Chapter Eight

Chloe stared in disbelief at the woman on the opposite side of the glass while she replayed the conversation she’d just had with her.

“I do this for science,” the pretty nineteen-year-old blonde, called Sadie, stated with a thick southern drawl.

“How did you come to know about Dr. Sudnik’s project?” Chloe asked.  “Were you living in Philadelphia?”

“Oh no,” Sadie said with a light chuckle. “I ain’t never left the mountain until the doc showed up.  He paid my parents a goodly sum for me to participate. Poverty runs deep in the Appalachian Mountains.  I was happy to do this to help the family.”

Guessing from the age of the girl, Chloe assumed this was her first pregnancy, but, even so, she felt it necessary to ask and be certain. “Is this your first birth?”

“I’ve had five babies in me, but none of ‘em has lasted long enough to be born.  This here’s my first to go full term,” she said with pride. “I’ll get paid extra for the ones that get born.”

“You’re due anytime, correct?” Chloe asked, knowing full well that the girl’s chart declared her overdue.

“Yep,” Sadie said as she shifted positions on her bed.  “Me and Julie is due about the same time.  Her baby took first try.”

“Julie? Where is she being kept?” Chloe asked with surprise.  She’d been working at the facility for the better part of a week, but was only aware of the baby Sadie carried.  There were more?

“There’s twelve of us in all,” Sadie explained. “Seven of us are carrying.”

“Where are you kept?” Chloe asked in a tone that was almost frantic.  She had only a few minutes alone with Sadie to ask such questions before someone would join them and she’d be forced into silence.

“It’s in the back… down the hall,” Sadie said.  “I can’t say for sure.  I’m usually pretty sleepy by the time they take me back there.”

“Are you sleepy when they bring you here?” Chloe asked.

“Yeah,” Sadie admitted.  “They feed us and the food makes me tired, I guess.”

“Why are you over here?” asked an irate Oleg as he flung open the door of the observation cubicle.

“She needed my help sitting up,” Chloe quickly explained.  “She’s getting too large.”

Oleg looked at Sadie, who nodded to indicate that he believed that Chloe spoke the truth. “Get back to your station. I’ve brought you more sperm.  The doctor wants the woman inseminated immediately.”

Chloe watched Sadie smile and accepted the drink Oleg gave her as if it was a glass of champagne.  The naïve girl drank it down, handed the glass back to the attendant that Chloe deduced was ugly on both the inside and the outside, and settled aback against the pillow Chloe had positioned earlier for her comfort.  Soon, she’d be disoriented enough to transport back to her room.

Her attention was drawn from Sadie at the sound of a gurney entering the large laboratory.   Oleg pulled the curtain that separated the observation cubicle from the rest of the room closed to block Sadie’s view from the happenings.   The glass she was encased in was soundproof so, with the intercom turned off, she wouldn’t be able to hear them either.  Although Chloe doubted the girl would have much interest in what they were about after the drink she’d just been served.

The gurney contained a young woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties.  Like Sadie, she was beautiful and fit.  Other than the fact that she’d not seen them before, Chloe paid little attention to the two burly attendants who lifted the young woman from the gurney and positioned her limp body onto the examination table, making sure that her legs were secured in the stirrups. 

Chloe took a deep breath as she put on the surgical gloves and face mask.  She’d been shocked to discover that she was assigned the task of inseminating females.  She was only a lab technician, not a doctor.  She deduced from the scattered inquiries she’d made that the only real doctor on premises was Antoh Sudnik.  The rest were attendants who were trained -and in her case, barely at that- to perform a specific task.

She’d expressed her doubts about having underqualified people -herself included- perform tasks that were normally left up to the medical profession and was met with hostility, mistrust, and a not-so-friendly reminder that she’d signed an agreement to do the task performed with no questions asked.

Had she known that she’d be literally taking life in her own hands by inseminating young women with live sperm, she might have thought twice about signing anything.  Sure, she had fantastic grades in all of her science courses, but she was a private investigator.  In no way had she ever considered being a doctor.  She especially never had aspirations of shoving her face up close to a woman’s vagina while she inserted an extremely long syringe looking piece of equipment that was loaded with sperm, into her uterus. She had nightmares about it for the first two nights of being there.

“You have another one after her. So, be quick about it,” Oleg barked.  “The doc will be pissed if the sperm loses its potency.”

“Do you want me to rush or do the job, right?” Chloe hissed as she gently inserted the syringe into the woman’s vagina.  “I’m not a doctor and, even if I was, I wouldn’t rush. This is a real person I’m working on.”

“Oh, good grief,” Oleg groaned as he pushed Chloe off her stool and out of his way. 

She lost her grip on the syringe as she was flung to the floor, landing on her backside.  Oleg paid her no notice as he positioned himself on the stool, grabbed the partially inserted syringe with ungloved hands, and spread the woman’s vaginal flesh wider with his other ungloved hand so that he could see better.

