Chapter 3: Blood and Ovulation
The chime was a guillotine blade falling. It severed the last thread holding them in that suspended, breathless space.
Cade withdrew from her body. The separation was a cold, shocking emptiness. A wet warmth immediately began to trickle down her inner thigh. The evidence. She couldn’t look at him. She rolled off the cot, her legs buckling as her feet hit the floor. She caught herself on the edge of the hard mattress, knuckles white.
She heard him shift behind her, the soft rustle of fabric. He was pulling his garment back on. The silence was a physical weight, thick with everything unsaid.
Her fatigues were still tangled around one ankle. She bent, yanking them up with clumsy, urgent motions. The material felt foreign against her sensitized skin. Every movement sent a fresh, dull ache through her core. She fastened them, her fingers fumbling. She left her top as it was, not bothering with the fastenings beneath her open jacket. The stun-rod lay on the floor where it had fallen. She stared at it, this symbol of her authority that had clattered away so easily. After a beat, she stooped and picked it up. The weight was a lie.
The transparent door hissed open. The cooler air of the antechamber washed over her, raising goosebumps on her sweat-damp skin. It carried the sterile scent of the prison, erasing the intimate, musky fog of the habitat. The two enforcers stood exactly as before, impassive.
“Session complete,” one stated, consulting his tablet. “Report filed. You may proceed.”
Proceed. Like she’d finished a shift rotation.
She walked past them without a word, without a backward glance. Her spine was a rod of iron, holding her upright. The corridor outside seemed brighter, harsher. The lights hummed with a renewed, judgmental intensity. She could feel the wetness seeping into her fatigues. A slow, warm leak. A brand.
She made it three steps before the first wave of nausea hit. She leaned a hand against the cold wall, head bowed, and swallowed hard against the bile rising in her throat. It wasn’t disgust. It was a systemic shock, her body rebelling against the violation of its own betrayal.
Her comm buzzed. She flinched, the vibration feeling like an assault on her wrist. She didn’t answer. It buzzed again, insistent.
With a shaking hand, she raised her wrist. “Thorne.”
“Warden, it’s Control.” The dispatcher’s voice was tense, clipped. “We have a Code Crimson in the Infirmary. Hostage situation.”
All the blood in Iris’s body seemed to drain to her feet. “Who?”
“Inmate Miller, Roxy. She’s… she’s taken Medical Officer Tarris and Sergeant Vee hostage. She’s armed with surgical tools.”
Roxy. The Mauler. Of course.
“Demands?” Iris’s voice was sandpaper.
A pause. “She’s demanding… Warden, she’s demanding to be next. She says she knows the schedule. She saw your name. She saw Vee’s. She says it’s her turn with the… with Subject Cade. Or she starts cutting.”
The chill in Iris’s veins turned to ice. The schedule. Broadcasting it on every screen. A catalyst for chaos. Jael’s efficiency had created this. Her own name at the top, a beacon.
“I’m on my way. Contain. Do not breach.” She shoved off the wall and began to move, her body protesting every step. The ache between her legs was a throbbing reminder of the very thing Roxy was killing for.
The walk to the infirmary was a blur of alarmed faces and locked-down corridors. The prison was holding its breath. She could feel the collective tension vibrating through the steel floor grates. News traveled fast here. By the time she reached the secure wing, a tactical team was assembled outside the reinforced medical bay doors, clad in black body armor, weapons raised.
Lieutenant Mara, her face grim behind a transparent visor, stepped forward. “Warden. She’s got them at the far end, near the supply lockers. Tarris and Vee are on their knees. Miller has a scalpel at Tarris’s carotid. She’s… not stable. Talking in circles. Pupils are fully dilated.”
“Has she harmed anyone?”
“Not yet. But she’s pacing. Agitated. Says she can smell him on you.” Mara’s eyes flickered over Iris’s disheveled state, the unfastened jacket, the pale sweat on her brow. Her expression didn’t change, but a flicker of understanding passed through her gaze. She looked away quickly.
