Chapter 8. Author's note - On the side, you can see the poem "The Sick Rose", by Blake (I reference it in this chapter) with its original illustrations. He actually did his own illustrations, and so they were different for each anthology released. That was the prettiest one I could find.

"Damn, damn, damn, damn, fuck!" yelled Lace.

The other Inamoratas looked up at her. They were all behind the Club, ready to join the clientele, and Lace had cracked the door. Peeking through the small space, she had obviously seen something that she didn't like.

"What?" asked Glitter, rolling her eyes a little.

"Mr. Beckett isn't here!" said Lace.

Nightingale gritted her teeth and waited for someone to explain the situation.

"Doesn't matter," said Sparkle. Nightingale, though her head was bowed as she re-laced Rose's corset - the girl had done it all wrong - could tell that Sparkle's eyes were on her. "Mr. Castleman is here, and that is enough to keep Bobby happy, provided none of us fucks up too badly."

Lace gave Nightingale a sidelong look. "So...that's Michael?" she said, beckoning to Nightingale to join her at the door.

All it took was one look to spot Michael sitting amongst the rest of the men. Unlike them, he was not wearing an expression of pained lust, but rather one of cheerful anticipation. "Yes, that's him," she said, and assumed an air of nonchalance as she went back to Rose's corset.

"Interesting," mused Lace slyly.

"Fuck you," was the snappish response Lace got from Nightingale. "What's wrong with liking a client?"

"Um, everything?" suggested Magenta. She'd just joined them. "Just being someone who comes here automatically makes him a scumbag. Besides, Nightingale doesn't like men. Or women. Anyone other than Inamoratas, really."

Nightingale scowled. "Liar. I do like Michael. He's kind. Yes, he's a client, but he doesn't mean to take advantage of me," she said. She wasn't entirely sure why she was defending Michael. After all, everything Magenta had said was true.

"Just because he didn't mean to didn't mean he didn't do it," muttered Rose, her slightly confusing sentence falling discordantly on Nightingale's ears.

Nightingale looked at the girl and immediately felt a pang in her chest. Poor Rose, only four days old, was already embittered by life in the Bordello. Her eyes were glazed and down turned, and she was quiet with resignation.

"Oh Rose, thou art sick," she murmured sadly in the girl's ear.

Rose looked up at her, her eyes widening. "What?" she asked.

Nightingale patted her on the shoulder soothingly. "That's a quotation from a poem. After your first client," she said, her voice steely with gravity. "I'll read it to you."

Rose paled and shuddered all over. "That's tomorrow night, isn't it?" she said, her voice nearly imperceptible with fear.

Nightingale nodded. Now, anger rose in her chest, replacing the sorrow that had lodged itself there. There stood Rose, a girl of four days old. A child, for all intents and purposes. Just an innocent child, a girl. What had she ever done to anyone, in her four-days' life, to ever deserve her fate? How did the manner of her birth condemn her to such a life?

Suddenly, she felt someone grab her by the wrist. She stared down at her shaking hands as Glitter tore her away from Rose. Looking up, she saw why. In her fury, she had yanked on the laces of the corset, imagining them to be a garrote around the neck of any man who would ever hurt Rose, and had laced the corset tightly, too tightly. The girl was gasping like a dying fish.

"Rose," whispered Nightingale.

Rose eyed her with nervousness. Her eyes rolled like a startled horse's. Or at least what Nightingale's engineered knowledge told her a horse's eyes looked like. She had, herself, never seen one.

"I...didn't mean to," she said. "I'm sorry, Rosie, darling."

Rose backed away. "It hurt," she said, her voice thin with pain.

"Forgive me," said Nightingale. "I wasn't thinking of you. I was thinking of other things."

The other Inamoratas watched Nightingale warily and she wondered just how hard she had pulled the laces to make them so afraid.

"Look at her," said Nightingale, gesturing to Rose. "I mean, look! What do you see?"

"Nightingale," said Glitter softly.

"Look! I'll tell you what I see - I see a child! An innocent child who has never hurt anyone in her life! And not just a child, but someone who is only four days old! Four days! And tomorrow she'll be forced into fucking some man who'll practically rape her and she'll be lucky if he doesn't try to knock her teeth out!" Nightingale's voice had risen to a hoarse shout and she was sure Bobby would be upon them at any moment, but she did not care. In her disjointed, furious thoughts, nothing made any sense. "And what the fuck has she done to deserve it? Nothing! And even if she had, no one deserves this!"

On the very last shriek, she gestured to her own body.

"Oh, my poor Gale," whimpered Glitter, taking a step towards her. Nightingale pushed her away.

"No. I'm fine. Leave me alone," she snapped.

