I stared blankly at the wall behind Dr. Wood’s head. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. A flood of questions spread through my mind, yet I found myself unable to articulate any of them. After the few moment of confusion passed, I found myself becoming angry. What gave these people the right to mess with my body?
Dr. Wood didn’t fail to notice the frown that spread across my face.
“I’m really sorry, Andrea. But really, there is nothing I can do about it. I have been threatened with the death of my own family if I fail to make you produce one of your own.”
I sighed. What could I do? As far as I could see, I had three possible options. To try and live this through, producing a child for the use of evil. To try and escape. Or to try to kill either myself and/or the child.
I found myself glancing down over my plastron. Dr. Wood watched me.
“Oh, and Andrea, I’ve been told to tell you that should you get any ideas about killing the embryo, then your brother will also die.”
I jerked my head to look in accusation at Dr. Wood. Had he been reading my mind? Nah, stuff like that just didn’t happen. He had probably just been able to guess from my expressions.
But anyway, his comment had managed to rule out option three. I didn’t think that I would be able to kill the child anyway, but with the threat that Mikey would die also had made this option vanish.
How come they knew Mikey was my brother anyway? I could only guess that they had performed some type of genetic experiments on us while we were under the affects of the sleep inducing drug and managed to identify the similarities.
As my thoughts continued, my hand flew to my mouth as I tried to stifle a gasp. Mikey was the only other mutant turtle captured and Dr. Wood had said that the sperm used to fertilize me, was that of a mutant turtle.
Mikey was a daddy.
That afternoon I spent laying on my bed staring at the ceiling. Questions flooded my mind, mostly about the morality of the situation.
Despite the fact that Michaelangelo and I weren’t born in the same family, or even the same species, out genetic relationship made us related and generally it was frowned upon for brothers and sisters to become lovers and have a sexual relationship.
Yet the same moral codes that bound humans were not the same for animals. But what happened for beings like myself that were both animal and human? And what about forced reproduction? Was I still a virgin?
I stuffed my head into my pillow as these thoughts continued to swirl around my brain in everlasting confusement. In desperation I grabbed one of the books that Dr. Wood had leant me from where I had dropped them next to my bed.
I opened one up and started to read. It described all about human pregnancy and childbirth. Yet it would not necessarily be the same for me, I was no longer human.
I started to quietly sob as I became more and more confused and worried about my predicament. Reptiles gave birth to eggs, would that be what happened to me? Or would I give birth like the Human I originally was?
Crying out in desperation and fury, I dropped the book off the side of the bed and curled up, cuddling my thin sheet like a security blanket.
Once a week from that time onwards, I was escorted to see Dr. Wood. Every time he would take the same original tests and note down the readings on his computer.
I always had lots of questions I would ask him, however if the questions were about what was going to physically happen to me and the child, then Dr. Wood could never answer them as he only knew what happened in normal human pregnancies. However he did say that from what he had seen so far, I appeared to be experiencing just a normal human pregnancy.
However, one time I asked how come the drug, that was to be used on the child when it was born to speed up its mental and physical growth, wasn’t just used on the child while it was in me to speed up the pregnancy.
Dr. Wood’s eyes lit up slightly at this question, for it was one he could answer.
“See Andrea, this drug doesn’t influence the number of days, or months, or years that the child grows. It influences the amount of development. So if the drug was put into you now, it wouldn’t just influence the development of the child, it would influence your development too. And if you think about it, your own growth and development over the next 8 months is going to be next to nothing, while that child is undergoing total development of all the body. So what would happen is the amount of drug needed to simulate a full pregnancy would cause your body to ‘over develop’ and therefore, well, die.”
On that same day, I also asked how many pregnancies they were planning to put me through.
“I don’t know.” Dr. Wood had replied. “All I know is that if the child is male then it is to be trained in ninja skills and used to fight. If the child is female then it is to be impregnated to try and produce more males. I have a feeling that you would be used again.”
I didn’t quite know what to say in reply to this. It appeared that my femininity was being used against me to create an army to use to dispose those closest to me. I had been told from a previous question on an earlier date that not only would my friends be killed using my children, but they would be then dressed to appear like my friends and firstly ruin the good name the turtles had been trying to build for themselves by disposing of evil, but then also try to take power and eventually control the entire planet.
