Weeks passed, and the ship sailed around and around. She was kept in solitary confinement for three months, with no word from Theyn or Beno and no more conversations with Rodriguez or Waner. Meals were brought, and she was taken under guard to the toilet and to the shower, then deposited back into her room. None of the sailors who attended her said a word, as if they had been ordered to say nothing. She called out telepathically for both of her lovers, but she received nothing in response, not even the echo of a feeling.

Inside her, the baby grew. She talked to her - she was convinced that she was carrying a daughter - and sang to her, and when she paced her cell, she rubbed her hand over her swelling belly. The day the baby kicked for the first time was the day the ship stopped sailing.

The door to her cell opened, and three men in black suits came in. Their reflective glasses hid their eyes, so she couldn’t tell if they were human or hybrids; she knew from the skin of their hands that they weren’t Ylian.  Their leader said only, “Turn around. Hands behind your back.”

Overwhelmed, she obeyed. Metal handcuffs locked onto her wrists, and then they force marched her out of the cell and up onto the top deck of the ship.

A helicopter waited there like a giant wasp, its foils spinning slowly as the pilot idled. Waner was sitting inside with a headset over his slicked-back hair. Sera was deposited into the seat beside him, and he put a matching headset on her head. It was a wireless unit, not connected to the communications system of the helicopter. The man who had handcuffed her handed the key to Waner, and then her trio of escorts stepped back. The helicopter whined into life, and Waner crossed his legs, the very vision of casual ease.

She shifted in her seat, trying to find a comfortable way to sit with her hands behind her back. She finally resorted to spreading her legs and leaning forward, making space for the baby between her thighs. The helicopter lifted off and bore them away from the ship.  After a very short time, she saw land, and then green trees and lush jungle slid away beneath her.

She stared out the window as they flew, taking in the beauty of the planet. She hoped that Theyn and Beno had more luck getting through to Waner and the CIA, because she certainly hadn’t. It pained her to think that the beauty she saw beneath them was going to be destroyed, turned to ashes and devastation by the Taluans when they came. It brought tears to her eyes to think that everything she loved was about to be destroyed, and her baby was going to be born into a world with nothing left to live for.

Abruptly, she saw a stone peak rising above the tree line, and she recognized it. They were heading back toward Theyn’s pyramid. She looked at Waner in surprise, and he grinned like a shark.

“What…?”

The helicopter landed in the cleared space of the plaza in front of the pyramid. Her dig looked the same as it had the last time she’d seen it months ago, before the Mexican government had appropriated all of the artifacts and torn down their tents and Quonset huts.  Joely and Asa were standing outside the conservation tent, guarding their faces from the grit being blown around by the downdraft from the spinning foils.

Waner reached over and unlocked her handcuffs, freeing her. She straightened and rubbed her wrists.

“What is going on?” she asked.

“The National Autonomous University of Mexico has asked for your assistance in continuing the excavation. The University of Austin has been happy to accept the invitation.”

A Mexican soldier came forward to help her out of the cabin. She stepped out, feeling off balance and confused.

“Welcome back to your life, Dr. Cooper,” Waner said. “We’ll be in touch.” He closed the door and grinned at her through the window as the helicopter once more lifted off and flew away.

Joely and Asa rushed to her side, wrapping her in enthusiastic embraces that she was more than happy to receive.  They held one another for a long moment, then Joely pulled away and put her hand on Sera’s pregnant belly.

“Oh my God, look at you! You’re so big!”

Asa grinned. “That’s just ‘cause you’re used to her being so skinny. My sister was way bigger than that before she had my first nephew, so there’s still a long way to go.”

Sera smiled and put her hand over her baby, who pushed against her palm in response. “I’m in no hurry. This little one’s still cooking. How are you guys? What the hell happened to you?”

“After you and the boys got taken away, another ship came and got Prescott and his crew, and us,” Joely said. “They kept us in separate cells for a few weeks, and then they just came and confirmed who we were.  Next thing we knew, we were on a flight to Austin.”

A man in khaki shorts and a white T-shirt strolled up, his eyes hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses.  Asa and Joely hesitated at his approach, clearly uncomfortable with him. He extended his hand.

“My name is Harry Lewis,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of Mr. Waner to make sure that if you find anything particularly interesting, we find out about it right away. Just pretend I’m not here.”

Sera glanced at Asa, who rolled his eyes. “Yeah. That’s going to be super easy.”

Rodriguez emerged from the artifact tent, stripping latex gloves from his hands. “Dr. Cooper,” he said warmly. “So good to see you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not going to lie and say it’s mutual.”

He sighed. “I understand that you may think I’m the enemy here, but I was only -”

“Following orders,” she finished for him. “And this dig, who has the publication rights? Who is the managing supervisor of the dig and the workers?”

“This is still your excavation and you hold the rights to publish the findings,” Rodriguez assured her quickly. “The project is still under your supervision, just like it was before. I’m just here as an adjunct and an assistant, since this is now a cooperative venture between your university and mine.”

