What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 09:00 - 17:00 Wednesday 09:00 - 17:00 Thursday 09:00 - 17:00 Friday 09:00 - 17:00 Saturday 09:00 - 17:00

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StoriesNovelniches, Lagos (2026)

12/02/2026

Chapter 10

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The sirens that arrived an hour later weren't the clinical, silent predators of Vane Biotics. They were the state police and federal investigators, called in by the massive, automated data dump Huxley had triggered.

By dawn, the Vice Chairman and his mercenaries were in zip-ties, led away through the mud of the Vesper driveway. The "Gilded Cage" had collapsed, and the pieces were being collected as evidence.

Huxley sat on the porch steps, his shirt sleeves rolled up, watching the sunrise. For the first time in a decade, he wasn't checking a biometric monitor.

He didn't need to.

He felt... balanced.

Querida stepped out behind him, wrapped in her grandmother’s old wool shawl. The adrenaline had faded, leaving a hollow, bone-deep exhaustion in its wake. She sat beside him, their shoulders touching.

"It's over," she said, though it felt more like a question.

"The hunt is over," Huxley replied, looking at his hands.

"Vane Biotics will be tied up in litigation for the next twenty years. The patent is dead.

Anyone with the right equipment can synthesize the stabilizer now. I’m no longer a king, Querida. I’m just a man with a very expensive medical history."

He turned to her, his blue eyes softer than she had ever seen them.

"I transferred the remainder of the Vane family trust into a private account for you and Melinda.

Whatever happens, you’ll never have to play for a paycheck again."

Querida looked at the rolling hills of the valley. "Is that what you think this was about? The money?"

"It’s what everything is about in my world," he said, though he sounded like he didn't believe it anymore.

"Well, your world is gone," she said firmly.

She took his hand and placed it on her stomach. "This is the only world left."

As Huxley’s palm pressed against the fabric of her dress, he froze. His brow furrowed.

"What is it?" Querida asked, her breath hitching.

"Your pulse," Huxley whispered. "It’s not just yours anymore. And it’s not just the child’s. It’s... synchronized."

He stood up abruptly, reaching for the small portable scanner he had salvaged from the cellar.

He ran the sensor over her abdomen, his eyes scanning the readout with the same old, sharp intensity.

"The transfusion," he muttered. "The direct link we shared in the panic room... it did more than just stabilize me.

Because of your phenotype, your body didn't just filter my blood; it merged with the synthetic markers in my system."

"Is the baby okay?" Querida’s voice rose in panic.

"The baby is more than okay," Huxley said, showing her the screen.

"The child’s heart rate is perfect, but the DNA sequencing is showing something impossible.

The synthetic flaws in my genetic code, the ones that were killing me, have been repaired by your biological markers."

Huxley looked at the house, then at the man he used to be.

"The Board wanted to steal a donor," he said, a dry laugh escaping his throat.

"They didn't realize that by trying to kill us, they forced an evolution.

This child... aren't just an heir.

It's the cure. Naturally occurring, permanent, and living."

Querida felt a strange sense of peace.

The "medical error" wasn't a mistake anymore; it was a miracle of science and survival.

"So, what happens now?" she asked.

"Do we go back to the city? Do we hide?"

Huxley looked at her, then at the cello case sitting by the door. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his touch lingering.

"No more hiding," he said. "And no more cages. I think I’d like to hear you play something that isn't for my heart rate.

Something just for... us."

Querida smiled, the first real smile he had ever seen from her. She stood up, picked up her bow, and began to play.

It wasn't Bach. It was a new melody, one that was messy, beautiful, and vibrantly alive.

**************************************

Three Years Later

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The stage at Carnegie Hall was silent as Querida Vesper took her seat. She was no longer the struggling cellist in a drifted coat.

She was now a legend.

In the front row, a small boy with piercing turquoise eyes sat perfectly still, his small hand tucked into the hand of a man who looked younger, healthier, and more at peace than the "Ice King" of Vane Biotics had ever been.

As Querida drew the first note, the boy whispered, "Listen, Daddy. That’s the song about us."

