Hart rested a hip against the glass of the autodoc. “About three weeks in, when you were still having trouble keeping food down. Plenty of other signs. That cramp in your foot at dinner two weeks ago. Stiffness in your lower back. Rather moody, too, no offense.”

Naomi grimaced. “Do the others know?”

“Hard to say with Lebedeva—can’t tell what she thinks about breakfast, much less anything else. But I don’t think so. Jerrie hasn’t said anything to me. Black? Another who knows.”

Naomi swallowed.

“Let’s see if we’re right, shall we?” Hart drew up the results. Naomi leaned forward.

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG): Present

“Shit.” Naomi exhaled the word. The cover of the autodoc slid open and she sat on the white, ergonomic cushions, her legs swinging. She hunched over her stomach.

“How long?” Hart asked.

“Sixty-one days.”

An arched brow. “That’s exact.”

“It’s easy enough to pinpoint.”

Hart snorted but, mercifully, didn’t press for more details. She could do the math. The night before they left for quarantine. “Eight weeks is more than early enough for a scan.”

Naomi hesitated. “You need to scan me anyway, don’t you? Might as well.” She inhaled through her nose. “Don’t put it on official records.”

Hart pursed her lips. “Dr. Black will definitely find out sooner or later,” she said with a pointed look at Naomi’s still flat stomach.

Naomi said nothing.

“All right. Fine. Lie back.”

Naomi complied. She lay on the ergonomic cushions, hands at her side, staring up at the white ceiling. Hart lowered the door and the screen came over the glass, blocking the doctor from view. Naomi closed her eyes as the machine mapped out her insides. Eventually, the cover pulled back, revealing Hart and the too bright lights of the med bay.

Hart helped her up, and she projected Naomi’s body double on the white wall across from the autodoc. There were her muscles, her veins, laid out as if she had been flayed on the table.

Hart zoomed in on the womb.

There it was. A clear image; no grainy static of an ultrasound or strange, knobbly 3D scans. As big as a sweet pea. A tiny blob that looked like it could become anything. That early, a chicken and a human embryo were much the same. The bulbous, earless alien head, the lattice of veins like a leaf, the small buttons where the eyes would form. Nodules that would elongate into legs and arms. Its minuscule heart beat twice as fast as Naomi’s own. A small, doomed tail curled around the C-shaped body, an evolutionary leftover. All tethered back to her through the umbilical cord. An unexpected seedling that should never have been able to take root and could still float away like a blown dandelion.

Make a wish.