***
{Outside The Projection}
...What?
The hall couldn't understand.
The world couldn't understand.
And Layla… Layla least of all.
Pregnant? She had gotten pregnant?
The words hung obvious in their minds, unwilling to leave.
Heads turned toward the once pregnant lady in unison with a kind of stunned searching, as though if they stared long enough, the truth would slip from her lips.
Since when?
Since when had she been pregnant?
Was this some secret buried so deep that even time itself had forgotten it? Or was it another thing Malik had somehow managed to hide, weaving it away in the folds of his shadowed life?
But her face said everything.
That stunned, horrified stillness—her eyes wide but empty, her lips moving without sound, trying to piece together something that simply wasn't there.
'I… I don't remember this…'
And that was the worst part.
Layla didn't remember any of this.
