Rain bounced off the sidewalk as the girl hurried into the doorway. Gaudy neon painted the backstreets red and green. Trash stuck to the wet sidewalks in a mosaic of neglect.

At any other time in the city's history, the sound of the rain would be drowned out by police sirens in such a neighbourhood, not so tonight, or any other night.

Pushing open the doors, the pregnant girl shook off the rain as best she could and smiled nervously at the bearded guy behind the counter.

'Hi, erm, I have an appointment with erm…..' fishing out a damp post-it,'....With Doc Renée?' She placed the note, alongside a pile of hundred dollar bills. The ancient President smiling goofily up at the beard.

'Old school cash! Cold, hard Donnies! Now where did a fine looking young lady get her hands on such a stack of shady underground money? Let me guess….180 Dodger?'

Cracked teeth showed through the matted beard in what she presumed was a grin.

'Renée……or am I taking Donald home?' She reached for the bills.

Beardy hurriedly scooped up the cash and shouted over his shoulder.

'Renée! Get out here Doc, you gotta customer!'

Her first impressions of the man were not good. Apart from the odours of Chill, contraband alcohol, and sweat coming from him, there was something dead in the man's eyes, something not quite normal.

Absent was the word that came to mind.

Not quite there in the moment, the way he stared over her shoulders, seemingly more interested in the weird artwork around his office, than her immediate needs.

She recognised prints from Dali, Magritte and Gleeson, the stranger ones, she had no idea.

Renée grinned through his matted facial hair, 'My passion, the beauty of the absurd, now, let Renée take a few samples and we'll be on our way. All good with the pregnancy, no problems?'

She nodded as she rolled her sleeve up and allowed him to take a blood sample.

'Good, good, now, if you lie down over here, Renée's gonna take a small sample from the baby, won't feel a thing, but you may feel a little pinching…'

The samples were placed in two separate centrifuges, then into a machine that beeped and glowed to itself: screens scrolled with what she presumed were DNA markers, she closed her eyes and hoped.

Forty minutes later Agent Grant slumped into her chair, the screen glowing green in her darkened living room.

She took another gulp of synthetic wine, ashamed of herself for consuming tranquillisers far into her pregnancy, but resigned to the fact that now it really didn't matter.

She threw the tablet onto the low table and went to bed.

In the gloom, green figures glowed ominously, the result of her very illegal prenatal scan.

'DDV balance of probability: 99.8%.'

Freewayriding