"Come on," muttered Magenta. "Let's go out and mingle with the scum. Leave her alone for a moment."

And so they all filed out, even Rose, who looked back at Nightingale with wide, frightened eyes, leaving Nightingale perfectly alone behind the Club.

She bit her tongue and pinched her wrists in an attempt not to cry. In that moment, she hated herself for her weakness, hated her clients for their cruelty, hated Michael for taking advantage of her position, even hated her fellow Inamoratas for a reason she could not quite understand. 

Upon consideration, she realized that the only person she did not hate was David. And so, smiling wryly, she thought of him and how he was trying to help her and her sisters. For the first time in her life, her short, artificially-created, subhuman life, she felt the stirrings of a foreign emotion pushing at her heart.

It took her a moment to realize what it was: hope. Hope that, miraculously, somehow, someday, things might get better for her. The feeling, so foreign because Nightingale had been a cynic since her extraction, spread through her, filling her warmth.

And so, with a genuine smile soaring across her face, she flung open the door to the Club and darted in. There was a cheer from the men in the crowd as she sashayed towards them. However, she didn't get very far as Bobby grabbed her by the arm.

"What the fuck took you so long?" he snarled in her ear.

She knew that he would rarely beat an Inamorata in front of the clients, but he sounded angry enough to make an exception. However, her good mood bubbling over, even miraculously extending towards Bobby, she grabbed his face and kissed him hard. Passionately, even.

She heard moans from the assembled men when she drew back. She was perversely pleased to see a shocked, dreamy, most un-Bobby-like expression on Bobby's face as she murmured to him:

"I was fixing my tights. Forgive me, Bobby, darling."

"Of course," he mumbled, looking dazed. He sounded so shockingly different from his usual sadistic self that she very nearly giggled. However, she stopped herself, not knowing what had gotten into her. "Uh, um, Mr..."

"Castleman?" she suggested, fluttering her eyelashes at him.

"Yeah," he said. "He's requested you. He's sitting at the back again."

"Thank you, baby," she purred. Patting him lightly between the legs, she strutted off. As she did it, she caught herself smiling at a few of the men. It was not a friendly smile, but one of mad glee. Not only was her hope making her giddy, but the very idea that she might have retribution on these men one day made her leer viciously.

As she threw herself down across from Michael, she grinned at him.

"Hello," he said. He was smiling grudgingly, as though jealous of Bobby.

"Hello," she said. She took back what she'd thought of him before - she didn't hate him. How could she hate someone so innocent? "How are you this evening, Mr. Castleman?"

"All the better for seeing you," he said, smiling warmly.

 Nightingale smiled and looked down demurely. When she did look up, she found Michael gazing at her longingly. As she opened her mouth to say something, anything, he frowned a little and said, his voice tinged with more than a little envy:

"Where were you last night?"

"I have other clients, Michael," she said softly.

He groaned a little. "Of course you do. So you were with another man last night?"

Nightingale nodded. She wasn't about to tell Michael that she wasn't "with" David in the sense that he was imagining. She would have to let him suffer the thought that she'd fucked another man, as opposed to simply sleeping next to him, perfectly innocently.

"But I'm with you now," she told him, taking one of his hands in both of hers. Perfectly chastely, she lifted it to her mouth and kissed his knuckles.

Based on Michael's gormless expression, she could tell that he was what one could colloquially refer to as "a goner". Even the fact that she was leading the poor man on did little to dampen her suddenly bright spirits.

"Yeah," he whimpered.

Nightingale smiled and batted her eyelashes at him. "So. Now that I'm here, how have you been, Mr.Castleman?"

Michael smiled brilliantly. "Fine."

"How is the lab?" asked Nightingale, suddenly curious about his line of work.

"Fine. I can't really talk about it," he said, looking slightly uneasy.

"Is it that you're sworn to secrecy, or that you don't want to tell an Inamorata how you create her sisters?" she asked, her voice miraculously light for the heaviness of her question.

"No!" he cried. "No, no! Well, yes. It's that I'm not allowed to tell you. And besides, I've never been the one actually growing the Inamoratas."

"They're grown? How?" asked Nightingale, leaning forward. As she said it, she stroked the back of his leg with one foot and put one hand on his thigh. She began to walk her fingers slowly upwards.

"I can't tell you," he hissed, though it was not a hiss of anger but one of desperate longing.

"Oh?" she asked, withdrawing her hand. She arranged her features into a devastated expression. "And who would I tell? Tell me, Michael, and I swear I won't tell any other Inamoratas."

Michael groaned. Eventually, after gazing at her hopeful face, he relented. "You have to promise you won't tell Bobby."

"I promise," she said, and kissed him quickly. "Now, tell me!"

Michael smiled in spite of himself. "You want to know how Inamoratas are grown?"

