The hard slap of the soles of Blaine's oxfords echoed off of brick walls as Blaine found himself striding through yet another alleyway. It was dark, the moon was new and it had been a few hours since nightfall. Blaine thought he saw eyes watching him in the shadows and since the shadows were everywhere, he jogged toward his destination with great unease and paranoia.


He was in the warehouse district. For acres upon acres, hulking buildings of brick and iron rose above his head, their dark, imposing forms making Blaine feel like a child being reprimanded. If it weren't for the cool press of the night air on his face, and the mild ache in his muscles from the running, he would've been certain this was just another of those abstract nightmares he'd had of being chased.

He turned a corner out of the alley on to a more central fairway. Large metal doors faced him from either side, their dull surfaces reflecting just a little bit of yellow light from the occasional light bulb interspersed over the buildings' faces. The dim light made Blaine even more wary than the shadows had, any on-looker could see him quite plainly now. He quickened his pace, grateful for the light only because it allowed him to see the warehouse numbers.

However, he found his way not by a number on a little rusty sign, but by the sound of a cleared throat and a small group of people clad in black stepping out from the shadows and blocking Blaine's path. Blaine felt intimidated obviously, but on an instinctual level. His world was far too safe to ever feel any real danger beyond the threat of arrest, and Blaine was certain that these people were not in any position of authority.

Two large men, every bit as hulking and imposing as the warehouse buildings around them, stepped forward from the group, and Blaine knew he was in the right place because they grabbed at him and wrapped their large hands around his arms. It was the first time Blaine had ever been touched so forcefully. He felt some sort of animal instinct twitch inside him in response, somewhere beneath his collarbones and surging through his arms, his wrists, his hands, and through his fingertips. It was that flight or fight reaction he'd learned about in the context of some Animal Planet special, and Blaine's body wanted him to fight.

The men kept him still, their strength allowing him to jerk only slightly. A woman stepped forward then, she was taller than Blaine, with blonde hair in tight curls that fell around her shoulders. She was every bit as intimidating as the two men holding Blaine in place. She crowded into Blaine's space, her tall black boots clicking on the pavement, she reached up and cupped his cheek in the palm of her hand, her long black thumbnail scratched at the bridge of his nose. She spoke and her voice was just as dark and gravelly as the asphalt under their feet.

"Oh sweet thing, what brings you to this part of town so late? Shouldn't you be home finishing your homework? Mommy must be so worried."


Blaine straightened as much as the hands around his arms would allow, eager to not be seen as a child.

"I want to join the r-resistance!"

She smiled cruelly and took two steps backward. "Search him." She ordered.

A dark, thin, whip of a man stepped around her and his hands were everywhere on Blaine's body, it was uncomfortable and invasive. He finished patting Blaine down and looked up at him from his knees, his hands resting on Blaine's ankles.

"Where's your phone?" He demanded.

"I-I left it at home. All the trackers and the monitoring and stuff... Should- should I not have?"

The man returned to a vertical position, he smirked and spoke directly to Blaine, "Smart." Then turned around and announced to the group, "He's clean."

The two men holding Blaine released their grips, he rubbed at the tender part of his arms where they had been holding him, shooting a perturbed glare at them over his shoulder. The woman who seemed to be in charge smiled at him again, this time the cruelty gone.

"Welcome to the party, little brother."

Another woman stepped forward and linked her arm with Blaine's, mindful of the soreness in his bicep. Not five minutes there and Blaine had already had hands all over him. Part of him found the whole process repulsive the other part was just strangely fascinated and eager. He wondered if another person's touch always felt that rough and invasive.

The woman leading him into the building was tiny and compact, the tips of her short, red hair barely even reaching Blaine's shoulder. She bounced happily with each step and reminded Blaine of some sort of pixie, or maybe a leprechaun.

" Hey I really wanna welcome you, yeah? I know you haven't been treated very kindly here so far, some people seem to think that just because we're all a little on edge, it gives them an excuse to be jerks. I promise we're not as awful as we seem. It's really just another product of the system. My name's Aubrey, by the way."

Blaine blinked at her, startled by her bubbly demeanor in such a place. "... Oh! I'm Blaine A-"

Aubrey interrupted him, clicking her tongue,"Woah there cowboy. We don't do last names here, in fact, most people use a fake first name."