Iris ignored it. She moved to the observation port beside the door—a thick, reinforced square of glass.
The infirmary was a stark landscape of steel and white tile under blinding fluorescent lights. The sharp, clean scent of antiseptic couldn’t quite mask the underlying odors of blood, fear, and sweat. Near the back, past rows of empty gurneys, Roxy Miller paced like a caged tiger.
She was a imposing silhouette, muscles coiled under her standard-issue grey jumpsuit, which was ripped at the sleeves to accommodate her biceps. Her shaved head gleamed under the lights, tattoos swirling up her neck. In one hand, she held a long, wicked-looking scalpel, its blade catching the light.
At her feet, Medic Tarris knelt, perfectly still, her eyes wide with terror. A thin trickle of blood ran down her neck from where the point of the scalpel rested. Beside her, Sergeant Vee was also on her knees, but her posture was different. She was slumped, shaking, her face ashen. The sedative Iris had ordered, or the shock of her own scheduled time, had left her nearly catatonic.
But Roxy was the storm center. Her eyes, when they flicked toward the observation port, were black holes. Her pupils had swallowed the irises completely, giving her a wild, inhuman look. Pheromone poisoning. The exposure had pushed her past craving into a dangerous, psychotic break.
“I CAN SMELL HIM!” Roxy suddenly screamed, the sound raw and ragged against the sterile quiet. She spun, pointing the scalpel toward the door. “ON YOU! YOU STINK OF HIM! YOU TOOK YOUR TURN! WHERE’S MINE?”
Spittle flew from her lips. Her chest heaved.
Iris keyed the external comm. Her voice, when it came through the speaker inside, was calm, flat. The Warden’s voice. “Roxy. It’s Warden Thorne.”
“WARDEN!” Roxy shrieked, a cracked laugh following. “WARDEN WHORE. YOU GOT YOUR TASTE, DIDN’T YOU? HOW WAS HE? IS HE AS GOOD AS HE SMELLS?” She paced again, the scalpel waving. “I’M NEXT! I SAW THE LIST! IT’S MY RIGHT!”
“There is no list, Roxy.” Iris lied smoothly. “It’s a system error. You need to put the blade down.”
“LIAR!” Roxy lunged toward Tarris, yanking the medic’s head back by her hair. Tarris gasped. “I SEE HIS STINK ON YOU! IT’S CLOUDING THE AIR AROUND YOU! YOU’RE DRIPPING WITH IT!”
The vulgar, brutal truth of it slapped Iris through the glass. She felt exposed, naked. She swallowed. “Roxy. Look at Sergeant Vee. She’s sick. She needs Medic Tarris. You hurt Tarris, Vee dies. That’s on you.”
Roxy’s frenzied eyes darted to Vee, who moaned softly, swaying on her knees. A flicker of confusion broke through the madness. “She’s weak,” Roxy spat, but some of the heat left her voice. “She doesn’t deserve it. I’m strong. My body is perfect. I’ll give them a perfect soldier. Not some shaky little rabbit.”
Iris saw an opening. A twisted logic to appeal to. “The program wants the strongest, Roxy. You’re right. But this isn’t the way. This is chaos. They’ll disqualify you for chaos.”
“THEY’LL COME FOR ME IF I LET GO!” Roxy yelled, pressing the blade a fraction harder. A new bead of blood welled on Tarris’s neck. “PROMISE ME! PROMISE ME MY TURN!”
On the tactical channel in her ear, Lieutenant Mara whispered, “Warden, we have a clean shot. Say the word.”
Iris watched Roxy’s face, the desperation etched into every line. She saw not just an inmate, but a woman burning up from the inside, driven mad by a biological need weaponized by the state. She saw herself, fifteen minutes ago, trembling on a cot, begging for an oblivion that wasn’t gentle.
“Stand down, Lieutenant,” Iris said quietly into her mic. Then, to Roxy, she spoke through the comm again. “I promise you. You will get your turn.”
“WHEN?”
“Now.”
The word hung in the static-filled air. The tactical team shifted behind her. Roxy froze, the scalpel trembling in her hand.
