... HE’S NOT AS CLOSE AS HE THINKS!
Sam is running out of steam, and the painfully uncomfortable hospital chair keeps breaking his concentration. He mindlessly browses over to EmbryoEmporium.com, just like he has done many times over the past few weeks. The thought of his future children with Lyla usually fills him with excitement, but this time he anxiously glances over at Lyla lying perfectly still in the sterile hospital bed. He looks back at his screen, which oddly has a different message than usual. “We’re currently having trouble locating your embryo capsules. Please try again later.” A thought dawns on him, and cold sweat begins to trickle down his forehead. He can hardly breathe. In disbelief, he looks over at Lyla’s expressionless face, and tries to say, “They have our embryos! OUR embryos!” but his mouth won’t yet say what his mind already knows.
The next few months were a blur of wonderful, as well as devastating, news and events. Lyla’s health took a surprisingly drastic turn for the better and she was able to leave the hospital only a few weeks later, although she would need to remain on bed rest for several months. Sam confirmed his suspicion that the Ukrainian terrorist organization, the one whose babybots he was instructed to shut down, had in fact stolen all of his and Lyla’s embryos as part of their massive Embryo Emporium heist. To make matters worse, the hospital later informed them that Lyla’s abdominal injuries from the car crash meant that her eggs were no longer viable. While Lyla wasn’t perturbed by this, since she didn’t know that their embryos were missing, Sam’s heart filled with anguish at the realization that they wouldn’t be able to create replacement embryos. Citing conflicting interests, Sam decided to leave the NSA, but not before stealthily sabotaging the operation to shut down the Ukrainian terrorists’ babybots, as he knew that some of those contained his and Lyla’s embryos.
“I need to tell you something,” Sam says as he brings chicken soup up to his and Lyla’s bedroom. Lyla sits up, wincing at a sharp stab of stomach pain. Her face grows paler and paler as Sam tells her the entire story of his NSA mission and their stolen embryos. Lyla’s father works as a high-ranking immigration official, and she knows that American children produced via babybots abroad are not guaranteed American citizenship. She also knows that biological parents are sometimes penalized for criminal offenses committed by underage children, even if they’re in a different country and the biological parents didn’t raise them. This measure was supposed to deter people from selling or sharing their embryos. All these matters aside, Lyla’s close call with death made her rethink her priorities, and she knows that she desperately wants those embryos. “What can we do?!” she cries. Sam responds carefully, “I was able to track down the location of the Ukrainian terrorists babybots via their IP addresses, we could go there…” “Are you nuts?!!” exploded Lyla, but she soon realizes that this is their only chance of rescuing their embryos.
Several months later, Sam and Lyla travel to the Ukraine, find the building that the Ukrainian terrorists’ babybots are housed in, and successfully sneak inside. It’s empty, but Sam’s connections at the NSA lead them to the nursery where the children are being cultivated. Using a decoded mapping of embryo number to surrogate key in the Ukrainian terrorists' embryo database, they immediately find their three children, and while posing as cleaning staff, steal them during the night. After a long legal battle, Sam and Lyla gain American citizenship for all their children and bring them to the US. Oddly, their children start saying strange things as they learn how to speak, such as “America kill!” and “America die!”
Sam breaks into a cold sweat, as it suddenly occurs to him that the rumors going around the office when he was still working at the NSA were true. The Ukrainian terrorists had indeed been able to use subliminal messaging techniques to imbed anti-American sentiment into the children using Russian babybots technology. Lyla notices Sam’s change in demeanor and sends him a questioning look. As Sam fills her in, Lyla’s eyes grow wide and fill with fear. Had they done the right thing?
​
-The End-
