We’re not heading toward the kitchens.
We’re going deeper.
Lower levels. Medical bay.
The smell changes down here. Sterile. Burned-clean. Fear woven into the walls.
My gut twists.
Silpha pushes open a side door without bothering to knock.
Inside, a sour-faced medic looks up from his desk. His skin’s the gray-green shade of someone who’s been locked underground too long.
“Scan her,” Silpha orders, flat.
The medic grunts, waves me over.
I move stiffly, every joint screaming.
The scanner hums to life. Cold light sweeps over my body, pausing at my abdomen longer than the rest.
I catch the way his brows pinch.
Catch the flicker of something sharp in his eyes.
The scanner beeps once, final.
He glances at Silpha. Hesitates.
“What?” she snaps.
The medic clears his throat. “She’s... not just sick.”
Silpha stiffens. “Explain.”
He taps a few keys, brings up the readout on a grimy screen.
“She’s pregnant.”
Silence detonates in the room.
I feel the words hit me before they make any sense.
Pregnant.
It echoes like gunshots in my skull.
“No,” Silpha says, voice cold and sharp. “That’s impossible.”
The medic shrugs helplessly. “Scan doesn’t lie.”
Silpha wheels on me so fast I flinch.
Her face is twisted into something savage.
“You little whore,” she hisses. “You planned this.”
I stagger back a step, the walls tilting around me.