Huxley Vane nodded, his eyes fixed on the woman on stage; the woman whose blood kept him standing, but whose heart had finally taught him how to live.

゚viralシfypシ゚

10/02/2026

Chapter 9

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The headlights of the tactical vehicles outside didn’t just illuminate the mist; they cut through the rotting wood of the farmhouse like scalpels. Huxley moved away from the basement window, his jaw set.

"Melinda, get the lights. Now!" Huxley commanded.

The house plunged into darkness, save for the rhythmic blue and red flashes reflecting off the peeling wallpaper.

Querida felt her heart hammering... not just her own, but a phantom echo of Huxley’s adrenaline. The connection from the transfusion hadn't faded; it had increased.

"They won't use heavy fire," Huxley whispered, crouching beside Querida.

"They can't risk damaging the 'biological assets.'

They'll use gas or stun rounds.

They want you alive, and they want the child intact."

"And you?" Querida asked, her fingers digging into his forearm.

Huxley’s eyes glinted in the dark; a predator's look. "I’m the only witness to forty years of corporate theft. To them, I’m the only thing in this house that’s expendable."

Melinda didn't panic. She moved to the old hearth and pulled a heavy iron lever hidden behind the mantle. With a groan of ancient gears, heavy steel shutters disguised as decorative wooden slats, slid over the ground-floor windows.

"Grandmother wasn't just a scientist," Melinda said, her voice steady. "She was a woman who knew someone was coming for her. This house is a fortress."

Huxley looked at the shutters, impressed. "It’ll buy us twenty minutes.

I need to get to the cellar’s transmitter.

If I can upload the contents of that journal to a public server, Vane Biotics' patent becomes worthless. The Board loses their motive to hunt you if the secret is free."

"You'd destroy your company?"

Querida asked.

"I’d burn the world to keep you in the light," he said, and for a heartbeat, the cold CEO was gone, replaced by a man who had finally found a cause worth dying for.

The sound started as a low hum, a sonic resonator. The steel shutters began to vibrate, the high-frequency pitch making Querida’s teeth ache and her vision blur.

"They’re bypassing the physical locks," Huxley hissed. He handed a small, compact pistol to Melinda.

"If they get through the floorboards, aim for the legs. Querida, come with me."

They retreated to the cellar.

The air was thick with the scent of old paper and the ozone of the ancient equipment.

Huxley slammed his tablet into the vintage terminal, his fingers flying as he attempted to bridge the gap between 21st-century encryption and 1980s hardware.

Upload Progress:
[ # # # # #-----] 52\%

Target: Global Open-Science Database

Status: Interference detected.

"They're jamming the uplink!" Huxley growled. "I need more power.

The house's generator isn't enough."

Querida looked at the old centrifuge, then at the cables running into the wall. She remembered the journal. The phenotype doesn't just stabilize the serum; it generates a specific bio-electric frequency.

"Huxley, the journal said the blood reacts to high-frequency sound," Querida said, her eyes wide.

"My cello. If I play the same resonance I used on the drone, but I do it near the copper coils of the old lab... can it boost the signal?"

Huxley looked from her to the wiring.

"It’s a long shot. It could blow the terminal."

"We don't have a choice!"

Above them, the front door gave way with a deafening boom. The sound of tactical boots hit the floorboards.

Melinda fired a shot, followed by a scream from above.

Querida grabbed her cello. She sat in the center of the cold cellar floor, surrounded by the ghosts of her grandmother's secrets.

She didn't play a melody. She played a single, sustained, agonizingly beautiful note.

Suddenly the copper coils in the walls began to glow a faint, ghostly blue.

As the note vibrated through the room, the upload bar on Huxley’s tablet flickered. 70\%... 85\%... 98\%.

"Almost there," Huxley whispered, his hand on Querida’s shoulder.

He could feel the vibration of the cello through her skin, a resonance that seemed to bridge the gap between his blood and hers.

The cellar door was kicked open.

A tactical team, led by a man in a high-end suit, the Vice Chairman of Vane Biotics stepped onto the stairs.

