Archive of Our Own ^beta

Every time Will walked into the precinct to start a shift, he felt like he was getting away with something. He wasn’t as tense as he had been his first couple weeks back, but there was still that sense of unreality, like this was an anxiety dream and any second now, fucking Milton would show up with a buzzing and spinning bone saw to lobotomize him, or the feds would turn up and arrest him. Neither of those things was going to happen, Will and the cluster and the not-evil remains of BPO had made sure of that, but Will still couldn’t entirely believe it sometimes. 

As far as the Chicago Police Department was concerned, Officer Will Gorski had been spirited away by an unspecified alphabet agency to be their undercover operative on a very hush-hush, long-term interagency counterterrorism task force that he had been uniquely qualified for, for reasons that remained classified, so classified that some other agencies hadn’t known about it and had still thought he was a person of interest in their own investigations. When the captain had informed the precinct of this, the response had been a mix of restive how dare they indignation, suspicion, and blasé acceptance. The acceptance had surprised Will.

One of the older guys on the force had nodded, crossed his arms, and asked, “Is this like what happened with Vecchio back in the day?” A murmur had gone through the assembled older guys. The captain had given an ambivalent waggle of his head.

“Eh, kinda. I’m not at liberty to divulge any more, apparently, so let’s all just welcome Gorski back, and not ask him any questions he’s not allowed to answer.”

The older guys had nodded and clapped Will on the shoulder as they filed out of the briefing room. “Listen kid, at least they didn’t just replace you with some other cop with your name who looked nothing like you. Poor Kowalski had to pretend to be Vecchio, and we all had to make like that was fuckin’ believable, even though no one would mistake that skinny blond Polish punk for Vecchio.”

“Uh, okay.”

“Worked though, didn’t it?” said one of the other older guys, and they’d walked off bickering over whether it really had or not.

Will wasn’t asked many questions he couldn’t answer, but rumors had swirled, and even a couple months after being back, he still got a lot of sideways looks. They were at least mostly sympathetic looks by now. He hadn’t been able to hide the surely gutted expression on his face when someone had asked shit, they wouldn’t let you come back for your pop’s funeral? He’d had to say no. That had led everyone to shake their heads and mutter pissed off things about fucking heartless bureaucrat feds, and someone must have passed the word around, because Will didn’t get a lot of questions after that.

The weirdness of being back aside, he’d missed being a cop, which was maybe a sign of how shitty and stressful being on the run from a vast international conspiracy had been, because being a Chicago cop wasn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a stress-free and fulfilling job. But it was his best shot at making a real difference, at doing something like the work he’d been doing against BPO in something approaching a legal way, and the Chicago PD wasn’t going to change without someone there to do the changing. After defeating BPO, it seemed downright doable. And shit, he had to keep up with his cluster, didn’t he? Capheus was an elected official, Lito was on his way to international superstardom, Sun had control of her family’s bank back….

And Will was sitting at his desk, typing up a report on a thoroughly boring B&E and burglary, while Diego was doing the same at his desk. He smiled, a little ruefully. Well. Baby steps.

One of the detectives who was walking by on his way to the coffee machine did an actual double take on seeing Will smiling. “Jesus, how fucking bad was the undercover op the feds had you on that you’re smiling at paperwork, Gorski?”

“Uh, you know, pretty bad,” said Will, smile transitioning to a grimace.

“One of your friends having a particularly good day?” asked Diego once the detective walked away.

The cluster cascaded across his mind: Nomi working on code, idly considering a lunch break, and Will shares an echo of his own lunch of a pastrami sandwich with her as subtle encouragement to take a break; Riley putting together a playlist for her next set and evaluating songs for the right beats per minute; Sun leaving the office for the day; Kala and Capheus warm and asleep; Wolfgang surveying the club that’s only just starting to fill up for the night, the music not yet pounding; Lito running lines with a costar—

“Hm?”

“You were smiling. At paperwork. Also, you’re humming. So, one of your friends having a good time or what?”

Dammit, Will hadn’t even noticed he was humming. Stupid Wolfgang and his earworms. “They’re alright, normal day for all of ‘em.” Diego raised his eyebrows. “What, I can’t just be in a good mood?”

“We’ve been doing paperwork for hours,” said Diego, and typed with particular vehemence as he said it. “No one should be in a good mood after that.”

“What can I say, I love my job,” said Will, with an exaggerated smile.

“You can do mine if you love it so much,” muttered Diego.

“No thanks,” said Will. He looked at the clock: it was coming up on 4 PM. “I’ll take what you’ve got left at five though,” he allowed. Diego could use a few hours with his kids, and Will might as well stay at the station a little longer. Riley was in Montreal for a gig, and wouldn’t be back for a couple days.

Diego looked away from his screen with a smile. “Yeah?”

“Sure.”

It was past seven by the time Will finished up all the paperwork and left the station. He spent the El ride back to his apartment visiting with Riley, who was about to head to the venue for her gig. She had that nervous pre-performance thrum of nerves running through her, and he felt the flutter of anxiety in his own stomach.

“Come distract me,” she said with a smile, so he did, and by the time he got off the train, and she hopped on her ride to the venue, they were both smiling and relaxed.

Will had been planning to spend his evening with a beer and whatever game happened to be on TV, or maybe visiting with Riley or one of the others in the cluster, and he did drop in on Riley’s set for a few minutes, before grabbing a sunlit walk with Capheus for a short escape from Chicago’s late winter chill. But soon enough he felt a weird kind of pressure behind his eyes, and he retreated back to the bounds of his own body. Will massaged his forehead and temples a little to try to relieve the pressure, but it stayed, dull and insistent, almost but not quite pain. Maybe he’d spent too long in front of a computer today.

Nomi blinked in for a visit, likely summoned by the thought of computers. “Pssh, you weren’t staring at a screen that long today,” she said, but she peered at him in concern anyway. “Make your screen dimmer next time,” she suggested.

Will nodded solemnly. “I will. But you’re going to have to help me with that, I don’t think I can work all those buttons,” he said with as straight a face as he could manage. Nomi rolled her eyes and grinned, and returned her attention to her own computer screen.

He dithered over taking a tylenol or something, but decided against it. It wasn’t really a headache. Maybe it was just some eyestrain or something, or maybe he needed more sleep. That was probably it. At the very least, he ought to lie down in a dark room, probably. So he went to bed early, and he was asleep before he could even finish his by now habitual glancing check-in with the cluster.

The weird pressure was still there the next morning. He checked his medicine cabinet, wondered if he should take tylenol or motrin, or if he just needed some coffee. Coffee, he decided. His head didn’t hurt, after all. When he closed the cabinet to reveal the mirror again, he saw Kala standing behind him. He smiled at her, warmed by both her appearance and the balmy Mumbai early evening she brought with her. Chicago was unlikely to heave itself free of winter anytime soon, but Kala was a pretty good substitute for spring right now.

“Good morning! Headache?”

“Sort of. Just feels like pressure, I don’t know. Probably just need my caffeine hit for the day.”

“Sinus pressure maybe,” she suggested, and brought her warm, dry hands up to feel his throat where the lymph nodes were. “You might be getting a cold. Try fluids and vitamin C! And ugh, wear warm clothes, I don’t know how you can stand this weather,” she said with a theatrical shiver before she turned away and disappeared back to Mumbai.

Will dutifully followed Kala’s advice, and spent patrol ignoring the odd pressure that persisted in some ill-defined part of his head. It didn’t hurt, and it was definitely his, not someone else’s in the cluster, but it was nothing like the headache he’d had when the cluster had been “born,” and it wasn’t quite like that about to get a cold feeling either. He was wiped at the end of patrol though, far more tired than he should have been after a fairly uneventful shift. Maybe he really was coming down with something. He had to fight off a wave of dizziness strong enough to make him sway on his feet when he got out of the patrol car.

“You okay, man?” asked Diego. “You’re looking a little woozy.” He leaned in and whispered, “Is it, you know, one of the others?”

Which earned Will a visit from Wolfgang, fresh from the sauna. “It wasn’t that hot in the sauna,” he said, frowning at Will. Will felt steam and sweat beading on his/their skin and when the sensation faded, Will gave a brief, violent shudder at the contrast with the cold air of Chicago before Wolfgang noticed and shoved in to share with Will again, which oh, felt really nice and warm. It always felt a little like a shove when Wolfgang shared with him, but not a mean, start a fight kind of shove, more like a friendly, jostling c’mon, move over, I’m here kind of shove.

“It’s fine, I think I’m just coming down with a cold or something,” said Will to both of them.

This set Diego off on a rant about the plague of strep throat tearing through his daughter’s elementary school that Will maybe sort of tuned out for by visiting with Riley for a quick mental makeout while she was browsing through records at a record store, but he hurried back quickly before Wolfgang could give it away by saying something obviously Wolfgang-y to Diego like “children are always sick” or “shouldn’t have had kids if you didn’t want to wipe their snotty noses.”

“Yeah, I’ll definitely go to the doctor if my throat starts feeling sore,” promised Will.

Wolfgang kept him warm until he got back inside, and when he got back home after his shift, he went straight to bed. His head barely hit the pillow before he was asleep, and he carried the feeling of a warm hand on his forehead down into his dreams.

