Chapter Text
Well, the moon gives light and it shines by night
When I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
Over the road we're bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down
~ When The Deal Goes Down, Bob Dylan
Raven Reyes sits in the tiny, windowless room on the Ark, tapping her fingers agitatedly on the table in front of her as she waits for the most recent test to start. This is the second time she’s done this test, and so far she thinks it’s totally pointless, just like most of the other ‘exercises’ they’re all put through in the name of science. Sighing loudly, she rereads the handout that Dr. Jackson gave her when he showed her into the claustrophobic room.
“We know that the years we have spent in space have affected our bodies, and because this has happened for generations of Ark residents, the genetic changes and mutations that have developed are likely numerous. Medical facility staff have devised multiple tests to help learn more about the evolution of these changes, such as increased stamina, a stronger sense of smell, and many other such examples. Studying blood samples from previous Ark residents and comparing them to current Ark residents are another way we can learn about changes to our DNA. We continue to discover more about these alterations every year, and your participation in these tests will go a long way in assisting our Ark community. We appreciate your time and understanding.”
Rolling her eyes, she pushes the paper across the flat surface, annoyed at the pollyanna tone of it. Participation isn’t exactly on a volunteer basis, since these tests are mandatory, and ever since Finn got put into the Sky Box almost two years ago for a rule that she broke, her attitude towards authority has steadily worsened. Her patience with all things related with the Ark and its politics completely soured, and a large part of her wishes she could knock the covered boxes off the table in front of her and tell everyone to fuck off and leave her alone. But that won’t do Finn any good, even though she sometimes thinks that joining him in the prison area of the ship might be her best option. Instead, he begged her to go along with the rules of their society and stay out of trouble. Unable to refuse him, she had promised him she would, so when the summons came for her to come to the Med Bay today, like it has so many instances before, she showed up right on time.
A knock sounds on the door, immediately followed by Dr. Jackson reappearing, his arms full of medical equipment. He proceeds to hook her up to multiple monitors by attaching little wires along various parts of her body with sticky little circles.
“Alright, I think you know the drill already. This is one of the scent tests like you did about two weeks ago. We’ll be looking for changes in your bodily responses and how you react to the three scents we’re trying today. I’ll be in the next room, watching your heart rate and breathing, among other things. We want to start off with a base reading for comparison purposes, so we’ll play some relaxing music in the beginning and between each scent. Don’t uncover any boxes until you are told to do so. Once the instruction comes, lift the object out of the box and take a deep sniff, breathing it in, and repeat that process until I tell you to put it back. Any questions?”
Shaking her head, she sits back in the padded chair and tries to get comfortable. Sounds just as stupid as the first time she did this test, honestly. Who the hell cares whether subsequent generations of humans have gotten a better sense of smell after being in space for extended periods of time? She sure doesn’t. There’s not even much up here in space to smell, unlike the things she’s learned about Earth from all of her time spent reading. What she’d give to walk through some of the gardens and forests that she’s read about… Anyway, seems to her there’s a lot more interesting and more important things that their medical staff could be spending their time on, but unless you were from Alpha Station, good luck trying to convince anyone of that.
Dr. Jackson leaves the room after ensuring that all the wires are in place, and soon after, soft classical music starts to play from a speaker on the opposite wall. Despite herself, it does soothe away some of her tension, and she’s feeling pretty neutral when she opens the first box to reveal a white t-shirt. Great, she thinks, more sweaty shirts to sniff, just like last time . Scrunching her nose up in distaste at the scent of it, she nonetheless follows the instructions and breathes it in, noting that the small tag at the bottom of the shirt is labeled Subject 6. She knows that the scent will fade once she returns it to the box and has a few minutes to sit back and loosen up before opening box number two, but she doesn’t remember any of the shirts from the first test smelling this awful. This shirt was disgusting and almost makes her gag, and she imagines who wore it with a frown - Subject 6 is definitely gross.
Eventually she’s on to the next box, which reveals Subject 110. The shirt also smells sweaty and distasteful but thankfully isn’t as off-putting, and she lets her mind wander. By the time she opens box three, she’s mentally reviewed the last repair Sinclair had her do over in Farm Station, which gives her an idea on how to increase energy output from their solar panels that she can’t wait to talk to him about. The new inspiration goes right out of her head, however, once she breathes in the third shirt that comes from Subject 228.