“Why aren’t you using a speculum?” he barked.  “I can’t see a damned thing.”  He inserted his long finger into her vagina and felt for the opening of her uterus.  “It’s a good thing her uterus is low enough to feel. Damn, Chloe, don’t you know anything?”

“You could always wait for me to find a speculum,” Chloe said with distaste as she stood up and pulled off her now unsanitary gloves. She glowered at the two attendants who’d followed Oleg into the room, feeling they looked more like aroused letches than serious men of science as they watched Oleg’s ungloved hands manipulate the woman’s vagina.

“There’s no time for this one,” Oleg said as he emptied the contents of the syringe into the woman’s womb.  “Have it ready for the next one.”

He tossed the syringe into a waste bin and headed for the sink to wash his hands.  He looked at the attendants and grinned a knowing grin that made Chloe’s skin crawl before nodding toward the woman on the table.  In her effort to search for a speculum, she’d missed the fact that he’d pulled the sheet from her naked body, leaving her luscious flesh exposed for the lecherous eyes of the attendants to feast on.

Chloe started toward the woman to replace the covering, but the attendants were quick to beat her to the table.  She was shocked when the light hit their skin to discover it had a bluish-green hue to it.  As one of the attendants reached down to pick up the discarded sheet, she noticed his hands for the first time.  They were long and claw like.  Closer inspection showed that, although they looked human at a glance, they hinted of reptilian genetics. 

“Can we?” one of the creatures asked anxiously.

“I don’t see why not.  She’s pretty out of it,” Oleg said as he dried his hands.  “Just get the other woman set up first.”

The attendants raced out of the room and returned in less than a minute with yet another drugged woman on a gurney.   They positioned her on an examination table that stood next to the table containing the woman who’d just been inseminated. 

The oversized attendants quickly repositioned themselves around their prey.   Chloe gasped when the tongue of one of the attendants slid out of his broad mouth as he sat on the stool Oleg just vacated at the bottom of the inseminated woman’s table.  It was long and thick with a forked tip.  She’d heard of people mutilating their bodies in such a way, but the length of his tongue was unexplainable. 

She watched with disgust as his reptilian like tongue moved lightly up and down the woman’s flesh. To her shock and horror, his companion followed suit on the poor woman’s upper torso with an equally horrific looking tongue.

“We have another insemination to do,” Oleg growled as he snatched the speculum from Chloe’s hands.

“Why are you letting them do that to that woman?” Chloe gasped with disgust.

“She signed an agreement to allow us to do with her body as we see fit,” he shrugged. “We have to reward them for their loyalty somehow, since they don’t actually get paid.”

 Cloe’s stomach turned with repulsion.  As disgusted as she was, she couldn’t look away.

“Is voyeurism part of your game?” Oleg asked as he removed the syringe from the new woman’s vagina, followed by the speculum.

“Excuse me?” Chloe asked with outrage.

“I could have used your help with this insemination.  Did you enjoy the show?” he said with a wicked grin.

“I can’t believe you allowed it,” she spat.

“Only with these guys,” Oleg said.

“Does Dr. Sudnik know about this?” she asked angrily.

“Get used to it.  They request this room often.  The taste of female is like candy to them,” he said with a Cheshire cat grin.  “Let’s face it. Even if they were allowed to leave the facility, just look at them. Can you see them getting near a woman’s naked body any other way?”

“What are they?” she said in a voice that sounded like a frantic whisper.

“One of our insemination successes,” Oleg said proudly.  “Now, step aside and let them at this one.”

The fact that he boldly placed the flat of his hand firmly on her breast as he pushed her away from the woman he’d just inseminated, along with what he was allowing those creatures to do to drugged females while he calmly stood by, made Chloe realize that he harbored not just a resentment toward her, but a resentment toward women in general. Had he one ounce of respect, he’d never allow such a thing to go on.   She didn’t care what these women signed.

The attendants scrambled to the newly inseminated woman and repeated their actions.  Once again, the noises of them greedily enjoying her body filled the room. 

Chloe busied herself cleaning the room and sterilizing equipment while she ignored what was happening as best she could. It was because of her avoidance that she didn’t look at the face of the second woman until she’d been returned to the gurney and was being rolled from the room.  It was the face of a beautiful brunette who’d been reported missing a month earlier.  It was the face of a woman whose photo was part of the file she was given when she first took on the case.  It was the face of Sara Martin.

She had little time to dwell on her discovery.  While she was staring at Sara, Oleg went in to remove Sadie from the cubicle.  Screams of fear, pain, and panic flew out of the door as soon as he opened it.

“I thought you’d left me here to die,” Sadie gasped between screams.  “The baby’s comin’ and it don’t feel right.”

“Fetch the doctor!” Oleg bellowed.

Chloe hesitated only briefly before racing from the lab in search of the doctor.  Unfortunately, she hadn’t a clue how to find him.