She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Fine. Show me what’s going on and let me get back up to speed.”

He smiled. “Certainly. Right this way.”

***

She spent the day reacquainting herself with the site. Virtually everything was the same as before, which made her feel like she was in some sort of alternate reality. Only her baby’s occasional kicks and flutters reminded her of what was real.

She went into the pyramid and crept through the narrow crevice to the burial chamber where she had first seen Theyn. The sarcophagus was gone, and a hole had been cut through the side of the pyramid to facilitate its removal. She was glad that Joely had scanned the chamber before the damage had been done; otherwise, all of the glyphs on the northern side of the room would have been lost.

She sat down on the stone slab beside the hole where the sarcophagus had been. This slab had held the body of a maiden who had been sacrificed to ancient gods, intended to accompany Theyn on his journey to the afterlife. She wondered if he’d known what was going to happen to that girl, and if he’d interacted with her at all.

She touched the empty place where he had lain, and the pain of missing her mates stabbed her, bringing tears to her eyes.  She let out a broken sigh, and the sound echoed hollowly around her. She wondered if she would ever see their faces again, or ever feel their touch. She hoped that they were all right, and that they hadn’t been shuttled off into some horrible government lab where they were enduring experiments or worse.  Her mind conjured terrible images of what her mates were going through, and she broke down and cried.

She didn’t know how long she sat and wept, but it felt like hours before she ran out of tears. She could hear the sound of someone crawling through the access tunnel, and she tried her best to get herself together before they arrived. As it turned out, she didn’t need to bother, because Joely appeared in the doorway to the chamber, a box of Kleenex in her hand. Sera greeted her with a rueful smile and accepted the much-needed tissues. 

Joely sat down beside her. “What happened to them?”

Sera shook her head. “I don’t know. We made it to the destroyer and talked to this guy from the CIA.” She blew her nose. “The last time I saw Theyn, he was being taken to some interrogation or other, almost naked with a hood over his head. I never saw Beno after we got taken from the Cyclops.”

“So are they…” She didn’t finish her thought. She didn’t have to.

“I don’t know.”

“I hope…”  Again, she trailed off.

Sera nodded. “Me, too.”

Joely hugged her tight, rubbing her back in reassurance. She said nothing, and there was nothing she could have said to make the hurting go away. 

“I was always so careful, you know? I never let myself feel for anybody, not romantically.” Sera wiped at her eyes, which were starting to tear up again. “I never thought I’d let myself fall. I never wanted to...I knew it would hurt too much. And I knew I shouldn’t, but I let myself fall for those two, and now it just hurts so bad…”

She began to weep again, and there was nothing that Joely could do but hold her while she cried.

***

The rest of the digging season went by in a surreal blur. They excavated, measured, photographed, recorded and conserved artifacts. They made maps of the site. They worked hard and made progress, and the whole time, Sera felt like a part of her body had been cut away.

Harry Lewis stayed close to her at all times, always watchful, his face always half-hidden by his mirrored sunglasses. He even wore them after dark, which seemed peculiar. He had shown a willingness to help, though, lifting heavy boxes for her in the lab and bringing her cool water when the combination of a bun in the oven and the Mexican sun threatened to lay her low.  He was trying hard to get her to like him, but she wasn’t that easy to convince. He was attached to the CIA, and therefore to Waner, the man who may or may not have done something horrible to Theyn and Beno. She couldn’t cut him an inch of slack.

Rodriguez busied himself with helping to conserve and study the corpse of the sacrificed girl, and he was an able archaeologist in his own right, government connections aside.  There were moments when Sera was grateful for his help, but she’d never tell him that. After the field team had done all that they could do for the remains in Mexico, Rodriguez and Sera had carefully packed her up and sent her on her way to Austin and the more climate-controlled environs of the anthropology lab.

She avoided doctors, even though she knew she should have been seeking some sort of prenatal care. She was afraid that her child’s singular parentage would show on ultrasounds, and she didn’t want to risk having her baby taken away from her, too. She found a midwife in the village where they were staying, saw her occasionally, and hoped for the best.

When the dry season ended and it was time to pack up for the year, Sera and Joely sat in the artifact tent, cataloging the potsherds and jade beads for their trip to Austin.  Thunder rolled in the distance and a flash of lightning illuminated the inside of the tent, briefly displaying the people outside as moving silhouettes against the tent walls.

“Weather’s changing fast,” Joely commented.

Sera put her hand on her abdomen. The baby was flopping, probably trying to turn over. “Easy, Junior,” she said. “I don’t think she likes storms.”

“I don’t think I like storms,” Harry Lewis said, stepping into the tent. “Mind if I take cover in here? It’s going to open up any minute.”

“No, go ahead.”

Sera carefully counted out twenty jade beads and sorted them by size and shape. They had found a broken jar filled with the things, and they were trying to get them packaged up as neatly as possible. There probably wasn’t a lot of scientific value in a bunch of carved jade pieces, but the volume might mean something. She labeled a pair of acid-free plastic bags and loaded the beads into them.