“What?” Roxy’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“Let Tarris and Vee go. Walk them to the door. You come out with them. You get your turn. Right now.”
Roxy’s black eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re lying. To get me out.”
“My name was on that list, Roxy,” Iris said, her voice dropping, letting a shred of the raw exhaustion show. “You saw it. I took my turn. Do you think I wanted to? Do you think I enjoy coming in here to clean up this mess? I keep my word. You let them go, you walk out with me, and we go to the Habitat. No tricks.”
The offer hung in the antiseptic air. Tarris’s eyes pleaded silently. Vee retched dryly onto the floor.
Roxy’s gaze darted from Iris’s face on the monitor to her two hostages, then to the scalpel in her hand. The violent energy seemed to seep out of her, leaving a hollow, trembling wreck. The weapon wasn’t for them; it was her last grip on a reality that was slipping away. A bargain with the devil was better than freefall.
Slowly, very slowly, she lowered the scalpel from Tarris’s throat.
“Okay,” Roxy breathed, the word sounding like a sob. “Okay.”
She released Tarris’s hair. The medic crumpled forward, catching herself on her hands. Roxy took a staggering step back, the scalpel dangling from her fingers now, a forgotten toy.
“Open the door,” Iris ordered.
The heavy locks disengaged with a series of loud clunks. The door slid open. Iris stepped through first, her hand raised to halt the tactical team. She stood alone in the doorway.
Tarris scrambled up, dragging a barely-conscious Vee with her. They stumbled past Iris into the arms of waiting officers. The door remained open.
Roxy stood twenty feet away, swaying slightly. The fury was gone, replaced by a profound, shuddering need. She looked young suddenly, and terribly lost. She dropped the scalpel. It clattered on the tile, a harmless piece of metal.
“Come on, Roxy,” Iris said, her voice soft. “It’s time.”
Roxy took a step. Then another. She walked toward Iris, her steps unsteady. As she passed through the doorway, she stopped, her black-hole eyes searching Iris’s face.
“You reek of him,” Roxy whispered, a strange mix of awe and jealousy in her tone. Then her face crumpled. “Does it hurt?”
The question was a child’s. Iris felt something crack inside her ribcage.
“Yes,” she answered honestly.
Roxy nodded, as if this was the confirmation she needed. She surrendered without another word, letting two officers take her by the arms. They weren’t rough. They led her away, her head bowed.
Lieutenant Mara moved to Iris’s side. “Medical will see to Tarris and Vee. Miller goes to solitary pending review of charges.”
“No,” Iris said, watching Roxy’s back. “No charges. And not solitary. Take her to Decontamination Shower Three. Scrub her down. Then… bring her to the Open Habitat anteroom. I’ll meet her there.”
“Sir?” Mara was stunned. “After what she just did? The hostage situation, the weapons—”
“She was chemically compromised,” Iris interrupted, the words tasting like ash. “By a system we are enforcing. We created this. We deal with it. That’s an order.”
Mara stared at her for a long moment, then gave a sharp nod. “Yes, Warden.”
As the team dispersed, Iris’s comm buzzed again. An automated notification. She looked down.
GENESIS SCHEDULE UPDATE.
INMATE: Miller, Roxy AKA ‘The Mauler’
STATUS: Added to Queue. Priority Level: Alpha.
Viability Assessment: 100% Birth Possibility.
She looked down the corridor where they had taken Roxy. The empty, sterile hallway seemed to stretch into infinity. The machine was correcting its course again, slotting another cog into place.
Her body ached. Her skin still felt too sensitive. The ghost of his scent clung to her.
She turned and began walking, not toward her quarters, but back the way she had come. Toward the Open Habitat. To wait for Roxy. To deliver on her promise. To watch another woman walk into the glass box, to burn in the same furnace.
The Warden’s boots echoed on the hard floor, a lonely, metronome rhythm in the silent, watching prison.
