Chapter 18: Panic Room Confessions
The gentleness lasted until morning.
Levi woke to the sound of retching. He was on his feet before his eyes fully opened, following the harsh, choking noise to the bathroom. Aria was on her knees, braced over the toilet, her body convulsing with dry heaves. Nothing but acidic bile came up, painting the bowl in thin, yellow strands. Her skin was clammy, her knuckles white where she gripped the porcelain.
He wet a cloth, knelt beside her, and held it to the back of her neck. She flinched at the coolness. “Again?” he asked, his voice rough with sleep.
She nodded miserably, spitting into the bowl. “It won’t stop. It’s just… empty.” A fresh wave hit her, bending her double. Her body strained, producing nothing but painful, hollow contractions. Levi’s hand moved in slow circles on her back, his expression grim.
Eren appeared in the doorway, hair wild, alerted by the sounds. “Still?”
“It’s stress,” Armin stated from the hall, already typing into his phone. “A severe somatic manifestation. The events of the last 48 hours, combined with the extreme physiological overload last night…” He trailed off, reading. “We should monitor her hydration. Electrolyte depletion is a risk.”
“It’s not stress,” Aria whispered, slumping against the tub, exhausted. She felt hollowed out, scraped raw. A deep, unfamiliar wrongness had settled in her core. This wasn’t the sharp, explosive panic of a seizure. It was a slow, gnawing revolt. “This feels different. It feels… internal. Like my body’s fighting something.”
Levi helped her to her feet, steadying her as she swayed. She brushed her teeth, the mint making her gag again. She caught his reflection in the mirror, watching her with the focused intensity he usually reserved for threat assessments.
“We have the intercept in forty-eight hours,” Eren said, his voice low. “She can’t be like this.”
“She won’t be,” Levi said, but it sounded like a wish, not a certainty.
The day passed in a nauseated haze. Aria tried sips of water, crackers, the bland remedies Armin researched. Everything came back up. The smell of coffee Eren made sent her stumbling back to the bathroom. The sight of the half-cleaned rug made her stomach twist. She was a liability in a silk kimono, huddled on the couch, a trash can by her feet.
Levi paced. Armin dove into medical databases, cross-referencing symptoms with historical accounts of soldier fatigue, with nothing conclusive. Eren cleaned his guns with a violent precision, the scent of oil and metal barely masking his simmering frustration.
By late afternoon, a new fear had taken root in Levi’s eyes. A cold, clinical suspicion. He watched Aria curl into a ball, clutching her stomach, and a possibility—terrible and mundane—occurred to him. Their world hadn’t had reliable medicine. Their lives had been too short, too brutal, for certain concerns. But this world did. And they had not been careful.
He pulled Armin into the office, closing the door. “The vomiting. The sensitivity to smells.”
Armin blinked, then understanding dawned, his analytical mind rapidly calculating cycles, dates, probabilities. “You think it’s gestational.”
“It’s a possibility we have to eliminate.”
“The timeline is plausible,” Armin conceded, pulling up a calendar. “But her cycle has been irregular since the displacement. Stress-induced amenorrhea is common. The data is inconclusive.”
“We need data that isn’t inconclusive.”
They stared at each other, two strategists from a brutal past faced with a profoundly ordinary mystery. The tools of their old world—heightened senses, blade work, tactical formations—were useless here.
Aria, sensing the hushed conference, felt a separate, chilling dread. She knew what they were thinking. The idea was absurd, terrifying. A child? Here? Now? Her body couldn’t even keep water down. The thought of something growing inside her amid this chaos, this hunted existence, made the nausea surge with a fresh, psychological ferocity.
She needed an anchor. Someone from this world.
She waited until Levi and Armin emerged, their faces carefully neutral. “I’m calling Maya,” she announced, her voice thin but firm.
Levi’s jaw tightened. “Aria.”
“She’s my friend. She’s a normal person. She gets flu shots and annual physicals and knows what a fucking vitamin is.” Aria’s hand trembled as she reached for her rose-gold phone. “I’m not asking. I’m telling you. I’m calling her.”