This one is… different. The three shirts she remembers from the first round of testing and the two she’s already sniffed today all feel very far removed from this one. She knows she’s still smelling a sweaty piece of clothing, but the scent of it is actually rather appealing to her, which is a strange thing to admit about a dirty shirt. No one has told her that all the shirts have come from males, but that’s the evidence her nose tells her, anyway. As much as she was repulsed by who might have worn the first shirt, she’s even more intrigued about who could have worn this one. She wants to breathe it in longer and can feel her cheeks redden at the thought. A little embarrassed, she’s aware that Jackson and any of the other medical staff are probably going to note that her heartbeat has kicked up a few notches on this last sample. For a fleeting moment, she wonders if asking who Subject 228 is might be worth the humiliation the question would bring, but she dismisses the possibility almost immediately. Certainly it would be unethical for them to tell her, and though her interactions with Dr. Abby Griffin, Med Bay Chief, have been brief, something tells her she’d consider patient confidentiality an unbreakable rule.
Jackson’s voice comes over the speaker, advising her to put the shirt into the box, and she takes one last deep sniff and regretfully folds it back up, her fingers smoothing out a few small wrinkles in the process. Whoever Subject 228 is, she doesn’t think she’s ever run into him before. Somehow she knows she wouldn’t have forgotten that scent if she’d ever gotten that close. Embarrassing or not, she’s going to be sniffing people a little more carefully after today, on the off chance she’ll find the wearer of that shirt. Just to appease her curiosity.
Exhausted, Abby sits in her office, reviewing the latest test results. It’s past midnight and she’s been on her feet all day. But there’s been so few pregnancies in the last four years and Abby knows that whatever genetic issues are causing this, it’s getting worse. So she’s no stranger to late nights anymore. A year ago, Chancellor Jaha gave her more leeway with testing permissions than he ever has, but in her opinion, it was still too limited. She’d finally had something of a breakthrough that could at least mitigate the problem, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it just yet. She was determined to get it, however, and thought back to her conversation with her friend, David Miller, a high-ranking guard currently stationed in the Sky Box. He hadn’t liked her plan, but had been willing to go along with it once he understood how dire things were. It’ll be her that will take the fall if any of this backfires, though, she’ll make sure of it. She brought both David and Eric Jackson in on her rule-breaking, and she’ll be damned if either of them suffer for her choices. But as she looks over the most recent entry in front of her, she feels a thrill of anticipation. Maybe she won’t need to worry about consequences after all.
Raven pulls the sticky white t-shirt away from her skin, beads of sweat running between her breasts. This certainly hadn’t been any fun, she scoffs. The day after she’d gone in for the second scent test, the white shirt had been delivered to the room she shared with three other young women, and the printed instructions had been clear - she was to wear it under her clothes for five days straight, and sleep in it as well. Then she was to come back to the medical lab, bringing the shirt along. When she’d arrived a few hours ago, Jackson had smiled and directed her to a room so she could pull the short-sleeved shirt on again, and then he’d had her running on a treadmill for what seemed like forever. He had wanted her to get it sweaty, and he’d been awfully good at changing the settings to progressively make the running more difficult. She didn’t mind working up a sweat when the occasion called for it, but this was probably the most intense workout she’d ever had.
Finally, her torture ends, and Jackson had almost gleefully taken the shirt from her after she’d come out of the changing room. She can’t wait to take a shower and get clean, but she hasn’t been dismissed yet, so she stands awkwardly out of the way as Jackson carefully labels her shirt as Subject 314. Grinning, she wonders if other guinea pig testers will sniff her shirt and rear back in dismay, or if she might ever get a reaction like Subject 228 had brought out in her. Her smile fades, and she’s suddenly not sure that she wants anyone to have that kind of response over her sweaty sample. It’s been on her mind more than she cares to admit, how frequently she’s thought about the wearer of that shirt, what he looks like, if she already knows him, what he’d be like, whether she’d be interested if she met him in person… No, she reminds herself. She had Finn. He was her boyfriend before he’d been arrested, and she was just lonely sometimes. She was entertaining harmless fantasies, that was all.
Jackson looks up and sends her on her way, telling her that he’ll be in touch. She’s not quite sure how to take that comment, but she nods purposefully and walks quickly to her room, intending to get a change of clothes before heading to the women’s showers. As soon as she’s gone, Jackson sits at the console nearest him and speaks into the receiver.
“We can proceed with the test for Subject 228. Yes, I know we have to do things very carefully on this one… If we do the test within the next few hours, we can have the results back by morning… Right… Well, neither one of them are in a position to say no, if this works out like we think it will... No, I know, but Abby, you’re the one always reminding me that there’s a much bigger cause at stake here. I gotta believe that the ends justify the means, and anyway, we’re not forcing them - it’ll be their decision… Okay, yeah, I’ll do that.” Closing his eyes briefly, and hoping that his words are true, Jackson gets started on the next step in the process.
