Chapter Text
2019
Rey woke as she always did--before dawn, and alone. At her phone's chiming, she blearily fumbled for the glowing device's off button in the deep darkness of her bedroom and forced herself to sit up. She flicked on her bedside lamp, blinking against the too-bright bulb that she always meant to replace with a dimmer one, and opened her nightstand drawer to pull out her packet of suppressants. She dug through the annoying industrial-strength foil with one practiced thumbnail, tossed the fat pill back dry, and then retrieved her phone again and skimmed her messages. No texts, and just one important email from last night--Rose confirming that they were going to meet at school this morning.
Nothing from Finn. No big surprise there. But she still scrolled down until she saw the last email she'd gotten from him, two weeks ago.
Hey Peanut, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Writing about the old place is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, except, you know, riding a shitty bike 300 miles to get away from it. So, I'm just putting my head down and grinding out the pages. I can't think about anything else, except when Poe makes me eat, sleep, or listen to him talk about how the training you have him doing is kicking his fine ass, haha. I guess I'm still on schedule, and I'll let you know when I'm getting close to done. Love ya, bae.
She felt a squeeze of pain from missing him and pushed herself out of bed to keep from dwelling on it. Still in her holey pajamas and fuzzy socks, she padded into her little closet of a study and sat down at her design station. She jiggled the mouse, and the screens flared to life in the dark. She felt a surge of comfort, of pleasure, as the CAD drawings of her inverter array flickered into place. Machines made sense. Engines made sense. Their problems could be solved, even when life's other ones couldn't. She immediately sat down to work.
Two hours later, dressed, caffeinated, and eating, she was in a far better mood. She scribbled notes on a little spiral-bound notebook about team tasks while she plowed through her usual breakfast of four eggs, a mound of steamed greens, and three enormous pieces of buttered bakery toast, then dropped the pen to scroll through the news on her phone. She snorted when the first headline in local news informed her that she was officially living in GQ's "Worst Dressed City in America" again for the fourth year in a row. She glanced down at her crappy old race T-shirt, the jogging shorts she'd had since high school, and her stupidly expensive running shoes, and shrugged to herself. Boulder was a university/high tech town in the Rocky Mountains; everyone from the homeless to software magnates lived in polar fleece and sport sandals. If that meant she never had to feel bad about always being ready to run, good for her. She clicked through to the snarky article and read until it mentioned that Boulder had also been voted "City That Looks Best Naked." She shut her phone off. Fat lot of good that would ever do her.
She dropped her dishes in her rebuilt dishwasher, grabbed her backpack, armed her security system, double-checked her door locks, and jogged off the porch to unlock her Volvo. Her 1972 P1800 was a ridiculous-looking little sports car, with tiny rear fins like a Playskool hotrod, black paint faded to a sad grey, and a handbuilt engine that could do 180 mph.
Rey slid into the mushy seat, pumped the gas twice, dropped the heavy clutch, turned the key, and felt her whole body light up at the roar of the engine.
Good baby, she thought at the sound of 700 horsepower thundering through the aluminum-block V8.
She pulled out of her rutted driveway and onto the canyon road toward the university. Hungry to hear another human talking after her weekend in solitude, she flicked on NPR, where a smooth-voiced host took his time telling her that the stock markets were volatile and the President was behaving badly. No surprises there.
She was halfway to school and about to switch to the college-radio station when she heard, "And now a special report from the BBC World Service.... Romanian officials have announced that an Anassa Omega girl, also known as a Queen Omega, has been born in the city of Bucharest."
Rey darted to crank up the radio's volume knob, glanced in the rearview mirror, and started looking for a place on the winding road to pull over so she could properly listen.
The announcer went on, "This one-in-a-billion birth is being hailed by conservative religious leaders and other Essentialists as proof of God's favor in the region. The Romanian government says it is preparing the security measures required to keep the girl and her family safe until the girl is mated and sequestered under her future husband's protection."
Rey's hands tightened into a death grip on her steering wheel, and she felt her upper lip raise in an unconscious snarl.
"A spokesperson for the unnamed family says that marriage offers are already pouring in from around the world, with proposed bride prices in the millions of dollars."
You poor baby, Rey thought, feeling nausea washing through her rage, picturing a helpless newborn who was already being bartered for. You poor little girl.