The echo of her own footsteps was the only company she had now. Each click of her boot heel on the polished floor felt like a nail being driven into a coffin she was currently lying inside. Her body was a ledger of shame—the persistent ache, the dried salt on her skin, the warm, sticky evidence still drying on her inner thighs.
She stopped before the reinforced door to Open Habitat Three. The anteroom here was identical to the one she’d left not an hour before: a sterile box with a viewing port. Her reflection in the dark glass looked hollowed-out, a woman wearing her own face like a poorly-fitted mask. She keyed in her code. The door hissed open.
Inside, the air was different. Cool, filtered. It hadn’t yet been contaminated. She walked to the control panel, her movements automatic. Her personal comm device buzzed again on her wrist. She ignored it. The main wall screen flickered to life, displaying the current Genesis Queue. It was updating in real time, names shuffling with brutal, algorithmic efficiency.
She read it. Her eyes skipped over Miller, Roxy. Over Vee. Over Tarris.
They stopped on two lines, listed back-to-back.
1345 THORNE, CADE: ONE HOUR BREAK
1445 THORNE, IRIS: PREGNANCY: 100%
A cold, sick weight settled in her stomach. The words ‘Pregnancy: 100%’ weren’t a prediction. They were a chemical verdict. A done deal. Her hand drifted instinctively to her lower abdomen, where a deep, unfamiliar throbbing had taken root. It wasn’t pain. It was something else, a cellular hum. The notification scrolled further.NOTE.: ALL 100% VIABILITY MATE EVERY 12 HOURS.
Every twelve hours. The math was simple, vicious. She had just left him. In eleven more hours, they would bring her back. And eleven hours after that. Until it took, or until her body broke. The screen finished its update.
1545 THE MAULER.
Roxy was next. Right now. Iris had promised.
The habitat door on the far side of the chamber slid open. Two guards escorted Roxy in. They’d scrubbed her down in decon; her scalp was pink and raw, her standard-issue jumpsuit was a fresh, dull grey. They’d even removed her wrist restraints.
She looked younger without the rage. Smaller. Her hands were clasped in front of her, knuckles white. She met Iris’s eyes across the room, and the defiance was gone, replaced by a terrifying, naked want.
The guards left without a word. The door sealed shut. It was just the two of them now, warden and inmate, standing in the antiseptic glow.
“You came,” Roxy said. Her voice was sandpaper.
“I said I would.”
Roxy’s gaze dipped, taking in Iris’s disheveled uniform, the tense set of her shoulders. “You’re really doing it,” she whispered, more to herself. “Putting me in there.”
“It’s what you demanded.”
“Yeah.” Roxy swallowed, her eyes darting toward the transparent habitat door. “Is he… is he just in there? Waiting?”
“Yes.”
“Does he… say anything?”
Iris thought of Cade’s silent, watchful eyes. The unnerving calm. “No.”
Roxy nodded, as if this was what she expected. She took a shaky step toward the habitat entrance. Then she stopped, her back still to Iris. “You told Mara no charges. For what I did.”
“You were compromised.”
“I still did it.” Roxy half-turned, her profile sharp in the light. “Why?”
Iris considered the woman before her, the perfect specimen, the 100% viability. She thought of the list on the screen, her own name repeating every twelve hours like a curse. “Because we’re all compromised, Roxy. Some of us are just better at hiding it.”
A silence stretched between them, thin and fragile. Roxy’s bravado was gone, leaving behind something more unnerving: a profound, childlike fear.
“Does it hurt?” Roxy asked again, her voice small.
Iris’s own ache pulsed in answer. She chose her words with a care she didn’t feel. “It’s not about pain. It’s about… dissolution. You stop being you in there. For a little while.”
Roxy’s eyes glistened. She wasn’t crying, but something had broken open behind them. “Good,” she breathed.
She turned fully to face the habitat door. Her shoulders squared, a soldier preparing for a drop into hostile territory. Iris moved to the control panel. Her finger hovered over the access button.
“You can still walk away, Roxy. Back to your cell. We can say you refused.”
Roxy’s laugh was a short, sharp bark. “And live with this feeling for the next sixty years? This screaming in my blood?” She shook her head, her gaze fixed on the door. “Open it.”