"Stop the music, Ms. Vesper. You’re worth billions. Don't make us decrease your value."

Huxley stood, his body a shield in front of Querida as she played the final, thundering note.

Ping.

Upload Complete. Public Access Granted.

Huxley lowered his gun and looked the Vice Chairman in the eye. "Too late, Arthur. The Vesper Phenotype is now public domain.

You don't own her. You don't own the child. And by tomorrow morning, you won't even own a stock option."

The Vice Chairman’s face turned a bruised purple. "You've ruined us."

"No," Huxley said, reaching down to take Querida’s hand as she finally let the bow fall.

"I've just made us human."

゚viralシfypシ゚

09/02/2026

Chapter 8:

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The escape from Vane Tower was a blur of shadows and screeching tires. Huxley had bypassed the main garage, leading Querida through a maintenance tunnel that smelled of damp concrete and ancient machinery.

They left in a nondescript, armored SUV black, silent, and scrubbed of any Vane Biotics branding.

As the neon skyline of Manhattan faded into the rearview mirror, replaced by the skeletal trees of upstate New York, the silence between them grew heavy.

Querida leaned her head against the cool glass of the window.

The transfusion had left her with a strange, buzzing energy. She could feel the rhythm of the car, the hum of the engine, and most unsettlingly she felt him. Every time Huxley shifted gears or checked the mirrors, a phantom twitch mirrored the movement in her own nerves.

"We’re crossing into the Hudson Valley," Huxley said, his voice raspy. He looked better than he had in months, the hollows of his cheeks filled in, his eyes alert. "Tell me about the estate."

"It's not an 'estate,' Huxley," Querida said, her voice small. "It’s a crumbling farmhouse with a leaky roof and a history of debt.

My grandmother left it to my sister and me. It’s the only reason I took your money to keep the taxes paid."

They pulled into a long, overgrown driveway three hours later. The house was a Victorian gothic structure, beautiful in its decay, wrapped in a shroud of winter mist.

As they stepped onto the porch, the front door swung open. A woman who looked like a more grounded version of Querida stood there, holding a heavy iron fire poker.

"Querida?" her sister, Melinda, gasped, dropping the poker. "The 'fellowship' people said you were in London.

They sent a check that cleared our entire mortgage. I thought..." She stopped, her eyes landing on Huxley.

"Who is he? And why does he look like he’s wearing your skin?"

"It's complicated, El," Querida whispered the fond name she called her sister, collapsing into her sister's arms.

Inside, the house was warm, smelling of woodsmoke and dried lavender. Huxley didn't sit. He moved through the living room with an investigator’s eye, stopping in front of a wall of old family photographs.

"Your grandmother," Huxley said, pointing to a grainy black-and-white photo of a woman in a lab coat. "What did she do?"

"She was a botanist," Melinda said, suspicious. "She worked for the university. Why?"

Huxley didn't answer. He followed a hunch, walking toward the basement door. He kicked it open, and the smell that wafted up wasn't mold; it was ozone.

Deep in the cellar, hidden behind a false wall of preserves, sat a workspace that mirrored the one in Vane Tower, though decades older.

There were hand-drawn charts of blood phenotypes and a small, primitive centrifuge.

"She wasn't just a botanist," Huxley whispered, picking up an old leather-bound journal. He flipped through the pages, his eyes widening.

"She was a hematologist. She wasn't studying plants; she was studying herself."

He turned the book toward Querida.

On the final page, there was a chemical formula one that looked terrifyingly similar to the serum Huxley had been using to stay alive.

"My grandmother didn't have a rare phenotype by accident," Querida realized, her voice trembling.

"She... she engineered it? In our bloodline?"

"She wasn't just hiding from the world," Huxley said, his gaze turning intense.

"She was hiding from my father. Vane Biotics didn't discover this phenotype, Querida.

We stole it forty years ago. And now, the blood is coming home."

Before Querida could process the betrayal of her own history, a low vibration shook the floorboards.

Huxley’s tablet chirped. He looked at the screen, his face turning to stone.