The pressure didn’t subside over the next week. Riley came back, and that was pretty pleasantly distracting for a few days, sharing physical and mental space with her again, distracting enough that he could ignore the weight in his head, the odd feeling of fullness, like his head was a balloon blown uncomfortably close to popping. Dizziness swamped him at odd moments, but maybe he just needed to eat more, drink more water. He hydrated even more than usual during his workout, though it didn’t seem to help.

“I’d say you should go to the doctor, but that doesn’t seem to work out well for us,” said Sun from her perch on the weight machine. Will had stopped the treadmill after a new wave of vertigo, and now he was fighting the unpleasant reappearance of his lunch and all the water he’d been drinking.

“Please don’t throw up,” said Lito. “If you throw up, I’m going to throw up, and I hate throwing up.” Lito stared at him with wide, worried eyes.

The rest of the cluster dropped in, Capheus and Kala sleepy-eyed but growing more alert with worry for Will. Riley and Nomi both tested his forehead with their hands, while Wolfgang glowered thoughtfully at Will. Anxiety rippled and bounced around the cluster, more than was warranted by Will feeling a little sick. It had been months since the whole BPO mess was resolved, but they were all still on edge a little, waiting for the next disaster. Will didn’t want to be the next disaster. Hell, Will wanted the cluster to be free of disasters for the foreseeable future. They’d already had more than their fair share.

“I’m fine, seriously. I think I must just be fighting off some cold or infection. End of winter, there’s always some bug going around, you know?”

“But if you get dizzy like this while you’re out on patrol, in a dangerous situation….” Riley wrapped her arms around him tight. And yeah, that was what worried Will. Apart from the dizzy spells, he wasn’t in enough discomfort to think a doctor visit was in order, but if one hit at the exact wrong time….

“And it’s not just you. It’s all of us,” said Wolfgang, arms crossed. They’d all had enough object lessons in shared pain to know that by now. “It’s not a big deal now, but if you get worse…”

“Yeah, but going to the doctor is a risk,” said Nomi.

She was right. BPO might not have been a problem anymore, not a get-kidnapped-and-lobotomized sort of problem anyway, but Will and the others were still a different species, and their latest experiences with doctors had been not great, to say the least. Getting tossed in the psych ward was still a distinct possibility, BPO or no BPO. The memories shivered along the psycellium that linked them, and they all tucked in closer against each other.

“It’s probably just a viral thing,” said Will. “I’ll get some more sleep, it’ll pass. If it doesn’t, we’ll figure something out.”

It didn’t pass. The pressure upgraded to an odd sort of throbbing, an almost painless kind of pulse in his head, and it was accompanied by vague flashes of sensory impressions, like a very faint echo of what visiting and sharing had first been like, but they were impressions that he knew couldn’t be traced back to his cluster. The unpleasant tang of the odor of manure. The clicking of heels on cobblestone. The strange and eerie call of some bird. For a second, Will wondered if he was having a stroke, and how he would even be able to tell if he was, given the ubiquity of vague sensory impressions in his life. After some furtive and frantic googling, he nixed the stroke diagnosis. Something was wrong though. He was sleeping ten, twelve hours a night, and his dreams—

“Your eyes are always moving under your eyelids, while you’re sleeping. For almost the whole night,” said Capheus one morning. He was sitting up on Will’s left, reading one last report before he turned in for the night. It was night in Nairobi, and Capheus’s bed was warm, Zakia was warm beside them, and the whole world was lit by a small golden circle of light. “That isn’t normal, is it?”

“You’re dreaming the whole night,” murmured Riley against Will’s neck from the other side of the bed, in Chicago. “None of us can get in. What are you dreaming of?”

Will closed his eyes, tried to summon up the memory, but doing so felt like being tugged by an undertow that would tear him away from Riley, from Capheus, dragging him into confusing depths. When he tried to remember, it was just a cacophony of overwhelming input. He pulled free of it with a gasp, grasping at Capheus’s hand. Capheus held on tightly. Will turned to look at Riley, and her concerned brown eyes doubled with Capheus’s.

“I don’t know,” said Will, unsettled.

Whatever was going on, it was a sensate thing. And Will loved being a sensate, he did, he wouldn’t give it or his cluster up for anything, but sometimes he’d be on the train, or walking out in the city, and he’d look at all the people and think, I’m not like any of you. We’re not even the same species, and the thought made him feel distantly panicked. Not out of loneliness or isolation, Will was never lonely anymore, but this level of difference felt terrifying, sometimes, if he thought about it too much. He used to think he was just a normal guy, he used to know what he could expect from the world, from his life.

But then the cluster had flared to life, and he’d realized he didn’t know anything. He was a member of a different species, and he couldn’t be sure what old rules did and didn’t apply. There was so much they didn’t know, still, about being Homo sensorium. There hadn’t been anyone to teach them. Jonas, the cryptic, two-faced asshole, didn’t count.

They’d met other clusters by now, on good terms even, but as soon as the war against BPO had heated up, they’d kept contact at a minimum, wary of leading BPO to anyone else. We’re a little like an infected computer, or a hacked email account, Nomi had said. Hook us up to the internet, and we can spread the virus to everyone else in our contacts list. We should stay off the internet. Even now that the danger had passed, sensates remained wary of each other. It would take time to rebuild more trust.

“Someone must know someone who knows someone who knows someone who’s a sensate doctor,” said Nomi now.

“We can check with the Archipelago,” suggested Riley. “People won’t be taking blockers so much, now that things are more settled and they know we were never BPO collaborators.”

So Riley did, and fifteen minutes later, they had the name and number of a doctor in Madison, and five minutes after that, Will made an appointment to see her next weekend. They just had to hope Dr. Fatima Mohammed wasn’t secretly evil.

When it came time for Will’s appointment, Will and Riley drove to Madison together. Riley spent the drive peering out of the window at the heavy gray sky nervously, twisting her hands in her thick sweater. She still didn’t like driving in any sort of inclement weather, though it helped that they were on a wide, straight highway. It didn’t start snowing, thankfully, and the rest of the cluster popped in and out, distracting them from their nerves. With half of them tense from bad memories, the rest of the cluster had their job cut out for them. Will could feel the phantom impact of Wolfgang’s punching bag on his fists, and Nomi was pacing as Amanita found out everything there was to know about Dr. Fatima Mohammed.

“Sing along time!” declared Lito from the backseat, and a fairly vigorous debate about the best road trip singalong songs followed. Will invoked driver’s privilege, and picked “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and sure, none of them had Freddie Mercury-level pipes, but that didn’t matter.

“It’s about the feeling,” Wolfgang insisted between punches.

By the time they pulled into the parking lot of Dr. Mohammed’s clinic, they’d realized Kala didn’t know much of anything about Queen, a situation they had swiftly rectified, and also, they were all mostly sure Dr. Mohammed wasn’t one of the BPO fanatics, or a freelance mad scientist. As far as Amanita and Nomi’s snooping revealed, Dr. Mohammed had emigrated from Somalia ten years ago, and had been practicing as an unremarkably competent family practice doctor since then. She was involved in her community, donated her time and services to local homeless shelters, was an active volunteer at her mosque. A model citizen, by all accounts. That didn’t stop the cluster from piling into the clinic with Will and Riley.

The clinic wasn’t deserted, but it clearly wasn’t normal, full-staff office hours. There were only a couple nurses on duty as far as Will could tell, and the waiting room was empty but for an exhausted looking mother struggling to wrangle a pair of fractious toddlers. She wasn’t sensate, or if she was, she was using blockers.

“Is the clinic not officially open on Saturdays?” Will asked the receptionist as he filled out his intake paperwork.

Unsurprisingly, there was no box to tick for Homo sensorium. He wondered if there was some sort of secret code he was supposed to use on the forms. He’d gotten the appointment with a vague, “a friend recommended Dr. Mohammed.” Maybe that was signal enough.

“Limited hours, just for patients who can’t make it otherwise,” said the receptionist. “Insurance card, please.”

After ten minutes spent trying to distract the toddlers with Riley (limited success), a nurse poked her head into the waiting room. “Will Gorski?” she called out, and gestured him into the interior office. Riley stayed in the waiting room. Or at least, she did to all outward appearances. In reality, she and the entire rest of the cluster followed Will in, and wandered around the clinic. Will tried to tune out their chatter and focus on the nurse.

The nurse did all the usual nurse things: had him stand on the scale, took his temperature and blood pressure, asked him about medications and why he was here today.

“Um, my head feels weird? And uh, I’ve been getting dizzy spells.” It didn’t really sound worthy of a doctor visit when he put it like that. He winced, but the nurse didn’t betray any reaction.

She scribbled something on his chart and gave him a professional smile. “Sit tight, Dr. Mohammed will be in to see you in a few minutes.”

The exam room was utterly normal: the paper cover of the exam bed crackled under him, there were cheerful informative posters about flu season and vaccination on the walls, the normal kind and amount of medical supplies were tucked away in the cabinets. The room was small though, and felt crowded with the whole cluster in there with him. Will knew they weren’t taking up actual physical space, but it was easy to forget.

