"Are you sure you don't wanna come with me?" Lincoln queried with puppy dog eyes.

"Yeah," Michelle chuckled. "I'm sure. I mean, don't you think you're going a little overboard with the baby stuff?"

It had only been a little over a week since Michelle and Lincoln found out that they would soon be welcoming a child of their very own into the world, but in that short amount of time, Lincoln had managed to fill their spare bedroom with stuffed animals, diapers, toys, and an beautiful baby crib that he tenaciously built with his bare hands. Despite the dread and despair that constantly enthralled Michelle's thoughts, she failed to voice her concerns to her ecstatic husband. After ten years of marriage, he was finally getting what he wanted, a true and complete family, and that was something that Michelle refused to take away from him.

"If you think this is too much just wait until he or she is born, they'll be spoiled to no end." The dredhead declared as he gently placed his hand over her flat stomach. "Please come with me." He tried again. "We'll go to the store and buy a rocking chair for the late night feedings and really pretty, bright paint for the baby's room. You can pick out a color."

"We don't even know what the sex is." Michelle giggled. "We won't know for a while."

"Well, we'll buy every color, then when we do find out the sex we'll have every color to choose from!" He beamed.

"We'll do that another day, okay? I really need to go to the firm." She uttered as she strutted towards the front door.

"Why?" Lincoln whined while gently grabbing her arm in hopes to keep with him a little bit longer. "I thought you said that Martin told you to take a break and he'll let you know if he finds anymore information."

"He did, but-."

"Michelle, I know that finding out who hurt your mother is important to you, but...do you think this is healthy? I mean, it's been ten years and you're still..." His voice trailed off as struggled to find the right words.

"I'm still...what?" Michelle tested with narrowed eyes, the calmness that her voice held a mere five seconds ago was now nowhere to be found. "Trying to avenge my mother? Yeah...I'm still doing that. I don't expect you to understand."

"Okay, you're right, I don't understand how that feels. I'm sorry, alright? I don't want to fight, but, I just don't want you worrying so much about that, especially since you're not just looking out for yourself anymore."

Michelle swallowed thickly at the truth laced within Lincoln's words. "That's why I need to go there now. There won't be much time left with this baby coming. I need to figure everything out while there's still time."

"I need to know that it won't always be like this." Lincoln admitted in a low voice.

"...It won't be."

"Hey, is Charles in today?"

"Michelle," Martin began with a pointed look. "you still have a few vacation days left. No one is doing any retributions right now, remember?"

"I know, I just need to talk to him. Do you know where he is? I went to his office but he wasn't there."

"Yeah, he said that he couldn't concentrate in there. Check the janitor's closet." Martin suggested as he pointed towards the door across from them.

Michelle nodded her response before ambling to the quaint room. She turned the doorknob and quickly entered before pulling the the minute key from her bra and bringing it to the tiny keyhole that sat in the floor's center. Michelle sashayed down the staircase that was produced as she surveyed the dimly lit gray room, her eyes meeting the overseer's.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Mr. Everett sighed, his eyes darting from Michelle's then back to the screen of his laptop as he tapped the keys briskly.

"Martin said that you were here. I need to talk to you."

"Two weeks, I gave everyone two weeks off. No retributions means no retributions. Go home, we'll start back up in a few days."

"Yeah, it's about that, actually." She began reluctantly, her lengthy digits awkwardly pulling on the loose strings produced by her bright red sweater. "I need a little more time off."

Mr. Everett abruptly ceased his typing, his fingers instead entwining with one another, the black buttons of his suit rested against the table as his eyes narrowed. "You should be asking for more cases, trying to make up for for that shit you pulled with Georgie Fulton, not trying to get more time off. Plus, as much as I hate to say it, we need you. As you know, we're down a retributioner."

Michelle grimaced at the thought of Gemma's dead, bullet filled body lying God knows where, alone and decaying into nothingness. "Listen, I can still work, I'll gather information on the victims, do the homework, you know, the paperwork."

"No..." The overseer drawled, his perussian eyes meeting Michelle's dark ones. "you'll do the retributions. There are already people that have the task of gathering information, just like there are designated people that perform the retributions. We've all got very...specific...assignments"

"Well, I need to be reassigned." She blurted, her hands scampering away from her sweater and instead seeking refugee on her hips.

"No one gets reassigned." He chuckled, his wrinkly Adam's apple squirming against his collar in the process. "You're given the job that you're given and you do that job from the day you become a part of this agency 'till the day you die. Besides, why the hell do want to be reassigned to badly?"

"I just...want something a bit different."

"If you want something different, spice up your sex life or something. The only people that are specifically assigned to clerical duty are people that are too incompetent to do anything else and women that are preg-." Mr. Everett creased his brow while his face contorted in disgust. "Holy shit, are you pregnant?"

Michelle reluctantly nodded with the shrugg of her shoulders.

"Fuck, Michelle!" He yelled as he violently shoved away his laptop, the computer sliding all the way down to the other side of the lengthy table before crashing to the floor.

"Look, I can just do clerical work, like you said, pregnant women are reassigned-."