"They didn't just track the car," he said.

"They tracked the heartbeat."

"Who?" Melinda asked, clutching her sister's hand.

"The Board," Huxley replied, drawing his weapon. "They aren't coming for the CEO anymore.

They’re coming for the source. They’ve realized that the Vesper bloodline isn't just a donor; it’s the patent itself."

Outside, the mist was broken by the bright, artificial beams of tactical flashlights.

The farmhouse was surrounded.

゚viralシfypシ゚ #

09/02/2026

Chapter 7

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The panic room smelled of ozone and Querida’s perfume; a scent of sandalwood and old sheet music that now felt like Huxley’s only oxygen.

Huxley woke first.

The tremors were gone, replaced by a strange, humming vitality. He could feel it in his veins... a warmth that wasn't his own. He looked down at Querida, who was draped across his chest, her face deathly pale.

The transfusion line was still pulsing, a crimson bridge between their hearts.

He reached out, his fingers trembling not from illness, but from a sudden, sharp fear, and checked the line. It was finished. The automated system had capped the flow to prevent Querida from going into hypovolemic shock.

"Wake up," he whispered, brushing his thumb over her lower lip. "Querida, stay with me."

Her eyelashes fluttered. "Huxley?" Her voice was a ghost of a sound. "Is it... is it over?"

"The crash is over," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "But we’re still locked in."

A heavy thud vibrated through the reinforced door of the panic room. Then another. Someone wasn't using a keycard; they were using a thermal lance.

Huxley sat up, easing Querida back onto the pillows. He felt a surge of strength he hadn't possessed in years. It was the "Donor Effect"his body was running on her pristine, hormone-enriched blood. He felt faster, sharper, and utterly lethal.

He walked to the wall of monitors. The external cameras were still dead, but the internal motion sensors were screaming.

"Sterling," Huxley muttered, seeing a silhouette on the heat map. "He’s the only one who knows the thermal shielding of this room."

"Your head of security?" Querida gasped, struggling to sit up. "But he... he’s been with you for years."

"Which is why he knows exactly how much I'm worth dead," Huxley replied.

He reached into a hidden compartment below the monitor bank and pulled out a sleek, matte-black kinetic pistol.

The Face of the Traitor
The door hissed as the seals melted.

The heavy slab of metal slid open, revealing Sterling. He wasn't in his usual suit; he wore tactical gear, a gas mask pushed up onto his forehead.

Behind him stood two men Querida didn't recognize; mercenaries from a rival tech conglomerate.

"Huxley," Sterling said, his voice devoid of emotion. "I expected you to be a co**se by now. That girl must have a sturdier heart than we calculated."

"She has more than that, Sterling," Huxley said, stepping in front of Querida, shielding her with his entire body. "She has my blood in her. And I have hers."

"A touching sentiment. But the board has already signed the death certificate. We just need to collect the 'biological assets' for the transition."

Sterling raised a weapon. "Move aside. We only need her. The child’s DNA is more stable than yours ever was."

Huxley didn't fire. He smiled. It was a cold, terrifying expression that made Querida’s blood run cold.

"You forgot one thing about this room, Sterling," Huxley said. "I designed the software. And I don't just build cages. I build traps."

Huxley tapped a command on his wrist link.

The floor below Sterling’s feet didn't open, but the air pressure in the hallway suddenly tripled. A localized acoustic pulse; the same technology used in the drones, but amplified shattered the eardrums of the mercenaries. They dropped to their knees, screaming.

Sterling, shielded by his tactical helmet, lunged forward.

Huxley didn't use the gun. He met Sterling mid-air. The "Ice King" fought like a man possessed, his movements a blur of calculated violence. He used Sterling’s own momentum to slam him against the obsidian door frame, the sound of breaking bone echoing in the small room.

Within seconds, it was over.

The mercenaries were unconscious, and Sterling was pinned to the wall by Huxley’s forearm across his throat.

"You breathed my air," Huxley hissed into the traitor’s ear.

"You guarded my life while plotting to steal my child’s.

You don't get a trial, Sterling. You get erased."

