Retam Sullet - Part Four

It was all Kimmy's fault. He got out the ice cream sandwiches. A case of cheap ice cream sandwiches. Everyone else just devoured them like a pack of bespectacled hyenas. Everyone, that is, except for Thea. It was Mordo's roll and she would have sworn she smelled the sugar in the air. It made her skin itch and it set her teeth on edge.

She looked at Ringo. He was sucking the ice cream out of the middle the way he always did. He tilted his head as he pulled in his cheeks. If she kissed him right then his mouth would taste cold and chocolaty.

She barely made it to Kimmy's bathroom in time to vomit. Instead of the toilet she let the vomit go in his sink - the sink was closer.

"Oh gross!!!! Shut the door, will you! Christ on a crutch, Manhammer, 32-of-A has the manners of Genghis Khan. Where was she born, in a barn?"

"Lay off Kimmy. T's just got some food poisoning. Besides she came from a lab not a barn, that was you, Kimmy the dog faced boy." It was a joke of his to tell the truth - since nobody'd believe anyway.

"Didn't you use that excuse last week - food poisoning, the week before that it was stomach flu. You wanna know what I think?" Kimmy said gleefully.

"No, Kimmy, nobody wants to know what you think," Langly said pushing his glasses up with his middle finger.

"I think Fido caught something, alright. I think Shaggy's knocked up Scooby. Ruck me Raggy," Kimmy howled in pseudo-ecstasy, enjoying his cartoon imitation a bit too much.

"SHUT UP KIMMY! And if you call her that again I'm gonna beat your misshapen head in." Langly stepped toward him.

"I think," Kimmy smirked but backed up cagily, "Lord Manhammer's little boyfriend is going to have puppies."

Langly slammed Kimmy into the wall but once he got him there was at a loss for what to do next. "Go buy some apples, sphincter boy," he sneered, dragging Kimmy by the front of his shirt across his living room.

"What?" Kimmy was frightened, puzzled, and vaguely pissed off.

"She likes apples and all you have around here is crap that makes her sick. And stop talking shit - if she's such a dog, how come every time she bends over I catch you checking out her ass? GO! NOW!" And with that he threw Kimmy out his own front door.

He leaned against the wall wondering if he had lost his mind. All the guys were staring at him like a pier full of netted fish - they gasped, they gaped, they stared unblinking.

Until Thea came out of the bathroom, wiping her mouth on her arm. All eyes turned to her.

She looked around at the shocked and somber faces and laughed like a seal. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE ASSHOLES? She signed to Langly.

KIMMY FIGURED OUT YOU WERE PREGNANT, he signed.

SO? Her eyes swept around the room. She gestured to Mordo, signing very, very slowly. She grinned. ANYBODY WANT TO SEE MY BELLY?

Langly scowled and Mordo nodded. Langly felt himself blush when she unzipped her jeans in front of everyone to show off the hard, shallow dome that had mere weeks before been utterly flat.

Male pride zinged through him like adrenalin. He'd done that. No one even had to ask. That was his work and everyone knew. Macho? Did he feel macho?

Langly couldn't exactly explain why he suddenly had goose bumps, just that he did. Watching Mordo and a couple of brave others touch Thea's naked abdomen, the hair on his arms stood up and his spine went straight. He, who embodied post-industrial man with his extended adolescence and his life lived devoted to abstracts concepts, had a Neanderthal impulse. He wanted to take a rock and bash in the skull of any male who dared to lay a finger on his woman. Needless to say, the feeling shocked him and he stood very still until it passed.

Then he said something sarcastic.

The game proceeded very close normal except that from time to time Langly would notice his gaming buddies, who, he grudgingly admitted, were Thea's gaming buddies too after the last two years, stealing looks at her. Looks that ranged from fear, to lust, to curiosity, to embarrassment. He wanted to make them stop prodding her with their eyes, set up a little screen around her, make her wear a veil or something. Maybe even a ring. The thought thrilled, embarrassed, and horrified him in equal parts.

She sat the way she always had, closer to him than to anyone else, but careful not to touch. He drew a few inches nearer and slipped his arm around her waist. That felt better. He puffed out his chest and rolled.

When Kimmy returned an hour later, he had apples. Granny Smith and Red Rome.

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He finally got it together to propose. He wasn't feeling too guilty, or scared, or tense. It was amazing really, that it only took him sixteen days of going over it in his head to do it, considering how much time Langly spent feeling 'not right.' At eight weeks, the pregnancy was now obvious - when she was naked, she looked like a boa constrictor that swallowed the rabbit.

The two of them were sitting at their monitors, same old same old. When he sent the words to her screen.