Levi held her gaze for a long moment, then gave a single, sharp nod. “Keep it vague.”
Maya answered on the second ring. “Hey, sparkles! I was just about to text. You will not believe the drama at—”
“Maya,” Aria interrupted, her voice cracking. “I… I don’t feel good.”
The chatter on the other end died instantly. “Okay. What’s up? Fever? Throat?”
“No. It’s… I’ve been throwing up. For like, twelve hours straight. Can’t keep anything down. Smells are killing me. Everything smells like… danger.”
“Oh, honey. Sounds like a nasty bug. Or maybe food poisoning? Did Levi try to cook something fancy with raw fish again?”
“It’s not that.” Aria took a shuddering breath. She could feel Levi and Eren listening, could see Armin poised as if to intercept misinformation. “It’s different. It feels deep. And I’m… scared.”
Maya’s tone softened completely, becoming warm and practical. “Alright, listen. First, you need Pedialyte. The clear kind. Sips, tiny ones, every ten minutes. If you can’t keep that down, it’s ER time for IV fluids, no arguments.” There was a pause. “Aria… is there a chance you could be pregnant?”
The word hung in the silent living room, heavy and surreal.
“I don’t know,” Aria whispered, her eyes finding Levi’s. “Maybe? We don’t… track things like that. It wasn’t something we ever really had to think about before.”
A longer pause from Maya. She knew the ‘before’ was a haunted, sealed room she wasn’t allowed into. “Right. Okay. Well, that’s step two. You need a test. Like, today. Do you want me to bring one over?”
“Yes.” The answer was immediate, desperate. “Please. And the… Pedialyte stuff.”
“I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t panic. We’ll figure this out.”
The call ended. The silence that followed was thick with unspoken history. Pregnancy. The continuation of a bloodline. In their old world, it had been a hope, a tragedy, a logistical concern for the survival of the species within the Walls. Here, in this soft, safe, terrifying future, it was a personal crisis that could be determined by a plastic stick from a drugstore.
“She’s coming,” Aria said, stating the obvious.
Levi just walked to the kitchen and began cleaning surfaces that were already spotless.
Maya arrived with a cheerful tote bag, breaking the tense atmosphere like a sunbeam through smoke. “Delivery service for the perpetually queasy!” she announced, hugging Aria carefully. She nodded at the three men, who stood like statues in various poses of looming concern. “Levi. Eren. Armin. You all look like you’re planning a siege. It’s probably just a stomach flu.”
She pulled out a box of electrolyte drinks, a sleeve of plain crackers, and a small paper bag. She handed the bag to Aria. “Go on. Bathroom. We’ll know in three minutes. Instructions are inside.”
Aria took the bag as if it were a live grenade. She retreated to the bathroom, locking the door.
In the living room, Maya smiled brightly at the three warriors. “So. Anyone want to tell me what’s really going on? Because Aria doesn’t get this freaked out over puking. And you three look like the world’s hottest, deadliest triage nurse convention.”
Levi ignored her, his eyes fixed on the hallway. Eren glared at a fixed point on the wall. Armin adjusted his glasses.
“It’s complicated,” Armin offered.
“Uh-huh. You’re from, like, a secret military cult dimension, you’re all secretly married to each other, and Aria might be having an alien time-displacement baby. I watch TV. I can keep up.”
Eren snorted despite himself. Levi’s mouth twitched, almost a smile.
In the bathroom, Aria followed the instructions with shaking hands. The plastic stick felt absurd. She set it on the edge of the sink and sank to the floor, back against the door, waiting. The three minutes stretched into an eternity. Her mind spun. A baby. Levi’s child. A tiny, fragile thing in this world of smart fridges and unseen enemies. A target. A miracle. An impossibility.
A soft knock. “Time’s up, sparkles.” Maya’s voice, gentle through the door.
Aria stood, her legs numb. She looked at the stick.
One line.
Not pregnant.
A wave of pure, dizzying relief washed over her, so potent it nearly knocked her over. Followed immediately by a confusing, sharp pang of something else—disappointment? Grief? She couldn’t name it. She unlocked the door and emerged, holding the stick out like evidence.
