Months pass before my body fully recovers from the OHSS. But when Dr. Lopez clears us for embryo transfer, we're ready—not just medically, but emotionally. The forced break gave us time to process everything: the move, the legal persecution, the choice to fight back with science and community.
The cyborg has learned patience. The machine has integrated with the flesh. We are ready for the final protocol.
On transfer day, Marcus holds my hand as Dr. Lopez carefully places one of our genetically tested embryos. The procedure is quick, almost anticlimactic after everything we've been through. One tiny cluster of cells—optimized, selected, approved—sliding into the space Alabama tried to turn into a crime scene.
"Now we wait," she says, the same words that have marked every milestone of this journey.
But this wait feels different. More grounded. We've learned to hold hope lightly—not because we care less, but because we've discovered our own resilience. We've learned what it means to become more than human in order to stay human.
Two weeks later, we're back in the familiar office, but the dynamic has shifted. The air feels charged with possibility. Dr. Lopez walks in with a smile that reaches her eyes.
"Congratulations," she says simply. "You're pregnant."
The words hit me like sunlight after a long winter. Marcus's hand tightens around mine, and for a moment, we're both too stunned to speak.
Pregnant. In Chicago. In a state that protected our right to try. After fleeing Alabama's criminalization of our dreams. The cyborg has succeeded. The future has taken root.
You think this is the end of the story? This is just the beginning. This is where the personal becomes political, where one body becomes a statement about what's possible when communities refuse to let laws define their limits.
Months later, I'm in the delivery room, Marcus beside me, when we welcome our daughter. She's perfect—ten fingers, ten toes, a cry that announces her arrival to the world with authority. Born free in every sense that matters.
Holding her, I think about everything it took to get here. The move that felt like exile. The community that caught us when we fell. The science Alabama tried to ban. The faith that carried us through doubt. The networks that made the impossible feel inevitable.
"She's beautiful," Marcus whispers, tears streaming down his face.
I look at our daughter—this child who exists because we refused to let persecution win, because we found the courage to start over, because we learned that fighting for your family sometimes means leaving everything else behind.
"She's freedom," I whisper back.
Marcus reaches out to touch her tiny hand. "Amadi," he says softly. "Her name should be Amadi. It means free-born in Nigerian. Because that's what she is—truly free."
I nod, tears blurring my vision. "Amadi. Yes. That's perfect."
Free-born. Not just legally, but technologically. Born from the merger of flesh and machine, community and science, faith and resistance. Born from the future we built when the present tried to stop us.
This is what victory looks like in the post-natural world: not just a baby, but a statement. Not just a family, but a network. Not just survival, but transformation.
Amadi sleeps in my arms, unaware that she represents the triumph of love over law, community over control, hope over fear. She is the cyborg future made flesh—living proof that when they try to legislate our biology, we engineer our own evolution.