When the pregnancy test showed a double helix symbol under the ultraviolet light, Leila kicked the full-length mirror in the dressing room to pieces. In the shards of glass, she saw three hundred and sixty-five crying reflections of herself, each with a golden fetal glow in their abdomens.
"Congratulations," Spider Shadow used the tip of his spider leg to lift the test stick. "You're going to be a mother..." He suddenly tore open the skin on his left chest, revealing a mechanical heart containing a miniature embryo floating inside. "Or rather, we are all incubators."
The temperature in the refrigerated chamber spiked abruptly, and blood-red roses bloomed on the corpses' wedding gowns. As Leila crashed through a hidden door, she found that every jewelry safe in the wall was playing the same ultrasound footage—the embryo's chromosomes were consuming viral chains.
"Aidan's ultimate weapon," she ripped off part of her haute couture gown to bandage her wound, the lace fibers automatically stitching the wound closed. "Hiding antibodies within the egg cells—truly ingenious..." A sudden contraction dropped her to her knees, the scales on her palms entangling quantumly with Grey's claws.
Spider Shadow suddenly grabbed her by the back of the neck. "You should listen to your child's heartbeat." The instant his mechanical spider leg pierced her abdomen, Leila heard two heartbeats resonating in Morse code—the countdown from Aidan's lab.
As the refrigeration unit collapsed with a thunderous crash, she saw her pregnancy report manifesting in the flames: the conception date was the night she first met Spider Shadow. The corpses suddenly knelt in unison, revealing spider-shaped birthmarks beneath their wedding gowns, identical to hers.
"Mommy..." Grey emerged from the rubble, holding up a glowing embryo vault. "Want to play hide-and-seek?" The star map reflected on his scales matched the gene-editing pathways from Leila's thesis.