"You okay, sweetheart?" asked Lillian to Jessica they stood outside the school. It had been three months since the child's impregnation and now there was distinct bulge at the child's belly.

"Sure mom, just not feeling too good after this morning."

"It's only a little nausea, sweetheart. It happens in pregnancy." The mother didn't add that for an unspecified reason, the morning vomiting tended to hang round little girls carrying babies for longer. In fact, Jessica might continue with this until she was well into her seventh month. Distressing, but there was nothing anyone could do.

A girl in an electric wheelchair, probably having twins or more, rolled past them. She was tied to it with leather straps, each closed with a couple of D rings and padlocks. She might have greeted them had it not been for her gag, a monstrous thing that filled her mouth and even had a tube running from it; a tube that led to a clear plastic bottle hanging on the back of the chair.

"She's got to drink that stuff," said Jessica. "To make her babies bigger." The girl shuddered, clearly worried it might happen to her.

"What lessons you got today?" Lillian tried to change the subject of being unwell and the fact that girls seemed to be gagged during for school more often these days. Last month hardly any child was gagged at school. Now it seemed half the school had their mouths taped up or sealed with some ball gag, and quite a few of them with this special diet drink.

"Um... The usual." Responded Jessica. "Child rearing, child handling, child care... Child development in old age." For one as young as Jessica she had a good sense of humor. "We've got this woman from the police coming, talk to us about being safe at night."

Lillian was about to say something when Alana Davies walked past. "Hi Jessica and Mrs Herd." The twelve year old girl was looking big and she was really waddling, her huge belly tenting her maternity school uniform. She seemed to be having some trouble walking, and not just from her bloated state.

"Honey," said Lillian to Alana. "Your ankle chains, they okay?"

"Um, they've been shortened." The girl looked embarrassed, as if she had done something wrong. "Eight links, not nine. I guess it's 'cos I'm almost at full term."

"Guess so," said Lillian as the child grinned sheepishly and made her way awkwardly off towards the school entrance.

"Mom," whispered Jessica, tugging at her mother's sleeve. "It isn't that, is it?"

"I don't know what you mean, angel. Kids have always have their ankle chains adjusted."

"But not made any shorter, right?"

"Oh I'm sure they have. Anyway, there's probably a good reason." But, the woman thought, please don't ask me. I really don't want to think of one now.

The school bell saved Lillian from having to think of anything and she kissed her daughter goodbye. The mother watched the child head off, her own nine-link ankle chain swinging as she walked.

Jessica disappeared inside and other pregnant girls were making their way in too. Lillian sighed. It was going to get harder. She turned to go and a poster on a tree close by stopped her.

'Missing or Lost!' The poster announced. 'Chelsea Powell, age 11. Identification signature UCP 201336T. Pregnant 8 months. Last seen between Langley Lane and Third Street in Kenyon Heights district. Child was gagged at time of going missing, so may not answer when questioned directly. Report any sighting or information to your local Police station or to any officer of the Child Protection Service. Generous reward, subject to condition of child and baby when found.' The photograph, from front and side like some criminal mug shot, showed Jessica's friend. In both pictures a digitally enhanced ball gag adorned the image of the child's face. Underneath the image were telephone numbers and web addresses for information, finished off by the slogan: 'Happy girls are pregnant with our future.'

Of course Lillian had seen missing posters before, but never one so close to school, and never one that said the missing girl was gagged when she went missing. A feeling of uncertainty gripped Lillian and she hurried away, troubled by much of what she had seen already today, and headed for her workplace.

She stopped at another poster, that sent even more of a chill through the woman. It was a silhouette of a clearly pregnant girl with pigtails and a neck chain attacked to a hook behind her, and at her feet a ball and chain. The caption under it said: "Have you made your daughter safe and secure today?"

