Two weeks had passed since the black van had swallowed the pregnant woman by the roadside — two weeks since her muffled scream was silenced under gloved palms.
In the underground corridors of Section Nine, the fluorescent lights flickered with a cold, clinical disinterest. Down here, time was measured not in days, but in heartbeats… and in how long a body could last under a scalpel.
The doctor's hesitation
Dr. Nera paused outside Observation Room C, clipboard in hand. Her eyes flicked to the notes:
Subject 27-B: Human, female, approximately eight months gestation.
Yet when she lifted her gaze through the small reinforced window, what she saw made her heart squeeze — though she quickly buried it under practiced detachment.
The woman, barely thirty, lay strapped to a gurney, ankles and wrists bound in padded restraints. Strands of sweat-soaked hair clung to her pale forehead.
And her belly… round, straining, as if pleading silently for the nightmare to end.
