Chapter 32
(Cottle's POV)

"A needle?" I ask, realizing that there are some things I need to know and that I'm going to have no choice but to go digging for answers.

"Yes. The first time he did that was early in the morning the second day after he handed me over. I remember being restrained and I remember Leoben running his hand through my hair and telling me to hold still or I could end up really hurting myself but that's about it. I know it's not much to go on but..."

"Kara, this is important, what did he do with that needle?"

"I don't know, damn it!"

"Did he give you a shot?"

"No, it was..."

"It was what?"

"It wasn't that kind of needle... not exactly. It was attached to some sort of ultrasound machine or something like that and he..." she trails off, again, and all of a sudden I get a very bad feeling about this.

"An ultrasound? Was that needle used transvaginally?" I ask, point blank, wishing for the first time that we didn't have an audience for this but knowing that there's nothing I can do about it.

"Yes," she whispers.

"And he did this three times?"

"Yes."

"Okay, let me ask you a different question. A while ago you told us that even after those first few days, at times Leoben would take a greater interest in you... that at times it seemed like he couldn't keep his hands off of you and that this usually lasted for a few days."

"So?"

"Can you tell me how did those instances correlate with the times in which Simon took you to the medical facility? Did they match in some way?"

"I don't know."

"Could you at least try to think about it?" I push.

"I guess they kind of matched, but not entirely," she replies after thinking it over for a few seconds.

"What do you mean by 'not entirely'?" I prod, realizing that that statement can have two different meanings... and that the implications of those two possible meanings would in turn be completely different.

"Well, for the most part Simon seemed to do that when Leoben was taking a greater interest I guess, but not always."

"Not always?"

"Not really, I mean, now that I think about it he never did it without Leoben taking a greater interest in me, that is true, but I remember that once Leoben's interest spiked without Simon doing anything like that."

"I see, and let me ask you something else. You told me that before handing you over Simon gave you a shot, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then let me see if I've got this straight. You said that he handed you over to Leoben at night... and that the first time they took you to the center's medical facility was on the second morning after the handover, do I have the times right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So the first time he did that was somewhere between thirty-two and thirty-six hours after the handover?"

"I guess."

"And in the two other instances, do you remember Simon giving you a shot in a similar timeframe?"

"Yes, why?"

"Nothing."

"Don't you frakking lie to me! You know what he was doing, don't you?" she growls.

"I have a theory, yes," I admit.

"And?"

"And I don't think you want to know," I warn her, though I seriously doubt that is going to do me much good.

"Don't give me that crap! What was that bastard doing to me?" she insists and I can see that she is not going to let this go.

"I can't be sure, not entirely, but what you are describing sounds suspiciously like an ova retrieval to me."

"A what?"

"Now, this is just a theory and I could be completely wrong about it but your bloodwork when you first came in suggested that they had been giving you some pretty powerful fertility drugs to increase your chances of conceiving."

"Tell me something I don't know," she mutters.

"Well, in order to understand what they were doing first you have to understand how those drugs work and to do that you have to realize that each month your ovaries release a single egg," I explain.

"Believe it or not, I know that much," she says, rolling her eyes at me.

"Yes, well, but the thing is that even under the best of circumstances your chances of conceiving in any given month are roughly one in five, maybe one in four. Now, those odds are far from ideal and in a way there's not much you can do to change them --at least not directly-- but that doesn't mean they can't be tweaked in other ways. You see, the drugs they were giving you don't increase the chances that that one egg will be fertilized but instead they work by stimulating your ovaries to release more than one egg at a time and from then on it's simple math. If you have two eggs instead of one your overall chances of success go up to a little more than one in three. Three eggs and you are theoretically above the fifty percent line... in other words, the more eggs you have, the higher your chances that at least one of them will take.

"Of course, the downside of this approach is that by messing with the number of eggs your body releases each month those drugs also increase your chances of conceiving more than one baby and the bottom line is that the human body was not designed to carry litters. That means that a pregnancy with more than one foetus is not a desirable outcome and one with more than two is automatically deemed to be 'very high risk'... especially for the babies who are always premature.

"From a medical perspective that means that under normal circumstances, if you are going to either let nature take its course or use artificial insemination, a cycle in which more than four follicles have matured should probably be abandoned for safety's sake, however with a more invasive treatment --such as in-vitro fertilization, where the eggs are fertilized outside the body and can then be either re-implanted or frozen for later use-- that is not really an issue. In fact in those instances a surplus may actually be deemed a 'good thing' because you are then in a position to implant two or maybe three of those embryos, freeze the rest and, if that first batch doesn't take, implant the others as needed without having to go back in to collect any additional eggs beforehand."

"Okay, I get that, though I don't know what that has to do with me, doc. Believe me, the bastards were going with a traditional approach," she growls.

"Actually, I'm not so sure about that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we have to at least consider the possibility that the cylons may have been using a two-pronged strategy. Yes, they were going with a traditional approach, there's no question about that --and, by the way, if my suspicions are correct what triggered Leoben's heightened interest in you at those specific junctures probably had something to do with the fact that he knew that those were the days in which you would have been most likely to conceive-- but at the same time they may have been trying to get as many eggs to mature as possible and harvesting that 'surplus'. Remember that, unlike what would have been the case with a 'traditional' fertility treatment, they may have been trying to keep as many doors open as possible, to keep themselves from putting all their 'eggs' in one basket, if you will. After all, once those eggs had been fertilized then the resulting embryos could just as easily have been implanted into a surrogate and that in turn would have vastly increased their overall chances of success."

"And that's what you think they were doing?"

"I'm afraid so, yes," I admit.

"No, that can't be it... if that were the case then the instances would match and they don't. There was a 'missing' time, a time in which Leoben couldn't keep his hands off of me without Simon doing anything," she reminds me, shaking her head.

"And that could be easily explained by the fact that the effects of the drugs they were giving you are not entirely predictable so it wouldn't have been all that unusual for you to have had one cycle in which there were no surplus eggs for them to harvest in the first place. In fact that would fit perfectly seeing how they had you for four months but, going by what you've told me, they only seem to have harvested your eggs three times," I point out, even though I know this is the last thing she wants to hear.

"So they could still have...?" she trails off, looking horrified at the thought and I can do nothing but nod at that.