I don't need him here, but I'm going to borrow his strength, just for a little while.

The Maroon Coat in front doesn't lose focus from his device when we enter. He's one I've never seen before, with thick, black-rimmed glasses and a coat much too baggy for his body. He stands behind a desk and taps rapidly into his PAHLM.

"Captain Lorn?" His eyes never leave the screen as he continues tapping.

Without a word, I nod my head.

"And . . . you are?" The Maroon Coat looks over the rim of his frames and points his stylus at Dean's chest.

"Captain Dean Freyer." Dean crosses his arms. "The father."

The Coat chuckles once like a hiccup. "Captain, we don't need you here anymore, you're free to go."

"I want to be here anyway."

He looks to his PAHLM, back at Dean, back to his PAHLM, then at me. He scowls at both of us.

"All right then. Follow me, please."

We trudge through a bleach-drenched corridor and into a series of rooms I hadn't registered before. Each door has a small, rectangular window on the front. Women in various stages of pregnancy occupy the rooms we pass. They lie on the singular beds the same hue as rotting oranges. The Coat leads us to the far end of the hall to an open door.

"Have a seat." He waves his arm over in the general direction of the bed while digging through his pocket.

The plastic is cold. It chills the back of my thighs, even through my stiff-as-fiberglass fatigues.

The Maroon Coat initiates the process with mechanical precision from the practice from a million mothers before me. He takes my wrist in his hand and shoves my sleeve to my bicep, exposing my skin to the prickly air. He wipes the bend of my inner elbow and stabs me with a syringe drawing blood into its empty bank like the burst of a sneeze. I barely flinch, but, honestly, that shit hurts.

He pulls out a machine from the back of one of the desks in the room and drops the little vial of blood through the tube at the top.

Dean stands like a sentinel guard beside me, not moving, not making a sound, not trying to hold my hand or do any of the other mushy crap I thought he would've tried by now.

"Well, that's not right," the Coat says as the results flash on the screen. "One more time." He fishes around his pocket for another syringe and stabs me in the forearm again before I have a chance to react.

"Ouch!" I say this time out of shock.

"What's wrong?" Dean asks the kid in maroon.

The Coat drops the tube into the machine again and drums his finger on its bulky sides a few times before a faint alert sounds and confusion mars his face again.

"This device hasn't been working right. Give me a second." He pulls the door and exits the room only to return moments later with an identical machine.

"One last time, Captain Lorn. Let's try the other arm."

I hold out my left arm this time, and he stabs it again with the syringe. My blood spills into the empty tube, and he rushes it to the open mouth of the little machine.

Confusion.

"It seems, Captain Lorn, that you are not pregnant."

The room falls silent. Next to me, Dean slumps forward.

"How is that possible?" I prod. "I thought you guys had a hundred-percent success rate." My anger and my relief build together slowly.

"Oh, we do. Every once in a while, it takes more than one attempt, so this isn't too irregular. Please wait here while I bring in the fertility specialist." His maroon coat barely follows him out as the door slams shut behind him.

An invisible wall of awkwardness forms between us.

Dean opens his mouth, but he stays silent. His hands run through his short cropped hair before rubbing the displeasure from his face.

"This is your lucky day, Dean. Now you get to stick it to me twice."

"Janika . . ." I can't face him when I hear the hitch in his voice.

We remain quiet until the young Coat returns with an older man with sandy hair and a maroon coat.

"Please come stand here and bend over the bed, Captain Lorn." The older Coat has a large syringe filled with pink liquid in one hand and motions me forward with his other hand.

When I hop off the bed and wiggle out of the top part of my pants, Dean comes around to the other side of it to talk to me.

"I promise," he says with a voice as soft and loaded as a stormcloud, "it will be different this time if you agree to try it another way with me."

I growl at him as the needle punches into my flesh. It stays in my skin longer than the first one. It must be a double dose of special baby juice for me this time. Dean rolls his sleeve and receives his own burst of special serum.

"All right, be back next week for the results." The older Coat tosses the empty syringes in a tin can in the corner of the room. He and the younger Coat with glasses exit with me and Dean closely at their heels. They stop abruptly and turn around to face us.

"Where are you two going? The drugs only last twelve hours. You two aren't allowed anywhere until the coupling is complete. The room is yours." He waves his hand around to the metal-cold room with the solitary orange table in the middle.

The door closes and locks behind them. Dean and I are shocked into stillness.

He breaks the silence first by saying my name.

I push past him to the old mustard-colored bed, hoping my face doesn't transform into an open ledger for the room to scrutinize. My shame is so lucid, it must be visible from the Topside.

I'm frustrated because it should have been one and done. They were supposed to get me knocked up the first time so I wouldn't face this humiliation again.

I'm ashamed because as brave as I'm supposed to be and as much as I want to be the model specimen for Hayomo to demonstrate how I can be twice what is expected, I'm scared, and I don't want to go through this again.