Iris pressed the button.
The seal broke with a hydraulic sigh. A wave of air pushed out, carrying that familiar, devastating scent—warm skin, sun-baked stone, something fundamentally male. It washed over them both.
Roxy flinched as if struck. Then a shudder ran through her whole frame, a full-body tremor. Her breath hitched. All the fear, the tension, the resistance melted from her posture, replaced by a single-minded, gravitational pull.
She didn’t look back. She took one step, then another, crossing the threshold into the soft, amber light of the habitat. The door slid shut behind her, sealing her in.
Through the glass, Iris watched. Cade was seated on the edge of the cot, exactly as she had left him. He watched Roxy approach. He showed no surprise, no hesitation. He simply opened his arms.
Roxy fell into him, not with violence, but with a desperate, drowning need. Her hands clawed at his back, her face buried in his neck. Iris saw her mouth move, whispering something, a plea or a prayer lost behind the soundproof barrier.
Then Iris turned away. She couldn’t watch the rest. She knew how it looked, how it felt. The unraveling.
She leaned against the cold wall of the anteroom, sliding down until she sat on the floor, her knees drawn up. The tremors started in her hands, fine and uncontrollable. The screen on the wall glowed softly, her name a green beacon in the list.
1445 THORNE, IRIS: PREGNANCY: 100%
Every twelve hours.
The hum in her abdomen seemed to synchronize with the low, persistent thrum of the prison’s ventilation. A new rhythm. A countdown. She closed her eyes, listening to the silent scream building in her own blood, waiting for its turn.
The silent scream in her blood had a pulse. It matched the dull, spreading warmth low in her gut, a biological clock already ticking down from twelve. She pressed the heels of her palms against her closed eyes, seeing stars against the black. The image of Roxy falling into Cade’s arms played on a loop behind her eyelids.
A soft chime from the habitat panel pierced her solitude. Session complete.
Iris forced herself to stand. Her legs felt brittle. She moved to the observation port, not wanting to look, but compelled.
Inside, Roxy was curled on her side on the cot, her back to the glass. Her jumpsuit was pulled up around her waist, her strong legs bare. Cade sat nearby, a statue once more. But Roxy… Roxy was moving. A slow, subtle rocking of her hips, a gentle, continuous undulation against the thin mattress. Her hand was pressed between her own thighs, not in frantic need, but in a languid, possessive exploration. Her face, in profile, was softened, her lips parted on a silent sigh. A smile touched the corners of her mouth.
She was tracing the feeling. Savoring it. The violent, rigid woman was gone, replaced by someone swimming in post-coital haze. There was a wet, glistening smear on the inside of her thigh. Iris looked away, a hot coil of shame and unwanted empathy tightening in her chest.
The habitat door hissed open. The two silent enforcers entered, their steps measured. Roxy didn’t startle. She slowly, reluctantly, stilled her movements. She pulled her jumpsuit down and sat up. When she stood, her gait was different. A slight, fluid wince, then a newfound awareness in how her body moved. She walked past Cade without a glance, her focus turned inward.
As she stepped back into the anteroom, she nearly collided with Iris. Roxy stopped. Her eyes, no longer black-hole dilated but hazy and deep, found Iris’s. A faint, private smile played on her lips.
“You were wrong, Warden,” Roxy whispered, her voice husky and full of wonder.
“About what?” Iris’s own voice sounded scraped raw.
“It doesn’t hurt.” Roxy’s gaze drifted down to Iris’s midsection, then back up. A knowing look passed between them. “It feels like… coming home. To a place you didn’t know you’d left.”
She walked out with the enforcers, her head high, her previous fury transmuted into a serene, unsettling pride. Iris was left alone with the hum of the vents and the ghost of Roxy’s words.
The day unspooled like a spool of barbed wire. It was a parade.
Lieutenant Mara was summoned next. She arrived at the Open Habitat gripping a stun-rod so tight her knuckles were white, her professional composure a thin veneer over a palpable, terrified fury. “This is an abomination,” she spat at Iris in the anteroom, her eyes wild. “I have a husband. I have children.”
