Rika and Max snap back to reality at the same time, their bodies tense, their minds still racing from what they just witnessed.
The air in the room feels thick, pressing against them, making it hard to breathe. For a moment, neither of them speaks, as if the weight of what they just saw is too heavy to put into words.
Ace steps forward, his eyes sharp. "What did you see?"
Jun, Rey, and Kieran are all watching them now, their expressions unreadable, but their posture tense.
Max swallows, looking at Rika. Do we say it out loud? Do we even understand what we saw? But there’s no way they can keep something like this to themselves.
"You’re not going to believe this," Rika says, still breathless. "We found her. The girl. But..." She hesitates. "She was somewhere we never expected."
Ace narrows his eyes. "Where?"
Max exhales. "Something like a hospital. But not just any hospital. It looked like some high-security medical facility."
"A hospital?" Jun frowns. "Why would she be in a hospital? Is she ready to deliver already?!"
Rika shakes her head. "That’s what we thought at first. But when we got closer, we realized it wasn’t just a place for treatment. There were no normal patients. No nurses walking around like in a public hospital. It felt... controlled. Guarded."
Ace stiffens. "What do you mean? Is it like a lab?"
"Yes," Max says firmly. "Am sure that was a lab. And what makes us doubt if we saw right is because of the people that were there with her!"
"Who?" Kieran asks.
Rika takes a deep breath. "Richard Crawford."
The room goes dead silent.
Ace’s breath hitches slightly. Kieran’s sharp gaze darkens. Jun shifts his weight, arms crossing over his chest, his expression tight. Even Rey looks unsettled.
But Marsel and Elira hardly registers.
"You mean the Richard Crawford?" Jun asks, voice laced with disbelief.
"The same Richard Crawford that runs the military?" Ace clarifies.
"Yes," Max confirms. "And he wasn’t alone. His wife was there too."
Ace’s expression hardens. "Adele Crawford."
Everyone in the room knows the name, except for Marsel and Elira.
The Crawfords are a powerful couple. Richard, the head of the military, is a public figure.
He’s been seen in interviews, shaking hands with world leaders, overseeing military operations.
His wife, Adele, is known to work for the government, but her exact position has always been vague- something about policy enforcement, security planning. Nothing concrete.
But this?
Seeing her inside a secret medical facility, dressed in a lab coat, running the place like she was in charge?
That was new. And deeply unsettling.
"What the hell were they doing there?" Kieran finally asks, his voice carrying the weight of barely contained suspicion.
Rika swallows, forcing herself to repeat the words that are still ringing in her head.
"Richard was yelling," she says. "He said, ’Adele, you cannot have our only child for a science test!’"
"OMG! Please tell me you are kidding! What you are trying to say is that the girl that Rehan got pregnant is Blake Crawford?!" Disbelief is written all over his face as he says this.
The words hang in the air like a curse.
Ace tenses, a storm brewing in his chest.
"Who are they?" Marsel finally asks.
"They are a powerful family who work in the government, the man is the head of the military. His wife works in something in the government too. And the girl... she’s their only child. That girl hardly shows up in the public, how the hell did Rehan meet her?!" Ace wonders after explaining.
Kieran, silent as ever, exhales through his nose, his jaw locked. "What I don’t understand is what they were doing in a lab like hospital. Are you sure that it wasn’t just a hospital?"
"No, it wasn’t." Rika says.
A science test?
"Then what the hell does that mean?" Rey demands.
"I don’t know," Rika admits, her voice quieter now. "But Adele- she wasn’t backing down. She told Richard that their daughter wasn’t carrying a ’normal’ baby. That they had to ’get it out before it was too late.’"
Ace clenches his fists. "She wanted to remove the baby?"
Rika nods. "Yes, Am telling you her belly is really huge, she’s really hurting. Adele said their daughter was two months pregnant, but her stomach looked like she was ten months along. And that she couldn’t stop writhing on the floor like a snake."
Jun takes a step back, rubbing his temples as if trying to process this.
"And the way she described it," Rika continues, her voice trembling slightly, "she made it sound like the baby was... growing too fast. Like something was wrong."
Max exhales. "Adele called her own daughter a... well, she said Blake was a slut, that she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant with a random person. Actually, I think Adele doesn’t care about her daughter, all she wants is do an experiment on her to see what she’s carrying, she seems to have passion in that kind of thing." He hesitates, shaking his head.
Another beat of silence.
Kieran finally speaks. "And Richard?"
"He was trying to stop her," Rika says. "He kept saying, ’She’s our child. You can’t do this. You can’t treat her like..." She pauses, the words too heavy. "Like an experiment."
Rey curses under his breath.
"So let me get this straight," Ace says, his voice low, controlled. "Richard Crawford... head of the military... was begging his wife, Adele, to stop treating their daughter like a test subject."
Max nods grimly.
Jun sighs heavily, "Well, I think we’re doomed. What if they are doing that experiment now? Does that mean we’ve lost the baby? And if they find out that what Blake is carrying is not a normal human, will they try to track down the man who got her pregnant? They won’t find him so they will keep looking till they find us who have that kind of blood? What now? Should we run?"
Ace exhales sharply, his mind racing. "I can’t believe Adele Crawford has been lying about her real job this whole time..."
"...or she’s part of something we were never meant to know about," Rey adds.
Ace exhales slowly.
This wasn’t just about a military leader’s daughter being pregnant.
This was about something bigger.
Much bigger.
Kieran, "We need to find out what that place is. What they’re doing. And most importantly- how to save the baby and the girl."
The room remains tense, the weight of their discovery pressing down on them. And they all realize the same thing at once.
They just uncovered something dangerous.
Something that could change everything.
And they were already in too deep to walk away.