The Midwife's Code | Part II
Part II finds Mara confronting the ghosts of her past and the cost of broken trust, just as a new danger forces her to run for her life.
Note: This story continues from Part I. If you’re new here, you might want to start at the beginning to catch the full thread:
Eyes of distrust. Not loud, not sharp, just there, like a curtain drawn a little too quickly. A tremble of anger beneath their skin. The lab had been tampered with. That much was clear. Objects out of place. Silence with its hand wrapped around the throat of the room. Mara felt panic rise, not a scream, not even a gasp. Just a quiet, electric crawl up her spine. She hadn’t even been here a full day. Not twenty-four hours, and already, something had unraveled. Whatever trust had been forming between her and the Meepebi, it had snapped, cleanly, like a string pulled too tight.
She was supposed to begin today. Begin understanding the science beneath the stories. The cure. The one that could save those she had sworn to protect. The ones who died because nothing else worked.
A lifetime ago, it had started with a dream in a room with dim lights and a coffee-stained textbook. The dream of becoming a sage-femme. Back then, she had studied for the Parcours d’Accès Spécifique Santé with the kind of quiet obsession only the uncertain have. Back then, the world still held structure, even if it had shown slivers of cracks here and there. Covid had left bruises, but routines persisted. Lectures, notes, rotations. She thought if she passed, she’d know who she was. That becoming a midwife would tether her to something real. Something permanent. But permanence, she had learned, was a trick of the light.
Now, nothing felt anchored. Not her body, not this place, not the way the women were looking at her. She knows they think it was her. Maybe that was the easiest answer. A newcomer. A foreigner. Someone who had wanted something from them. And maybe Mara would have thought the same, if the roles were reversed.
One of the women steps closer. Not hostile, but no longer open. The warmth from the supra had burned off like morning mist. “Were you followed?” she asks, too calmly.
Mara blinks. “No. I don’t think… No.”
A glance passes between the others. Not loud. Not spoken.
“They’ve been near here before,” the woman with ink-black hair explains, mostly to herself. “The Index leaves no footprints, but they don’t have to.” She kneels, running a finger along the base of an overturned scanner. “They don’t take things. They shift them. Reprogram. Copy. Leave just enough disorder to warn you.”
Mara opens her mouth, unsure what to say. “The Index wouldn’t sabotage a lab like this?”
The silver-haired woman’s gaze narrows. “You know them.”
“Not personally,” Mara says quickly, the words out before she can consider them. Her mind scrambles. Maybe it’s safer if they don’t know the whole story. But lying has never sat right with her. And besides, she’s almost certain the Index wouldn’t do something like this. Not like this. “Their drops kept my clinic alive for two years. Medicines we couldn’t get anywhere else. Anti-hemorrhagics. Safe birthing kits. Insulin.” She hesitates. “They’re part of the resistance.”
“So are we,” the black-haired woman says, her voice cool, almost robotic.
Silence spreads.
Mara doesn’t answer. She only knows that trust doesn’t break loudly, it fractures quietly, along the grain. And the way the Meepebi are looking at her now, she’s seen it before. Not here. Not now. But then. In a place where suspicion was law and silence a form of currency.
The lab seems to pull sideways for a moment, the way a dream changes without warning. She is no longer standing in the cool observatory. She’s back in her hometown, in Marseille. The dead weight of summer heat pressed against her back. The long, silent line at the pharmacy checkpoint. Drones buzzing overhead like slow, mechanical flies. She remembers clutching her medicine ration pass, the cheap paper soft from the sweat of her hand. The wall screens flickered warnings in blue and gold: Resistance activity suspected. Report suspicious behavior. Protect the city. Protect your family. Until that day, she thought she understood who the enemy was. She thought she knew what survival looked like.
And then... she had seen her. Naïma. Standing half-hidden under the broken awning of the old tram stop, the sun painted her face in brutal light. She was thinner than Mara remembered. Shoulders hunched. Belly visible now under a worn shirt two sizes too big. Pregnant. Alone. For a second - a split, gasping second - Mara felt the old reflexes rise: the instinct to run to her, to help. But the next breath was different.
The posters. The announcements. The neighborhood meetings where they warned about ‘contaminated minds.’ About traitors dressed like ordinary people. About women used as bait. About disease, rebellion, danger, death. Naïma’s mouth moved, saying something Mara couldn't hear. Mara stood frozen. She did not go to her. She clutched her ration pass tighter and turned away. When she dared to glance back, Naïma was already gone.
The cameras caught everything. Not the desperate pull in Mara’s chest. Not the ache in her throat when she turned away. Only the hesitation. A second too long.