"Is Aubrey your real name?"

She smiled, extending her finger to tap his nose. "We may never know." She winked.

Blaine wiggled his nose at the unfamiliar gesture, and followed her through the open door, "That lady with the curly hair is intense, she reminds me of one of the coaches at my school. She's scary. I've got goosebumps."


Aubrey laughed as she led Blaine through the aisles of stacked crates. "Yeah, Cilla's a tiger. That's why she's in charge of security, and it's part of the reason I fell in love with her."


Blaine stopped. " Wait, love? Like... are you and she... like... partnered? Is that even possible?"


She giggled. "Yes, we're together. She's my girlfriend. And as for the possibility of that fact, all I can say is tonight, Blainers, you are going to see the impossible with your own two eyes. C'mon."


They wove through the maze of boxes. Blaine heard the dusty rabble of hushed voices before they entered a small clearing and saw their source. A single light bulb hung unshaded from the ceiling. Bathing a group of twenty or so darkly-clad individuals in warm yellow light. They were gathered in a circle, seated on stray crates though some of the younger attendees were on the cement floor. There was was a tattered old couch that was conspicuously left un-claimed. Lost in his observations, he barely noticed when the perky little red head wandered off without another word.

He looked around for some place to sit, noticing that pretty much everyone was sitting with someone else. The thing he noticed most though was the touching, a hand on a knee, a head on a shoulder, hands holding other hands. These things that were so foreign to him seemed to exist like oxygen in this room. He saw the couple from the other night, the woman was playing with her friend's hair and saying something to him, he was looking at her like the sun rose and fell with her. He walked over to some dusty crates and sat down with a sigh. Blaine was happy to be there but watching these people have something he wanted but didn't have and didn't ever think he would, it made a part of him just want to leave.

While he was wondering what they even did there (besides grope one another) a couple walked in. A petite young woman in a long brown coat along with a scruffy man in a hat. They stood talking to Aubrey while the woman removed her coat revealing her curiously rotund belly underneath. They walked towards the group, greeting people as they passed, and sat down not far from Blaine, both of them regarded him curiously. Blaine tried to pretend he hadn't been staring at the woman's protruding belly.

The couple whispered to each other for a moment, then the man turned to him and extended his hand.

"How's it going newbie?" The man said.
Blaine took the man's hand and shook. Was he even doing that right?

"I'm well, but- um- I'm a little confused as to what the- um- actual purpose of this meeting is..." Blaine trailed of afraid of sounding dumb.

"Well isn't it obvious." The woman laughed patting her belly.

"That's not really the main focus of The Resistance Mikenna, no matter what your hormones are saying, you perv." the man laughed and playfully nudged his companion.

"Stuff it Nash you love it. Or did I get myself pregnant?" Mikenna said patting her belly again.

"Pregnant?" Blaine said, repeating the woman's words out loud before he could stop himself. He had never heard of the word used outside of a science class or unless one was talking about animals. Yet here this woman sat patting her belly and talking about hormones?

"Well...I'm gonna have a baby." smiled Mikenna a little nervously. "Don't you know what that means hon?"

In Blaine's world, legitimate infants were cultivated in artificial wombs, this was the only sensible way to go about reproduction he had learned. The fetuses were provided with their exact nutritional needs in perfect conditions to produce strong, healthy new citizens, they were produced in exactly the perfect quantity so that overpopulation no longer plagued the nation as it once had, and inferior specimens were eliminated so that no precious resources were wasted on lesser citizens. The concept of a bodily pregnancy was impossible to Blaine, and yet there was the evidence of one, stretching Mikenna's shirt.

He couldn't help but wonder how the baby would get out.


Or more pressingly, "How did it get in there?"

Mikenna looked at Blaine kind of concerned and whispered something to Nash.
"What?!" He whispered giving her a rather panicked look then rolled his eyes. She smiled seemingly pleased and then hoisted herself up.

"I'm going to go find out where Aubrey is. Probably with Cilla in a closet somewhere no doubt. back in a bit." She kissed Nash on the forehead waved to Blaine and waddled off. Blaine wondered if he'd said something wrong.

