Alien Proliferation

and Jamie are both okay, I’m better than fine.”
    “You’re always better than fine.”
    Jeff laughed. “I love how you think. Even right after a hard delivery, your mind is laser-focused.”
    I snuggled closer and hugged the baby. She was already asleep. “It’s a gift.”

CHAPTER 16
     
    T HE BABY WOKE UP a few hours later, this time really wanting to eat. Which was good. I didn’t have breasts any more—I had torpedoes filled with milk.
    Jeff was amazing. Changed her diaper, put her on one breast, took her off, helped me switch sides, put her on the other side, took her off, burped her, checked the diaper, back in the bed. He did most of this at hyperspeed, exhibiting yet another reason why A-Cs were superior mates.
    “So, the blocks,” I asked as he snuggled next to me. “They work how? And will Christopher need to put some in?”
    “Probably. I can’t really tell what talents she has, but with what she did in the womb, empathic’s in there for sure.”
    “They work how?” I asked again. I’d never badgered Jeff for this info before, but that was because I already knew what to do to take care of him. I didn’t want to have to slam a huge needle filled with adrenaline into my tiny baby’s hearts unless I absolutely had to. Prevention seemed like a smart plan, therefore.
    “I don’t know that I can explain it, but I’ll try. The ones I put in—I . . . rearranged things in her brain. Just a little. As she gets older, she’ll need some medically implanted blocks and to have regular injections of serums that all empaths use to control their talent. Imageers need less of this, but if she’s strong like the other hybrid women, I imagine she’ll need some. The implants and injections are slightly different for imageers, but the process is the same. As we get older, we learn to move the implants and blocks around in our minds on our own. The serums allow us to do this.”
    “So you and everyone else are going to be fiddling with our daughter’s brain? And this doesn’t sound like a bad idea to anyone?”
    “It’s similar to the implants we use to manipulate the gases on this planet, and it’s not fiddling like a human would do it,” he said, patience clearly forced. “We’ve been doing this for centuries. It works. No one dies from the implants or the injections. We can and will die without them. You’ve never had an issue with any of this before.”
    “No need to get testy. I just want to be sure we’re not doing something that would hurt the baby.”
    Jeff made the snorting exasperation sound. I looked at him. I was getting a dirty look. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt our baby. The blocks will protect her. She won’t be able to feel any emotions, other than her own.”
    “What about mine? Or yours?” Jeff said I broadcast my emotions, and when his blocks were down, I had to assume he broadcast his.
    “As far as I can tell, she won’t feel either one of us. Unless she’s in life-threatening danger.”
    “In general or from us?”
    I got another dirty look. “She’d better not be in life-threatening danger from one of us. But if the person whose emotions she’s blocked from is a danger to her, she’ll feel their emotions.”
    “How?”
    “I can’t explain it to anyone who’s not an empath. It works, that’s all I can tell you.” Or at least all he was willing to. I decided I had another question that was more important. “And,” Jeff went on, “because I know you and know the next question you want to ask, when she has to go into isolation, I’m going with her, at least until she’s old enough to understand what it is.”
    “Not that I mind that you want to, but if two empaths are in isolation together, doesn’t that mean neither one is actually isolated?”
    “It would if I were a normal empath. Since I’m not . . .” Jeff looked upset, affronted, and a little hurt.
    “I know, you’re Superempath. I just want to be sure that—”
    “That we avoid having to give her the adrenaline shot,” he finished for me. “I know. I don’t want to do that to her if we don’t have to, either.” Jeff ran his hand through his hair. “Why are we fighting? I mean, really, why? And why right now?”
    I considered this question. “Hormones?”
    “I’ll take it. Look, can we just rest until the baby needs to eat again? I’m almost as exhausted from this conversation as I was when I thought I’d lost you forever.”
    “I’m sorry.” I was. I