November

October 8

The next place they drove was the hospital, and at first, Ortega felt some brief glimmer of hope. It was false.

The room felt tiny. Too tiny. Across the desk from him, a young woman was busily filling out the top paper in a stack of forms. She looked up at Ortega, took in the mussed hair and miserable eyes.
"Age?"
His voice didn't seem to want to work. It came out a croak. He tried again.
"Ah, 19."
"Height?"
"5'7"."
"Weight?"
"142."
She flipped through the file, initialing and penciling in various boxes. When she got to a stapled bright yellow page, she stopped. She stared for a moment, read over it again, then paused in her note taking and glanced anxiously up at Tega. Her pencil flapped between two fingers, tapping a nervous beat on the desk. She willfully stopped it, squeezed it in one fist.
"Ortega, I have to ask you some questions now, and - " she cut herself off, glanced towards a far wall. "I...I have to ask: did you plan this, Ortega?"
Horror, then fear, then rage crossed his face. He'd already fought and lost tonight; all he wanted was to go home and feel defeated in the privacy of his room. Tears pricked at his eyes.
"Did I plan this? You think I planned this? You think I planned to get taken out into a minefield and raped?"
Her eyes shifted, joined him in his misery. She shook her head.
"No, Ortega, please. It's just -" she looked uncomfortable, then worried. "Ortega, this all happened at a very...opportune time. They took a sample at check-in a few minutes ago, and the bloodwork shows you at peak fertility."
Sloane.
It had to be.
It was the only way. It was Sloane who kept track of their cycles and medical histories. It was Sloane who would be the only one who knew. It was Sloane who had betrayed him. He just hadn't realized before how deeply.
"...the likelihood of conception..." the woman was still speaking, Tega realized, fading back into the room from his nightmares, "...is high."
Ortega stared blankly across the table at her. He couldn't make the words make sense.
"The accused perpetrator, Officer James Irvine, has testified that you two have a pre-existing relationship."
"No! That's not true!"
Ortega was desperate, frightened. In his stomach, he could feel the world tilting and his footholds slipping away. What if nobody believed him? What if nobody cared? The woman gripped her pencil longways in two hands, couldn't seem to meet Ortega's eyes.
"Your peer leader, Sloane, and Sloane's fiancé, Officer Clinton Hamilton, have corroborated his story."
Ortega felt like throwing up.
"Officer Irvine, as I'm sure you know, has claimed possession, both of you and any possible child."
The dam broke and water ran; Ortega started to cry. Sincere, gut-felt, thought-through, miserable tears and in between, all he could say was that it wasn't fair. It wasn't true and it wasn't right and it wasn't fucking fair. The woman reached out one hand to take his in her own.
"Ortega." she said, her voice a cross between solemn and stern, "We have to keep talking." he looked up at her. She took a deep breath.
"The doctors see no legitimate reason to keep you in our care."
Tega's heart was pounding.
"But I - I didn't even get an exam! They said, at the Centre, that if something like this happens, we're supposed to get an exam, and now - now, you're saying this..."
"This," she said, as gently as she possibly could, "is being treated as an act of consensual engagement."
There was a lull, like the moment in a car accident just before the impact, and in it, he was floating and weightless, soft and empty with the sound of his condemnation. Then, in a sudden, violent movement, the collection of death warrants and blue eyes that passed through his mind reconvened in an explosion of yellow and white sharp color, as the file the woman had been reading flew off the side of the desk and scattered across the floor. There was another pause, and the woman made meaningful eye contact with Ortega before kneeling down to slowly collect them. From the floor, head bowed and half-hidden behind the massive desk, she began to whisper.
"Ortega, I can't say a lot right now, because they are watching me, and they are watching you. But I believe you, Tega, I do. And I can't make this different for you, and I can't make this different for me. But the one promise I can offer you is that I will never stop trying to make it different."
It came very suddenly - like a wave, this feeling of defeat - and he felt like he was drowning. Flailing. In too deep. There was no swimming back to shore. James was waiting outside of the door for him. The web had already been spun.

The woman was back up at her desk, looking at him sympathetically now, her hands clasped together in a prim bun on the burnt brown desk. Her eyes were gray. In another life, he probably would have found her beautiful.

~:~

The sky was still dark when they released him into James' care, under Sloane's direct supervision. James got six days' leave and shook hands with the military director of the Carrier Health Ward - a very dear friend of his father's - who signed the release papers and wished them well. Halfway down the broken-asphalted drive, Clint suggested they go back into the mountains; home would be too distracting for a newly initiated carrier and anyway he hadn't had any time alone with Sloane lately. Sloane shifted his hand closer to Tega's on the black leather seat and Tega stared at it for a moment. Sloane had always seemed so much bigger than him; days of gazing up in classtime and lectures must have given that impression. In the grey early dawn, they were very much the same. Ortega laid his hand flat and Sloane's came up even; his fingers were thicker - Sloane's build was not quite so slight as Tega's - but still very much the same. Ortega wondered what Sloane's first time had been like. In the front seat, Clint was still talking. Sloane cleared his throat and spoke up, reasoned that he was due back to the Centre at least in time for chapel or else his group would worry. Clint glanced into the backseat and out loud wondered if he shouldn't just get Sloane pregnant already and not have to hear about his job anymore. Sloane shut his mouth. Ortega did not speak. They drove through daybreak. James bought him a teddy bear and a change of clothes on the way home.