After a few minutes of hushed bickering with Sun and Wolfgang about what his best escape route was if Dr. Mohammed turned out to be evil, Will heard the clack of heels in the hallway and shut up just as the door opened. Dr. Mohammed was a tall and stately looking middle-aged black woman, wearing a fashionably draped hijab, and the moment Will met her eyes, he felt that click of connection that meant she was a sensate. She smiled warmly at him as she shut the exam room door.

“Ah, I thought so. Welcome, Will. You’re safe here. Now, I see you’re having dizzy spells, headaches?”

“They’re not quite headaches,” said Will, and made his best effort at describing his symptoms.

Dr. Mohammed didn’t take notes, only held Will’s eyes and nodded, listening intently. Once he was done, she palpated his lymph nodes, checked his nose and throat and ears, listened to his chest, did a reflex test. All normal doctor stuff.

“I like her,” declared Kala. Will was inclined to agree. Dr. Mohammed had a calm and even manner, and her hands were gentle where they touched Will. Unlike some doctors Will had been to, she gave him her full attention.

“Hmm, no infection as far as I can tell. You haven’t had a fever, have you?”

“No, no fever.”

“History of seizures? Any recent head injuries?”

“No.”

“And the rest of your cluster? How many are there, are any of them having any symptoms?”

Now Will hesitated, and felt the collective tensing of the cluster. None of them were sanguine about just giving this kind of information out. Even when they’d all made their big confessions to their assorted family and loved ones, they’d been vague about who else was in the cluster, and where they were, at least at first. And BPO or no BPO, connecting to other sensates was still a risk. The lessons of waging a war weren’t soon forgotten.

“Do you absolutely have to know that?” asked Will.

Dr. Mohammed tilted her head and gave him a searching look. “I understand why you might be hesitant. God knows we all have more than enough reason to be. But I do need to know, yes. Just as your various organs interact with each other, so it is with a cluster. In many respects, you are all one organism. Are they here now with you?” Will nodded. “Well, you may have noticed I’m not taking any notes. None of this will end up written on your medical file. Whatever diagnosis we reach, I will couch it in terms that will be unremarkable to any future sapiens doctor who looks at your file. And of course, you are entitled to the full extent of doctor-patient confidentiality, just as any other patient is, sapiens or sensorium. You are all safe with me, I promise.”

Will took a deep breath in, looked around at his cluster. They nodded, though Wolfgang was directing an intense stare at Dr. Mohammed.

“Eight. There are eight of us, including me. And no, no one else is having any symptoms.”

“Thank you for your trust. All of you,” said Dr. Mohammed, solemn. “When were you born as a cluster?”

“A couple years ago.”

“Are you sexually active?”

“Um, yes.”

“With a sapiens or a fellow sensate?”

“Sensate.”

“In your cluster or out?”

Shit. Riley startled, and the memory of Yrsa’s distaste rippled through the cluster. Would Dr. Mohammed be like Yrsa? Would she think it was incestuous and masturbatory, to be with someone in your own cluster? Whatever, Will didn’t care. He could make a run for it if she started getting weird, or Riley could start some shit out in the waiting room as a distraction.

“In. Uh, what does that have to do with—”

If she found this distasteful, she didn’t show it. “You’ve been sleeping more than usual lately, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know if you’ve spent most of that time in REM sleep?”

“What does that mean?”

“Dreaming,” said Nomi at the same time as Dr. Mohammed.

“Yes. So is it, do you know—”

“And your sexual activity, was that via visiting and sharing, in person, or all of the above?”

Will felt his face heat. “Awww, he’s blushing,” said Wolfgang with a grin.

“All of the above.”

Now Dr. Mohammed’s thoughtful expression transformed into a smile. “Congratulations, then. You’re pregnant with a new cluster.”

“What!?” said the whole cluster simultaneously. Shock ricocheted and reverberated around the cluster. Riley blinked out only to physically burst through the door seconds later and throw herself at Will. Will clutched at her in numb panic. Dr. Mohammed took this development with equanimity.

“The other parent, I presume? You know, I’m never sure if pregnant is quite the right word to use with us sensates, given that there’s no physical embryo or fertilization, but it’s the best word we have, I suppose. Anyway, do not take any blockers until you give birth, and try to sleep at least ten hours a night. Gestation of a cluster is somewhat more variable than a standard sapiens pregnancy, but you can expect it to take three to five months, depending on the size of the cluster. I’ll schedule you for a checkup in six weeks.”

“But—are you sure? Is there a test, or like, what if it’s something else—”

“A PET scan or a sleep study would confirm it.” Dr. Mohammed hesitated now. “Honestly, I have generally recommended against such tests for my sensate patients. The risk, with BPO, or other medical professionals seeing the odd results….it hasn’t been worth it, in the past. It’s safer now, I suppose, but this grouping of symptoms is unlikely to be anything else.”

“Don’t get the tests,” said Nomi urgently. And yeah, she had good reason to say so.

“Okay. Okay, no tests.”

“So. Does a checkup in six weeks work for you?”

“Uh.” Yeah, Will was done, Will needed to check the fuck out for a second and freak out. Sun took over. “That would be fine. Weekends work best.”

“We can do that, pick a date with the receptionist. Occasional vertigo will likely be the worst symptom you have, so I’ll write you a prescription for meclizine. If the pressure starts feeling like anything worse than a mild headache, call me or visit with me immediately.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” said Nomi, now that the news was sinking in. Lito was just making a high-pitched sort of noise, and Kala and Wolfgang were looking at each other in total panic. Capheus had an uncertain sort of smile on his face, and Sun was wide-eyed but ably handling the current conversation with Dr. Mohammed. Riley and Will just kept clutching at each other in shock.

“I’m pregnant, oh my god. What the fuck. What the actual fuck.”

“Jonas did say male sensates could birth a cluster,” said Kala weakly, a hand over her mouth. Jonas should have spared a fucking second from his cryptic pronouncements and playing every side of the war imaginable to give them sensate sex ed, holy shit.

“Fucking Jonas,” groaned Wolfgang.

Will took back over from Sun. “Wait. Wait wait wait. I’m, uh, confused,” said Will.

Dr. Mohammed looked up from her prescription pad and blinked. “Oh. Oh dear. Did you not know male sensates could…?”

“No, I knew that!” He maybe should have paid more attention when Jonas had dropped that little tidbit, maybe he should have followed up on it, but sue him, he’d been a little distracted. “But uh, we’ve been having safe sex! I mean, we use condoms—”

“And I’m on birth control!” added Riley.

Even as they said it, Will realized how stupid that sounded. What did human birth control have to do with psychically birthing a sensate cluster? Fuck. The vertiginous panic of remembering he wasn’t quite human hit him again.

“That’s certainly enough to prevent a—hmm, the language here is really lacking—a shall we say, traditional sapiens pregnancy. And you should absolutely remain on those methods of birth control so long as you do not want a literal baby. But birthing a cluster is a different matter entirely. Did your cluster parent not tell you?”

“She died right after we were born,” said Riley.

“No one ever gave us sensate sex ed!” said Will, and he couldn’t even blame Lito for how high-pitched and freaked out his voice came out sounding, because it was all him and he was definitely still freaking the fuck out. Because holy shit, what else didn’t they know?

Kala was pacing around and flapping her hands. “Oh my god, oh no, I knew there were things we should have asked Jonas or literally any other sensate! We’re a different species! We barely know anything! How does being pregnant with a cluster even work?!” Kala came over to grip Will’s shoulders. “You have to ask her, she has to tell us everything she knows. Wolfgang and I have been—oh my god, is one of us pregnant too?!”

“Ah.” Dr. Mohammed hooked a stool with her foot and sat down on it, giving Will and Riley a reassuring smile. “I suppose all the...unrest, lately, with BPO and all...well, no matter. I can tell you now. So, gestating a cluster is not much like gestating an actual embryo. We’re not yet certain how it works in detail, to be honest, at least not on the genetic level. Unlike physical forms of reproduction, there is no actual genetic material being exchanged between the parent and the offspring. It is more that when two sensates engage in both mental and physical sexual activity and achieve orgasm, it causes a sort of chain reaction in the psycellium that culminates in birthing a new cluster.”

Kala slid into Will. “So… it is an epigenetic form of birth, almost. Instead of a genetic transfer, it’s a stimulus that influences genetic changes in the...children.”

“Yes! And it is your—Will’s—mind that nurses that process along. Much like physical pregnancy, where the parent’s body provides nutrients and the appropriate environment for growth, the sensate parent’s mind is busily working in the background to form the appropriate connections and flip the appropriate genetic switches in the new cluster. It is why you have had to sleep so much, and why nearly all that sleep is REM sleep.”

“So how do two sensates even have safe sex?” asked Kala through Will. It was pretty immediately relevant for her and Wolfgang.

“There are three requirements for sensate pregnancy: the physical act of sex, not necessarily penetrative and between any combination of genders; the mental portion of sensate sex, namely that you must be visiting or sharing while also engaging in the physical act; and finally, simultaneous orgasm.”

“That’s it?!” said Will.

Oh fuck, no wonder he was pregnant. Judging by the sudden look of total panic on Wolfgang’s face, he was doing his own frantic cataloging of recent sex. And here Will thought coming together was just a fun side effect of sensate sex. Turned out it was part of how his goddamned species reproduced. Fuck, Will was in so far over his head.