---

At the office where she worked, Lillian was being distracted by Delia Osaka hovering round with her own daughter on a leash. Delia was one of those women who were consumed with anxiety all the time about her daughter being pregnant. She worried that it wouldn't be a healthy girl, worried that the child wasn't secure enough, worried that her daughter would be snatched at any moment by dark forces. "Mr Laing was very kind, letting me bring Shelley in like this," she said.

Shelley Osaka blinked from behind her gag, her arms bound in back of her. The child was six months pregnant and big with it. She wasn't fidgeting or restless as she stood silently on the end of the leash, but then her mother often brought her into the office. Laing probably felt he had no choice but to acquiesce and let neurotic Delia bring her child in as often as she did. He certainly wouldn't want to be be accused of "not providing sufficient care and protection facilities for a pregnant child." Anything for a quiet life. In fairness, a gagged child was a quiet life, so it wasn't as if she was making any noise and tied up, she wasn't going to be running around.

"I was watching TV this morning," Delia continued, not bothered if Lillian was listening. "In Europe people are getting sleep cages for their girls... lock them up for the night. I'm thinking of getting one for Shelley. Germany does some amazing ones."

"But you chain her up on her bed, right?" Lillian didn't really want this conversation.

"Of course I do! That's why I want more protection for her. There's been so many missing kids lately..." The woman shuddered.

"I am sure there's no more than usual," Lillian said, though was unsure how many would count as usual.

"There are big warnings out," said Delia. "In China they are rounding girls up for safety. In Brazil girls aren't allowed out most of the time now. I want to secure little Shelley up here properly, to be sure she's okay," she said as she looked around nervously. "You can never be too careful, even with people you know."

"Indeed," said Lillian, head down and getting on with her work.

---

The poster of Chelsea Powell was covered up the next morning by a new one: a girl called Amethyst Jackson had gone missing. 'Taken,' said the poster in large letters, 'from her bedroom.' Lillian thought of Delia Osaka, desperately trying to get a child cage imported from Germany to protect her kid.

But what bothered Lillian more was the idea that already Chelsea, in being covered over by a new poster, was half-forgotten. It was as if the district had been made aware of her disappearance for a whole day but now it was of no consequence: there was a new drama in town and poor Chelsea was relegated to a memory.

Worse, the mother (Lillian presumed) of the missing Amethyst had written 'Please find my child' on the poster. Yet if tomorrow there was a new missing girl poster, even that heartfelt plea would be lost.

At the door of the school were armed guards. Not an entirely unusual sight but disturbing that each girl going in was being given a metal tag. The Principal, Christine Zemek, was standing supervising and Lillian caught her attention. The older woman came over as Jessica was being herded into line for her tag.

"It's a new system," said the Principal, not bothering to say 'Good morning' and launching straight in to the explanation, though Lillian figured she had probably done this talk for quite a few of the other mothers earlier. "We are trying to make sure your precious child is comfortable and secure as possible. We are also going to be adding new chairs for the girls with lockable straps to keep them safe during lessons."

Lillian knew the school had to do what it could, but she couldn't help saying: "Won't that cut down on lesson time?"

"Excuse me?" Ms Zemek blinked at Lillian.

"The time taken to strap and lock each girl, every lesson. There'll be less teaching time."

"Perhaps," said the older woman stiffly. "But sacrifices have to be made." She nodded and moved on to tell another parent of the changes. She didn't even give Lillian time to ask why they thought it necessary to put a metal tag on the child when she was already collared with a microchip in it.

For a good minute Lillian stood, wondering if it was time to do what Delia Osaka did and withdraw her child from school, taking her to work with her.

"Move along," said a police woman, indicating Lillian shouldn't stand watching the line of girls being given their tags.

"I'm a mother of pregnant girl, for heaven's sake," snapped Lillian. "A pupil here."

"And we are trying to keep your children safe," retorted the woman in navy blue. "So you have no business here until school is out." The helmeted officer narrowed her eyes at Lillian. "Unless you want to discuss this at the station, ma'am," she added coldly, hand on her pistol butt, the two pairs of hand and ankle cuffs gleaming on her hip.