WANNA GET HITCHED?

He held his breath as he watched her puzzle over the words. It wasn't a hard question. She either wanted to or she didn't.

LIKE A HORSE? AND YOU CALL ME KINKY!

He rolled his eyes at the monitor. Langly typed in the next words impatiently.

MARRIED, T - DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED? TO ME?

This time her brow smoothed as she read.

Her answer was swift, if not effusive.

OKAY.

He found himself smiling and wanting to jump up and down, although he sat very still.

OKAY? REALLY? YOU WILL?

SURE. YOU THINK SHORT MAN WILL HAVE LUNCH READY SOON?

Langly wanted her to be more excited. He was excited. He didn't realize an officially recognized union was roughly as significant to her as a trip the DMV.

I GOT YOU A RING, he typed hoping her lack of enthusiasm was all in his head.

WHAT FOR? She asked.

Could that be right? He thought over her life as he knew it. She'd been in a tank, and a lab, and a deaf school, and then living on the street with Gibson. Was it possible in all that she'd missed the significance of a wedding ring? Maybe even marriage in general? She wasn't dumb she had to know what it was, but maybe the deeper meaning had by passed her.

A WEDDING RING, T. IT'S TRADITIONAL. He waited for her response.

Oh. I'VE NEVER KNOWN ANY MARRIED PEOPLE. HAVE YOU?

He stared at the screen for a minute before he started to type.

A FEW, YEAH.

LIKE WHO?

Langly blinked, then typed:

BYERS WAS MARRIED WHEN WE FIRST MET HIM BUT SHE KICKED HIM OUT FOR SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME WITH ME AND HICKEY. FRO WAS MARRIED MANY MOONS AGO, IN THE 70's. ALL MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS HAVE BEEN MARRIED SINCE THEY WERE YOUR AGE. MY PARENTS WERE MARRIED. I COME FROM A LONG LINE OF MARRIED PEOPLE. IT'S WHAT MOST PEOPLE DO, T.

He saw an expression flicker across her face, but from his vantage point he couldn't see what it was.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN MARRIED BEFORE?

Oh that's what that look was. Cool. It made him feel reassured that she was jealous. He waited a second before he replied with a smug:

NO

GOOD. CAN I SEE THE RING?

IT'S IN MY ROOM, he answered. SHUT DOWN AND I'LL SHOW YOU.

They went to his room but somehow didn't get around to looking at the ring that day.

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Yves Adele Harlow looked peevishly into the surveillance camera in the alley and tapped her foot. She would never have imagined those two geniuses could be so abominably stupid. Careless. Idiotic. True, Langly had always evidenced a certain impulsiveness. Miss Fidelis had appeared to be more sensible than that, but Yves supposed there were certain things being reared by lab techs might not prepare one for. Still, she mused, a Zeus Genetics nursery was most likely no more dehumanizing than the average daycare center.

Yves had assumed the girl would get him into bed at some point. She'd just reckoned that anyone intelligent enough to do the work Thea did was also smart enough to use birth control. Hearing buzz that Langly had bared Fidelis's belly to a throng of geeks somewhere and beaten Kimmy Belmont bloody, Yves was embarrassed that she hadn't been more proactive.

"Guys," she waved at the camera, "let me in." After a moment, she heard the snick of seven locks and saw the face of Melvin Frohike.

"To what do we owe the pleasure?" Frohike said mock-graciously.

"Where are they?" She asked him point blank.

"I take it you're here to offer congratulations?" Byers looked up from his accounting.

"So it's true, then?" she asked.

Byers nodded.

"Where'd you hear? If it was Burkes, I'm gonna kick his ass but good," Frohike fumed.

"Where haven't I?" she asked casually. "Word around the cyber campfire these days is that Ringo Langly beat Kimmy Belmont senseless for insulting one Thea Fidelis, then proceeded to proudly display Miss Fidelis' distended abdomen to the assembled crowd."

Frohike and Byers stared wide eyed. "Crap," Frohike whispered.

"We knew we weren't going to be able to hide it forever." Byers sounded resigned.

"I'v heard the tale from eight different sources in the past forty-two hours. In one version, Kimmy wound up unconscious. In another, your young associate was carrying triplets," Yves continued.

"The part about the triplets is true," Byers replied, "but we saw Kimmy yesterday and he looked fine."

"He did seem kinda..." Frohike winced

"Furtive?" Byers supplied.

"Squirrelly," Frohike amended.

"When isn't Kimmy squirrelly?" Yves asked rhetorically. She let out a sigh. "My god, those two are stupid."

