Chapter 2
As it turned out, one million dollars might not even cover diapers, let alone formula.
My belly was expanding like a balloon, changing drastically by the day. Day one, I had a slight bump. Day three, I looked three months along. Within a week, I was the size of a woman ready to go into labor.
I was too terrified to even leave my apartment. The neighbors were already staring at me like I was a freak of nature.
It was growing way too fast. This completely defied human biology. If this kept up, my stomach was going to burst open.
Feeling terribly anxious, I used Ethan's money to visit the most exclusive private hospital in the city. I booked an appointment with their top specialist.
Ryker Hyde, a kind, silver-haired doctor, welcomed me in. He looked at my massive belly and down at the medical form where I had written that my last period was only a week ago. He adjusted his glasses, and his eyes were filled with gentle confusion.
"Ms. Bell, are you sure you have the dates right?" Ryker asked.
I shook my head with absolute sincerity. "I am perfectly sure."
Ryker sighed. "Given your size, it looks like you might be expecting multiples."
He printed out a referral. "Let us get an ultrasound to see how many babies we are dealing with here."
I clutched the paper and walked into the imaging room. The young ultrasound technician, Jaden Sharp, chatted with me casually as he set up the machine. "Lie back and pull your shirt up. Wow, you are huge. Congratulations. How many months along are you?"
I answered honestly, "One week."
His hand jerked, nearly dropping the ultrasound wand. He let out a snort of laughter. "You are quite the joker."
He squirted freezing gel onto my stomach and pressed the wand down. A second later, the smile completely vanished from his face.
The monitor did not show the one or two gestational sacs he was expecting. Instead, there was a dense, static-like haze. The entire screen was pitch black, thoroughly overrun by countless tiny, pulsing dots of light.
"What on earth is this?" Jaden screamed.
The color drained from his face. He rubbed his eyes hard and smacked the side of the machine. "Is it broken?" he muttered to himself, rebooting the system twice.
However, the image on the screen only grew sharper, brighter, and infinitely more chaotic. It was like staring into the heart of a star cluster through the Hubble telescope.
His hand began to tremble. A bead of sweat traced a path down his temple. In ten years of scanning pregnant bellies, he had never seen anything even remotely like this. This wasn't an obstetric sonogram; it was a deep-space anomaly.
"No way. This is impossible. It defies all laws of physics and biology."
His voice was a dry rasp. His finger hovered over another button, the one for the fetal doppler, the device that would amplify the sound of a baby's heartbeat.
Normally, a jagged line would trace across the screen, accompanied by the strong, rhythmic thudding of a heartbeat.
But the moment his finger pushed down, a deafening shriek of static ripped through the room.
The speakers did not broadcast a heartbeat.
Instead, they emitted a high-pitched buzzing, like a thousand bees swarming at once. It felt like my eardrums might tear.
The audio levels on the monitor spiked into the red, maxing out instantly. It was the sound of a machine being overwhelmed by an impossible amount of life force.
Then, with a loud pop, the monitor went completely black. A thin wisp of smoke curled up from the mainframe.
Jaden stared blankly at the million-dollar imported equipment and slowly shifted his gaze to my towering belly.
He slipped right out of his chair and collapsed onto the floor, whimpering as if caught in a nightmare, "A monster. It is a monster."