Maya took it, glanced, and smiled. “Okay. One crisis averted. Just the regular, old-fashioned feeling-like-death-warmed-over crisis to deal with.” She wrapped an arm around Aria’s shoulders. “See? Not the end of the world.”
But Levi was watching Aria’s face, seeing the turmoil that the single line did not resolve. The primary threat was eliminated, but the mystery remained. And in his experience, mysteries that involved his people’s bodies behaving strangely were never benign.
“So, it’s a bug,” Eren said, some tension leaving his shoulders.
“Or,” Armin said, his voice quiet but carrying, “it is something else entirely.” He turned to Maya, his blue eyes earnest. “You said ‘time-displacement baby’ as a joke. But what if the displacement itself is a factor?”
Maya’s cheerful facade faltered. “What do you mean?”
“We aren’t from here,” Armin said, stating it plainly for the first time to an outsider. “Our biology evolved in a different… context. Different pathogens, different environmental pressures. Our arrival here was not natural. What if our immune systems, our very cellular structures, are reacting to this timeline in ways modern medicine has no framework for? We are anomalies. This illness could be Aria’s body attempting to reconcile an impossible historical dissonance.”
The room went very quiet. Maya stared at him, then at Levi, then at Eren, the joke dying on her lips. She saw it then, not as a quirky metaphor, but as a stark, terrifying reality in their eyes. These weren't just weird, intense guys. They were relics. Living fossils. And one of them was sick.
“Oh,” she said softly. “So… not a bug.”
“No,” Levi said, his gaze finally leaving Aria to settle on the forgotten test in Maya’s hand. “It’s not a bug.” He looked at Aria, pale and trembling in her kimono. “It’s a signal. And we have no idea what it’s trying to say.”
The relief was gone. A new, deeper dread took its place, cold and formless. The intercept for Liora was in two days. And now, Aria was coming apart from the inside, not from fear, but from the simple, horrifying fact of being out of time.
The silence that followed Armin’s theory was thick enough to choke on. Maya stared at the plastic stick in her hand, the single line now seeming absurdly inadequate, a relic from a simpler world that didn’t apply here. Her cheerful practicality finally cracked, revealing the unease underneath.
“Okay. Okay, wow.” She ran a hand through her hair, exhaling slowly. “So we’re in uncharted medical territory. With people who are basically humanoid historical artifacts. Cool. Super cool.” She looked at Aria, who was swaying slightly on her feet, her face a mask of exhausted fear. “But let’s not jump to ‘cellular dissonance’ just yet. There’s still a way more boring, way more likely explanation.”
Levi’s eyes were chips of obsidian. “Which is?”
Maya gestured vaguely between Aria and the three men with a wry, strained smile. “Or. More likely because you idiots fuck like rabbits, it’s too early for a test to come back positive.” Maya says. She held up the test. “This isn’t a magic oracle. It measures a hormone. It takes time to build up.”
“That’s a thing?” Eren asks, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. This new world’s trivialities still tripped him up.
“Yeah most women don’t test positive the first test.” Maya says, her voice softening as she addressed his ignorance. “You need to wait a few days, test again with first-morning pee. Basic biology, even for time-displaced super soldiers.”
The new possibility, mundane and biological, hung in the air. It didn’t erase the other, darker theory, but it lay over it like a familiar blanket. Aria felt another swell of nausea, unrelated to any hormone. It was the sheer, overwhelming weight of not knowing. Was her body betraying her because of some arcane temporal sickness? Or was it the terrifyingly ordinary consequence of love in a safe, soft world she was never meant to have?
Levi moved first. He went to the kitchen, yanked open a drawer, and pulled out a small, black notebook. He ripped out a blank page and grabbed a pen. “Tell me exactly what to buy,” he said to Maya, his voice leaving no room for argument. “Brands. Types. Everything.”
While Maya listed products, Armin sank onto the couch, his fingers already flying over his laptop keyboard. “I am compiling every piece of data on our physiologies since arrival,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone. “Resting heart rates, metabolic changes, sleep patterns. There must be a baseline anomaly we’ve missed.”