Frohike shrugged. "It happens everyday, sweetheart; boy meets girl."

"Thirty-seven is hardly a boy," Byers interrupted.

Yves frowned. "So where are they?"

Frohike cracked his knuckles as he spoke. "Myra and Jerry Lee are out looking for a judge who doesn't have a grudge against the groom to marry them."

Yves considered it. There were an avalanche of factors that would make a legal marriage a difficult pursuit for them. Langly's mouth and epic number of court appearances over the last decade and a half had made him less than beloved by the judiciary of the along the eastern seaboard. Even if they had given a false date of birth for Thea, and she was certain they had, the communication problem would not be easy to overcome. Chances were a judge would look at them and see a young handicapped girl and an older man with an arrest record a mile long who all but breathed contempt of court.

They'd be home soon.

And they were. Yves watched Langly surreptitiously stroke Thea's belly on the surveillance camera.

Thea signed when she walked through the door, YVES, YOU LEAVE GIGANTOPITHECUS AT HOME?

"I took the liberty of sending Jimmy after Chinese," Yves answered. "He should be back soon,"

ANY LUCK? Frohike signed to Thea and asked Langly.

Langly shook his head. WE COULDN'T EVEN GET THE LICENSE, they signed together.

"Why don't you just break in and make yourselves one? Surely that option occurred to you," Yves said, relying on Langly to translate for Thea.

Thea looked at Yves and nodded but Langly glared.

"'cause this is a marriage, not a parking ticket," Langly snorted.

Pleasantly, Yves said, "I may know someone. But first we need to have a talk."

Langly pursed his lips as he signed the conversation for Thea. "About?"

"Your offspring," Yves said.

Thea rolled her eyes then reached for one of the dozens of note pads that she'd left around the offices. WHY IS EVERYONE OBSESSED WITH MY PREGNANCY? she wrote.

BECAUSE, MY DEAR, IT IS YOUR PURPOSE, Yves wrote underneath

"Somewhere a feminist weeps," Frohike commented.

"This is precisely what her makers designed her to do - find a male with exceptional traits and breed. I have to say, her idea of *exceptional* is probably not what CGB Spender had in mind. Gustatorum non disputum est, though."

Thea began to write frantically as soon as Langly finished signing what Yves had said.

FUCK SPENDER AND FUCK ZEUS. I'VE BEEN MY OWN GIRL FOR A LONG TIME NOW. I'M NOT THEIR CREATION ANYMORE. THEY DON'T CONTROL ME. THEY'VE GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.

Yves cocked her head, unimpressed by the rant.

ONE MORE CRACK ABOUT RINGO AND I'LL BREAK YOUR CUTE LITTLE NOSE, Thea wrote and again shoved the paper into Yves face.

ARE YOU QUITE FINISHED? Yves wrote back. "Is she quite finished?" she asked Langly.

Behind her on the monitor Jimmy Bond banged the door vigorously with his forehead, arms laden with takeout. "Who wants Chinese?" he called at the top of his lungs.

WELL, AT LEAST THERE'S FOOD, Thea signed.

In the kitchen, takeout boxes blooming like white lotuses along the counter, Jimmy held a cold pack to his forehead while the others loaded plates.

"Now," Yves said as they sat to eat, "are you ready to discuss this?"

Jimmy signed. It was a small irony that he was the best hearing signer of the group.

SURE, HIT ME WHEN I'M HALF-DRUNK ON FRIED FOOD, Thea signed.

"What do you know about why you were made?" Yves asked and Jimmy signed.

TO PROTECT AND SERVE, SAME AS YOU, Thea answered, wiping the grease off her lips with the back of her arm.

WHAT? Byers asked, almost dropping his fork.

SAME AS HER, Thea signed laconically. HER REAL NAME IS LOIS RUNCE AND HER FATHER'S SOME BIG SHOT BILLIONAIRE WHO BOUGHT HER FROM ZEUS GENETICS.

All eyes turned to Yves.

Yves shrugged and toyed with her chop stick. "Enough money and the right connections can buy anything." She sounded very bored. "Even the carefully manipulated genes of an advanced human."

THEY'RE SISTERS, Jimmy signed, beaming. ISN'T THAT COOL?

"Crap," Langly groaned.

"It's a rather simplistic way of putting it," Yves explained. "I entered this search to uncover my own origins, in the process I came across quite a few secrets." She turned to Thea. "Some of them are yours."

LIKE WHAT? Thea frowned, chomping her way through an eggroll.

"The lab in Costa Rica where you were made was destroyed by Struckhold's men in a fire. There were only two survivors - you and your fellow clone."

