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After I made my daily jogs through the dam, I always joined Shea on the rooftop of the generator room, the very spot I would’ve splattered had Michio not caught my rope. It was there that the farmer, Ronnie—he actually answered to Roark’s nickname—set up the garden. Under his tutelage, Shea and I learned the mechanics of hydroponics, helped him channel the water and nutrients, and modified the system as the vegetables grew. And they grew fast. Fifty percent faster than soil plants. Eddie would have vegetables on the menu in a few short weeks.

When Roark wasn’t with us in the garden, I often found him kneeling beside our bed or holing up in an empty tunnel with his head bowed. The larger the bump in my belly grew, the more he prayed. I always left him alone with his prayers, as his faith in God seemed to cushion the weight of the prophecy.

My fate. The big ugly thing my guardians didn’t talk about. Yet when I peered deep into their eyes, I could see it there, the shadowy threat of my death like an impression looming in their thoughts. My healthy exams consoled them, but fate would come, most likely in the form of a tiny baby girl. Some days, my pregnancy felt like an endless fight against time.

Michio set up his lab in an old office near the generator room. After he took me outside for my daily dose of vitamin D, he would dart off to his research, bending over microscopes and studying my biology—or rather that of our daughter’s. He never vocalized his assumptions, but I knew he suspected the same thing I did. She was the reason for my surplus of energy. When the time came to push her from my body, there was a good chance she would take all my superhuman quirks with her. Would she take my metabolic energy, too? My blood? And my final breath?

Day after day, we watched her grow and develop on the screen and listened to the physicians repeatedly confirm she was a girl. But every night, we left the medical exams, praying, gardening, and security worries behind us to satisfy other needs. Sometimes my guardians were patient and steady, content just to look at me, as if waiting for me to offer whatever I was willing to give. They already had all of me, so I would assure them, coaxing them with my eyes, reaching out with a husky whisper, opening my legs, and fingering my cunt as they watched with feral intensity.

But most often, by the time we reached our room at night, they were restless and worked-up, assertive and needful, climbing between my thighs, pressing me against the wall, bending me over the bed, and taking their pleasure. Michio always took me first then fucked me again after Jesse and Roark were spent. I never glimpsed jealousy in their heavy-lidded eyes. I saw ambition, maybe a little healthy rivalry, and always love and respect, for each other as much as for me.

It went on like that, week after week, month after month. Winter melted into spring. Spring bloomed into summer, and our baby grew, pressing outward and stretching my skin. Much like my deep attachment to her fathers. I didn’t think I could love those men any more than I did yesterday. Then today came and proved me wrong. I couldn’t fathom losing one of them, couldn’t imagine wondering every second of every hour if that was the moment I would watch one of them die.

It was June when I reached the beginning of my third trimester, and I was stir-crazy, wired, and anxious to breach the conversation I’d put off for so long. I needed them to start thinking about what life would look like caring for an infant, seeking love and happiness, and slaking baser needs, without me.

Every day, I jogged the tunnels, my mountainous belly bouncing with the restless strides of my legs, using that time to frame my thoughts and plan for my family’s future.

Shea had sorrowfully agreed to nurse my baby, but in the event she couldn’t produce milk, I’d been gathering baby formula, with Hunter’s help. If my guardians were privy to that effort, they’d never commented on it.

By the time we’d reached our seventh month, Shea had all but hibernated in her room with Paul and Eddie. I remembered my own endless exhaustion during my pregnancies with Annie and Aaron, but this baby was different. I couldn’t sit still, my body a boisterous mass of surging blood and fire, nerves and power. A normal woman might’ve accredited the boundless energy to Ronnie’s nutritious vegetables, but I hadn’t been a normal woman in a very long time.

Link kept me updated on his attempts to locate the facilities where Aiman had sent all the bitten women. He’d captured dozens of spiders, but no amount of torture convinced Aiman’s servants to release the locations. Link explained that they weren’t exactly mindless, but their minds had been altered to unerringly and devotedly follow Aiman’s requisite without concern for themselves or their own interests. With the spiders’ speed and strength and growing numbers, only a fraction of Link’s men returned from each mission.