Eren watched Aria, who had slid down to sit on the floor, her back against the wall. She looked small, swallowed by Levi’s t-shirt and the enormity of the problem. He crouched in front of her, his usual fury banked to a low, smoldering concern. “Hey,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Look at me.” She did, her eyes wide and glassy. “You’re not gonna dissolve into time dust or whatever the fuck Armin’s cooking up in his head. We’ll figure this out. Then we’re getting Liora. In that order.”
His certainty was a rock. She nodded, a tiny, brittle motion.
Levi returned, the list in hand. He looked at Eren. “You’re with me.” It wasn’t a request. They needed supplies, and Levi wouldn’t go alone, not with the threat of the van still lingering. He glanced at Armin. “Monitor her. Log everything. Any change.”
Armin nodded, not looking up from his screen. “I’ve already started a symptom timeline.”
Levi’s gaze finally landed on Aria. It wasn’t soft. It was forged steel, unwavering. “You will drink what Maya tells you to drink. You will rest. You are not allowed to fall apart until we have more data.” He said it like an order, and in the command, she found a sliver of solid ground. Being told what to do was a relief.
He and Eren left, the door closing with a definitive click. The sound seemed to siphon some of the tension from the room, leaving behind a different kind of quiet, filled with the hum of Armin’s laptop and Maya’s soft instructions as she coaxed Aria to sip the electrolyte drink.
After a while, Maya spoke again, her voice hesitant. “Armin? That… other idea. The time sickness thing. Is that even possible?”
Armin stopped typing. He looked over the top of his screen, his blue eyes serious. “We exist. Therefore, every previous law of physics and biology has, in some way, been violated. ‘Possible’ has a new definition for us. Likely? I have insufficient data.” He went back to his work. “But fear is a potent catalyst for somatic symptoms. We cannot discount the psychological component.”
Aria leaned her head back against the wall, the cool plaster a relief. She felt like a museum exhibit and a science experiment. A beloved toy, a strategic variable, and now, a possible biological anomaly. The thought ‘pregnant’ flashed again, bright and terrifying. A life. A tiny, fragile chain tethering them all to this future forever. The nausea rose, a warm, acidic tide.
She scrambled up, a hand clamped over her mouth, and ran for the bathroom. This time, it was just dry, wrenching heaves that left her shaking and spent. She rinsed her mouth, the sour taste a constant companion now. When she emerged, Maya was waiting with a fresh glass of the clear, sweet liquid.
“Sip,” Maya said, her tone leaving no room for refusal. “Even if you puke it up in five minutes, something might absorb.”
Aria obeyed, the liquid chilling her throat. She wandered back to the living room, but didn’t sit. She stood by the window, watching the empty street. The normalcy of it—a neighbor walking a dog, a car driving past—felt like a taunt. Her body was a warzone, and outside, the world just carried on.
The front door opened. Levi and Eren returned, a plastic bag dangling from Levi’s hand. He placed it on the kitchen counter with a quiet finality. It contained three different brands of pregnancy tests, a bottle of prenatal vitamins, and a box of ginger chews.
“Covering all bases,” Levi stated, his voice devoid of inflection. He looked at Aria. “You test again in the morning. Until then, you are on bed rest. No arguments.”
It was a plan. A simple, stupid, mundane plan. Test, wait, see. It felt entirely insufficient against the vast, unknown threat Armin theorized, and against the more immediate, visceral terror of the coming rescue mission. But it was action. It was a next step.
Aria nodded, mute. She took the bag and retreated to Levi’s bedroom, to the bed under the faded Survey Corps posters. She curled on her side, facing the framed photo of her younger self, a girl who knew nothing of time or nausea or the weight of a single pink line.
She heard the low murmur of voices from the living room—Levi’s curt commands, Armin’s data-stream explanations, Eren’s frustrated interruptions, Maya’s calming interjections. They were strategizing. About her. About Liora. About battles on two fronts, one cellular, one criminal.