The last thing Lillian wanted was a few hours cuffed at the police station being grilled over how suitable she was as a mom. She turned on her heel and walked swiftly away.

---

"Rosie," said Lillian into her cell phone not long after she had left Jessica at school and not long after yet another talk with an increasingly agitated Delia. "What the hell's going on?"

"What do you mean?" Said Rosie tentatively. "Look, Lill, I'm on my way to feed a pair of demanding twins, and I haven't got time-"

"Just listen," interrupted Jessica. "I need an answer. You're part of the government, going out and feeding girls. You get to find things out."

"So?" The woman was clearly wary.

"So kids are having ankle chains shortened, even getting gagged up for school for heaven's sake. I saw a girl strapped to her wheelchair yesterday with her hands fastened in back, not on her lap or anything. How can these girls do their lessons all gagged and hands behind them? Today the kids going in to school are being given extra tags, but they're locked onto their necks and look real heavy. More for them to carry round, and they've already got collars on!"

There was a brief silence from the other end of the phone. "Lill, I can't say right now, in case someone's listening in. Meet me in three hours, at the old diner on Oak and Seventh." The phone went dead.

Rosie looked worried as she arrived at the diner, and slid into a booth table where there was enough room so she get her large bust in. Her uniform was wet at the front from leaking. Not unusual, but she was clearly distracted.

"So, hi," said Lillian.

"Hi," said Rosie, looking round nervously.

"You're making this seem a big mystery."

"It is," said Rosie, leaning forward. Her large breasts pressed on to the plastic table between the two females. "Look, I never told you this, okay, but the State Department of Pregnant Child Care is putting some new things out."

"Things?"

"Yeah. New laws, rules. Ways that pregnant girls have to be restrained. Kind of tightening the screw. More registratiions, better satellite tracking. Those tags are only the start. I think, no I know, some kids will have a kind of ball chain at their ankle soon. More weight to drag round, but so it puts off any, um, undesirables."

Lillian felt uncomfortable, remembering the silhouette poster but trying to keep her outlook positive. "Well, that's okay if it keeps them safe-"

"No its not. Girls just impregnated aren't being released from the centers for three days, probably will be a week soon. Kids are being tested more often, checked over." Another nervous look round. "The government wants tighter controls, less freedom for kids. Some of it is experimental, see how far they can go. They are monitoring reactions to all this. Seeing if anyone notices."

"Hell, I noticed! I guess half the school moms have noticed that their daughter has to be gagged, and we all know about these tags."

"You asked any of those moms why? About the gags?"

"Well I asked Marlene Pierre. She said it was her choice, as she didn't want her Betsy talking in class so much." Lillian felt foolish as she said it: the explanation sounded dumb.

"Yeah, right. Listen, people like this Marlene woman are under pressure to say that. She doesn't have a choice in it. You noticed any bigger collars?"

"Well, not really, but perhaps-"

Rosie dropped her voice lower. "There are bigger collars, and metal under the plastic."

"But the plastic is supposedly almost indestructible."

"Metal is better," said Rosie. "The department is rolling out some deeper, heavier ones to fit on girls." She paused. "And there'll be wrist chains soon."

"What? I don't get it... But why?"

"Same thing it is always is. Control. You noticed that the number of kidnaps has risen lately?"

Lillian shivered, remembering Delia's comments and the psoters. "Well, there do seem to be a few kids missing, but they said not as many as four years ago."

"Bullshit. Those figures have been twisted up some, and more. We have more pregnant child snatches than before, so the government's real worried. And you notice anything about me lately?"

"Um, you had your hair done?"

"Very good. How about this?" The woman reached up and pointed to her collar.

"Jeez," gasped Lillina. She hadn't noticed the ring set in the front.