Huxley didn't pull the trigger. He simply squeezed the pressure point at the base of Sterling’s skull until the man went limp.

He turned back to Querida.

He was breathing hard, a single drop of blood; Sterling’s or his own, he didn't know was on his cheek. He looked like a monster. He looked like a king.

Querida stared at him, her hand over her heart. She should have been afraid. But as Huxley dropped the gun and rushed to her side, falling to his knees to pull her into his arms, she realized the truth.

The cage wasn't for her protection anymore. It was the world that needed protecting from what Huxley Vane would do to keep her safe.

"We're leaving," he whispered into her hair.

"Tonight. This tower is compromised."

"Where?" she asked.

"To the only place they can't track us," he said.

"The Vesper family estate. We're going to your home, Querida. And we're going to win."

゚viralシfypシ゚

06/02/2026

Chapter 6

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The silence that followed the drone’s destruction was more terrifying than the alarm. Huxley’s breathing had transitioned from labored to a wet, rattling sound. His hand, still clasped in Querida’s, felt like ice.

"Huxley?" she whispered, the "Mr. Vane" formalities dying in the dark.

He didn't answer. His head slumped back against the marble pillar. The monitors on his wrist began to chime a frantic, rhythmic warning. Without the serum to bridge the gap between his failing biology and his heightened neural load, his heart was beginning to skip beats.

"The panic room," he managed to choke out, his eyes rolled back.

"Code... 9-9-Bach."

Querida hauled him up. He was a dead weight, his lean frame surprisingly heavy. She dragged him toward the obsidian desk, kicking the hidden panel he’d shown her earlier. The wall hissed open, revealing a small, clinical sanctuary filled with monitors and emergency medical supplies.

She got him onto the narrow cot. He was seizing small, localized tremors that racked his shoulders.

"Dr. Aris!" Querida shouted at the intercom. "Aris, answer me!"

"The signal is jammed from the outside," a voice crackled through the local terminal. It was Aris, but she sounded distant, panicked. "Querida? If he’s crashing, you have to use the manual bypass. The serum is contaminated; you can't use the bottled supply."

"Then what do I do?" Querida screamed over the sound of Huxley’s heart monitor flatlining for two-second intervals.

"You are the filter," Aris said, her voice breaking. "Your phenotype is the only thing that can stabilize him. You have to do a direct, arm-to-arm transfusion. Use the 'Emergency Link' kit under the cot. It’s a closed-loop system."

Querida looked at the kit. It wasn't a professional medical setup; it was a battlefield tool. Two needles. One tube.

Querida didn't hesitate. She didn't think about the risks to her own health or the tiny life inside her. She only saw the man who had, in the last hour, looked at her like she was the only fixed point in a spinning universe.

She found the vein in her own arm first. She was a cellist; she knew the geography of her body. She pushed in the needle, a sharp sting of iron and fire. Then, she took Huxley’s arm. His skin was so cold it felt like touching a stone at the bottom of a lake.

"Please," she whispered, guiding the second needle home. "Don't leave us."

As the pump whirred to life, she felt the pull. It was an agonizing, draining sensation; her life force being siphoned away. But then, she felt the return. The closed-loop system meant their blood was mixing, filtering through her liver and kidneys; which were currently boosted by pregnancy hormones and flowing back into him.

For a moment, the room vanished.

Querida felt a rush of Huxley’s memories, or perhaps just his sensations. She felt his coldness, his sharp, analytical fear, and the crushing weight of a legacy he never asked for.

And in return, she felt him receive her warmth, her music, and the vibrant, pulsing energy of the new life she carried.

The monitor stabilized.

゚viralシfypシ゚

04/02/2026

Chapter 5: Lockdown

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The high-pitched wail of the security alarm wasn't a sound; it was a physical assault. Red emergency lights replaced the sterile white glow of the medical suite, casting long, rhythmic shadows across the floor.

"Lockdown initiated," a calm, synthesized voice announced. "Level 90 is now sealed. External communications severed."