Dr. Mohammed raised an eyebrow. “That’s it. This doesn’t lead to pregnancy every time, goodness no, but based on my experience, it does lead to more successful pregnancies compared to a sperm fertilizing an egg. No need to worry about fertility or any of the hundreds of things that can prevent an embryo or fetus from implanting in the uterus or remaining viable, after all.”

“Is—is a miscarriage possible? ” asked Riley in a shaking and small voice. The cluster drew in close around her.

Dr. Mohammed nodded. “If a member of the cluster you are gestating dies or suffers a catastrophic injury, or if you suffer a severe head injury. Sometimes if the cluster a sensate is birthing is especially large, the strain is too much for the brain, and the sensate suffers an aneurysm and the birth terminates. The potential cluster will feel nothing but a brief loss of consciousness if the pregnancy is terminated.” She must have seen how worried they were because she reached out to grasp Will and Riley’s hands. “Truly, there is not that much to worry about, at least not compared to a physical pregnancy. Make sure to get at least ten uninterrupted hours of sleep a night, eat healthy, avoid blows to the head. And don’t take blockers. If you’re on blockers for longer than three or so hours, you will lose the potential cluster.”

Okay. Okay, maybe this wasn’t that bad. Will could deal with it. The cluster could deal with it. Already he wasn’t sure he could…terminate the pregnancy, but it was good to know it was an option.

“We can share and visit like usual?” he asked.

“You will begin to find sharing more difficult as the birth approaches. Most sensates prefer not to share with each other as the pregnancy progresses, it’s just uncomfortable. You will only be unable to during the birth itself though. You should have no problem visiting though, in or out of the cluster.”

Birth. He was going to give birth. Oh god. He knew what it felt like, the normal way at least, thanks to Riley, he had felt that awful and beautiful memory with her, but this was different. This was his body, his head. And what the hell was sensate birth even like? “Oh. Okay,” was all he said.

“This is a lot, I know. I’m sorry no elders were there for you at your birth. But truly, there is little to fear, especially now. I’m given to understand BPO are no longer an issue.” Will nodded. “So, you are safe. Inshallah, you will have an uneventful pregnancy, and we will all welcome a new cluster into the world.” She smiled, squeezed their hands. “Now, give me your email addresses, I will send you some additional literature.”

“Give her mine, oh my god, give her mine!” said Kala.

“Uh, one of my cluster is gonna have a lot of questions for you,” said Will. Dr. Mohammed laughed.

“That’s fine. I will be happy to answer them as best I can. And if you have an emergency, feel free to visit with me.”

Will and Riley made the drive back to Chicago in a state of alternately numb and giddy shock. There was some shuffling as the cluster decided Will shouldn’t drive because he was too distracted. Riley didn’t feel comfortable driving yet, especially not when the gray skies threatened rain or snow, so Capheus took the wheel through Riley, while Riley and Will huddled together in the back seat with Kala.

“At least we know you’re okay,” said Riley.

Wolfgang popped into the front seat. “And hey, no matter what, you probably won’t fuck things up as badly as Angelica did.”

Will kicked Wolfgang’s seat. “Low bar,” he said. But that did make him feel better, and Wolfgang knew it.

Capheus glanced at him in the rear view mirror and said, “You have already made a better world for them. That was the hard part, was it not?”

A pulse of love resounded through the cluster, for Capheus, for Will, for this thing they’d built and the new lives they would welcome to it. He felt the echo of Sun breathing in slow and deep as she did tai chi, and he followed her, let his lungs fill and empty with the rhythm of her calm, of the cluster’s love.

Birthing a cluster wasn’t any notion of fatherhood he had ever expected. He didn’t even fully know how this would work. Would it hurt? Would he know the new cluster? What did it mean to be a good parent to them? They didn’t exactly have any good role models for Homo sensorium parenting. But he remembered the unalloyed joy of that meeting between Jonas and his cluster’s father. They weren’t all born in pain and desperation. And Capheus was right, they had fought a war for this better world. Maybe Will could keep making it better, maybe they could send something new and good out into the world.

“You’re going to have to tell Diego,” said Riley when they got back home.

They were sprawled out on the couch, TV on to give them an excuse to lie there doing nothing, but neither of them were paying attention to it. Riley was scritching gently at Will’s short hair, and it made for a nice distraction from that persistent, odd pressure in his head. The pressure felt even stranger now that he knew what it was. As best as he could tell, he was about a month into the pregnancy. Just two to four months to go. He could do that. He could deal with that.

Riley dug her nails in a little deeper. “I sure hope you can. Us women manage nine months with an actual living thing inside us. So, Diego?”

Will groaned. “That’s not going to be a fun conversation.”

Once the dust had settled, Diego had been a fucking champ about this sensate shit. Meeting Riley in person and getting to know her had helped. Now Diego tended to ask after the cluster the same way Will asked after Diego’s family. It still clearly unsettled him when one of the others shared with Will though, even as he often appreciated the results. He’d just blink, shake his head, and mutter something about how he was still getting used to it. Will didn’t blame him, it was a lot to get used to. Will just wasn’t sure that Diego fully got that Will was a different species. This would sure drive the point home.

“You have to tell him. He’s the one who has your back on patrol, he’s the one who keeps you safe out there. Now he has to help keep the new cluster safe too.”

“I know.” Will sighed, reached for his phone on the table.

You around tomorrow? Diego texted back within a couple minutes. Yeah, why? Will frowned and considered what to say. “We need to talk,” sounded ominous no matter what. Wanna grab a quick drink at the bar? I need to run something by you before we go back to work. The … blinked for a long minute before Diego sent back, sure, see you there at 4.

The next day was a quiet Sunday for the cluster, which meant that everyone was visiting back and forth with each other as they all processed the news. Kala kept popping in with increasingly wild hair to share new sensate facts. She was deep in the literature Dr. Mohammed had sent her, and it kept sending her on new research tangents. Lito kept asking if Will wanted to throw a baby shower, an idea everyone else firmly rejected on account of how no actual babies were involved in this pregnancy. Nomi dropped by every so often to ask what she should include in a “welcome to being a sensate!” informational packet for Will’s baby cluster. To Will’s dismay, the cluster immediately settled on calling his precious bundle of joy the baby cluster.

“That sounds so gross, you guys,” whined Will. That mental image was just not good, in any way. He shuddered. Surely there had to be a better term. An official scientific one, maybe.

Lito came over to rub at Will’s head. “Shh, don’t listen to him, babies.”

Wolfgang didn’t laugh out loud, but they could all feel that he wanted to laugh. “They’re not actual babies, Lito. And they’re not literally in his head.”

“How many do you think there are?” asked Sun. “Do you think you’ll be able to tell?”

“I can’t yet,” said Will, but he frowned and tried to focus on that fullness in his head. “More than three, I think.”

Will spent most of the day going through Dr. Mohammed’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Sensate Edition materials. Some of it was distressingly vague, barely a step up from hippie nonsense about feeling your connections with the universe and the psycellium. But there was plenty of concrete information there too, about how much sleep was normal for what stage of cluster gestation, about what supplements he should take and what medications to avoid, what symptoms he’d have in the coming weeks and months. And there was the section on what he could expect from labor, namely, overwhelming mental stimulation and something like a migraine, maybe. Apparently, the physical experience of sensate labor varied, as the body and brain struggled to reconcile their conflicting inputs. It wasn’t reassuring.

By the time he went out to meet Diego, he was as informed as he was going to get. He wondered if this was going to be the bridge too far for Diego, the straw of weirdness that broke the camel of friendship’s back.

“It won’t,” said Riley, and kissed him in reassurance. “Diego loves you, and this isn’t going to change that. It didn’t change for you when he had kids, did it?”

“No. No, you’re right.” He rested his forehead against hers for a moment, and they swayed together a little. Will felt wrapped up in love and safety the way he always did in Riley’s arms, and the feeling reflected back and forth between them. It steadied him. She steadied him.

When Will got to the bar, Diego greeted him with a smile and a quick, backslapping hug just like always, and handed him a bottle of beer. Will stared at the beer in dismay. He wasn’t going to be able to drink the bottle of beer. He should have thought of that before asking to meet in a bar, probably. Dr. Mohammed’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Sensate Edition) had been pretty clear on not taking any depressants. Well, it had said one to two drinks a night were probably okay, but Will wasn’t risking the baby cluster. Ugh, they really had to find a better name for it.

“No thanks,” he told Diego, and gestured for the bartender’s attention. “Can I get a ginger ale? Thanks.”

Diego narrowed his eyes. Will refusing a beer was not normal, so maybe he’d given the game away already.

“So what’s up, Gorski? You okay, Riley and the others okay?”

“We’re fine, we’re all totally fine.” The bartender slid a ginger ale in front of him, and Will waited until he got to the other end of the bar before he continued. “So, uh, there’s just something I have to tell you. About me.”

Diego took a preemptive swig of his beer, then set it down with a decisive thunk. “Okay. Lay it on me. Though if this is about how you’re kind of gay, then we can skip it, because I already knew that.”