Rosie sighed. "It's so I can be fastened down when I feed the little monsters. And it wouldn't surprise me if they don't want me shaved too, like every female in the pregnant girl business has to be shaved. As I say, it's all control. Seems like you aren't trusted until you are chained up and shaved. Yeah, and before you ask, yes I've already been shaved between my legs too as if that makes any difference. Bald as a new born baby, you could say." She gave a hollow laugh.

Lillian sank back into her seat. "I had no idea."

"You won't have, but you are now going to be dangerous."

Lillian stared at her friend. "Me?"

"Yes you. The people who know too much, who notice too much, are a growing problem for the government. They've quietly been closing down radio stations, monitoring TV news outputs, hacking web sites and bloggers that might just be on to something. Soon there will be martial law unless there's a big drop in this child abduction."

"And what about Jessica?"

"Shit, Lillian. You know as well as I do the individual doesn't count. Families don't count. Never have, but it's going to get worse."

Lillian looked anxious. "I guess we could run away."

"Listen," said Rosie seriously. "If you leave the area you will be found guilty of child abduction. Trust me and just stay put."

"But... Abduction, how? She's my child!"

"You think so?" Rosie shook her head. Then she glanced at her watch. "Look, I have to go soon and let a few howling kids chew my tits. Tonight, I'll come round and you can do what the brats don't do and be gentle with them." She gave a smile and reached across the table. "Actually, it would help me if we went to the bathroom right now."

"What, here?"

"The last call, the kids weren't hungry. I got too much milk and it's painful. You up for a little sucking?"

"Okay," grinned Lillian. Then she added: "Providing there's still some milk for me tonight."

"There will be. Promise." Rosie squeezed her friend's hand.

In the bathroom, in the small cubicle, Lillian drank long and satisfyingly from her Rosie's large nipples, bringing gasps of pleasure from the feeder. Lillian also got to see Rosie's freshly shaved slit too, and drank from that. So much so that Rosie was almost late for her next appointment, but she kissed her friend deeply before she left. "I do love you, no matter what happens," she said quietly.

"Show me again tonight," whispered Lillian.

"I will, believe me," sighed Rosie, before she went.

---

The banging on the front door wasn't Rosie at all. As soon as Lillian opened it the police were inside, swarming all over, guns drawn. "Where's your daughter," snapped one in full battle armor with "Captain" stenciled on the front of his dark blue steel helmet.

"Upstairs, in bed of course," said Lillian, alarmed at the way cops with guns were taking up positions. "What's all this about?"

"Child Security," said the man. The one thing that no one could ever doubt or gainsay. "We are here to make sure that," he consulted a scrap of official looking paper in his hand, "Jessica Damon Isherwood Herd and her unborn child, to be named as Albany Thomas Olmera Herd, are fully protected under the laws of State and Nation."

A chill ran through Lillian like an ice-cold knife. "W-what does that mean?" She managed to say.

"State protection," snapped the man, "means we are in control." A woman in police uniform stepped up behind Lillian and pulled her hands behind her. There was a click as cold steel cuffs went on the mother's wrists.

"What are you doing?" Lillian protested.

"Exercising society's rights to provide for its safe future," said the Captain tersely. "Or you miss that in social re-education lessons?"

The mother glared at the uniformed men and women but mostly at the one in front of her, the one in charge. "I am a mother of a pregnant child. Under my rights I demand a legal representative here!"

"Yeah, whatever," said another cop nearby with a smirk.

Lillian had never been so angry, nor so helpless. "This is an outrage! I demand you-" A large ball gag stopped her demanding any more. She realized that another police officer was holding a plain black bag, ready to put it over her head. Lillian tried to step backwards but the cop behind had hold of her tightly. Someone at her feet was clicking ankle chain cuffs round her ankles. In terror she looked at the hallway and the stairs. Her daughter, or rather a naked pregnant child with her hands cuffed behind her and a black bag over her head, was being guided down the stairs by two police officers.

It was the last thing Lillian saw before the waiting black hood went over her head and a padlock secured at her throat.

