The evening had been oddly quiet — a rare thing in Night City. A couple of mercs had dropped by earlier, asking about Sandevistans. One kid stumbled in with a ruptured eardrum, said Mox had screamed at him — a ten-minute fix with a basic auditory graft. For a moment, Vik even dared to think the city had taken a damn day off.

So when she stepped through his clinic door, he felt it twice over — relief, and something warmer. A familiar face he didn’t realize he’d missed. Something real in a day that felt like smoke and reruns.

Same routine. Another tangle with who knew which gang this time. Vik had already laid out the tools, the scanner blinking to life as she eased herself into the ripperdoc chair, the synthetic leather sighing under her weight.

“Let’s have a look,” he murmured, voice low and easy, already sliding a stabilizer into his working arm. It clicked into place with a soft hiss. His eyes never left the monitor as data began to flood the screen.

“Not too bad today,” he whistled under his breath, fingers gliding across the interface with the practiced calm of someone who’s stitched up half the city. “Contusion on the right forearm, bone’s fine, nothing we can’t patch up. Mmm... broken finger, but I already know you’re not gonna let me splint it properly.”

He tapped and rotated the imaging feed, brow furrowed but calm.

“Hairline fracture in the rib, too. Small. You’ve walked away from worse.”

Then he paused.

Just for a second, but enough. His finger hovered mid-air. The flicker in his breath. The soft narrowing of his eyes. He zoomed in — closer, slower now — adjusted the contrast. His hand reached to remove his glasses, and he sat back in the chair, spine straightening.

No words, not yet. Just a beat. Then another.

“...Huh.”

He glanced at her, then back at the screen. Ran a secondary diagnostic, double-checked the bloodwork.

He waited for the results to confirm what his gut already knew.

She was pregnant.