“I had no idea archaeology was so tedious,” Harry said, chatting.  “I guess I watched the Indiana Jones movies too many times.”

“It’s a science,” Sera said. “Not a hard science, but a science nonetheless. It requires careful attention to detail and a tolerance for boredom.”

Joely looked up from her potsherds, which she had been painstakingly numbering. “I can’t wait to get to the lab and glue these things back together.”

“You must like puzzles,” Lewis ventured.

“Sure do. You?”

He shook his head. “I don’t really have the patience for them.”

“Funny, you’ve been awfully patient with watching me work for the last two months,” Sera said drily.

He flashed a charming smile. “With a couple of ladies like you, watching is no hardship.”

Joely snorted. “That sounds dirty.”

“Only if you want it to be.”

Sera gave him a nasty look but said nothing. She went back to her beads.

Outside, a thunder clap boomed directly over their heads, and the skies opened up with drenching rain. The drops hit the ground with such force and ferocity that the noise they made was deafening. She put down her beads and went to the tent flap, looking out into the gale. Her baby twisted again, squirming, and she rubbed her hand over her to soothe her.

“When are you due?” Lewis asked.

She glanced at him. “The midwife isn’t sure, exactly, but she says I have at least another month or so. Just enough time to get back to America and find an obstetrician.”

“My organization has a number of talented doctors that we could put at your disposal.”

There was a strange tone in his voice, excitement coupled with deceit, and she gave him a side-eyed look. “No, thank you.”

A truck drove up, and Asa jumped out and raced into the tent. His foray from cab to cover was brief, but he was still soaked when he arrived.  He took off his hat and brushed the water from it, carefully keeping the moisture away from the table filled with antiquities.

“Got the last big crates loaded on the plane,” he reported. “Now we just have to get the last of the beads and bits boxed up and we’ll be on our way.”

Sera nodded. “Thanks. If you shake like a dog or drip on my artifacts, I’ll kill you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Never cross a pregnant lady,” he said, winking at Lewis, who smiled.

“Words to live by,” the pregnant lady in question confirmed.

Another flash of lightning tore the sky, and barely a second later, the thunder roared again.  Sera shook her head as it felt like the baby was pummeling her with both fists. She was about to say something to Joely when a voice in her head stopped her cold.

Sera.

She froze.  Tentatively, afraid that she had imagined it, she replied, Beno?

She could feel his smile like echoing down their link like sunshine. I’m so glad you hear me. Are you well?

I’m fine. Where are you? Where’s Theyn?

He is with me, but we aren’t linked up currently. I decided I had to take the chance and contact you. They don’t want us using telepathy, since they haven’t determined any way to eavesdrop.

She asked again, Where are you?

Sera could feel him hesitating, then he said, At a military facility in North America. I can’t say more than that.

Because they won’t let you?

Because I don’t know. They only move us at night, and they never tell us where we are. Theyn says we’re far north of the equator, based upon the magnetic pulses he detects.

She realized that she was weeping from the intensity of her relief, and she hoped her companions in the tent put it down to pregnancy hormones. I was so scared, she told him. I miss you both so much and I was afraid you were dead. Are you hurt? Are you okay? Are they hurting you?

Sera, shh. Don’t upset yourself so. They’ve run what felt like a million medical tests, but they’re not hurting us, not really. Not maliciously, anyway. If there’s any pain, it’s an accident.

That’s not very reassuring.

Where are you? Is the baby all right?

She smiled. I’m back in Mexico at the dig where we found Theyn.

He sounded surprised. You’re working?

They let me go. After keeping me in solitary for nine weeks, they just dropped me here. I don’t know what they have planned, but I have a watcher and… She took a deep breath. And the baby is fine. We’re getting regular check-ups and she’s healthy and ahead of the curve.

She could feel happiness and relief coursing through him. I’ll tell Theyn.

Tell him I love him, and remember that I love you, too. Will you get in trouble if they know you’re talking to me?

If they know, yes, but the only way they’d know that is if they see me without my cap.

She was confused. Your cap?

They’re making us wear caps made out of lead and iron. They’re very heavy, and they prevent us from communicating.

She smiled through her tears. I assume you’ve taken yours off.

He sounded pleased with himself.  I found some acid and burned through the lock so I could get rid of it for a minute. A flash of anxiety replaced the smug happiness.

Are they coming?

Yes. I have to put the cap back on. I’ll contact you again soon.

Be careful, she urged. I love you. Somehow I’ll find you.

No, he objected. We’ll find you.

She could feel him disconnected from their link, and the echoing absence hurt. She put her hand on her stomach and thought to the baby, That was daddy. Did you hear him, somehow? Did you feel him?

Joely spoke, breaking her out of her mental cocoon. “Are you okay, Sera?”

She wiped her face. “Fine. Just… moody.”

The look on her assistant’s face told her that she suspected it was more than just hormones, but she let it go.

Sera went back to her beads, hoping that she would hear her lover’s voice again.