Huxley didn’t panic. He moved with a cold, practiced efficiency that suggested he had prepared for his world to end many times before.

He grabbed a tablet from the medical cart, his fingers flying across the screen.

"The elevator bank has been compromised," he said, his voice tight. "Someone is overriding the biometric bypass from the sub-level."

Querida sat up on the exam table, her hands instinctively clutching the hospital gown over her stomach.

"Who? Your board? The saboteur?"
"Does it matter?" Huxley turned to her. He looked at her bare feet, her trembling hands, and then at the ultrasound monitor which was still flickering with the image of that tiny, delicate heartbeat.

Without a word, he grabbed a discarded lab coat and draped it over her shoulders. "We have to move. My private study has a reinforced panic room, but we have to cross the open atrium to get there."

They moved through the darkened halls of the penthouse. The glass walls, which usually offered a view of the city’s freedom, now felt like a transparent cage. Outside, the rain lashed against the panes, blurring the lights of New York into a smear of neon.

Huxley kept his hand on the small of Querida’s back, guiding her. He was leaning on her slightly; the lack of his serum dose was beginning to show.

His breathing was labored, a thin sheen of sweat coating his forehead.

"You’re shaking," Querida whispered as they reached the edge of the glass-walled atrium.

"The serum's half-life is expiring," Huxley gritted out. "My nervous system is starting to misfire. Just... keep moving."

Suddenly, the sound of breaking glass shattered the rhythm of the rain. A heavy, metallic objecta; security drone, hacked and turned into a projectile had smashed through the far end of the atrium.

Huxley shoved Querida behind a structural pillar just as the drone’s rotors whirred back to life, its red optical sensor scanning the room for a heat signature.

"It's looking for me," Huxley whispered, his back against the cold marble. He was pale, his hand twitching uncontrollably now. "If it finds me, it’ll execute a lethal 'containment' protocol. It thinks I’m an intruder in my own home."

Querida looked at the drone, then at the man beside her who was literally coming apart at the seams. She looked at her cello, sitting in its case just ten feet away near the elevator doors.

"You said the music stabilizes you," she said, her voice steadying. "You said it’s mathematical."

"Querida, don't..."
She didn't listen. She waited for the drone to sweep its sensor toward the kitchen, then she bolted. She grabbed the cello case and dragged it back behind the pillar, the heavy wood thudding against the floor.

"If I play," she whispered, "the drone’s acoustic sensors might prioritize the sound frequency over the thermal scan. It’s an old security exploit high-frequency resonance can 'blind' certain Vane models."

"It's a su***de mission," Huxley gasped, his eyes wide.

"No," she said, pulling the cello out.

"It’s a performance."

She didn't sit. She stood, bracing the cello against her hip, and drew the bow across the strings. She didn't play Bach. She played a piercing, high-altitude minor chord that vibrated through the very floorboards.

The drone froze. Its sensor turned toward the source of the sound. The frequency was so pure, so intense, that the drone’s internal gyroscopes began to whine in protest.

Huxley watched her. In the strobe-like flash of the red emergency lights, Querida looked like a goddess of war, her hair flying as she poured every ounce of her fear and her newfound maternal rage into the strings.

As the drone’s logic circuits struggled to process the overwhelming acoustic data, Huxley saw his opening.

He lunged forward, grabbing a heavy decorative bronze bust from a pedestal and hurled it with the last of his strength.

The bust collided with the drone’s central processor. The machine sparked, spun wildly, and crashed into the glass floor, its red eye fading to black.

Silence returned, heavier than before.

Huxley collapsed against the pillar, his heart hammering visible against his ribs. Querida dropped the bow, her breath coming in jagged gasps.

He looked up at her; this woman he had bought, this woman he had accidentally tied to his bloodline...and for the first time, he didn't see an asset.

He saw a partner.

"You saved me," he wheezed.

"I saved my child's father," she corrected, though she didn't pull away when he reached out and took her hand. "There’s a difference."

"Not to me," Huxley whispered, pulling her down until they were both sitting on the floor amidst the glass shards and the ghosts of his empire. "Not anymore."