That night, her sister was waiting. The radio crackled in the corner of the kitchen.
“...another successful intervention today at the southern perimeter. Thanks to our great city's vigilance, peace and prosperity are stronger than ever,” the announcer said, syrupy and proud. A familiar anthem began to play.
Mara stood by the sink, washing her hands for too long, watching the soap swirl away like it could scrub the unease out of her skin. Her sister leaned against the counter, flipping through a battered magazine without really reading it.
“You were flagged,” she said like she was mentioning the weather. “They noticed you hesitated.”
Mara's hands froze under the tap. For a moment, neither of them looked at each other. Her sister smiled - not at Mara, but at the window, at the rising sound of the anthem.
“They're saying the hospitals might get new machines next week,” she said lightly. A pause. A smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Good things happen here. To people who deserve them.”
Mara dried her hands slowly. Careful. Too careful. Her sister finally turned, studied her for half a heartbeat too long.
“You’re tired,” she said, almost kindly. “You think too much.” And then, nothing. She walked away, leaving the radio to fill the silence with another round of promises Mara couldn’t quite believe anymore.
Two days later, Mara's ration card stopped working. Three days after that, someone left a note tucked into the broken slot of her mailbox. No signature. No warning. Just a set of coordinates written in a hand she recognized. Naïma’s. Mara never replied. But by the end of the week, she was gone. Her clinic shuttered. Her bike packed. Her life folded small enough to carry over the mountains. She never found out if Naïma survived.
“Mara!”
Someone shouts her name. Sharp, urgent, terrified.
The memory of Marseille fractures like glass hit by a stone. She jerks her head up. Eyes. Dozens of them, but not distrust now, fear.
“Run!”
A hand clamps around her wrist, pulling her hard enough to stumble. In the distance, beyond the tree line, shadows are moving. Dark, fast, deliberate. Not scavengers. Not locals. Not The Index.
Fortress City intelligence.
Mara doesn’t wait to ask how they found them. She runs. No time for questions, no time for fear. Only instinct. The silver-haired woman shoves a satchel into Mara’s hands, too heavy, too fragile, and yanks her toward the trees. Behind them, boots hammer against the stone steps of the observatory. People shout. Clipped orders, not in Georgian, not in anything Mara wants to understand. Fortress City agents. Intelligence ops.
The forest isn’t a path, it’s a maze. Branches tear at their clothes, needles crackle underfoot. They don’t speak. Breath is too precious. Survival is too thin. A root catches Mara’s boot. She stumbles, nearly goes down. A hand steadies her. The woman with black-dyed hair. Her face grim, unreadable in the half-light. Then a jerk of her head: Move.
Somewhere behind them, gunmetal shapes flicker between trees. Machines. Human or not, Mara doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to know. All she knows is the burn in her legs, the roar of blood in her ears, the sharp metallic taste of panic.
“North,” the silver-haired woman hisses. “Find the cave. Follow the riverbed.”
Riverbed? Mara sees nothing but darkness, trunks, the wild tangle of undergrowth. But she runs. They all run. Shouts again, closer this time. A weapon discharges. Not a bullet, something hotter, hungrier. It carves a tree trunk clean through. Splinters rain down like needles. Mara presses the satchel tighter against her chest. What if she drops it? What if this, whatever she’s carrying, is the last piece of the cure?
Up ahead, the blonde woman, the granddaughter, points. A low dip in the landscape, almost invisible unless you knew where to look. A scar in the earth, lined with old, slick stones. The riverbed. They scramble down into it, shoes slipping. Mud sucks at their soles. The forest above them stills for a heartbeat. A trick of silence. Then: heavy footfalls, crashing closer.
The cave. It’s there. A jagged mouth yawning open under an overhang of moss and rock. Small. Almost too small. But big enough. One by one, they throw themselves inside. No grace, no time. Hands scrape rock, knees bruise, hearts hammer. Mara slides in last, feeling the air move behind her, too close, as something bigger, faster follows. A net is pulled across the entrance. Camouflage. Someone - the black-haired woman? - presses a finger to Mara’s lips before she can even breathe.
And then: stillness.
Not safety. Not yet.
Only hiding. Only the hope that today, the hunters won’t find their prey. Mara presses her forehead to the cold stone, the satchel cradled in her arms, and waits.
Part III will draw Mara deeper into the hunt for the cure. Lines between friend and enemy blur. Whispers of the Index grow louder — maybe they hold the key. Maybe they’re another risk. All Mara knows is that alone, no one will survive what’s coming.
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