“Wait, what, I’m not—” Yeah, no, Will couldn’t finish that sentence without lying. He was pretty sure the hard limit for still claiming you were straight was one orgy involving guys, and Will was...definitely over that limit. Lito leered and waggled his eyebrows at him from the other end of the bar. Diego didn’t need to know about that. “Okay, so yeah, but that’s not relevant right now. And how did you even—? You know what, never mind.”

“Alright. So what is it?” asked Diego, looking a little concerned now.

Will glanced around to make sure no one else was in earshot and leaned in. “So, uh, you know how I’ve been feeling kinda off lately?”

“Yeah…”

It was probably best to just rip off the bandaid. He could feel Riley and Nomi and Lito pressing close against him. “I’m pregnant.”

Diego just blinked at him for long seconds. “Um, do you mean—” He squinted, examined Will’s face. “Riley?”

“No, me, Will. I’m pregnant.”

Diego’s eyes flickered down to Will’s stomach as if he’d see a baby bump there. “Uh, okay, but…”

“Not like that.” Will tapped his head. “Up here. With a new cluster.” Will watched Diego nervously as Diego’s eyes went wide and he took a long swallow of beer. “It was kind of—unplanned.”

“How do you even—how does that work, for you guys?”

“The usual way? Kind of? Uh, we didn’t really get a sensate sex ed, so it was kind of a...shock.” Will smiled wanly at Diego.

“Oh jesus. Has someone given you sensate sex ed now?”

“Yeah. I saw a sensate doctor yesterday.” Will gave Diego the rundown, redacting all the stuff he deemed TMI. “I thought you should know. I’m good staying on patrol, at least so far, but I’m probably going to need a few days when it’s—when it’s time.”

“Just a few days?”

“Yeah. It’s not like they’re actual babies, I don’t need paternity leave. And, you know, nothing’s physically coming out of me.” Diego eyed Will’s head as if imagining a cluster springing forth from it fully formed. Will felt a surge of nausea at the thought. “Seriously, it’s all—” he made a vague gesture around his head, waggling his fingers.

“So you’re—uh, you’re planning to keep it? Could you even…?”

“Yeah, I could. But yeah, I’m keeping it.” Equal parts terror and excitement welled up in him and Riley drew in close against his back, the sting of her pain easing into him like a needle to his veins. Luna. Who had been much loved, and much wanted, and still lost. This wasn’t the same, not anything close, but still. Tears filled his eyes, and he scrubbed them away.

“You okay?”

“Sorry, sorry, this is hard for Riley.”

“It’s okay, you can tell him,” she whispered into his ear, her arms tight around him.

“She lost a baby. Before. So.”

Diego sat back, eyes filling with sympathy. “Aww man. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” said Riley, and Will relayed it to Diego.

“So. Pregnant. Fuck. Not easy being a different species, huh?”

Will laughed, a little hysterically. “No, it’s not. Every time I think we’ve got a handle on this, that we’re alright, something else pops up, and…” Will spread his hands, helpless.

“Listen man, this is weird, for sure this is weird. But, uh, y’know. It could be worse, I guess? You could have weird...other parts?” Will gave Diego a despairing look. Diego attempted a reassuring smile. “Listen, I’m here for you, okay? You need me to be there when your...baby cluster is born?”

“Why is everyone calling it that? And I don’t know.” Will was vaguely envisioning a classic labor scenario with the lamaze breathing and the pushing, a scenario that he knew probably wouldn’t apply. Whatever ended up happening, Will wasn’t sure he wanted anyone other than Riley and the rest of the cluster there. “Maybe. Thanks,” he said, and smiled at Diego.

“What are best friends for but to help you out with your psychic pregnancy?” said Diego, and his smile was a little manic, but his eyes were sincere when he gave Will a bracing and comforting pat on the shoulder.

The news of Will’s pregnancy spread through the assorted friends and family of the cluster basically immediately. Will’s phone blew up with excited texts from Amanita, Dani, and Hernando. It was a little overwhelming, but the fond affection Will felt for them wasn’t only the bleed through of Nomi and Lito’s love. Will just plain liked them.

Amanita facetimed him after he got back from telling Diego. She was alight with excitement and joy, and it made Will’s own anxieties recede in favor of excitement of his own. He smiled back at her so hard it hurt a little.

“Will! Congratulations! How are you feeling, how’s the baby cluster doing? Can you tell?”

“Thanks, Neets. And I’m fine, I think the baby cluster is fine too. Seriously though, is there no better name for them?”

“Awww, I think it’s a cute name! Will, I kind of think you’ve got the ideal pregnancy going, here. No giant stomach, no pushing a literal tiny human out of you, no dealing with midnight feedings….” Amanita waggled her eyebrows.

Will laughed. She wasn’t wrong, and the reminder helped tamp some of the still-lingering panic down.

The next time Will visited with Lito, Dani and Hernando surprised him with a cake, sparklers fizzing on it and “IT’S A CLUSTER!” written on it in messy icing. Once Lito had finally told them about the cluster, they’d rallied admirably after a couple days of baffled and chaotic shock. Meeting the cluster in person in London had done more than enough to convince them, though Lito had then had to explain why he’d waited so long to say anything. It was tough to resist Lito’s apologies though, and Lito’s genuine fear of getting tossed in a mental ward and lobotomized had blunted Hernando and Dani’s anger.

“We are all family too, aren’t we?” Hernando had declared eventually, a little hesitant, but mostly determined, and since then, he and Dani had treated the cluster as just that. Dani was clearly a woman who should have had many siblings to corral and fuss over given how quickly she took to being the cluster’s devoted and protective little sister, and Will was maybe a little in love with Hernando. He was always so kind, and his wisdom didn’t come in vague platitudes, it came in straightforward conversation. Also, he gave great hugs.

He gave Will-in-Lito one now after he blew out the sparklers, and Will returned it and then Dani’s hug with enthusiasm.

“What a good thing after a crazy year!” said Dani with bright eyes.

“Exactly!” exclaimed Lito.

Will “shared” the cake with Lito, and they all chatted about what they thought the new cluster would be like, what the best way to welcome them to being Homo sensorium would be. Will still wasn’t sure how it would work, but he figured he could definitely do better than Angelica’s ghostly post-death appearances, or Jonas’s vaguely condescending cryptic pronouncements. Soon enough, Dani and Hernando shooed Will back to his body in Chicago.

Dani pressed a fond kiss to his/Lito’s cheek. “You need sleep! Lito said the doctor said ten hours a night!”

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” said Will, and dutifully went to bed at eight like he was an old man, or a toddler.

“You’re not an old man,” said Riley with a grin as she got in bed with him.

She stayed sitting up, pulling a book from the nightstand, as Will burrowed under the covers. For a moment there was an uncomfortable echo of the hours and days she’d held him through drugged hazes when they’d been on the run from Whispers, but Will banished the memory. There was no undercurrent of fear or desperation now, no numbing but warm heroin. Just the comfort of a shared bed and each other’s company, and the gentle pulse of the new thing they’d brought into being heavy in Will’s mind.

The next day, Will woke to a short series of very excited voicemails from Felix. He listened to them as he ate breakfast in the kitchen with Riley.

“Cop! I can’t believe you’re pregnant! Oh man, you’ve gotta figure out psychic condoms, yeah? Congrats anyway!”

“Does this mean Wolfie is an uncle? Does this mean I’m an uncle? If any of the new kids are in Germany you have to tell me!”

And finally, whispering, “I think Wolfie is very worried about him and Kala also making a baby cluster. Cluster baby? Hmm. I’ll have to work on the right word. Anyway. Wolfie hasn’t freaked out like this since his first girlfriend’s period was late.”

“Felix is very excited,” said Riley as she poured them both coffee, fondness and exasperation warring with each other in her sparkling eyes.

“I can tell.”

Will texted Felix back: you and wolfgang are both uncles now, hope you enjoy your new adult nieces and nephews. Please stop calling them a baby cluster it sounds gross. Felix sent back a line of thumbs up emojis.

Capheus’s mom was very excited about the new cluster and relayed a lot of pregnancy advice that Capheus had to keep reminding her didn’t apply in their case. According to Capheus, Zakia had been briefly very alarmed (Will didn’t blame her) before Capheus had explained matters to her, and now she was cautiously excited for Will and the cluster.

“What is it like?” she asked, eyes avid and curious.

“It’s hard to explain,” said Will, because it was. Will couldn’t find the right vocabulary in any language he knew.  “It’s like—it’s like there’s something heavy and waiting in my head, and if I try to look at it, or, I don’t know, mentally poke at it, I can kind of see, or feel—” Just talking about it made the sensations rush in and flood him, and he must have lost a little time because Capheus gave him a mental tug back. “Sorry. It’s just really weird.”

“I bet,” Zakia said. “A good weird though, I hope.”

“Yeah. Mostly.” Now that he knew what was going on, he was more fascinated than scared. And with all of Kala’s research, Will knew a lot about what was going on.

If Kala was doing all that research out of a certain amount of frantic self-interest, Will couldn’t blame her. She and Rajan were in an untenable holding pattern. Kala had dropped the “I’m a different species and also in love with someone else” bombshell after beating on some guys who’d been about to kill Rajan. This beating had actually been delivered by Will, but it had definitely looked like it had been delivered by Kala to Rajan’s eyes. Since then, Rajan had set up camp along the river Denial and wouldn’t be budged.