゚viralシfypシ゚

02/02/2026

Chapter 4: The Golden Cage

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The morning sun hit the glass walls of the West Suite with a blinding, clinical glare.

Querida hadn't slept.

She had spent the night curled in the armchair, the cello case standing guard beside her.

She looked at her stomach. It was flat, unchanged, yet it felt like a ticking time bomb.

The "medical error" Huxley described felt like a ghost story, yet the way her body felt... the heaviness in her limbs, the heightened scent of the expensive lilies in the vase across the room told her it was all too real.

A soft chime echoed.

The door didn't slide open; instead, a small service portal at the base of the wall hissed, and a silver tray slid through.

Organic poached eggs (high choline for neural development).
Steel-cut oats with manuka honey.
A green juice that smelled intensely of kale and iron.

A single, unmarked white pill.

"I’m not taking that," Querida said to the empty room.

"It’s a prenatal vitamin with a synthesized stabilizer," Huxley’s voice came through the room’s hidden speakers.

It was crisp, as if he were standing right behind her. "Eat, Querida. You’re eating for three now: yourself, the child, and indirectly... me."

She looked up, searching for the camera. "I want to speak to a lawyer.
Or my sister.

You can't just keep me here based on a lab mistake."

"The mistake is being rectified by the best legal and medical minds in the country," the voice replied. "Until then, your sister has been told you’ve accepted an international touring fellowship.

Her rent for the next year has been paid in full."

Querida felt a chill.

He was erasing her.

He was smoothing over the edges of her life until she only existed within the confines of Vane Tower.

The door finally opened.

It wasn't Huxley, but Dr. Aris, accompanied by two security guards who took positions outside.

Aris looked frazzled, her lab coat wrinkled.
"We need to do an ultrasound," Aris said, skipping the pleasantries. "Mr. Vane is... insistent on visual confirmation."

The Heartbeat
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The "medical suite" was a room hidden behind a bookshelf in the library.

It was filled with equipment that looked decades ahead of any hospital Querida had ever seen.

As the cold gel hit her skin, Querida squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to hate this. She wanted to believe it was all a corporate trick.

"There," Aris whispered.

Querida opened her eyes. On the monitor, amidst the gray and black static of her own body, was a tiny, rhythmic flicker.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

It was the fastest, most delicate sound she had ever heard. It was more rhythmic than Bach, more complex than any concerto.

"Is that...?"

"The heart," a new voice said.

Huxley was standing in the shadows of the doorway. He wasn't looking at the charts or the data. He was staring at the screen with an expression Querida couldn't decipher.

It wasn't the look of a CEO checking an asset; it was the look of a man seeing a ghost.

"It’s 6.1 millimeters," Aris noted.

"Perfectly healthy. But Mr. Vane, the serum... we have a problem."

Aris pulled up a second screen, showing a chemical breakdown of the blood they had drawn the previous evening.

"Someone didn't just 'glitch' the lab logs on the twelfth," Aris said, her voice dropping to a fearful pitch.

"The nutrient line in your personal serum supply has been spiked with a low-grade hormonal inhibitor.

It’s designed to be undetectable, but with the pregnancy hormones in Querida's blood reacting to it... it's showing up like a flare in the dark."

Huxley moved toward the screen, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.

"Someone is trying to induce a miscarriage before we even knew there was a child."

"Not just that," Aris added. "If the inhibitor reacts with your next dose, Huxley, it won't just stabilize you.

It will shut down your respiratory system.

They aren't just trying to kill the heir.

They're trying to kill the CEO."

Huxley turned toward Querida. The clinical distance was gone. He walked to the exam table and, for the first time, he didn't just touch her pulse. He placed his hand over hers. His palm was burning hot.

"The gilded cage just got a lot smaller, Querida," he said, his voice a low growl. "You aren't leaving this floor. Not for the conservatory, not for the sun.

Someone inside these walls is a murderer, and they think you're my greatest weakness."

He looked at her, and for the first time, Querida saw the "Ice King" crack.

"They’re right," he whispered.

゚viralシfypシ゚

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