Chapter Text
Carol walks towards her front door. As she turns the key in the lock, she looks back at Manousos.
“Come in,” she says. “We have work to do.”
He nods, and follows her in.
She pours herself a drink. She offers one to him, too, but he refuses.
“Come on. You need a drink,” she insists.
“No alcohol,” he says. “Café?”
She’s a little dejected, but it’s fine. “Uhh, sure, but I only have oat milk.”
He perks up at that. “I like that.”
She wasn’t expecting that. “Perfect. Bueno. Well, one coffee with oat milk coming right up.”
What she's expecting even less is that he insists on making his own. She insists on getting everything out for him at least. Whether it’s her being nice, or she’s just wary of him going through her kitchen cabinets, is anyone’s guess, but he seems happy enough to let her.
As she watches him make himself a cup of coffee, her phone starts ringing. She sighs and walks over. Before she picks it up, she knows exactly who it is.
“Is them?” Manousos asks.
She shakes her head and picks up the phone.
“Why on EARTH did you make your chaperone give you a nuclear weapon?” Laxmi yells down the phone.
“You know, Laxmi, I think Ravi can tell you exactly why,” Carol says coldly.
“You can tell me exactly why,” Laxmi counters. “Was killing eleven million not enough for you? You have to kill more of them?”
“Why don't you put me on speaker phone, Laxmi? Let me talk to him. He can explain.”
“You will not talk to my son!” Laxmi pauses, and Carol can just about make out a barely audible conversation for a moment before Laxmi groans. “One minute, and that's all you're getting!”
“Hello, Carol,” Ravi says. “I believe you wanted to speak with me?”
“Yes, Ravi. I want you to tell your mom why I got the atom bomb, no bullshit, tell her what I said to Zosia. To you, ‘cause you're all the fuckin’ same. Make sure you tell her about my eggs and what happened to Helen, I don't want you missing out one single detail to make yourselves look good.”
She hears Laxmi make an irritated grunt on the other end, like she can’t even find the words to express her frustration.
“Yes, Carol. Mother, Carol said to Zosia, and I quote: You're gonna get me an atom bomb. And this time, believe me, I'm not being fucking sarcastic. A real, live atom bomb that really can take out a city. And if you fuckers mess with me, I will detonate it. So don’t fuckin’ test me.”
“You stupid woman! How dare you make my son say those words!” Laxmi shouts back, before she hangs up.
Carol can't help but laugh.
“Carol Sturka… what is so funny?” Manousos asks. He’s squinting, confused, and yet there's still a smile on his face.
She doesn’t stop laughing for another minute or so. Then she exhales and smiles. “Oh, man. Let me tell you a bit about the other survivors.”
Laxmi slams the phone down in frustration. She doesn’t know what is wrong with that Carol, why she keeps doing these things. She huffs.
Ravi waits for her calmly. Then, when she sits back down, he continues speaking.
“As you know, Mother, in order for you to Join us, we need your stem cells. For most of you, this will involve an intensive and quite painful medical procedure, for which we require your consent.”
“That’s nice, Ravi. Why don’t you go and play with your toys, hmm?” Laxmi suggests. She doesn’t want to hear it.
“Sure, Mother, we– I can play with my toys,” Ravi says. As he heads to the toy box, he continues talking. “However, in the case of Carol Sturka, she had some of her eggs frozen in 2011. She and her wife, Helen, had been talking about having children and decided to take that step.”
“Wife?” Laxmi questions. “She made no mention of a wife. I did not know she was– never mind.”
Ravi brings a toy truck back to the kitchen and rolls it around the table as he continues to speak. “Yes, Mother. Carol has always been very guarded about this part of herself. Even the fans of her Wycaro novels – which are brilliant – did not know about this, and believed Helen was simply her manager. We believe this is a result of her time in a conversion therapy camp in her late teenage years, which was a terribly traumatic experience for her.”
Laxmi doesn’t really want to hear any more about Carol’s sad backstory. There's no excuse for how rude she’s been, for killing her grandfather, for making Ravi cry – for getting an atom bomb, for goodness’ sake!
But Ravi keeps talking, and she’s not going to tell him to shut up. She recalls a time before all of this happened, when she’d told him to stop rambling about his favourite cartoon so much, and he never even watched the show again after that. She vowed to never tell him to stop talking ever again.
So, she lets him keep speaking, and hopes he'll be done soon.
“What does this have to do with the bomb?” she asks instead. She rests her forehead on her palm and draws circles on the table with her fingertip absentmindedly.
“Right, Mother. It’s about the eggs she froze.” Ravi doesn't elaborate, and Laxmi has to ask follow-up questions.
“What about them?” she asks impatiently.
Ravi sighs, and his face becomes serious. He lets go of the toy truck.
Laxmi is tempted to leave it, to move on, to pretend everything is normal and ask Ravi about his toys or his day at school instead. But in this instance… she just has to know what this is all about.
“Ravi. Tell me. What about her eggs?” When he won't answer, she retraces the steps of their conversation. They need stem cells, he said. Realisation dawns on her. She gasps.
Another realisation hits seconds later, making her sick to her stomach, and she leads Ravi out of the room, stammering, “Ravi, baby, how about you go back to your room?”
