Prologue
The fluorescent lights overhead don’t flicker; the facility pays too much for maintenance to allow something as sloppy as a dying bulb. They hum instead, a low, sterile vibration that I feel straight through my desk.
I click my ballpoint pen. Click. Click.
To anyone else, it was a rainy Tuesday night on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico. To me, it was Tuesday night of the third fiscal quarter, and I was three files away from finishing my shift.
The heavy security doors at the end of the intake bay suddenly hiss open. A woman steps through. Her short brown hair and dirty clothes are soaked through. She is shivering, clutching a small bundle tight against her chest. She looks terrified - her eyes darting to the armed guards flanking the wall on the other side of the room, her breathing ragged. I don't look too closely at her face. I look at the bundle.
“¿Habla español?” I ask. When she looks at me, confused, I know my answer. “Do you speak English?” A look of slight relief crosses over her face as she nods. She whispers a barely audible “yes.”
“Identification,” I say, my voice flat, perfectly practiced after six years at this desk.
She fumbles in her pocket, pulling out a crumpled identification card. She pushes it beneath the bulletproof glass barrier separating me from anything that might come through those doors. “They said… they said on the secure line that if she was healthy, the rate was fifty thousand. American.”
“Subject to medical clearing,” I correct, not looking up as I type her information into the terminal. A series of results populates the screen.
BACKGROUND STATUS: CLEAR
KNOWN NEXT OF KIN: NONE IDENTIFIED
LEGAL BIRTH RECORD: UNREGISTERED
ACQUISITION RISK: LOW
Perfect. No one is likely to come looking for this asset.
“How old is the child?” I ask.
“She was born eight days ago,” the woman says softly, looking down at the baby.
“Place the child in the bassinet tray to your left.”
The woman hesitates. For another second, she clutches the infant against her chest. Then she lifts her head. For the first time, I catch her face fully in the light. Her eyes are a deep, striking green. Rare. Coveted. She looks around the sleek, high-tech interior of our facility. She most likely thinks of the money. Then she lays the baby down.
I press a button on my console. The heavy glass partition slides into place around the bassinet, sealing the infant inside the intake chamber. On my side, a secondary hatch unlocks with a quiet click. I pull the bassinet toward me and fold back the blanket.
The baby doesn’t cry. She simply blinks up at the harsh white ceiling lights, her newborn eyes dark and unfocused. I gently expose her face and hands. The buyers will pay more for certain traits.
But beauty doesn’t matter if the wiring is faulty.
I open my desk drawer and retrieve a sterile swab. I tear open the packaging and run it along the inside of the baby’s cheek. She flinches. Her tiny mouth opens in a silent gasp, but she doesn’t make a sound. I place the swab into the analyzer tray. Then I reach for the sterile lancet. I press it into the soft skin of her heel. A bead of dark crimson blood rises.
The baby finally cries.
I collect the blood sample and place it beside the swab. Then I close the analyzer. A digital timer appears on my secondary monitor.
03:00.
Those three minutes are always the longest part of the job. The baby’s mother stands on the other side of the glass, chewing her thumbnail to the bone, her eyes locked on my face, trying to read a death sentence or a lottery ticket in my expression. I keep my face blank.
Inside the bassinet, the baby’s cries begin to taper off, turning into a rhythmic, exhausted whimpering. Behind the wall, the analyzer begins processing the samples. The system isn’t reading her entire genome. It doesn’t need to.
Our screening panel checks for the genetic markers, chromosomal abnormalities, inherited conditions, and other predetermined traits relevant to acquisition. The facility doesn’t believe in surprises.
02:14
The mother wipes away a tear with an already-wet sleeve.
01:05
I watch the progress bar crawl across the screen. If the display turns red, the child fails screening. The guards will escort the woman out with her child and a painful memory of why no one should waste our time. Intentional or not. We don’t keep broken inventory.
00:03
00:02
00:01
The monitor finally beeps, a series of text blocks cascading down the screen.
RAPID GENETIC SCREEN: PANEL COMPLETE
CHROMOSOMAL SCREEN: NO ABNORMALITY DETECTED
NEONATAL TOXICOLOGY SCREEN: NEGATIVE
TARGETED INHERITED-CONDITION PANEL: ACCEPTABLE
ACQUISITION STATUS: CLEARED
A bright green bar fills the bottom of the screen. Cleared.
“Healthy,” I mutter, logging the data into the main intake server. The database automatically generates a permanent serial number for the child, wiping away whatever name her mother might have whispered over her in the dark.
ASSET #4092 - UNASSIGNED
I stamp the woman’s paperwork. Then, I reach into the safe beneath my console and retrieve a pre-packaged block—fifty thousand in uncirculated hundreds, five banded straps vacuum-sealed into a rigid brick of heavy plastic. It drops onto the stainless-steel tray with a dull thud. I press the release switch, and the pass-through drawer locks on my side before sliding forward to hers. She grabs the brick, her wet fingers slipping twice against the smooth plastic before she manages to shove it deep into her coat.
“Pleasure doing business with you.”
She doesn't answer. Instead, she hurries toward the exit. The heavy security doors close behind her, cutting off the sound of the torrential rain and locking the storm outside.
The intake bay falls silent again, save for the sterile hum of the fluorescent lights.
I look down at the transparent bassinet tray on my side of the glass. Asset #4092 is staring blankly up at the ceiling, her eyes reflecting the harsh white glow overhead.
I reach out and press the button on the wall intercom. The system line blinks to life with a soft chime. “Activo listo para traslado al Nivel Uno,” I say, my voice flat and echoing slightly in the empty room. “Adquisición exitosa. Envíen a una nodriza para la recogida.”
A brief crackle of static cuts through the speaker before a voice responds. “Entendido, Martínez. La nodriza Elena ha sido enviada a tu puesto. Procesando ahora la transferencia de Nivel Uno.”
The intercom goes dead.
I don’t look back at the child.
I log out of the genetic screening terminal, slide the finalized paperwork into the completed bin, and reach for the next folder on my desk.
Two more files left, and my shift is over.
