back together for me.

But with each piece she puts back, the closer she gets to me and the less I can imagine giving her away. When I hold her, my heart is warm and I’m content. I know that I will never be able to hurt her.

And I know that I would go to the factories and work until I die if it meant that she wouldn’t be hurt. I would even open my window and breathe in the toxic fumes outside to save her from whatever terrible fate.

I know the emotion of love. It’s how I feel about Albion. Since I was little, my teachers have told me to love Albion, but that doesn’t match the way I feel about Beth. For Beth, I would truly give my life to Albion.

I’d kill Albion before Beth got hurt.

It’s treason to think like this. That’s why I don’t say it. My feelings for Eric remind me of my feelings for Albion, and my feelings toward foreign countries.

I think it’s fear. My heart races in Eric’s presence, but it’s not a nice feeling. Not like with the soldiers, who made me feel safe and important.

I feel small with him, like I need to be cautious. Like I’m going to be found out, even though I’ve committed no crime.

After I put Beth to bed in my room for her nap, I accompany Eric downstairs before he leaves. He stands by the door and places his hand on top of my head, then strokes my hair and cheek.

“I look forward to creating more life with you, Alexandra,” he tells me.

“Me too,” I whisper, bowing my head. My body trembles, and I wish that he would stop stroking me. Instead, he lifts my chin and places his lips against mine for a second.

“I will come to visit you again soon. Proba—”

He’s cut off abruptly by a wailing siren. It slices through the air and pierces my ears. I gasp, and he jumps in surprise.

I hear girls screaming and their footsteps pounding as they race downstairs. Eric reaches for my hand and drags me across the room.

“Hurry!” he urges me.

“Beth!” I cry, pulling away from him. But he holds me tight.

“Come on, Alexandra!” He hauls me toward the basement, to where all the girls are rushing.

“No! No! Beth!” I scream, ripping my hand from his.

He turns to me in surprise, his dark eyes wide and frightened. “Alex! Come on!” he yells at me.

“Not without my daughter!” I snarl, pushing past him and racing up the stairs.

But bodies push me back in the other direction. I hear the sound of the building crumbling. Great smashing, screaming metal, concrete snapping and falling. A bomb has hit the nursery.

I feel the building shudder and force myself through the throng of girls running downstairs. I lose Eric, who’s still shouting my name behind me.

My heart races in fear of the thought of Beth’s exposure to toxic fumes. The thought of her burning in the flames of the explosion.

I’m on the ground crawling through legs, then I’m up and running down the empty hallway. I see my bedroom door slightly ajar. I know I had closed it before I left. My heart racing, I ignore the siren and burst into my room.

I find Beth screaming and crying in her crib. The window is still sealed shut. Tears streaking down my face, I gather Beth into my arms and hug her to my chest. As I approach the door, another bomb lands.

The whole world seems to go silent for a second. The air leaves the room, then I’m sent flying through the air and slammed against the wall.

I see nothing, hear nothing. Then the dull ringing of sirens begin making their way to my ears, sound as if from afar. And I feel heat. As I roll back, Beth is still in my arms, her face scrunched up.

In front of me is open air. What had been my bedroom wall has disappeared. I feel the sharpness of the hot wind on my face.

I stare at the landscape before me. The ground seems to be covered in fresh ash, and a large Japanese warplane burns steadily close to the nursery. A second plane is circling in the sky.

For a few seconds, I can only hold my child in my arms as I stand at the edge of my room. Flames burn beside me, below me, above me.

Then Beth lets out a wail. I take in a quick breath, and smoke fills my lungs. I drop to my knees, hugging Beth to my chest.

I cannot breathe, I cannot scream, I cannot move. I watch in horror as the Japanese plane explodes and the sky fills with flames. The other plane circles closer to the nursery, dropping bombs on trucks parked outside.

In the distance, our gray planes finally appear, shooting across the white sky, racing to save us. But they don’t come in time. A bomb lands on the nursery above me, and I am thrown from my bedroom floor.

One moment, Beth and I are airborne. The next, I’m sprawled on the ground. It’s hot, dry, and unyielding beneath me. Yet, I don’t feel any pain. Beth is in my arms, crying and coughing, but she’s unscathed from the fall.

Flames are dancing wildly nearby. The sky is choked with black smoke, and ash is falling like snowflakes. I catch a fleeting vision of Albion’s birth, a scene of falling ash and fire, and a younger version of me clutching her child, knowing our fate is sealed.

Coughing, I push myself up. The smoke stings my lungs. My eyes are watering, my head is spinning, and I clutch Beth closer to my chest.

Walls of fire seem to encircle us. I can’t see anything beyond them. I can’t even spot the planes in the sky, but I can hear them, their guns blazing ruthlessly. The ground trembles beneath my feet.

Then, the flames part. A figure leaps through them. It’s dressed in red and black. Its face is concealed by a black balaclava. It’s sprinting toward me, shouting. It’s taller than me.

I cough, watching it approach. I bend over, the flames inching closer behind me. Suddenly, an arm yanks me upright. Two eyes lock onto mine.

Two long, almond-shaped brown eyes. Not Perfect eyes. Outsider eyes.

I scream.