---

The truck bumped and ground its way over rocky roads, and all Lillian could do was stand and sway with the vehicle, occasionally colliding with the female in front of her and the one behind her as she strove to keep her balance.

She couldn't see anything, of course, in her hood and the gag made communication impossible. But above the noise of the truck and its grating gears Lillian heard people snorting and breathing and there was the unmistakable smell of someone having soiled themselves. Attached by her neck to what must have been a rail running down the length of the truck (a chain that kept the hood closed tightly round her head and made breathing hard), Lillian did her best to avoid falling.

She knew they were women in with her as the two she bumped into from time to time had the softness of body that men didn't have. It was also reasonable to assume that there were other females like her, cuffed and gagged mothers, being transported in darkness to God knew where. Or even why.

Worst of all Lillian had no idea where her daughter was. She could be heading in the opposite direction for all she knew. And she felt she knew very little indeed. Whatever had caused this arrest, as surely it was that, had done it without charge. Lillian was thus blind in two ways right now.

As she stood, her legs aching and spread as far apart as she could manage for stability, Lillian thought of Rosie. Why hadn't she come to the house? What had happened to her? Did she know any of this? Lillian even thought: what if she somehow caused this. Was she warning Lillian when they met in the Diner, or was she part of this government crackdown?

The woman's head ached and there were a hundred questions she wanted to ask, but she had the feeling that no one would have wanted to answer them.

The vehicle slowed. It had done it before but this time it drew to halt and the engine was turned off. There were voices, orders being barked, the tailgate of the truck lowered and fresh air blew in.

"Get them out," snapped a female voice. "And the one who's crapped herself, get her cleaned up for fuck's sake. Hurry!"

Hands were on Lillian, releasing her neck chain but not her hood or anything else. She felt herself pushed towards the fresh air, hands lifting her down on to something smooth and hard under her feet. "Move," said a man's voice at her side and she was shoved ahead, but a hand on her arm to stop her stumbling.

There were steps, metal steps, and Lillian barked her shins on them before she got the measure of the angle and rise. They were still outside and she felt the wind blowing. A roar of a noise, like engines. Aircraft engines.

She was inside something now, banging on a wall, pushed along. Then she was half turned and pushed backwards: her legs met the edge of what might have been a seat and the sitting reflex took over. As she sat on whatever it was, a hard surface, a strap of some kind was passed over her chest, pinning her down.

The noise was increasing, voices saying they were all on. She felt the seat beneath her tremble, a sense they were moving. Tires on a runway. "Hoods off," shouted a man. In the sudden light as her hood was unlocked and dragged off, Lillian blinked at what she could see.

An aircraft, long and narrow, with women sat gagged and strapped in on side and pregnant girls secured opposite. The girls gagged just as effectively as the mothers.

Lillian had no idea of course where the plane was going. She was just thankful that Jessica was there opposite her, and she looked okay all things considered.

Like all the pregnant young teens and pre-teens, she was naked and sat with her legs strapped apart (by dint of having her knees secured to the child on either side of her) and her baby-bulge visible. The straps that held the kid to the seat ran across her flat chest and there was a strap round her neck. It took Lillian a few moments to realize what was different about her daughter: it wasn't the gag that made her look different, or the way she was sat, or that her arms were secured behind her.

It was, Lillian understood with shock, the fact that under the neck strap there was no collar. Every child on that side of the aircraft was bare necked. Whoever had brought them here had removed the security collars.

A woman in a navy blue police uniform was walking up down the aisle between the row of mothers and daughters, her hand holding a low-velocity gun. Probably not, Lillian reasoned, filled with bullets. Some sort of stun dart probably. The girls were too precious: she could see that as the seats the pregnant girls were fastened to were softer, more comfortable. A jolt from turbulence was painful on this side of the aircraft, not so on the kids' side.