I really wanted to be able to just kill myself. Even if Mikey did have to die too, along with my unborn child, those two were considerably less that the amount of people that would have to suffer if the plan worked. Yet I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to kill either myself or even part of me that had only just begun its existence.
I put these thoughts temporarily out of my mind and turned to face Dr. Wood again.
“So are there human females impregnated with Mikey’s sperm?” I asked.
“Mikey?” queried Dr. Wood. “Oh! The male. No, no. To the best of my knowledge nothing like that has been done yet. If that were done then the child would be too human really to be much use.”
At that moment our conversation was disturbed as always by the timed arrival of my escorts to take me back to my prison.
Over the first three months after I had been impregnated, some of the consequences of the pregnancy began to hit me. I had no weight gain, or physical change at this point, but I was experiencing quite a number of effects stimulated by the pregnancy. My body temperature often fluctuated without control and caused me to feel groggy and ill.
To start with, every morning as the sun began to stream through the bars in my cell, I would drag myself out of bed and do the exercises I had been taught. However, as time passed, I found myself become more and more unwilling to stir from under my covers. When I did I often felt sick and shaky. According to Dr. Wood, this was perfectly normal in a human pregnancy and I shouldn’t worry.
Whether it was normal or not, it still wasn’t a very nice sensation. Occasionally I would actually vomit. Not that there was much for me to vomit up. I was provided with only just as much food as I supposedly needed, incorporating the right number of vitamins, and all the other stuff that I was supposed to have the correct amount of. I frequently felt strange cravings for bizarre types of food mixtures, mainly a weird combination of pizza toppings, yet my desires were never satisfied.
Dr. Wood did his best to help me. He provided me with means of cleaning myself with the help of the cold water tap in my room. However it was still difficult to maintain a good level of hygiene. Somehow he also managed to retrieve my belt and mask which had been taken from me upon my capture.
“Not that the belt will fit you for much longer.” he had said, smiling as he handed it to me. “But I thought you could do with having some of your personal items returned to you.”
Finally he managed to get hold of my canvas shoes which had also been taken from me. These were a great relief to my poor feet which had been forced to walk bare for three months and been cut and bruised from the harsh floors.
As the summer arrived and started to pass, I began to put on weight. Lots of weight. I was forced to watch in dismay as my slim figure and waist line was completely obliterated. Nights became a problem as I couldn’t get comfortable on the hard bed and every position I got in caused discomfort. However most of the other effects of the pregnancy stopped and I no longer felt almost permanently nauseous.
I noticed myself that I had started to slip into an almost ‘hopeless’ state, were I became very docile and placid. The old fire in my eyes that I would glare at my escorts with when I was taken to Dr. Wood had gone.
I knew that some of the feelings I was experiencing were maternal instincts. I often wondered what I would call the child when it was born. Or if I would even get a chance to do that before it was whisked away from me.
Dr. Wood had managed to identify the gender of the child. Yet he refused to tell me. I think I preferred not knowing as then I couldn’t worry about the fate of the child.
It must have been sometime in late September or early October that I was sitting huddled up on my bed staring dismally at the outside weather. The wind was howling round the court yard and through the window, chilling the room. I watched the sky begin to darken as evening drew on and angry clouds began to gather. I predicted a rather big thunderstorm for later that night.
I heard the door creak open behind me and turned to gaze at a face I knew well. Not the face of a Foot Soldier delivering my evening food, but still, a face that scared me.
“R, Raph?” I said in disbelief, shivering in the cold. “Wh, what are... H, how come...”
“Here to rescue you.” he explained in his usual uncomplicated style. He moved to the door to drag in an unconscious foot member who appeared to be covered with what had been my supper.
“R, Raphael...” I started, pausing to contemplate my next action.
“Yeah?” he said, turning to face me and pausing from slumping the Foot member in the corner of the cell.
“Th, there’s something you n, need to know...” I was partially shivering with the cold and partially shivering with fear at what Raph’s reaction to the full acknowledgment of me would be.
“What?”
I slowly pushed the blanket away from me and rose to stand so Raphael could see my full appearance. Our eyes met briefly before Raph slowly looked down over me.
“Holy fuckin’ shit!”