“Did you tell him I’m pregnant?” asked Will as he read Kala’s latest research material from over her shoulder.

“I did! He wanted to ask how it was possible, I could tell! But then he just walked out of the room saying he had to take a call. He did come back to ask if I was pregnant too though. I was tempted to say yes just to see the look on his face.”

Nomi popped in, peering over Kala’s other shoulder. “Rajan is kind of the worst, Kala.”

“Dump the motherfucker already,” muttered Will. Nomi snorted with laughter.

Kala sighed and waggled her head in something between acknowledgment and ambivalence. “He has a lot going on. And I know he really does believe me, because he hasn’t had me shipped off to the hospital.”

Whatever. If Rajan wanted to stick with denial, that was his call. Will sure as hell didn’t give a fuck what Rajan did or didn’t think of his pregnancy. But if he hurt Kala, or tried to lock her up, all bets were off.

Detective Mun had not stuck with denial, because Detective Mun was a perfect human being. The entire cluster had looked on with not very well-disguised glee and adoration as he had determinedly courted Sun via the medium of bringing her monster of a brother to justice, and he hadn’t let a little thing like getting shot stop him, oh no. He’d recovered and he’d worked the case. He’d gone to the press when it had seemed like Joon-ki would get away with everything thanks to his connections. And he’d paid close enough attention to Sun to realize that sometimes Sun wasn’t Sun, and that her assorted escapes from the law had relied on outside help. So eventually, Sun had told him about the cluster, and his reaction had been delight and fascination, and even more determined courting. It had taken Lito and Will coming to passionate defense of Gwon Ho to get Sun to accept said courting, but whatever, now Sun and Gwon Ho lived together in restrained bliss so score one for Lito and Will’s matchmaking.

Yeah, Will maybe had a little bit of a crush on Detective Gwon Ho Mun. Just a little? murmured Sun, fond exasperation coming through strongly. Whatever. He was just such a good detective! And so hot! Will was pretty sure he was becoming a better cop by proxy just by knowing him. Sparring with him through Sun was definitely making him a better fighter.

“Can you tell anything about the babies yet?”

Will dodged a knee to his/Sun’s side. “They’re not babies. And not really. I won’t really get to see them, or uh, meet them I guess, until it’s closer to when they’ll be born.”

Gwon Ho bobbed and bounced, looking for an opening. “Are you excited? I’m excited. They could be anyone! Anywhere!”

“Yeah,” said Will with a laugh, and tried to get a couple punches to get past Gwon Ho’s guard. He didn’t manage it.

“You should work out what you’ll tell them. None of that cryptic shit.”

“Of course. I’m not gonna pull a Jonas. Clear explanations for everyone.”

Will, the whole cluster really, was adamant about that. Who knew if the new cluster would believe him, but he was gonna be there for them, he was gonna answer their questions without constantly cutting out on them or giving them loaded, secretive looks that said I know things that I’m not going to tell you because you are Not Ready. Fuck that. Jonas should have given them sensate sex ed at least. Even the two-minute long Cliff Notes version would have been better than nothing.

As they sparred, Gwon Ho kept peppering Will with questions about the pregnancy, about the new cluster, about how he would find them and what he would tell them. It helped. It helped Will feel more in control, it helped this crazy situation feel more normal, gave him a tentative birth game plan, and Will maybe needed that. He needed it as a distraction from his only other experience of pregnancy, second-hand as it was. Because if he thought too much about that, all he’d be able to think about would be all the ways this could go horribly wrong.

Will knew the new cluster was out there in the world, living their lives, totally normal humans to all outward appearances. They weren't actually in him or with him, not in any physical sense. He read the stuff Dr. Mohammed and Kala sent him, he knew it was all connections along the psycellium this and epigenetic switches that. It still felt like he was holding them in his head though, and there were sensations that he couldn’t classify as anything other than the sensate equivalent of feeling a baby kick. And thanks to Riley, he knew what it felt like when a baby kicked inside you. The first time he felt it with the new cluster, the wave of sorrow from Riley left him breathless.

He went to her, took her in his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” For a moment they both felt the phantom weight of her heavy pregnant belly, they felt the fluttering kicks, the press of little Luna’s impossibly tiny feet. Riley didn’t say anything, but then she didn’t need to. Will felt it anyway, the sharp grief, dulled only a very little by time. Together they held the memory of Luna as close and as precious as if she were actually in their arms.

“Do you, would you want—?” They hadn’t discussed kids yet. The thought remained abstract to Will, but he couldn’t help but think of it more when he was pregnant himself, even if he wasn’t going to be having an actual baby.

“I don’t know,” whispered Riley. She took his face in her hands, then ran a hand over the curve of his skull, as if she could feel the new cluster stir beneath the bone. “Let’s see how this goes, alright?” A chill trickle of dread and fear seeped along the psycellium between them.

“What are you scared of?”

She smiled tightly at him, eyes worried and sad. “Of things going wrong again. Of something terrible happening. We’re due for a disaster.” Will couldn't deny she had a point there. They’ve been lurching from one disaster to another since the cluster was born.

“Maybe, maybe not.” He gathered her close again and she gripped him tightly. “Let’s try and hope not though, huh?”

As the weeks ticked on, Will felt the strangeness of what was happening to him more and more keenly. He was fine at work, mostly, though Diego seemed to be manufacturing reasons to keep them on calmer beats and on desk duty as much as he could. Still, when he was busy, when he was distracted, he could forget that somewhere in the background, his brain was busily reaching out along the psycellium to bring a new cluster into being. In quiet moments, he couldn’t forget it. He was always faintly aware of his own cluster, and now he could sense the new cluster too, only distantly, very distantly, as if they were deep underwater, or just beyond his ability to hear as more than a faint voice on the wind. He could feel what they were feeling sometimes, only it didn’t feel like it did with his own cluster, more like a dim echo of that, weak and vertiginous like deja vu.

He felt them most strongly in the twilight half-consciousness before sleep took him, when his mind drifted along the psycellium, only just anchored by Riley so he didn’t float away. He got hazy glimpses at them: hushed voices and flipping pages, dusty light - a library; the loping rhythm of a long-legged walk, cold dry air and golden setting sun sunlight; a vast horizon, a depthless outstretched plain, wings in the sky; the crush and rush of a city, voices and bodies—

“There are four of them,” he mumbled one night, before promptly falling asleep, headlong into strange dreams. He woke up to the whole cluster piled on his and Riley’s bed, desperate for details.

“Four of them! That means you’ll likely be birthing the cluster next month!” said Kala.

“Can you tell anything about where they are?” asked Nomi.

Wolfgang’s eyes were sharp with curiosity, but he scoffed. “It’s pointless to try to find them now on so little information.”

Still, Will told them what he could, and the cluster speculated wildly. The scraps of sensory data didn’t seem like enough to figure much out about the new cluster, but everyone was more than willing to give it a shot as Will shared the memories.

“A cowboy!” said Capheus, looking around in the memory of the second member of the new cluster.

Sun looked up at the hazy gray sky in the memory of the fourth. “Beijing?” she hazarded, as she peered at the indistinct faces of the crowd around them.

“A professor, like Hernando,” whispered Lito in the library of the first glimpse.

“No, a librarian or student probably. They’re younger than us, right?” said Nomi.

Wolfgang flopped onto the ground to look up at the deep blue bowl of the sky from the third member of the new cluster. “This one is the cowboy,” he said.

Kala brought her hands to shade her eyes and peered up at the bird wheeling in the sky. “That is a very large bird.”

Mirth danced along Riley’s features when he shared a look with her.

“At least we won’t have to choose names. Can you imagine?” she whispered, and Will laughed.

As the days ticked on, Will wished more and more that this was a normal pregnancy where they could go get an ultrasound, where a doctor could tick off milestones and say with certainty your due date is April 5 or something. Instead all Will had was the increasing sense that the new cluster was using up more and more of his brain. Dr. Mohammed had been right: sharing with his own cluster became unpleasant, made him feel full like he’d eaten too much and was about to throw up, only the feeling was focused in his head. The loss of being able to share made him irritable, reminded him too much of the time he’d been on the run from Whispers. What if one of the cluster needed him?

Every kiss with Riley, every time they had sex, Will wanted to reach out to share, wanted to dive into that place where the boundaries between them blurred. But he just ran up against the sudden unpleasant sensation of not being able to hold onto her in his head. It had been easier with blockers. Those had only made him feel like he was a standard Homo sapiens human again. This new, pregnancy-induced inability to share made him feel sick, broken. How the hell could any sensate stand this? Will was stuck inside his own skin, which felt too crowded, and he wanted either himself or the new cluster out. It was making him cranky, especially on the job.

“Did you see the walk sign on?” he asked the pedestrian he’d just spotted scurrying across a crosswalk, against the light.

“No, but—”

Will pulled out his citation pad. “Jaywalking. The streets are still icy, if a car came towards the intersection, they might not be able to stop in time and you’d be pancaked on the road.”

“A ticket? C’mon, man! The intersection was clear!”