Lillian studied the female cop, and realized she wasn't a regular cop at all. The uniform was a copy. A male cop was patrolling the plane too, and the huge label on his chest that said "Police" was peeling badly. These people were kidnappers. Well organized, almost perfect copies, but not the real thing.

But you can be wrong about the good and bad guys, as she discovered.

---

The office was pleasant and the chair Lillian was tied to pretty comfortable, all things considered. Jessica didn't look too unhappy, the way the girl was tied up. Or rather strapped down. Ropes would have been too abrasive on one so young, and the latex straps on the child were wide and didn't look too tight. Of course Jessica couldn't move and like Lillian couldn't speak as they still had their gags in, but overall the situation felt nowhere near as threatening as when their home was broken in to by the kidnappers or the truck ride in darkness.

The early morning light came in through the blinds on the window behind the desk in front of the bound mother and daughter. But there was no one else in the room, until the door opened behind them and a middle aged woman swept in and sat at the desk.

"Lillian Herd," she said, reading from a sheet of paper in front of her, "and daughter Jessica. Please grunt into your gags if you are the so named."

Both Lillian and Jessica made the required grunting noise. "Good," continued the woman as she sat back. "I do hate it when we get the wrong people. My name is Mrs South. That's all you need to know about me, except I run this place."

The woman studied Lillian for a few moments and then said: "I am sure you have plenty of questions but as you are no doubt aware the gag stays in. For now at least. However I will try to explain something of why you are here." The woman paused. "Does the name 'Born Bound' mean anything to you? Perhaps not, they are a secret organisation, though perhaps not entirely as secret as they would wish." The woman pressed something on her desk and sat back, waiting.

After a few moments the door opened behind where Lillian and Jessica were bound and someone came into the room. With a rattle of chains, a figure was escorted to the side of the desk: a naked woman weighed down with manacles and her face almost entirely hidden by a web of straps holding a ball gag deep in the her stretched mouth. She had been shaved bald and her large, heavy breasts - dripping milk from the large nipples - hanging from her chest were adorned, cruelly, by pins driven into them.

"I am sure, if you can't recognise her immediately, you will be pleased to know that your friend Rosie is suffering pleasantly like this." Mrs South smiled and Lillian and Jessica both blinked in astonishment at the heavily chained, gagged female standing before them. She was almost unrecognizable as she was and it was only the government's standard feeder approval brand with her regulation number on both her breasts (and the shaved sex she had been intimate with so recently) that told Lillian it really was her old friend. Lillian, in shock, moaned into her gag and even tried to struggle with her straps. The woman she loved was a zombie, lost to the world. Lillian felt tears well up in her eyes and her stomach twist as she'd never known.

"Please don't be too upset," said the woman behind the desk, noticing Lillian's distress. "This really is for her own good. And ours too."

Rosie was distant, staring into space and not focusing on anything. She certainly didn't seem aware of the mother and child secured to the chairs in front of the desk. The woman behind the desk gave a wave of her hand and the guard, a woman in the same navy blue uniform that Lillian saw on the aircraft, prodded Rosie with a rod with a blue glowing tip, causing the fettered naked woman to mewl into her gag before she set off walking as best she could back towards the open door. Still staring ahead blankly.

Mrs South sighed. "I am sorry to say she wasn't your friend. Not at all. A good government operative, well trained, and as a member of 'Born Bound' she had marked you and your daughter down for what they call "Urgent Intervention." You were it seems asking too many questions, so you were about to be rounded up and separated. For the good of the state, of course. Jessica here was going to go to a state breeding farm and, I'm sorry to have to say, you Lillian were going to the factories. In case you don't know, that would require you being chained to a production line making, ironically, gags and restraints for small girls."

Lillian tried to say something into her gag but Mrs South ignored it. "The people by the way who came to your house were in fact real police. You were being arrested. What they didn't know then, though no doubt angry memos and accusations in high office have now informed them, is that in transferring you to the aircraft they were putting you not on a government plane but on ours. You were flown to this secret location and not to where you would have been processed and split apart." The woman stood and moved over to stare out of the window, looking at the view. She turned back after a few moments.

