Page 85 of Minding the Minotaur
He laughs. “We wouldn’t want that, Samantha.” He’s still smiling, but I sense the menace in his words. “Someone might get hurt.” He means me, of course. But I also sense he doesn’t want word to get out about me. Which it would if I made a fuss in public. “Very well. Sit down, then, there’s a good girl.”
I hate his patronizing tone, I hate everything about him suddenly. But I perch stiffly on the bed, take hold of my little bag and wrap my arms around it, as if somehow it can shield me from the news I know I don’t want to hear.
“Tell me what my blood results show,” I grit out.
Dr Petronis stands nonchalantly by the window, the panorama of Sparkle City’s towers and spires silhouetted behind him.
“You’re pregnant, Samantha.”
My head reels as I try to take in Dr Petronis’s words.
Pregnant.
With Arlo’s baby.
Oh gods!
The elevated enzymes they found in my bloods are because I’m pregnant! It makes total sense, it’s the very same enzymes they’ve been farming from Arlo’s sperm to increase human fertility.
Fuck, fuckity FUCK. This sure makes me a person ofrealinterest.
What if they link those enzymes to Arlo? What if they already have?
A human falling pregnant to a minotaur. Naturally. This could spell all kinds of trouble I can’t even begin to comprehend. For the monsters. For me. For Arlo. For the tiny baby growing inside me.
“That’s not possible,” I falter, knowing that at all costs I have to cover up the truth.
“I’m sorry, Samantha. It must be shocking to learn that such a heinous thing has happened to you—it’s something we intend to investigate thoroughly. How, and to whom. Orwhat.”
It’s a horrible derogatory insinuation, of course, but hardlysurprising, knowing the contempt humans view monsters with. Dr Petronis has proven himself just another cold-hearted human bigot.
Although I’m dazed, I at least know to keep my mouth buttoned tight. Whatever happens, I will never tell him the true story.
I remain silent as I’m escorted out of Sparkle General by two orderlies—AKA guards. I know by the way they hover around me, ready to grab me if I try to abscond, that this is no voluntary journey.
I remain silent when Dr Petronis open the doors of a black limo waiting outside, but when he goes to help me into the car, I only just stop myself from shouting that I’m pregnant, not sick. But I don’t. I return his tight smile, pretending that I’m totally cool with the fact that they are taking me to an undisclosed destination to do further tests on me. A human guinea pig, at their mercy.
But as we drive, my anger bubbles like a volcano inside me. Because this bastard sitting next to me has just robbed me of the joy of finding out I’m carrying Arlo’s baby.
And I will never, ever forgive him for that.
As the car glides through central Sparkle, my chest is so tight it’s hard to breathe. Past DeVines we go, all glitzy and shining bright. Past Central Starlight Tower, even more ostentatious with its marbled entrance and the jewels in the signage. This is where the all-powerful DeVines run their many enterprises from. We whizz past Gemstone Plaza, and the entertainment arena, until we reach the commercial area, where the buildings rise sharply toward the fake blue sky. Things happen here behind closed doors that no ordinary Sparkle resident would know anything about.
Except now I do, and these buildings, which I used to take for granted, suddenly take on a sinister patina.
When the car draws to a halt, I peer out, and barely stifle a gasp. The blue reflective modern glass is the very samebuilding that caught my eye from the hospital’s roof garden yesterday. There’s a huge entryway, a revolving door and above it, a neon blue double helix with a serpent’s head atop it.
And suddenly, I know why it’s so familiar. It’s almost identical in design to the clinic on level one. And the double helix with the serpent’s head was above the door there too.
Realization glides like ice over my scalp.
This place is linked to the clinic where I so happily helped Arlo produce sperm for humans. Thinking it was all fine and dandy.
But it’s not fine. It’s not fucking fine at all.
“What is this place?” I try to sound calm as I turn to Dr Petronis.
“DV Medical and Biotech Research,” he responds.