"I want to know the whole process," she said, trying not to let her rabid, vicious curiosity - her desire to know where she had come from - show in her voice or in her face. But based on the way Michael recoiled after taking one look into her wild eyes, she could tell that she had failed.

"You wouldn't understand it. It's highly technical," he said, his voice faltering.

"I'm actually extremely intelligent," she pointed out, and recounted quickly the story of the man who had only agreed to fuck her after finding out she was gifted. With Michael's admiring eyes upon her, she could see them widen with wonder.

"That's fascinating," he said. "So, you're highly intelligent? That was always something we could never engineer. Inamoratas always have differing mental capabilities."

"And personalities," said Nightingale quietly.

"What?" asked Michael. "Personalities?"

Nightingale knew from his tone that he had never considered that Inamoratas had personalities. But based on the way sadness grew upon his face and upon their first conversation in the bordello, Nightingale could tell it made him think twice.

"Yes," she said. She tried to be as kind in her tone as she could, though even her hope was not preventing her from wanting to stand up and scream that any fool could understand that Inamoratas were human and had emotion and personality. "Haven't you noticed? Like normal people, we're all different. We have different personalities, different intelligence levels, different feelings. Hell, we even have different likes and dislikes."

"Like humans," said Michael.

"Exactly," said Nightingale. The sorrow on Michael's face, the realization of how similar to - indistinguishable from, really - Inamoratas he was touched Nightingale, moving her nearly to tears. "Now go on. Tell me how I was made."

"Inamoratas start out from an ovum. Usually, the Corporation - or even morons like Starkwood, I guess - screens the woman who is the donor of the ovum and the cell that we use to clone the Inamorata. We can make anything into a beautiful Inamorata, but it's easier when the Inamorata has a pretty mother," said Michael. His tone had fallen into a very even, paced one, as though he explained this frequently. And he probably did, to investors or something.

Nightingale, on the other hand, could not hear such things with such a blase attitude. "I have a mother?" she whispered.

Michael paused, looking at her expression, which Nightingale knew must have been one of childish sorrow - and hopefulness. "Not technically. Your 'mother'" - his fingers sketched quotation marks around the words - "did not conceive you. You have no father, and your mother was paid for her egg."

Nightingale's jaw dropped. She could hardly believe the horrific audacity of someone who would sell out her own daughter - for the woman who had given rise to her must have known that the egg she was selling would be made into an Inamorata - for any sum of money.

She tried to prevent the tears from spilling over onto her cheeks as she clenched her teeth in anger and sadness.

"Gale?" whispered Michael, touching her hand. "Gale, are you all right?"

She used all her hope in David to rescue her from the bordello and all of her fine acting skills to plaster a brilliant smile on her face. Even then, it still felt awkward. "Yes. Go on, please."

"Okay," he said, looking at her hesitantly. When she got up and sat next to him, putting her legs in his lap and snuggling close to him, he went on with less wariness. "Since we now have discovered the locus of every gene on every chromosome - something we were able to complete by the end of the twenty-first century - we can, with the help of restriction enzymes, cut and paste genes in order to make a perfectly healthy, perfectly beautiful, never-aging Inamorata. We take the clone, modify its DNA, and then get it to grow. Growth is accelerated, of course."

After a long pause Michael put one hand on Nightingale's face and drew it up to his level so he could look into her eyes. As they stared at each other, Nightingale saw pity in his wide, innocent eyes.

"Is that how I was made?" she asked. Some little part of her chuckled acerbically at the fact that she sounded like what her conditioning told her a human child sounded like when asking where babies came from.

"Yes," he said, nodding. "You were cloned from a woman who liked something like you and then your appearance was modified. It's a horribly difficult process," he added, smiling ruefully, but so innocently that it even made Nightingale grin.

"Oh?" she said. She kissed him quickly in thanks for his explanation. "Was I difficult to engineer?"

Michael laughed. "I'd imagine very difficult. Your hair, Gale. It's curly, but lies flat. That's extremely difficult to get right."

Nightingale joined him in his laughter, but she was quickly cut off as he leaned forward and, taking her waist in his hands, kissed her deeply. When he drew back, she stared at him in surprise.

He even looked surprised at himself as she spoke. "Why, Mr. Castleman!" she cried. "How very bold of you!"

He smiled bashfully and somewhat stupidly in response.

"Come," she told him, taking him by the hand. "Let's go somewhere more private, hm?"

"Okay," he said. And, meekly as a lamb, he allowed her to lead him away. As she did, Nightingale heaved an internal sigh. She was shocked to find herself wondering when David would visit her next. However, in his absence, she contented herself with Michael. As she pushed him into her room and began to remove his clothing, she considered that he wasn't a bad man after all.