For the second time that day, John Murphy walks along the dimly lit hallway, accompanied by David Miller, one of the highest ranking guards on the Ark. His hands are cuffed behind his back, but Guard Miller has always been kinder than most, and this time the cuffs don’t dig into his wrists. He’s led to the same room he was in earlier, but this time there aren’t any covered boxes on the small surface inside, and the monitors that were present are gone. There’s also two chairs on opposite sides of the table, when earlier there was only one. He slumps into the nearest seat, and Guard Miller pats him on the shoulder and tells him he’ll be right outside. With nothing to do but wait, Murphy closes his eyes and rhythmically taps his foot until he hears the faint sound of the door knob turning. He watches suspiciously as a short and slender woman with a long lab coat enters the tiny space.
“Hi, John. You might not remember me, but I’m Dr. Abby Griffin. I’m here to talk to you about something very important.”
Murphy stares impassively just over Abby’s shoulder. He remembers her, alright, not that he’ll tell her. She’d treated him quite a few times after his dad died, when his mother got out of hand with the drinking. In her gentle way, she had tried to get him to confess what was going on, both of them fully aware how he’d gotten injured, but he’d never admitted things. And look where that had gotten him. He doesn’t have anything to say, and isn’t thrilled about the urge he has to actually be polite, so he offers a noncommittal shrug in response.
A faint smile crosses her lips before she leans over the desk towards him, abruptly serious. “Listen carefully, because I’m going to tell you a few things, and then you’re going to have to make a big decision in a very short amount of time. Know that there is no record of this meeting, and that both myself and Guard Miller will deny this ever took place. You’ve been in the Sky Box a long time - you know that it’s very unusual for any prisoner to participate in the kinds of tests you’ve been doing lately. By my count, you’ve had multiple scent tests. Earlier today, you sniffed your thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth shirt samples.”
Intrigued despite himself, Murphy finally meets Abby’s gaze. He has wondered why he’s been singled out, why he’s getting these tests, because he knows for a fact that a prisoner like him wouldn’t normally be included. He tries to reply in as emotionless a tone as possible, not wanting to give away his curiosity. “Yeah, so?”
“So what I’m about to tell you is something only a very few people know. Genetically, our population is dying. We haven’t been regulating the population for years - it’s just that pregnancies are becoming increasingly rare. During yearly checkups, we’ve secretly removed all of the birth control implants from anyone over eighteen, but even so, barely anyone has gotten pregnant. Because I’m the Chief Doctor, I tend to be the first to know about any… illegal pregnancies, shall we say. And I cover them all up so no one gets arrested. I urge the couple to get married and then lie about how far along they are. Or, less often, I help hide the pregnancy, deliver the baby and it gets adopted by a couple who hasn’t been able to get pregnant and they keep quiet because they’re desperate for the child. However, the problem is getting worse.”
Murphy can’t help the shock that makes his eyes widen, even though he would prefer to remain stoic. But this is a scandal - for years, the entire population of the Ark has been lied to, and he’s actually hearing about it by someone who would know. It’s not like he didn’t think this place was capable of it, but to have it laid out so boldly is more surprising than he would have expected.
Abby continues, her head slightly tilted as she takes in his small changes in body language that give away his attention. “I’ve been tasked with the job of finding out why things are going so wrong. I’ve been working on it for a long time, but I still have no definitive answers. Not long ago, it occurred to me that perhaps instead of studying what could be going wrong, I should study when it’s going right.” She’s pleased when she notices John leaning just the slightest bit towards her, as though he’s interested in her explanation. He was an inquisitive kid, she remembers, asking a lot of questions, although that could also have been to distract her from how he’d gotten something like a broken arm in the first place. “Using the cover of the effects on our bodies from the time we’ve spent in space, we’ve done medical and genetic testing with a focus on those couples who have gotten pregnant without any help. It’s hard to make a conclusive statement because the sample size is so small, but one thing we’ve noticed is that there is always a positive reaction to each other from both the male and the female partner to the scent test.”
She drops that statement on him and then goes silent, and Murphy’s foot, which has been tapping nonstop since he sat down, finally slows to a halt. She was right - earlier that day he’d sniffed another three of those damned shirts, bringing his total to fifteen, and that last shirt had been different than all of the rest of them. Subject 314. It was the opposite of anything else he’d come across during those stupid tests, because it had smelled good. He’d sat in this very same chair, hours ago, and his body had gotten hard as he breathed in the shirt as instructed. As compelling as the smell was, he’d actually been weirded out over his reaction after he’d gone back to the Sky Box. Was he so hard up that a fucking smell was enough to get him in the mood at this point? Yeah, so maybe he’d made use of his hand, coming hard in the privacy of his cell as he imagined what kind of woman could have worn that shirt and what she’d done to get so sweaty, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have any opportunity for the real thing. The Sky Box was harsh, but there were ways to make a lot of things happen, and he should know after being a resident for so long. Still, Abby’s reveal is enough to have him clenching his jaw tightly, because he’s getting the feeling that nothing good is going to come from this.