"The Romanian prime minister, Nicolai Golescu, assured the public that the child will be assigned a full-time security detail and provided with secured housing in an isolated region. He also noted that his son, 35-year-old Petre Golescu, has himself made the child's family a marriage offer."
Rey felt her stomach knot. Her vision started to swim, with grief or fury, she didn't know. She needed to get off the damned road.
As she powered through turns, looking for a pull-off, the host kept going. "Anassas have unique biochemistry that causes, among other effects, a high likelihood of non-singleton pregnancies. Their likelihood of naturally conceiving triplets is over fifty percent per pregnancy, with a twenty-five percent chance of conceiving quadruplets. However, it's not uncommon for Queen Omegas to have as many as six live births per pregnancy. This characteristic has led to their other historical names, including "Mother of Armies," and "Mother of Cities." With specific dietary regimens before pregnancy, Anassas can even be made to conceive octuplets and other high multiple pregnancies, as well as all-Alpha, all-Omega, or mixed-designation pregnancies, though they rarely give birth to Betas. Because Anassas are so rare, little research has been conducted to explain the causes of these characteristics. It's suspected that they're related to extremely high levels of the hormones oxytocin and omegagen that are known to be released during the Anassa's pregnancies, and that are speculated to be released during claiming. Researchers also believe that high blood levels of these hormones are what cause Anassas to become essentially singleminded mothers and mates, with no interests outside of homemaking after they're claimed."
Thank God--the parking lot by the river overlook. She took a hard, tire-squealing left into the nearly empty lot, swerved into the nearest parking space, braked to an abrupt halt, turned off her rumbling engine, and slumped back against her headrest in the sudden quiet.
The announcer droned on over the relative silence, and Rey listened almost unwillingly.
"Though the Romanian child was detected during routine genetic testing, most Anassas have been discovered when presenting, when they develop what has been described as an overwhelmingly attractive pheromonal scent, along with typical Omega traits. Traditionally, Anassas have been claimed only by sociopolitically powerful Alphas. In ancient times, military leaders with an Anassa mate sometimes saw enemy armies simply surrender prior to battle, based on the assumed dominance of the general. Historians speculate that this factor contributed to the rise of a number of notable military leaders, including Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, and most recently, Nazi German High Commander Anakin Vader, whose wife was the Anassa Padme Amidala.
"U.S. Senator Paul Snoke, who founded the Essentialist group The First Order, has reached out to the Romanian family with an invitation to bring the child to the First Order's Colorado compound. Snoke's third wife, the Anassa Susanna Snoke, gave birth to fifty-seven Alpha sons over eight pregnancies before her death from eclampsia at the age of 30. Snoke commented that "all Anassa births are a bless--"
Rey angrily twisted the radio knob to silence, and leaned her forehead on the steering wheel, tear-filled eyes closed. She let herself rest against the worn leather cover for a long moment, trying to bring herself back to the present. There was nothing she could do for that baby, nothing. And she herself was as safe now as she ever had been. She blew out a long, cleansing breath and looked out at the cottonwoods along the river.
The new leaves on the trees were luminously green against the red canyon wall, and the river roared white beneath the bluebird sky.
How can life be so beautiful and so unfair? she thought.
She swiped at her eyes, then flipped her forearms so she could see the tattoos on each wrist, wrapped across her carpal scent glands. "σιδηρομήτωρ," they said, inside the splash of red roses. Mother of Iron.
She rustled through the glove compartment for a tissue, blew her nose, then restarted the Volvo. For a brain-scrubbing moment of relief, she revved the V8 so loudly that it vibrated her skeleton and obliterated her agonizing thoughts. Then, she backed the car into the shadiest parking space beside the river and got out. She tucked her earbuds into her ears, turned on her iPod, and cranked up Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the Ode to Joy.
This was a good place to have stopped, she realized. It was a little over five miles to the automotive engineering lab at school, and she had 37 minutes to get there, rinse off in the lab shower, and get to work. A few five-minute miles would take the edge off. She grabbed her backpack out of the back seat, double-checked that her pillbox, toiletries, extra shirt, and phone were inside, then tightened the laces on her running shoes. She strapped the pack tightly around her waist, ribs, and upper chest so it wouldn't bounce as she ran, then rotated each ankle in turn to warm it up, left circle, right circle, left circle, right circle, left circle, right circle. She slammed the Volvo door, locked it up, tucked away her keys, and ran.