"I'm sorry if I said something that upset you guys." Blaine said turning to Nash.

Nash chuckled a little under his breath, "No kid she wanted me to talk to ya."

"What about...I mean you guys don't even know me." Blaine said.

"True." Nash said getting up and sitting a little closer to Blaine. Which surprised him but it was nice, better than the usual sterile existence he came from and not as invasive as some of the interaction he'd had so far that night. "But we soldiers of the rebellion have to make fast friends and stick together." He chuckled some more then took a deep breath, like he was preparing for something that was going to be very uncomfortable.

"Listen kid there's some things you should know."

"Like... what kind of things?" Blaine asked.

"Like things the government doesn't want to you know. Things a kid your age should already know."

"I'm listening." said Blaine his curiosity piqued.

"Well for starters human life is not meant to be a fucking science project. Me and Miki over there we made that baby out of love."

"What, how? Look, I'm not stupid. I'll be making my contribution in a few years. I know babies aren't made of love."

"No no no, you aren't understanding me. The government says all touching is immoral and disgusting right, but it was the fundamental reason for our existence as a species! There weren't always incubators, you and I were incubator babies, and so were our parents, and maybe even their parents but what about before then? People used to find each other and they'd fall in love and with that love they would create a child. Just like Mik and I did. It was natural and beautiful and it's what humans were meant to do. It's the most basic of human things and the fucking government acts like it's perverted and criminal. That's why we're here. To fight."

He finished his rant. With a few deep breaths, then stood abruptly. "I'm... gonna go find Mikenna, see ya kid." He shuffled off and Blaine was left alone again. He waited and people watched, hoping to not be too obvious. Mikenna and Nash returned to the crates nearby after a few minutes, but they didn't acknowledge Blaine beyond a friendly nod.

Blaine was lost in his head, the new information he'd gained from the scruffy man's speech only created more questions. Where Nash's intention was to clear things up for Blaine, he'd only confused him further. He still didn't know how the baby got in there, or how it was supposed to get out.

He was jerked out of his confusion by a cleared throat. Sometime while he'd not been paying attention, the people from outside had joined the group in the little clearing, the men who had been holding him and the man who had searched him, took their place with the others on the crates. Aubrey and the curly haired woman, Cilla, instead walked hand in hand to the empty couch, they sat and were joined by two others and Blaine decided that the couch was reserved for those in power.

Blaine felt uneasy about this. He was at this meeting for the very purpose of rebelling against a government that enforced way too much power over him. He hoped their little council of sorts wouldn't be too controlling. He faith that they wouldn't be, he didn't think them that hypocritical, but he remained wary.

Aubrey leaped up from her spot on the couch just after everybody had settled, she stood directly under the light bulb like it was a spotlight. She began her cheerful introduction with, "Well, now that everybody's here we can get started with the meeting! It's an exciting one tonight! Our friend AJ managed to get his hands on a pre-conflict Ipod by apple and he got it to work, so he's been kind enough to share the music with us later!"

Blaine felt his interest piqued at that, he'd heard stories about the old music, mostly from his mother telling him how evil people had been pre-conflict, how they had written awful, degrading lyrics into something that was supposed to be enjoyable, and how it was much better that music no longer had any lyrics at all.

Under her spotlight, Aubrey continued " But first we need to take care of book-keeping....."

She trailed off at the sound of a loud thump, a crate shifting, and a painful sounding yelp. Every head in attendance turned toward the sound, and then someone stumbled into the clearing, coughing and clutching their shin.

The slim figure stood up straight, seeming to react to all the eyes focused on them. Blaine rose to his feet to get a better look. He was rewarded with a view of possibly the most beautiful human being he'd ever seen.

He locked eyes with the tall, pale, gorgeous, brunet from across the room. The boy, er, man's lips parted and his eyes widened and Blaine hoped more than anything that it was in reaction to him. He was desperate for the boy to feel as drawn to Blaine as Blaine was to him, he needed it like he needed oxygen.

Blaine's urge to reach out and touch was stronger than it had ever been. He wanted to run across the room, leap over people and crates, and envelop the beautiful boy in his arms.

It would seem the two large men that had manhandled Blaine earlier that night had beat him to it.