Zero Contentment

ZERO CONTENTMENT

The baby kicked. Immediately, I screamed.

“Um…! Umm…!!”,

and the entire eastern wing of the base went dark.

Emergency lights flickered red and alarms screamed, but in that single second of darkness, I was already moving. I twisted my wrists and slipped free of the cuffs, Mark's work, loosened minutes earlier before the extraction. My palm struck the guard's throat before he could shout, and he dropped. I caught his sidearm before it hit the floor and shoved it into my waistband, then kicked the ventilation grate open and dropped inside as the backup generators roared to life.

My knees hit metal and my palms scraped against the walls of the narrow shaft. My belly was swollen and heavy, making every movement difficult as it pressed against my ribs, but I bit down on a groan and kept crawling. The baby kicked again, and this time the metal around me seemed to hum.

Not now. Please, just give me five minutes.

My neural implant crackled, and Mark's voice came through the static.

"Naomi, she's flooding the vents with neurotoxin. You have ninety seconds."

Of course she was. Vivian Ford didn't do subtle, she did efficient, and right now efficient meant poisoning the vents so she could capture me and take the child.

I crawled faster. My elbows hurt, my knees burned, and the shaft grew narrower until my shoulders scraped against both sides. I focused on my breathing, in, out, in, out, and forced myself to keep moving because fear was a luxury I couldn't afford. Not when my brother had risked his entire career to save me. Not when my father was waiting at a safe house he didn't even know I knew about. And not when the strange child inside me kicked again as if it could sense the danger around us.

I pushed through the maintenance grate, rolled onto the concrete floor, and came up with the stolen sidearm pressed against a guard's neck before he could react.

"Don't scream."

He didn't. He couldn't. His eyes were wide with fear as he stared at my face like I was a ghost. I didn't have time to wonder why, so I struck him hard enough to knock him unconscious and quickly pulled off his jacket, slipping it over my civilian clothes before walking toward the east hangar as calmly as I could, pretending I belonged there.

Walk like you belong. No one checks twice.

My heart hammered, but my hands stayed steady. That was the thing about being a soldier, your body learned how to hide what you were feeling. It could be screaming on the inside while your fingers remained steady and your voice stayed calm. You could smile at the guards and they would smile back, never knowing you were injured beneath your jacket and carrying an alien child inside you.

The hangar doors opened. Fifty meters to the shuttle. Forty. Thirty.

The baby kicked hard, and my vision blurred. For half a heartbeat, I could see through Silas's eyes. I wasn't in the hangar anymore, I was seeing him inside his cell, chained and sedated beneath the base. His silver eyes burned with an unnatural light that reminded me of frozen stars.

"They're coming, Naomi."

His voice echoed inside my mind.

"Not for me. For the child. They will do anything to reach it."

"Then they'll have to get through me first," I whispered.

Twenty meters.

The hangar doors behind me suddenly exploded. I didn't look back. I dove through the shuttle hatch, slammed the door shut, and dropped into the pilot's seat, my fingers flying across the controls as I bypassed the safety systems and ignored the normal pre-flight checks. There was no time. The engine screamed to life.

Then Vivian's voice filled the hangar through the base speakers.

"Naomi Carter. You are carrying a biological asset that belongs to Project Chimera. That child is not yours. It was never yours. Surrender now, and I will ensure you survive the extraction."

I laughed. It came out broken and bitter.

"Extraction? You mean the surgery where you cut me open and take my child? Go to hell, Vivian."

The shuttle lurched forward. Gunfire struck the hull as defense turrets turned toward me and began firing. I rolled the shuttle sideways, twisting through their line of fire with movements that came naturally to me, because flying had been part of my training for years. They made me this way. They turned me into a weapon. They gave me reflexes that shouldn't exist and instincts that warned me of danger before it appeared. They trained my body to react before my mind could even understand what was happening. And they expected me to be grateful.

I pushed the throttle forward and aimed for the sky.

Alarms blared as the shuttle shook violently. Something struck the left wing, and the entire vehicle lurched to one side. I gripped the controls tightly as smoke began filling the cabin. My eyes burned, my lungs burned, and the baby kicked again. For one terrible moment, I thought I was going to pass out.

"Naomi!" Mark's voice came through the neural implant, desperate and broken by static. "Dad's coordinates are already in your implant. Go there. He'll—"

The connection disappeared. Static filled my ears.

A few seconds later, the shuttle broke through the atmosphere. The blue sky disappeared behind me, replaced by the endless darkness of space. Stars blinked into existence around me, cold and distant, and for the first time since my escape began, I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding.

I was out. I was finally out.

I slumped back in the seat, trembling from exhaustion. My hands were bleeding, and my entire body ached, but I placed one hand over my belly and forced myself to breathe. Tears gathered in my eyes, but I blinked them away. I didn't have time to cry. I didn't have time to process what had happened. Vivian could track the shuttle's signature within a few hours, and I had to reach my destination before she found me.

I pulled up the coordinates stored in my neural implant. They led to a small planet on the edge of human-controlled space, where my father had built a safe house after retiring from the military. He didn't know I was coming. He didn't know I was pregnant. He didn't know what Project Chimera had done to me. And soon, I was going to walk back into his life carrying all of those secrets with me.

I'm sorry, Dad.

The shuttle's engine suddenly coughed, and red warning lights appeared across the control panel. The system showed the engine had suffered serious damage, but I didn't have the time or energy to figure out exactly what had failed. I entered my father's coordinates into the navigation system and let the autopilot take over, then leaned my head against the seat and closed my eyes.

"You did well."

My eyes snapped open. Silas's voice was inside my head again, clearer and closer than before. I looked around the cockpit. It was empty. Just me.

"You're not going to sleep, Naomi. Not now. The child is restless."

"I don't care." My voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. "Leave me alone."

"I can't. We're connected now. The child bonded us."

I slammed my fist against the console.

"I didn't ask for this! I didn't ask for any of this!"

Silence stretched between us. Then his voice returned, softer this time.

"Neither did I. But we are here now, and they will find us."

I looked down at my belly. It was still small enough to hide beneath my clothes, but it was growing and changing into something I didn't understand.

"Then what do I do?"

"Find your father. Hide. And wait for me."

I gave a bitter laugh.

"Wait for you? You're trapped in a cell three levels underground."

His voice turned cold.

"Not for long. They cannot contain what they do not understand, and they do not understand me."

The shuttle lurched again, the control panel shaking as the warning lights kept flashing. Somewhere far behind me, I knew Vivian Ford was already sending her hunters.

I didn't cry. I didn't break. I wiped the blood from my face and reached for the controls. I had a father to find, a war waiting to begin, and a child inside me whose true nature I still didn't understand.

But I was Naomi Carter. And I had never been the kind of person who ran from a fight.