“You really wanna keep arguing?” He tore the ticket off the pad and handed it to the affronted, grumbling pedestrian. Diego looked on in amusement and mild alarm as the guy stomped off.

“Gorski, you haven’t written a jaywalking ticket in literal years.”

“It’s dangerous! You gotta problem with me doing my job?”

Diego raised his hands and shook his head. “No, nope. Just, uh, you kinda seem like you’re in a bad mood.”

“I’m not in a bad mood.”

“Uh huh.”

Diego took to leaving him milkshakes in a futile bid to improve Will’s mood. Will glared at Diego for doing it, but he drank the milkshakes anyway. Maybe they improved his mood a little.

“Please tell me your due date is soon,” murmured Diego. Will wanted to throw the milkshake at him.

As it got closer to when Kala and Dr. Mohammed thought his due date was, Will found himself lying awake in bed when he should have been asleep, head throbbing with the not-quite-pain of the new cluster, wondering what the hell he was going to tell them. Would they know him, somehow? Would they believe him? Would Will love them, could Will greet them the way Jonas had been greeted by his cluster’s parent, with joy and boundless love? The new cluster deserved to come to this new life in joy, not in fear. This new cluster should be greeted with life and love, not death and terror like Will and his cluster had been.

He wasn’t the only lying awake. Riley was tense where she was draped over his back. He slept so long and so deeply lately thanks to the pregnancy--had Riley spent those nights up late, awake and alone?

“Will? You okay?” Riley’s arm tightened around him, and he pressed closer against her.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just—thinking.”

“It feels more like worrying,” she said, and kissed his neck, behind his ear.

“You’re up too. Are you worrying?”

“Oh, you know. Worst case scenarios. I keep thinking this is all too good to be true. That we’ve had it too easy lately.”

Will sighed. “Yeah. If it’s all about to go to shit again, it’s not from anything we did. We’ll get through it. We dealt with BPO, and Sun’s brother. We can get through anything.” That Will believed it didn’t mean he was looking forward to whatever the next disaster was. “Anyway, don’t borrow trouble.”

“What about you? What are you worrying about?” Her voice was low and sweet in his ear.

“What am I gonna tell the new cluster? We barely know anything ourselves, and hell, they were an accident! Should we tell them they were an accident? Like, as part of their sex ed? Should we tell them about Angelica, and BPO? It’s just—a lot. There’s a lot.”

“You don’t have to tell them everything right away. I think you just—welcome them. You welcome them, and you love them.”

“What if I can’t, what if—” Now Nomi visited, lying in front of him on the bed.

“You loved us, didn't you? You barely knew me, and you helped me right away.” Will smiled at her. Everything had been so bewildering back then, but yeah. It had been shockingly easy to love the rest of the cluster. What had started as baffling, deeper than bone recognition had pretty swiftly turned to love. How could it not, the more he got to know them?

“I hope it’s enough. Their whole lives are gonna change.”

Nomi snorted. “At least we won’t be dumping them into a war.”

“And we can tell them about blockers, if they’re not happy,” said Riley.

“Okay,” he whispered, and pressed his forehead against Nomi’s. “Alright.”

In the last couple weeks before Will thought he was due, he visited with Dr. Mohammed a couple times, peppering her with questions.

“How am I supposed to know when it’s time? I don’t have any water to break, or anything to, uh, dilate or whatever.”

“You’ll know,” she answered, serene. There must have been a wild and alarmed look on his face because she smiled and continued, “You’ll start visiting with them more often. And then you’ll feel more pressure, and it will be sudden. You’ll have at least an hour after that before the labor starts in earnest.”

Will still wasn’t sure when in all this he should come down with a “nasty flu” and stay off work, but that question was answered when he was pulled away, as if by some outside force, to visit with one of the new cluster while he was on patrol. He was in that wide plain again, and he saw a dark-haired, short woman milking a cow. Or no, it was really hairy, it was probably a yak. She was singing something, keeping a rhythm, and Will watched, rapt. When she was done, she patted the yak a few times, then stood, hefting the bucket full of milk on her hip. When she turned, Will saw her round face, her red, wind-chapped cheeks and merry, dark eyes. She startled when she saw him, and the milk sloshed, splashing onto the ground and on her clothes. Before Will could talk to her, he was back in the patrol car with Diego. Good thing he hadn’t been driving.

“Will? Will?! You with me?”

“Huh? Yeah, yeah, sorry. I was just—” In Mongolia? Maybe? Somewhere in Central Asia, anyway.

Diego’s eyes darted between Will and the road. “Is it, uh, time? Should I take you back home?”

“No, not yet. But close.” Will rubbed at his temples, not that it would help. He was starting to relate to Zeus in that myth about how Athena burst from his head fully formed.

“It’s time to take a few days off, man. That can’t happen in the middle of an arrest or something.”

Will grimaced, and leaned his head back against the car seat. “Of course.”

Diego dropped him back off at his apartment, and went back to the precinct to tell the chief that Will had come down with something during patrol. Will hoped this would all be over within a week so he wouldn’t need any explanation more involved than “I got the flu” or “oh no, norovirus.” He didn’t need any more attention from the brass.

“Don’t worry, I’ll cover for you,” said Diego. “Uh, let me know when you’ve had the baby cluster, I guess?”

“Ugh, seriously, don’t call them that. And yeah, of course.” He tried to smile reassuringly at Diego through the throbbing in his head, even though his stomach was roiling with sudden anxiety too, which was feeling not dissimilar from norovirus, actually.

As soon as Will walked in the door, Riley was there, wide-eyed and ready to leap into action. “Is it time?”

“Not exactly. But it is time to stay home and wait for it to be time, I guess.”

Riley took charge and settled him on the couch with his head on her lap and her cool fingers stroking his forehead and his temples, a pleasant distraction from the pressure that was growing too difficult to ignore. The rest of the cluster popped in and out as they could, as Will paid vague attention to whatever nature documentary Riley put on to distract them. Will wondered if there was something he should be doing to help the whole process along, but Riley just shushed him and told him to relax.

“Your body will know when it’s time. The psycellium will know.”

So he relaxed, and when he felt the tug of the new cluster again and again, he followed it without resisting, and visited with all of them. They probably had headaches right about now, were probably feeling weird things and wondering if they needed more sleep, if they were having a stroke, or an aneurysm. Maybe their glimpses of him made them feel crazy, or haunted. Will hoped he looked less ominous and sorrowful than the echo of Angelica. Will hoped that if he looked like a ghost to them, that he at least looked like a friendly ghost.

The one from the library, a dark-skinned woman, paid him no mind when he visited her in what looked like a poky office, papers and books strewn all around. She was absorbed in her work, typing away and paging through books. Nomi had been right, she was too young to be a professor—grad student, maybe? What he could glimpse of the books and papers on the desk were in French and German. Before he could fully read the titles, he was pulled away by something like the tug he felt when one of his own cluster needed him.

Bright sunlight temporarily blinded him before his eyes adjusted enough to show him a desert landscape. The long-legged guy who Will had felt walking outside that first time was walking outside again, his hiking boots crunching along a dirt trail, and Will saw now that he was a sandy-haired, tan young man in a park ranger uniform. He looked almost aggressively wholesome, wouldn’t have been out of place in some PSA about preventing forest fires, or not feeding wild animals. The park ranger jumped when he saw Will. Will smiled, tried to look reassuring.

“Jesus christ, you scared me.” Ranger guy’s brow furrowed and he looked around the sunlit chaparral that surrounded them, as if to guess where Will had come from. “I didn’t hear you. You alright, you lost? The campground’s back that way, down the trail ‘bout half a mile. I could walk you—” and then Will lost the thread of connection with him and blinked out.

When he blinked back in, he was in what looked like a cozy, warmly lit room, where the young woman he’d first seen milking a yak was curled up on a low couch or futon, scribbling in a notebook. She hadn’t noticed Will yet, so Will looked around. The room was pretty big, and weirdly, round, with a rather low roof. It was homey though, and not lacking in modern conveniences. The young woman’s family was gathered around a TV, watching something Will couldn’t make out. When she finally looked up, her dark eyes widened in surprised and her mouth opened, eyes darting between Will and her family.

“Don’t worry! I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m not really here at all.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or, I’m real, but I’m not actually here. It’s hard to explain—” A pulse and tug along the psycellium sent Will away from her.

Will visited the last member of the new cluster in the chaotic center of a restaurant kitchen, where food was sizzling and knives were chopping and people were shouting and laughing, and there he was, the last new sensate, floppy-haired and sweating over a stove in stained chef’s whites. He called out something in Chinese—Mandarin, Cantonese, Will didn’t know, and the connection wasn’t strong enough to share language yet—to his fellow workers, and failed to stifle a shout when he spotted Will, who tried a friendly wave and encouraging smile before being drawn away.

Will went back to his own body and Riley like a rubber band snapping back, abruptly floppy and weak after being stretched out.

“You saw them!” said Riley.

“Yeah, I did,” said Will, and realized he was smiling so hard his face hurt. That hadn’t gone so bad, had it? Better than when Angelica and Jonas had ominously appeared to his cluster, anyway. As if summoned, the whole cluster suddenly appeared, gathering around him and Riley by perching on the couch, or sitting on the floor.

