The following day, the snow had stopped, so they were able to continue their journey to the coordinates Khajal had given Rafaroy.
When they were close to the place, both men stopped startled.
“What’s the matter?” Elena asked, stopping to look at them.
“There are humans nearby, more exactly, right where we’re heading,” Rafaroy explained, clearly frustrated.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I can sense them too. There are at least ten soldiers heavily armed,” Zandar confirmed.
Elena rubbed her face, desperate. “Now what? What shall we do?”
“We’ll need to find a place to hide while we find a way to contact the other cyborgs,” Rafaroy explained. “Stay here, I’ll go take a look to see what I can find out.”
“Be careful, please,” she asked him, worried.
“I will be.”
He disappeared among the trees, and Elena took a seat with Alanna, on a fallen trunk.
“What will happen now?” the little girl asked, scared.
“Let us wait for Rafaroy to return, then, we’ll decide what to do,” she replied as calmly as possible. There was no use in scaring the little girl.
It took Rafaroy a couple of hours to return. The expression on his face didn’t look promising.
“They’ve set camp there. As we estimated, there are ten men. It would be hard to take them all down, and that’s not the kind of thing I would do if I have a choice,” he explained.
“What are we going to do then?” Zandar asked, worried.
“We need to find a transmitter.”
“The only way is to find a Taucets colony. They should help us out like they have done with several other cyborgs,” Zandar suggested, though the frown on his face showed he wasn’t very pleased with the idea.
“That would put the girls in danger. We’ll have to find another way,” Rafaroy rejected his friend’s idea. “Right now, we need to get out of here and find a place safe to hide while we decide what to do.”
“Where can we go?”
“Let’s head back to the Taucets colony. The place should be empty by now, and we could find a working transmitter in the ruins,” he suggested. “We can’t stay here. We have no idea what sort of technology they have up there, and the last thing we need is for them to detect us.”
The girls got up at once, and they left with the cyborgs.
A few minutes later, though, Zandar stopped and looked at some point on his left. “What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing at it.
Rafaroy looked at what he was signaling, and before the girls could ask what was going on, they were running towards the object Zandar had spotted.
Startled, the girls followed them, not sure they should.
“Rafaroy?” Elena called him when they were close enough.
He walked to where she was, with a wide smile. “It’s a Taucet vessel. There’s no transmitter, but it has enough fuel to take us out of here a lot faster,” he explained.
“What’s it doing out here?” she asked suspiciously.
“We’ve scanned the area, there are no Taucets around. For some reason, someone abandoned the vessel here, and now it’s ours,”
She chuckled. “Can you fly it?” she asked, amused with his enthusiasm.
“I can fly anything, sweetie… it’s a pity this vessel isn’t big enough to take us to Arcadia, but I’m happy it can take us out of here,” he assured.
They got inside the vessel, and just a few moments later, the vessel was on the air, heading to the colony. They still wanted to check the ruins, in case they could find a transmitter to send a message to the other cyborgs.
As expected, the colony was a total ruin. Everything appeared to be destroyed, but even so, the men walked around the place, trying to find anything useful. They found food, fuel for the vessel and even some clothes, but not much more. They were about to return to the vessel when Rafaroy found the communications’ room. The place was a wreck, but the found a transmitter. It wasn’t working, but they gathered a few things they could use to try and fix it.
It wasn’t a solution, but it was better than nothing.
They returned to the vessel and loaded all they had found. “We need to decide where to go. With the vessel, we have a lot more choices.”
“We need a place where we can find food easily, but far from any city or town,” Elena pointed out.
“There’s a Taucet colony in Australia. We could fly to one of the desert islands near it and establish our camp in it. If we can’t find a way to fix the transmitter, one of us could pay a visit to the Taucets and contact the cyborgs,” Rafaroy suggested.
“Those tropical islands will have enough fruits and vegetables to please me and meat and fish to please you,” Elena replied, pleased.
“Exactly, we can be self-sufficient in a place like that.”
“It’s a plan then.”
They boarded the vessel once more, and after setting course for the island, they were on their way.