“Sure thing, Mother.” And he heads up the stairs.
Alone in the kitchen, she sinks back into her seat. She’s hyperventilating. A memory comes back to her.
From the start, she wanted Ravi to keep going to school, Aarush to still go to work, and her own part-time job to still operate as normal. This request was fulfilled. She doesn’t know where they really go, but as long as they only eat the food she packs and come home at the same time, she doesn't care.
About a month ago, Aarush came home from work one evening, happy as ever. And rather than just the usual quick kiss, hug, and some small talk, he greeted her with an embrace and a more passionate kiss.
“Laxmi, I’ve been thinking,” he said in a low voice, “perhaps another child would make you happy. You have expressed wanting this for years now, as far back as 2018, when Ravi was starting to walk. I understand I was always hesitant. But the world is very different now, and I think it's about time we gave this some real thought. What do you think, Laxmi?”
She’d smiled. “I’d like that.” She kissed him again, and before long they were in bed together, clothes on the floor, having sex for the first time since everything changed. It was so different this time. Not worse, not better, just different. Okay, maybe a little better, a little more about her pleasure, but the way he moved was almost robotic. Too perfect, too consistent.
The next morning, Aarush suggested trying IVF. After all, Laxmi was in her forties now, and she’d had a hard enough time getting pregnant with Ravi the first time. That took a year of trying naturally, a couple of miscarriages, and another six months of trying with fertility treatments.
So, the following weekend, Laxmi’s mother agreed to watch Ravi while she went with Aarush to the clinic.
She can’t even finish the memory before she’s throwing up in a plant pot. She stares at the phone. It stares back at her.
She knows what she needs to do. She knows who she needs to call. But she’s unwilling to accept defeat like that.
She imagines telling Carol she was wrong and that Carol was right. She imagines Carol’s stupid face laughing at her. She can’t do it.
And they’re not actually going to do anything with her eggs anyway, surely not, because she didn’t give them permission.
Everything has been so good for her. Her son doesn’t act up anymore. Her mother doesn’t criticise her anymore. She hasn’t had to do any housework since everything changed, because Ravi and Aarush take care of it for her. She can have anything she wants without needing anyone’s approval.
If she helps Carol put the world back to normal, she loses all of that.
If she gets turned into one of them, she loses everything.
She does little all day but stare at her phone, as if she’s hoping she can make it ring with her mind.
Thoughts creep into her mind. She used to trip over toys on the floor. She used to have to clean sauce off Ravi’s chin. She used to have to kiss him better when he got hurt. She shakes her head, hoping the thoughts will go away, like a dog shaking itself dry.
Carol stands next to the whiteboard with a marker in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, but she’s not doing a whole lot of note-taking. No, she’s laughing, gossiping about the other survivors, and Manousos is laughing with her.
“And, fucking, uh, Mr Diabaté! He thinks he’s James Bond or something, like he’s the fucking king of the world, living in Vegas with all these beautiful women.” She sighs. “Man, you are going to hate him. You think me being with Zosia is bad, wait until you see Casanova McBoner and his harem.”
After hearing it translate, Manousos tilts his head. He writes something in his notebook and reads over his notes. “There is more?”
“No,” Carol says. She leaves it at that.
He squints. He speaks Spanish into the translator: In your video, you said twelve. Twelve plus you is thirteen. You say six of them don’t speak English and you didn't meet them, and you told me about four people who speak English. That adds up to ten. Then add me and you. That adds up to twelve. Who is the other one?”
“Ah.” Carol sets her glass down. She looks at Manousos, then down at the ground.
Kusimayu. The Peruvian girl.
Carol remembers how Kusimayu insisted she wanted to Join them, even when she tried to discourage her and said she’d lose everything that made her special. Kusimayu didn't want to hear her.She remembers the conversation with Zosia, where she learned about her eggs. Zosia had informed her that Kusimayu had Joined that morning. That she was happier than she’d ever been.
Bullshit. She’s not happy. She’s basically been brainwashed into letting them lobotomise her. And now they're going to do the same to Carol.
“There was another?” Manousos asks.
She considers lying, telling him she miscounted. That she accidentally counted herself, and that’s why she said twelve.
He’s not that stupid, and she knows it.
So she takes a deep breath, and then she tells him the truth. “There was another. Kusimayu. I don’t know how old she was, but she looked around seventeen, eighteen, I guess. She wanted to be with them. She wanted to be with her family. And, I guess she got that wish.” She picks up her drink again and downs a third of the glass.
“Manipuladores,” he says.
She doesn’t need to wait for that to be translated. “Yup.”
She notices he writes something down there, too.
“We save her. Yes?” Manousos asks.
“We will.”
There's an awkward silence hanging in the air. Carol doesn't want to talk any more about Kusimayu. She doesn’t really know how to move on from that.
Mercifully, another phone call breaks the silence. “And that's probably Laxmi again," Carol says. She braces herself for another angry phone call. She picks up.
There's silence on the other end.
“Laxmi?” Carol asks. “Is that you?”
“It’s me,” Laxmi says. Carol is oddly relieved to hear her voice, though it’s weird that she isn’t being yelled at. “They told me everything. I’m on my way.”