"I will send Jessica away now. Please don't worry, your daughter will - though still bound and gagged - be perfectly safe. You will see her soon enough. But I need you here on your own Lillian." The woman pressed what must have been a buzzer on her desk and a woman, this time in a white outfit like a nurse, arrived. She unfastened some, but not all Jessica's straps and lifted the child up, carrying her effortlessly out of the room and leaving the two older females alone.

Once the door closed Mrs South attended to Lillian's gag. As soon as it was free, the mother snapped sharply at the middle-aged woman: "Let me go! And I want my daughter here with me!"

"I have already explained to Lillian that we can't do that, not yet."

"This is a kidnapping!"

"Have you heard nothing of what I've told you? If you insist on making that dreadful noise I shall have to gag you again. Is that what you want, Lillian?"

Lillian thought for a moment and then admitted: "No."

"Good. Now you can ask questions." The woman dropped the gag on her desk. Handy in case she needed it. "First let me give you some more information to help you. We are an organisation called 'Born Free.' The opposite, we know, to the government's own 'Born Bound', of which that woman Rosie is, or was, a full member. Our concern is that children are allowed to be free of state intervention - and not experimented on as is increasingly the case. You have already seen evidence of those experiments, true?"

Lillian thought of the pregnant girls bound in electric wheelchairs at Jessica's school and the feeder bottles they carried. And what she had been told at work. With a nod admitted she had.

"There is a lot for you take in at the moment, I understand, and Lillian as much as I wish to be brief it is important: despite your restraints, severe though they seem, you will be far more free here with us. In time. But first we have to make sure you are not double-agents. An understandable precaution I am sure you will agree.

"Now about your so-called friend. Rosie is an unfortunate in that she has something young girls need, gallons of good milk. Babies rather depend on it. It is one of the things by which the government exercises control."

"Unfortunate?"

"Indeed. She is in her own way a slave to the system, but then so many are these days. That's what the meteors did: they made us all reliant - or a slave - to the whole process of government control. The Night changed all our lives in so many ways we can't begin to fathom. But Rosie was feeding you, as it were, with information to see what was getting out into the news media."

"If she was under orders, a slave you call it, why have you pierced her tits with those needles?"

"Because," said Mrs South, "She has been artificially enhanced to supply a certain type of milk."

"Meaning what?"

"Your friend's milk has a sedative, for want of a better term. It is a drug that controls thinking, we have discovered. The needles we have put into hurt her, of course. Inevitable. But our medical people believe they help drain the toxins, or at least neutralize them. Oddly, we will need her type here to help the new-born babies, but not filling them with a submissive drug."

Lillian stared at Mrs South and gulped. "But... I... I mean, she was my lover. I was sucking her... I was drinking her milk at times."

Mrs South raised an eyebrow. "Really?" She scribbled a note on a pad on her desk. "This makes things interesting, shall we say."

"Is that bad?"

"Lillian, we do not know what it does to adults. We think we know how it affects small babies, but we need to do more investigation."

"So what will happen to me?"

Mrs South shook her head. "I am not sure, yet. However I think, and I regret to say this, we must keep you confined for a little longer than we might normally."

"I see... And Jessica?"

"Was she drinking Rosie's milk?"

"No! Of course not. She knew nothing of my relationship with Rosie."

"Then she should be okay. However, we have to be very careful." The woman scribbled another note. "I will recommend you are put into mother and daughter confinement for the next few weeks."

"Together?" Lillian sounded hopeful.

"Separate, sadly, for now."

"You said we would be free." There was a note of bitterness in Lillian's voice.

