I knew something was wrong the moment my sister decided to keep the baby.

  She announced it on a quiet Sunday morning, standing in my kitchen with a cup of coffee in both hands.

  “I’m keeping her,” Emily said.

  Not I’m pregnant.

  Not I need advice.

  Just that.

  I looked up from the newspaper slowly.

  “You already decided?” I asked.

  She nodded. The sunlight coming through the window caught in her hair. For a moment she looked almost peaceful.

  Too peaceful.

  “You didn’t even ask what I think,” I said.

  Emily smiled faintly.

  “I already know what you think.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  I had been an obstetrics nurse for seven years—seven years of night shifts, seven years of holding hands in delivery rooms, seven years of watching joy and tragedy unfold under the same fluorescent lights. When you’ve seen that much life begin, you learn to recognize the warning signs.

  And the moment Emily said she was pregnant, something inside me had already begun to worry.

  The ultrasound appointment was three weeks later. It was a cold October afternoon, rain tapping softly against the hospital windows.

  Emily lay on the examination table while the technician moved the probe slowly across her stomach. I stood against the wall with my arms folded, trying not to look nervous, trying not to think like a nurse—just a sister.

  The monitor flickered. A familiar grainy image appeared: black, gray, shifting shadows, the shape of a tiny body floating in darkness.

  The technician smiled politely. “There we go.”

  Emily turned toward the screen, eyes bright.

  “Oh my God… look. You can see the hands.”

  I stepped closer.

  At first everything looked normal—tiny arms, tiny legs, a small curved spine.

  But then something made my stomach twist.

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  There was something wrong with the edges of the image. Very subtle. Almost impossible to notice unless you’d seen thousands of ultrasounds before. The outline of the fetus wasn’t smooth. It was uneven.

  Tiny jagged shadows clung to the edges.

  Like something had been gnawing at the image.

  Or corroding it.

  I leaned forward slightly.

  “Can you zoom in?” I asked.

  The technician did. The image sharpened.

  The shadows became clearer.

  Sharp.

  Serrated.

  Like teeth.

  “Is something wrong?” Emily asked.

  The technician hesitated for a fraction of a second—the kind of hesitation patients rarely notice, but medical staff always do.

  “No,” she said quickly. “Everything looks fine.”

  I didn’t answer. Instead I looked down at the heartbeat monitor.

  The line moved steadily across the screen.

  Up. Down. Up. Down.

  Perfect rhythm.

  Too perfect.

  A normal fetal heartbeat has tiny irregularities. Life is messy, organic. But this—

  This looked mechanical.

  Like a metronome.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  A chill crawled slowly up my spine.

  “Emily,” I said carefully, “have you thought about maybe waiting a little longer before deciding?”

  Her head snapped toward me.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Just… more tests.”

  Emily pulled the ultrasound printout to her chest.

  “Lina, I’m thirty-eight,” she said. Her voice hardened. “This might be my last chance.”

  The technician pretended to adjust the machine. The room suddenly felt very quiet.

  I didn’t tell Emily what I was thinking. I didn’t mention the shadows, or the heartbeat, or the feeling sitting heavy in my stomach.

  Because sometimes instincts are wrong.

  Sometimes fear makes you imagine things.

  At least that’s what I told myself.

  The results came back two days later.

  Emily brought the ultrasound picture to my apartment. She stood in my kitchen again, just like before, holding the black-and-white image like it was something precious.

  “Look,” she said. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  I took the paper slowly, and the feeling returned instantly.

  Those jagged shadows were still there.

  Small.

  But unmistakable.

  “You see the little feet?” Emily said, her voice trembling with excitement.

  I swallowed.

  “Yes,” I said. “I see them.”

  But that wasn’t what I was looking at.

  Later that night I went back to the hospital.

  Technically I wasn’t supposed to access family medical records. But hospitals run on shortcuts. Everyone knows someone. Everyone occasionally looks the other way.

  The prenatal file opened on the computer screen.

  Blood tests: normal.

  Hormone levels: normal.

  Genetic screening—

  My heart skipped.

  High risk.

  I clicked the next report: amniocentesis results. A long string of genetic data appeared. Most of it looked ordinary.

  Until I reached Chromosome 7.

  There was a section the lab couldn’t identify.

  A block of code marked UNKNOWN SEQUENCE.

  My mouth went dry.

  At the bottom of the report was the chief physician’s note.

  Just one sentence.

  Clinical. Cold.

  Recommend termination of pregnancy.

  Extremely high risk of severe abnormalities.

  I stared at the screen for a long time.

  Outside the nurses’ station someone laughed. Phones rang. Monitors beeped.

  Life continuing as normal.

  But something inside me felt off.

  Like the world had shifted slightly out of alignment.

  Emily didn’t believe the report.

  Instead, she believed a psychic.

  Three months later, on a night of violent rain, the baby was born.

  And the first word she ever spoke was—

  “Fake.”