"No, Michelle, weren't you listening? No one gets reassigned." Mr. Everett uttered adamantly as he rose to his feet. "The women who were assigned that job were all either already pregnant, planning to be pregnant, or had families and didn't want to risk their lives. Every retributioner was assigned their particular task for a reason. Somehow, someway you proved to someone that you were somewhat competent enough to be a retributioner and after ten years of service, you should know how all this works. That's not gonna change."

"Then what the hell am I supposed to do?" Michelle scoffed. "You know what happened with the Georgie situation the other night and...that shit that happened to Gemma. I mean, she was a retributioner for Christ's sake and now she's fucking dead! Obliterated! Gone."

"She knew the stakes as well as the consequences...and so do you." He reminded in a calm voice as he pulled his license from his wallet before moseying towards the black scanner that protruded from the dark walls. He held the plastic card up to the device before pulling it away at the sound of a quiet beep. Michelle glanced at the filing cabinet marked with the letter R that slowly projected from the seemingly bare wall. Mr. Everette briskly thumbed through the cabinet before finally pulling out a manila folder and tossing it onto the table.

"You see this right here?" He barked.

Michelle reluctantly opened the file before removing the white cardstock paper that sat inside.

"You signed your name on that dotted line when you joined Versa Vice Sensus. You agreed that your home life wouldn't get in the way of your duties as a retributioner, but that" He continued as he pointed to Michelle's growing belly. "is getting in the way."

"Says the father of three young children." The brunette muttered before tossing the manila folder back onto the table.

"You're right. I have a family, but I don't get my hands dirty because I have them to think about. I made that decision long ago...just like you made the decision." The overseer sighed deeply, running his hands through his snow white hair as he clenched his teeth. "Does your husband know?"

Michelle simply nodded her head at the man's inquiry.

"Well that's gonna make what you have to do a whole hell of a lot harder." He uttered, allowing his words to crawl from the depths of his throat.

"And what is it that I'm gonna have to do?" Michelle tested with crossed arm. She narrowed her eyes as she watched Mr. Everett pull a business card from the jacket of his raven tinted suit before scribbling on the back of it in blue ink.

"Here...call this number."

"What's it for?" She asked with a creased brow.

"It's a number from a woman that performs procedures for women in your...predicament. She works for the agency, she's discrete-."

"She performs procedures for people in my predicament?" Michelle tested.

"You gonna make me say it? Okay...abortions, she performs abortions."

"Are you kidding me?" The brunette bellowed.

"This way the baby has a chance to die sooner rather than later. You can be humane and kill it before it even starts to form, before it understands what's going on, before it has to look at the news one day to find out that mommy isn't coming home. It could happen, if these past few weeks have taught you anything, it's that it could happen. If something like that happened it would be hard on your husband but you don't have to make it hard on your future kid too. Come on, Michelle. I know you're not one of those white, right wing conservatives." He chuckled. "I mean...come on."

"This isn't a discussion of politics, it's not even about a random woman's child, it's my child!" She shrieked before furrowing her brow in thought. She couldn't help the small smile that spread across her face as the truth filled words slipped past her lips with ease. This was the first time since she found out that she was pregnant that she actually said it. Her child. Those were words that she could get used to, words that she welcomed, words that would complete her family. "There's no way in hell I'm aborting this baby."

"I told them not to do it." The overseer growled while his right hand slowly massaged his temples. "When I first signed on with this agency, I told them not to let people like you be a part of this great thing we have here, a part of Versa Vice Sensus. Being an agent means that you have to have stealth, strategic skills, common sense, and intelligence. I knew that those were the four things that not everyone has, and after seeing you, your incapabilities, and lack of regard for this agency...it just reiterates what I've known all along. You shouldn't trust a nigger to get shit done. They need direction, a set plan, if you don't guide them step by step...they go ape shit...like the monkeys that they are."

Michelle tightly gritted her teeth, clenching them so tightly she feared that they would shatter into a million tiny pieces. Her body trembled with ferocity as the term nigger rang through her ears over and over again. The seething, debilitating rage did nothing but keep Michelle's sharp tongue at bay as she attempted to process the overseer's unrelentingly vicious lecture.

"So, I'm gonna be kind enough to give you the set plan that you require and I'm gonna talk real slow so that even you can understand." Mr. Everette pressed on, his words dripping in patronization. "Starting in about three days time, you're gonna get back to your retributions and you're gonna perform them like you've got some fucking common sense. You're gonna be quiet, you're gonna be discrete, and you're not gonna fuck anything up. I don't care if you're days, weeks, or months pregnant, you're gonna be out there on the front lines when I say so. From now on when I say jump all I need from you is a yes sir. No questions asked, you just do it. You're not getting reassigned and you can't stop doing your work because if you do stop doing your work, then I'll have to fire you and if I have to fire you then that means both your baby and you are dead. It doesn't have to be both of you...don't make it be both of you." He slowly approached Michelle, getting so close that she could feel his firery breath steadily scortching her skin. "Do you understand what you have to do?"

Michelle's boiling blood reached an all time high as the overseer's words seeped through her cochleas. "Yeah..." She insisted as she finally allowed her hardened gaze to meet the overseer's. "I do."