“What are they like?” asked Lito. “Dani and Hernando are so curious!”

“Did you get any names?” asked Nomi.

“Are they all safe?” asked Kala.

“Slow down, slow down,” said Will, and recounted the visits as best he could. He wished he could just share with them and show them, but just thinking about it earned him a spike of white hot pain in his head. He had to actually talk to the cluster, no shortcuts. He was so worn out that he fell asleep before he could finish.

He spent the rest of that day and the next dozing or sleeping, and when he was awake, visiting the new cluster like someone had the remote to his brain and was changing the channels to send him bouncing across the globe. Sometimes the new cluster didn’t see him, sometimes they did. They all had the confused and frightened look of people who knew something was going on that they couldn’t make sense of. Will hoped they wouldn’t freak out when all was revealed.

Which was going to be soon. Mid-morning of the third day, he felt like his head was going to pop like a balloon. His body almost couldn’t translate the sensation, sending him confused signals that wavered between pain and pressure, the feelings overwhelming everything else. If he hadn’t already been in bed, he’d have collapsed. As it was, he could only curl up into a ball and clutch at his head. Was this an improvement over actual pushing a baby out-style labor? Will couldn’t tell. Riley rushed to him as he groaned in surprise and pain when his brain seemingly spasmed inside of his skull.

“Will! Will, are you okay?”

“It’s happening,” gasped Will, and the rest of the cluster blinked in before he could even finish saying the words. Riley, kneeling on the bed, took hold of his hands and squeezed tight, keeping her fierce eyes locked on his.

“You can do this. Listen to your body, to your mind. Find the new cluster.” His mind skittered over memories of Angelica doing this in a dark, abandoned church, alone and in agony. How had she done it? How did any of them do this? It felt uniquely impossible and unbearable when you were in the middle of it and feeling like your brain was about to dribble out of your ears.

“I know, I know,” soothed Kala. “And yet our species persists, so it must be possible. Focus, Will.”

Someone must have gotten Dr. Mohammed, because she was visiting now too, a calm smile on her lips. “I know it is overwhelming. But you must throw your awareness open along the psycellium, you must push yourself out to the new cluster.”

“Oh good, this involves pushing,” said Will, through gritted teeth.

“Oh my god, should you have taken lamaze classes? Has anyone taken lamaze classes?!” Nomi was wide-eyed and flapping her hands.

But Riley, his Riley, was still calm and unmoved and solid. She took his chin in her hand and trained his eyes on hers. “Breathe with me. Think of the cluster, the new cluster.”

For a moment, he keenly missed sharing with her, and his mind almost made the effort to try, to feel that unique doubling of sensation and touch, the hall of mirrors refraction that was him feeling her feeling him feeling her. But his overburdened mind couldn’t handle it, so he pushed outward instead, and breathed.

It hurt, and he understood now why Angelica had screamed.

“C’mon cop, you’re tougher than that!” said Wolfgang.

“We have had worse,” said Sun.

Capheus was bracing Riley, his arms tight around her, the only indication that she was more upset than she could let on. “It will be worth it,” Capheus encouraged.

“Scream, if you have to,” said Lito, and Will panted out a laugh that turned into a groan when a new wave of pulsating pressure resounded through his head.

“What’re the neighbors going to think?” he asked.

“That you’re having some really wild sex,” said Nomi.

The waves of pressure ebbed and flowed, and Will pushed himself past them to find the new cluster, to seek them out on purpose. He found the park ranger first, who, fortunately, was alone, in a bathroom. He was doubled over and gasping as he clutched at a sink, and Will felt a brief pang of regret that this process was causing him so much pain. Then Will pushed, as if against a heavy door in his mind, in the ranger’s mind—and the full sensate connection flared to life, and Will saw all of the ranger, and the ranger saw him.

“Hey, it’s you! Who are—” But his birth was over, and Will was pulled away with another surge of feeling.

“Oh wow, he’s pretty great,” said Will to Riley’s now smiling face. She laughed.

Scant seconds later, Will reached out again, and he was with the dark-skinned woman, who was sitting in front of a shelf of books, library stacks, probably, maybe caught in the act of looking for a book on the shelves when this new birth overtook her. Will pushed again, finding it easier this time, and the connection was like a flash of lightning, a moment of total illumination that showed the woman in stark relief, showed her intricate, seeking mind, her self filled to the brim with words. She looked at him with wide and avid eyes, laughing a little, and Will loved her too.

“Hi,” said Will with what he hoped was a reassuring and not crazy grin. “Don’t be scared.”

“You’re a hallucination, of course I’m not scared,” she said, and before Will could deny being a hallucination, the psycellium tugged at him again and he was back with Riley.

“Two out of four,” he said, breathless. He didn’t feel another push or pull just yet, so maybe he had a moment of respite.

“You’re doing so good. Take a few deep breaths with me,” urged Riley, and her voice was a little shaky, but her hands were steady.

“Everything’s going just fine,” assured Dr. Mohammed. “You’re lucky, actually, this is moving along quite quickly. It takes longer for some.”

“Well, now you’ve jinxed it,” grumbled Nomi, and Will groaned.

But only a couple minutes and a lot of encouragement from his cluster later, there was another push and pull of painful pressure, and Will was back in that cozily lit room, the TV on again and playing something indistinct. The young woman he’d seen before was humming while her nimble fingers braided her long and sleek black hair, her eyes locked in an unfocused stare towards the TV. She was getting ready for bed, maybe. When Will moved, her eyes snapped to him and her fingers stilled.

“Hi, don’t freak out!” She looked at her family a few feet away, looked back at Will. She blinked rapidly a few times before she lowered her hands from her hair. “Also, you’re not going crazy,” he added.

He took a deep breath, and opening the full sensate connection to her felt less like a push or blinding light, and more like letting out a relieved sigh. Her mouth dropped open in shock, and she leaned towards Will. To Will’s relief, she was curious, not afraid. Will could feel it, and he beamed at her in response. He was charmed by her already. Either she was a fast study or an absolute natural at getting the hang of being a sensate, because she reached along the psycellium with her own mind and tried to hold onto Will’s presence. Curious and brave, and had her sensate shit together. Yeah. She’d do fine. She wanted a world bigger even than her endless blue horizon, and she just got it.

Going back to his own body and Riley was like being carried back to shore on gentle waves this time. When he paid attention to his body, his muscles were shivery and weak, and his head was still throbbing. Some of the awful pressure had eased now, presumably because there were three less people to deal with in there. He squinted and focused on Riley’s pale face.

“Will. Will, talk to me.”

“Hey. Hi. Wow.” Those weren’t helpful words. Riley brought a glass of water to his lips and he drank messily. “They’re all so, so great, Riley. And none of them have freaked out!”

“Uh huh. That’s good.” She stroked his forehead, which felt really really nice. “One more to go, Will. You’ve got to go to the last one.”

Will groaned, and yeah, there was that pulling pressure, more like a yank now. The squeeze and pulse of pain was almost half-hearted this time, slow and dull, and he pushed past it until he found the guy from the restaurant. He wasn’t in a kitchen now; instead, he was in a dark and narrow alley, head tipped back against a wall, smoking. He was still wearing the chef’s whites. A smoke break. He hadn’t spotted Will yet, his eyes were closed as he sucked on the cigarette and let the smoke loose. Will almost didn’t want to break the moment. This was probably the only moment of peace the guy would get his whole shift.

He did open his eyes eventually though, as if he’d sensed Will, and he startled so hard he hit his head against the building wall he was leaning on when he saw Will.

“You!”

“Yeah, hi, me! You’re not going crazy!”

Will gave one final push, which this last time, felt like he’d pushed against a door that opened with an unexpected lack of resistance, leaving him to stumble through the doorway. With this last member of the new cluster, Will had the impression of a pleasantly kinetic and messy mind, spilling out beyond itself like a pot boiling over. Now the cigarette dropped from his fingers, and he laughed. He was gonna be fine too. Will rushed back to his body, to his own cluster, giddy and satisfied. This new cluster would be fine, they were gonna be great. Will reached for Riley clumsily and tugged her down for a kiss. She smiled and indulged him for a moment before pulling back.

“I’m okay. We’re okay,” he told her.

Her face twisted up and tears escaped her eyes to drip on his own cheeks. He rose up to kiss her again, and for the first time in weeks, he felt the kiss from both ends, and he felt, too, the bitter sting of her remembered sorrow. She let it go as she kissed him, as if it were dissolving in the sweetness of their joy, at least for now.

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re okay. How about you rest now?” said Riley, and Will did, carrying his own cluster’s excited cheers down with him into sleep.

When Will next woke up, he spent a long few minutes reveling in how light his head felt, how it was just him and Riley and the cluster now. Or—wait. The new cluster was there too, faintly. He thought about the park ranger guy, and then he was there. It was just past dawn, and park ranger guy was out in nature, park rangering or whatever. He stopped when he saw Will.

“This park is haunted, isn’t it. You’re haunting me.”

Will laughed. “No, I’m not. I’m alive, for one thing. Hi. I’m Will. I’ve got some stuff to tell you about, about what’s been happening to you….”