Thea's jaw clenched and her hand went unconsciously to her belly. Langly sat very still.

Thea moved her hand from her belly and signed, THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR CHILDREN.

"On the contrary, it has everything to with them. It also has everything to do with why you can't stay here," Yves explained. "You were designed to select the optimum male available and breed true super-soldiers. Not praetorians, Thea, but actual indestructible super-soldiers. The fire was set to destroy you and the others like you."

Thea closed her eyes.

In unison, Langly and Frohike said, "What the fuck?"

After a moment, Thea opened her eyes. Langly thought she was going to throw up. YOU'RE SAYING SPENDER WASN'T SATISFIED? HE WANTED TO BE ABLE TO BREED SUPER-SOLDIERS OUTSIDE THE LAB IF THERE WAS A POWER STRUGGLE, RIGHT? Thea signed.

Yves nodded. "The larger group of consortium members thought your project was dangerous enough to attempt to destroy all evidence it ever existed, even amongst themselves."

"These are still my kids, right?" Langly asked, all thoughts of finishing his food having vanished.

"Yes," Yves said icily, "and they will possess all your strengths and none of your multitude of weaknesses. Which is why Spender sought to breed Thea with a young man named Gibson Praise."

Thea's knee was bouncing convulsively. Langly, Byers, and Frohike were staring, first at Yves then Thea.

I'LL HAVE AN ABORTION, Thea signed flatly.

Yves arched one brow. "Which part of 'indestructible' did you find confusing?"

"What the fuck are we supposed to do?" Langly groaned.

"I suggest Thea leave, go into hiding, and attempt to be the best mother possible."

NO WAY, Langly signed. SHE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE WITHOUT ME.

"Make no mistake, Langly - the parties interested in your children are brutal." Yves said "If you go with her, you'll be endangering Frohike and Byers."

Frohike spoke. "What if Byers and I went with them?"

"That is one possibility I've considered," Yves answered.

SO WE'RE JUST SUPPOSED TO DROP EVERYTHING? SCREW TRUTH AND JUSTICE, SCREW THE PAPER, LET THE LIARS AND THE CHEATERS CONTINUE UNHAMPERED BECAUSE MY STUPID ASS IS REPRODUCING? Thea signed violently.

"It is my opinion that the welfare of your children should come first." She pinned Langly with a pointed glare. "Or am I mistaken about that?"

Langly shook his head. "Go on."

"To that end," Yves continued, "I've prepared a place where you should be able to live in comfort and anonymity. I am even prepared to provide you with a modest monthly living allowance."

Thea stood. DON'T TAKE THIS WRONG, BUT I'M GOING TO GO VOMIT NOW she signed as she left the room.

"Gosh, you're lucky, Langly," Jimmy said as he watched Thea's retreating back. "I mean she is gonna make such a beautiful bride."

Langly gave Jimmy a look he used to give him fairly frequently back in the days when he lived at the headquarters.

"I keep trying to convince Yves that we should start a family." Jimmy gave Yves' thigh a friendly little squeeze. "Isn't that right, honey?"

Yves lifted his hand from her leg and placed it on his own. "Jimmy, pl-"

"I mean it, Langly. This super-soldier thing seems kinda scary now, but think about it. Do you have any idea what this is gonna save you in doctor bills?"

Langly blinked.

Jimmy continued blithely. "So are you guys wanting to go with a church or a temple for the wedding? 'Cause I know Agent Mulder was Jewish, but that kind of thing is counted through the mother, right? And you've got a certain, don't take this the wrong way, a certain gentile look to you. if you wanted to go with a Jewish ceremony, though, I know a great rabbi, grew up next door to me, and-"

"We're both atheists, Jimmy."

"No problem." Jimmy's grin kept getting wider and wider. "I know a Unitarian guy who could handle that. Gee, I love weddings."

Langly gave the other man a dark scowl. "We've sort of had other things on our minds."

"Of course you have. But you know, I'd be thrilled to help. More than help. Just consider me your own personal wedding planner. Now, what-"

"Jimmy?" Yves attempted to divert him from his goal.

"-kind of flowers does she like?"

"Jimmy," Yves reprimanded.

"Flowers make me sneeze until my eyes swell shut." Langly answered

"Silk," Jimmy nodded. "Easy enough. How about cake? Something smallish, maybe two-tiered?"

"Thea won't eat cake."

"Does she have a dress picked out?"

"I don't think she wants one."

"Jimmy!" Yves snarled.

"No flowers, no cake, no dress? What kind of wedding is that?"

Langly rose. "I'm gonna go find T."

A quick search revealed she had taken the group's VW bus.

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End 04