"I said you would be, in time." The middle-aged woman looked up. "You must understand the gravity of the situation." She put down her pen. "The government is drugging babies to ensure their continued submission, and increasingly subjecting pregnant girls to various tests, not least of which are numerous mental controls, as well as increasing physical restraints. We suspect that are multiple programs and experiments ongoing - many unknown to some if not all the government departments. So the Department of Child Advancement doesn't know what the Office of Baby Development is doing, and neither are aware to National Security Advice Group are up to. And no one can fathom the military level of involvement. So it's hard to know what or who is most affected in all this. It's fair to say though that there are probably very few pregnant girls who aren't being tested - and those are probably secreted away in some underground complex to ensure that if it all goes wrong there is a fall-back. The get-out plan.

"All we do know is it is extensive, even if we have no idea what harm this is doing to future numbers of baby-carrying girls. At the same time there are experiments on young mothers as well as their babies as the government seeks to find ways of overcoming the natural barriers and making a child like Jessica have multiple pregnancies. Other countries are striving for all this too, but we seem to have a particularly aggressive program, or series of programs, here. None of which gets into the media, of course."

Lillian's eyes widened. "I had no idea-"

"And why should you? All this is under the cloak of state security, all disguised by the need to protect ourselves. Can you think of a better way of state control than to say we are, in effect, at war? Whatever happens, it is for our protection."

"At war with whom?"

"Ourselves," smiled Mrs South. "The hardest enemy to see and the most difficult to understand."

"So what are you doing? Isn't your organization just the same as all those out there?" Lillian went to gesture as normally might but her arms were too well-restrained.

"Yes, I admit we have to be secretive. Yes, we have to be careful. But we at 'Born Free' are different. Our experiments are to set the young teens and pre-teens free, ultimately. We may not be able to do anything for years to come about the fact that only girls below 15 can be mothers of girls, but we can make sure they come to no great harm."

"And that," said Lillian coldly, "involves keeping them locked up. Mothers and girls and babies. All of us."

"Locked up and restrained, yes. For now anyway." The middle aged woman looked sad. "It is the great paradox that the price of freedom is restriction. I wish it was different, and we are working so it will be. But for now, it has to remain our great ideal, our over-riding ambition. Immediately though we have to make sure our people are safe from government plans."

"But what if the government are doing it right?"

Mrs South shrugged. "Doing what right? And which department, which office? How about which city are they based? The Chicago Office of Bound Mothers, or the LA District Pregnant Restraint program? And how about the Society for Restrained Births? Or the Daughters of the Chain in New England? People like that are funded by the government, from our tax dollars, to work in semi-secrecy, pursuing their own agenda. All this is vast and we are small, but we are getting there."

"So would it be bad if you lived up to your ideals and simply unfastened me and Jessica, and set us free?"

"I am afraid it would be. There are wolves and predators out there. Gangs roaming the country, securing stray pregnant girls. Thugs financed by the government, or shady charities. Even the church! The organization called "Spirit of Love" is more active than we would like - we know of one convent filled with bound pregnant girls supervised by nuns. Guarding their future, as so many do.

"But if we let you go, well, it wouldn't be good. Ten minutes outside our gates we couldn't protect you. On top of that, we have evidence Mexico and Canada have snatch units operating in this country. No doubt other nations have too. Some our greatest allies are trying to take our kids for their own."

"Just as our country does to them I expect."

"Perhaps. But all we can do, Lillian, is protect ourselves. You are safe here. Our cells are good I can assure you."

"But it's still imprisonment," said Lillian slowly. "Which ever side you're on."

"It is imprisonment for the greater goal of freedom, you will see." Mrs South stood up and picked up the gag. "Now I am sorry to say our interview is over. I have other mothers and pregnant daughters to see." Without another word the woman stepped behind Lillian and gagged her tightly. She pressed the buzzer on her desk and two men came in, armed with the same prods Lillian had seen used on Rosie.

Lillian, wisely, went quietly.

---

End of part 2

In the final part, Lillian gets to discover the real secret of the female birth crisis that has eluded so many for so long, but it comes with a price attached. Fortunately, help is on hand from an unexpected quarter...