"I'll go slow," Dean says, scrambling for words. "Or, I don't know." He runs his hand through his hair again. "Maybe I'll go faster if it helps, I don't know, Nika. I don't know what to do to make this better."

My eyes unfocus as I hope Our Lady of the Impenetrable Heap is not up there, watching me do this again. I look at the ceiling, unbuckle my pants, and slide them over my wide hips where they bunch over my boots. Still forcing eye-contact with the ceiling, I bend at the waist over the table and wince when the icy air hits places that have never experienced icy air before.

"Janika?" He says my name again in the sad way one would mention an impending surrender.

"Just do it, Dean. Do it before I lose my will to be here."

My words hang in the air as we hesitate together, not knowing what to do next. Eventually, I hear the drawers at the exam room storage supply slam open and a bottle cap swirled off with sharp, quick movements. I hear soft, slow rustling and buckling and shuffling for a few seconds. I hear liquid slurping. I hear the squelch of his own preparations.

"I'm here," he says quietly. "Nika, I'm sorry."

My gut twists.

It commences like science. It's cold and sterile and horrible.

His legs make parallel lines with mine. The sole noise in the room is a repetitive

Thunk . . .

Thunk . . .

Thunk . . .

I think back to the poster we passed on our way up. I think about the beacon of painted light shining behind our President. I think about the nondescript couple handing a pile of ambiguous blankets. I think about the words painted in red that fill me with a slow, bubbling rage.

Safety . . .

Equality . . .

Unity . . .

None of this is my reality. I'm participating in the Human Hope Project. I'm adding another human to this crusty, dried-up, mechanical, shapeless world. I'm left broken, minuscule, and alone.

Thunk . . .

Thunk . . .

Thunk . . .

I am alone. I'm with Dean, but he's not really here either. He's a pawn, like me.

The idea settles over my head as if it were a falling feather hesitating on its landing. Dean is a pawn, like me.

A creeping emotion scuttles over the surface of my despair.

I feel sorry for him.

Dean's imaginary future between us, our contract, and our future offspring was different from the norm. If they played out his way, our world would be warm with sunshine.

He's doing what he can, following the rules like he always does. He's been a spectator of my overt evasion. He's never once pushed me into this but waited for me to come to him.

And I blamed him the whole time.

I abandoned him. But he's never left my side once. I am miserably alone in Combat Room 4, and I have left him miserably alone here.

Guilt has never burned so hot.

Pushing away the bile in my throat and the lumps in my stomach, I attempt to clear the slate for the man who used to be my best friend.

I endeavor to bring some life back to this debacle and push off the orange-yellow bed. I back into him, arching up, trying to press my body closer. I want to show him I'm here, too.

And, just like that, there's a new sensation. It strikes like lightning.

I'm surprised by my own gasp when it comes out of me.

He must sense my transformation.

He whispers my name.

He wraps me in a gentle embrace, holding me close to his chest.

The room is a little less cold.

The lights are a little less harsh.

Dean's forearm crosses over my body as his left hand grips my shoulder. I allow myself to lean into the comfort of his familiar body as he makes long, languid strokes, building speed as he pulls me closer. He ends with a shuddering breath.

As comforting as these last few moments are, I don't have any desire to repeat them ever again. This thing is getting conceived today.

"Do you think it worked?" I ask at half-volume, looking at an empty corner to my left.

"Probably," he says back, focusing on the door.

As I scrutinize the door with him, our Coat with the glasses passes and does a double-take. He unlocks the room and steps inside, clicking through his PAHLM and pushing his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose that's spattered with dark freckles and flaring red zits. This guy can't be older than twenty years old. He probably hasn't even been contracted yet himself.

Dean and I quickly buckle up and rearrange our clothes.

"All right, Captain Lorn, we will notify you in one week when to come back to get your results. Until then . . ." He takes out another syringe filled with yellowish liquid and punches the fleshy part of my bicep with it. "Here are some extra vitamins to boost Junior's growth."

I'm a hardened member of the esteemed Earth's Militia. If I'm sick of the extra swat of pressure they use with those syringes, I wonder how the other women take it. Or maybe they're giving me the extra force because I'm special and they like me so much.

"See you next week, folks." The Coat nods with what I suspect is sympathy and abandons the room, leaving the door ajar behind him.

"I feel pregnant already," I say to the room with a forced note of hope.

Dean stays in the corner and doesn't respond. Something weird has happened to him.

Part of me wants to ask what's wrong. Do I want to know? Do I care?

"Dean? What?"

"Don't you think this is unfair?"

"I think you know the answer to that."

He looks at the floor. "Why does this feel like it's all on you? Like you're the only one they want to suffer."

I don't understand what he's saying. "You want a needle? I'm sure if we ask nicely, we can get the Mountainous Region of Zitlandia to draw some blood or something."

"I'm serious." He looks at me with his brow furrowed. "Safety, Equality, Unity. Where is the equality?" He inches closer. "I won't leave you by yourself in this. I promise."

Warmth flares. I grab his hand and entwine my fingers with his. Suddenly, I'm not crazy or alone.