“I’ve been putting shirts on almost every man of age on the Ark, letting women do the sniff test on them, but there are levels of compatibility to the matches that make things more difficult. I needed more to work with because timing is so tough, so I decided to add some of the prisoners to my sample list. You’re getting closer to twenty-one, John. We both know what happens then. I’ve always wished that I tried harder to help you, that I shouldn’t have let you lie to me when we both knew what was going on. Maybe… Anyway, you were perfect as a test subject and I’ve used your scent sample with more women than you probably want to know about. I don’t think it will come as a surprise to you when I tell you we’ve found someone you’re compatible with.”
He’s not proud that his first thought is of Subject 314. His immediate reaction should have been anger that she was using him in this way, that the good of the Ark was yet again sacrificing the individual. His hands clench into fists where they’re still bound behind his back, even though he sees the guilt on Abby’s face.
“I know it’s not fair, but nothing about this life ever really is. So here’s the deal - according to our feedback, you’re highly, and I do mean highly compatible with a female test subject. I want the two of you to agree to this, so I’m giving you both an incentive I think you’ll find worthwhile. I need more proof that my theory is correct, because if I can take that proof to Jaha, we can use the test results to increase the pregnancy rate, and maybe eventually, if we figure out why it works like this, we could have success at doing it via artificial insemination rather than making matches between people in this way. And that would mean that the population here could rebound as long as we track things genetically. You have seven months before you turn twenty-one. If you accept my deal, you will fully participate and make every attempt to impregnate the female subject, and you will allow medical staff to do further testing, within reason, and allow the possibility of medication or methods that will increase the chances of pregnancy. If you get her pregnant before those seven months are up, I’ll make sure you don’t get floated, and by then you’ll be too valuable as a verifiable genetic father to get rid of. So what do you say? Are you in or are we both going to forget that this conversation ever happened?”
To say that this was all a strange turn of events was an understatement. He stares at the wall for a moment, weighing his options. After his dad died, he’d never wanted to have a kid, not ever. His childhood had ended, his family fell apart, and his mother… well, the less said about her, the better. He had deliberately been overly cautious when it came to sex, figuring it was always better to be safe than sorry. The idea of a kid being raised on the hellscape of the Ark still doesn’t please him, but is that a worse fate than dying? Honestly, he’s not even sure. But the thing is… if he agrees to this, even if it doesn’t work, he’ll at least spend the next seven months having a lot of sex, presumably with whoever this Subject 314 is, because he knows he never had any kind of positive reaction to any of those other shirts they’d put in front of him. He has no idea what she looks like, whether she’d be any fun or even whether she wants a child or would raise it well… But his nose certainly likes her, and as awful as it sounds in his own head, he could always close his eyes and pretend it was someone else if he needed to. Spending what could be the rest of his life before being floated in his single cell, with nothing to break up the monotony, is so much like what he’s already been through. He could do it, yeah, but does he want to when there’s another option?
“If a pregnancy comes out of this, what will happen to the baby?”
Abby’s eyebrows lift slightly, making him scowl. “I’m sorry, John - I’m surprised that’s your first question, that’s all,” she apologizes. “As far as a potential baby goes, that can be a choice made down the road. You could choose to raise it together, one of you could raise it, or neither of you could participate and I could arrange for the child to be adopted by an already married couple who have been unable to conceive. There are so many people who would want this baby, that would never be an issue.”
“I’ll accept the deal but I have a condition.” The expression on his face tells her he’s very serious, and Abby has to work to hide her satisfied reaction. One down, she thinks, and one more to go.
“Understood. Tell me so I can determine whether it’s possible.”
He’s glad she can’t see how white his knuckles are behind his back, giving away his tension. “If the baby is given up for adoption, it has to go to people in Alpha Station that it will resemble, so that it will pass as legitimate. Only Alpha Station.”
“That won’t be a problem. I believe that means we have a deal.” Watching him give a curt nod, her guilt at forcing him into this situation lessens. The Sky Box hasn’t ruined everything inside him, at least not yet. He wouldn’t have made that caveat if it had. She’d told him the truth, before. She had always wished that she’d tried harder to save him. It was later than it should have been, but maybe it wouldn’t be too late after all.