“The override is in your file, Mara. Civilian familial status is waived for Alpha-priority staff. You know the protocol.” Iris recited the words by rote, her own insides hollow. “It’s an order.”
Mara looked at her with pure, undiluted hatred. “You’re one of them now. You stink of it.” She stormed into the habitat, the door sealing on her choked sob of rage.
Forty-five minutes later, Mara emerged. She walked stiffly, her face a blotchy mess of tears and sweat. She wouldn’t meet Iris’s eyes. She handed her stun-rod to a subordinate with trembling hands and walked down the corridor, her shoulders shaking with silent, ragged breaths.
Then came Officer Jin, young and fiercely loyal, who went in trembling and came out quiet, staring at her hands as if they were foreign objects. Nurse Fern from the infirmary, who had treated Roxy’s victims, entered with a look of clinical detachment and left with her uniform mis-buttoned, her fingers tracing her own lips.
The inmates followed, a procession of the prison’s most volatile. Vega, who’d stabbed a guard over a cigarette, snarled and spat all the way to the door. She returned subdued, her knuckles brushing unconsciously against her lower stomach. Chandra, the fire-starter, was eerily quiet, her intense eyes burning with a new, single-minded flame. Each one went in a storm of defiance or fear. Each one came out… changed. Softened. Possessed by a quiet, internal fixation.
The antiseptic air of the wardens’ quarters became permanently stained with the faint, haunting trace of Cade’s scent—citrus, salt, and warm stone—lingering on every woman who passed through. It clung to their clothes, their hair, a branding that permeated the tier. The usual cacophony of the cell block dwindled to a low, preoccupied murmur.
Iris moved through it all like a ghost. She processed the logistical nightmare, signed the chits, updated the relentless Genesis queue. Her own body was a traitorous clock. The warm, persistent throb low in her belly was a countdown. It flared with a sudden, wet heat every time the habitat door slid open and that scent rolled out.
1445.
The numbers glowed on every screen, on her own comm, in the back of her skull. Her next session. Her name, paired with his, again. A public decree.
At 1430, she was in the central control hub, reviewing lockdown status. Her hands were steady on the console. Her breath was even. Inside, a silent, cold panic was crystallizing.
Lieutenant Mara approached, her face now a mask of exhausted resignation. “Tier C is secure. The… rotations have quieted them. For now.” She couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Iris. “Your schedule is cleared, Warden. The enforcers are ready to escort you.”
The word ‘escort’ was a formality. It was a summons.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Iris said, her voice devoid of inflection.
She didn’t walk to the habitat. She floated there, detached from her own footsteps. The corridor, usually vibrating with contained chaos, was preternaturally quiet. Inmates watched from behind their reinforced glass cell doors. Their eyes were no longer angry. They were hungry, knowing, jealous. They tracked her progress like she was walking to a feast they all craved.
The two enforcers were waiting at the familiar door. They didn’t speak. One simply reached past her and keyed the entry code.
The door opened. The scent rushed out to meet her, richer now, layered with the imprint of all the women who had come before. It was no longer just his scent. It was theirs, mingled, a potent cocktail of surrender and salt and sex.
Her body reacted instantly, violently. A flush spread from her chest to her throat. The dull throb between her legs sharpened into a pronounced, aching pulse. Wetness soaked through her fatigues. She clenched her jaw, forcing her spine straight.
Across the anteroom, the transparent door to the habitat was open. The soft, amber light spilled out. Inside, she could see him.
Cade was standing this time, silhouetted against the glow. He was waiting.
He turned his head. His eyes met hers through the open door. There was no invitation in his gaze. No malice. Just a terrible, patient awareness.
The enforcer behind her cleared his throat softly. A prompt.
Iris took a breath. It shuddered on the way in, laden with him.
She took a step forward. Then another.
Her boot crossed the threshold into the warm, scented air of the habitat. The door began to slide shut behind her with a soft, final hiss.