"She's… what?"
Kyle's voice came out lower than he intended, a fractured rasp that barely carried across the room.
Leila didn't repeat it immediately. She seemed to be weighing her words, choosing them with a precision that suggested even speaking them aloud might cause the ceiling to collapse under their weight. She let the silence linger for a heartbeat longer, as if trying to delay a truth that could not be undone.
"Pregnant," she said at last.
She followed it with a clinical explanation, an attempt to shroud the shock in medical logic. "It is in the very early stages… and easily overlooked given the sheer amount of physical and emotional trauma her body is enduring. But I am certain."
For a moment, the world seemed to stop. The air in the chamber grew suffocatingly tight, as though the walls were closing in, drawing the oxygen out of the room.
