"Did you have sex with him?" Dean mumbles.

"Almost."

"Why?"

No viable answer comes to mind.

"Seriously, Janika. Why? You knew what would happen if you did."

"Yeah, and it was worth it. It was my choice."

For a second, Dean seems appalled. He returns to scrutinize the floor. "I'm sorry it didn't work out. I'm sorry for a lot of things, but what I'm most sorry about now is that we're going to have to," he gulps, hesitating, pausing to find the words to accurately describe this, whatever this is, "complete the contract in here. Right now. With them watching." He nods to the darkened window across from the cot. The crudity of the one-way window makes me laugh a little.

"At least I'm adequately prepared," I shrug, hooking my thumbs in my pants and pushing them over my hips.

I've rarely seen Dean be disgusted by anything. It's a setting of his features, his thick eyebrows encroaching into his furrowed brow, the pinch of his eyes coming together, his thin lips parted, and his jaw open leaving his mouth slightly agape, that I've yet to memorize and become familiar with. This is one of those new looks I catalog somewhere in the back of my mind where I'll probably end up storing these firsts we'll have together tonight. I'll burn this compartment later.

The door whooshes open behind me. The fertility specialist in the maroon coat administers the injection fast like a hard slap on the ass.

A burning chemical cocktail rushes straight into my body. The tingles travel from the point of impact through my veins until my limbs are humming from the stuff. I feel weird in this body, as if it's not my own.

Maybe this will make this easier—I'll just leave this corpse right here, and they can do what they want with it. I'll be back when it's over.

Shivering and having been massacred by fertility drugs and stripped of everything but my pathetic dignity façade, I stand stoic in the middle of the room.

In a gesture resembling what I hope is a shred of humanity, Dean wraps the blanket from around my shaking body. He unties my boot laces and slips them off, left foot then right.

"We could try again," he says to my boots. "Being friends, I mean. Just be friends through this."

I don't want to look down. I only let him do what he needs to do because it's the law. I've never had the same blushing enthusiasm of the other twenty-one year-old patriots. But this is what I have to do.

We were friends once. We were even something much greater than that. Now, somewhere along the years between then and now, he's become nothing more than the fine print.

But the idea warms me. Friends again.

Maybe it's just the blanket or the hormone-rocket speeding through my blood, but I like the sound of it, despite the animosity I had merely hours ago.

He pulls my pants through each ankle and leaves them in a puddle on the floor. I am naked underneath the blanket, similar to the night when I first went to see him in nothing but my winter coat and boots. But this time is real, and there is no mission in Combat Room 4 I can sprint to. It's merely me, Dean, my nakedness, the cot, and our audience tonight.

His gentleness is lost on me. Usually when I look at Dean, I see the man with the enormous rifles strapped to his chest as he rummages through debris to find survivors of the latest massacre. I see Dean, hardened and frowning into the most dangerous situations as he moves to fearlessly rescue those who were stupid enough to stumble so close to death. I see Dean above, extending his hand to me, waiting for me to grab it and pull me out of the rubble. I see Dean the survivor and the savior.

Not here. Instead of the decorated hero, Captain Dean Freyer of the Tactical Recovery Team, I see a man who is unsure whether his broken heart will keep him moving forward.

I turn away.

On top of that, I'm now enraged at the HHP, the URE, and the persistent existence of the world. I don't want to do this. Now. Or ever.

I stare into what I hope are the eyes of the Maroon Coats behind the mirror.

Dean sits on the edge of the cot again, his hands squeezed between his knees and his shoulders slouched forward.

"We have to do it."

I don't answer.

"They won't let us out until it happens."

I continue glaring at my reflection in the mirror.

"I'm going to go slow. I'll try not to hurt you."

"Who cares," I snap. I hope it hurts. I hope it hurts so bad I die and never give the HHP a single cell to profit from.

My eyes roll back after the thought crosses my mind. That seems a little melodramatic. Even for me.

As I occupy the space on the cot next to him, I don't watch him undress.

I lay down.

He joins me in the folds of the itchy blanket. His skin burns hot like a warm loaf of bread against my belly.

"Janika?"

I don't answer.

"You need to believe me. This isn't what I wanted either. I'm sorry."

Silence.

"I never thought we'd end up like this. It was supposed to be different. Somehow this went wrong, and I don't know how to fix it. I don't want this."

I want him to stop talking. But I listen and wonder if we could ever return there again. There was a time when Dean's touch was more welcomed than warm sunshine. It wasn't too long ago we would laugh together at the absurdity of our lives. It felt like just yesterday that we were sitting back to back under the stars during the long nights of hatch duty and talking about what it would have been like to thrive in the Before Days.

Then how did we arrive here?

What happens next is indescribable. Painful, is the first word that penetrates my mind.

There are motions.

There are hands.

There are full feelings and empty ones. There are fingers that brush away hairs falling over my eyes. There are places that feel like they're being sliced.

It's clinical. It's the rough fabric of gauze rubbed over all the places I never thought gauze could go.

He's heavy on me.

I'm heavy like the dead.

The scrape of the cot's metal legs against the white, tiled floor fill the silence of the sterile lab.

I stare at my reflection in the one-way mirror. I see green, lifeless eyes speckled with brown. I see dark-brown hair falling over the rim of the cot. Some of it is in my face, streaking my skin like scars.

Dean's concentration is firm. His eyes are closed. He's labouring at something behind those locked eyelids.

Then he shudders as if swept by a violent cold. A gush of heat deflates me.

The lights in the room dim.

The show is over.