The island they found was quite small, but a real paradise. They managed to build a pretty good shelter near a waterfall, and they had enough food. The only cloud in their sky was their inability to fix the transmitter.
They had been on the island for a month now, and Rafaroy’s impatience seemed to grow with each day that went by. Elena tried to understand his feelings, but she hadn't been feeling that well herself, lately.
“We’ll have to pay a visit to the Taucets’ colony,” Rafaroy announced, one afternoon, while they walked along the beach, watching the beautiful sunset.
“You haven’t been able to fix the transmitter.” She wasn’t asking.
“No, and though we could live here for a while longer, this is not the life I want for me,” he stated, with a frustrated tone.
She raised her head a bit too suddenly to look at him and the world spun around and she almost fell to the ground. His quick action was the only thing preventing it.
“What’s the matter? What happened?” he asked, with a deep frown, still holding her in his arms.
“I just felt a bit dizzy, that’s all… but I caught some kind of bug or something…” she said, in a faltering tone.
He looked at her, and for the first time, he noticed the deep eye bags and how pale she was, despite the golden skin color she had gained under the tropical sun. “Why haven’t you told me about this?” he asked, feeling his heart racing in his chest.
“I’m sure it’s nothing Rafaroy, just a normal bug, I’ll be alright soon,” she assured her.
“You don’t look alright. I have been so concentrated on the damn transmitter I have lost sight of the things around me,” he said in a self-deprecating tone.
“I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure all I need is some rest, and I’ll be fine.”
“Let’s go back to the shelter,” he insisted, and she accepted, not willing to make a fuss over something so insignificant.
Alanna was helping Zandar prepare dinner. They were cooking fish, and the scent was too much for Elena’s stomach. Covering her mouth, she ran from the place, just in time before she threw up all she had eaten during the day.
Rafaroy had followed her and was standing next to her, more worried than ever.
“This seems something more than a bug,” he said, taking a seat on a rock and pulling her into his arms.
“I know we’ve never talked about this and I never felt I had the right, but, considering the situation, I guess it’s pertinent,” he started saying.
Elena looked at him, intrigued, not sure what he meant by his words. “What are you talking about, Rafaroy?”
“Did you have a husband or a lover before you were taken by the Taucets?” he asked.
“No, I didn’t. I don’t remember the last time I went on a date with a man,” she replied, still not getting his point.
“What about the Taucets? Did they touch you before they put you in your cell?”
“Rafaroy, what the hell are you talking about?”
He looked at her, clearly uncomfortable. “You have all the symptoms of a pregnant woman, Elena,” he finally said. “I have been so focused on getting us out of here I failed to see the signs. You gained some weight, your breasts are bigger and heavier, your dizziness, and nausea… they all point at it.”
“And you’ve assumed I was pregnant before we met. Why?” she asked, too astonished with his train of thoughts as to really assimilate the truth.
“Cyborgs can’t breed, remember? The nanocybots destroy all embryos because they consider them defective eggs,” he explained, in a stern tone.
“Yes, you told me so. You also told me that same would happen to me since your nanocybots now live in me,” she pointed out.
“Obviously, I was wrong…”
She jumped up, stepping away from him. “In more ways than you think, Rafaroy because if I’m pregnant, you’re the father.”
Her words felt like a wall of rocks falling over him. That couldn’t be possible. Cyborgs couldn’t breed… everybody knew that…
“There’s no other possible candidate,” she stated, crossing her arms over her chest, as the idea of being pregnant finally started to set in.
“But…” he started saying, as he jumped to his feet. “That can’t be…” he walked away from her, troubled with the idea of Elena pregnant with his child.
Elena was still having trouble accepting the possibility of being pregnant, but she sure as hell hadn't expected Rafaroy’s reaction. She was sure he wouldn’t have reacted worse if she had told him they were stranded on that island for the rest of their lives.
Struggling to keep her tears at bay, she turned around to return to the shelter. There was no point in worrying about a possibility. If she were pregnant, she would deal with it later… and clearly, alone.