Her hand drifted to her stomach, flat and tense beneath the soft cotton of the t-shirt. Was there a cell, dividing? Or was her DNA itself unraveling, unable to reconcile the past with the present? She closed her eyes, the debate swirling in her mind until it blurred into a formless, churning dread.
The only thing that was certain was the pounding of her own heart, a frantic drumbeat marking time in a body that no longer knew what time it was. Tomorrow, she would pee on another stick. Tomorrow, they would finalize plans to take a truck driver. But tonight, in the dark, she was just a collection of malfunctioning symptoms, waiting for a sign.
But tonight, in the dark, she was just a collection of malfunctioning symptoms, waiting for a sign.
Morning light, sharp and accusing, cut through the gaps in the blinds. Aria’s mouth tasted of metal and defeat. The nausea was a low, grinding constant, a background hum she’d learned to breathe through. She moved through Levi’s sterile bathroom on automatic pilot, her hands clumsy on the foil-wrapped stick. The process was absurdly mundane. She peed, capped the stick, laid it on the edge of the sink. She didn’t look. She brushed her teeth, the mint triggering a fresh gag that she swallowed down with a practiced effort. She washed her face, the water cold on her wrists.
When she finally picked up the test, her hands were steady. She looked.
Two lines.
One was faint, a ghost of a line, but undeniably there. A plus sign. Positive.
The world didn’t spin. It just… solidified. It became real, this terrifying possibility that had been whispering in the corners of her mind since the first wave of sickness. She stood there, frozen, the plastic stick feeling like it weighed a hundred pounds. A baby. Levi’s baby. Growing inside her while another part of their family was trapped in a refrigerated truck heading for a port.
The door clicked open behind her. Levi stepped in, his presence immediately filling the small space. He was dressed in dark, practical clothes, his hair still damp from a shower. He carried the sharp, clean scent of soap and his cologne, the expensive one she’d picked out for him last Christmas.
It hit her like a physical blow.
A wave of pure, violent revulsion twisted her gut. The scent, usually a comforting anchor, smelled like chemical flowers and rotting citrus. It was cloying, overwhelming, vicious. She gagged, her hand flying to her mouth.
“Your cologne smells so gross right now,” she muttered, turning her face away, breathing through her mouth.
He stopped, his sharp eyes taking in her posture, the test clutched in her hand, her pale face. Confusion flickered across his features, quickly masked by concern. “It’s just… my same cologne. The one you insisted on buying.”
From the living room, Maya’s voice, bright and decisive, cut through the tension. “Oh, she’s definitely pregnant if she’s saying your cologne stinks!”
The words hung in the steamy air. Levi’s gaze dropped to the test in Aria’s hand. He didn’t need to ask. Her face, a mask of shock and sickness, told him everything.
He took two slow steps forward, plucked the stick from her numb fingers, and looked at it himself. His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes shifted, a calculation being performed at lightning speed. Threat assessments. Timelines. Logistics. The safety of a person who didn’t exist yet, weighed against the life of one who did.
“Okay,” he said, his voice low and utterly calm. He set the test down on the counter with deliberate care, as if it were a live wire. “Okay.” He turned on the tap, rinsed his hands, dried them on a towel. Every movement was controlled, precise. He then turned to her, his hands coming up to frame her face. His thumbs brushed her cheeks. “How do you feel?”
The question was so vast it was meaningless. She felt everything. She felt nothing. “Sick,” she whispered, which was the only true, manageable thing.
“We’ll handle it,” he said, and it wasn’t empty reassurance. It was a statement of fact. “First, we handle today. Then we handle that.” He nodded toward the sink.
“Levi, the mission—”
“The mission parameters have changed. You are now a primary objective to be secured, not an asset to be deployed.” His tone brooked no argument. “You will stay with Maya. Here. In this fortified location.”
“No.” The word was out before she could stop it, surprising them both. A spark of her old defiance, smothered by fear and nausea, flickered to life. “You can’t bench me. Not for this. Liora needs us. All of us.”
“Aria—”
“I’m not an invalid! I’m pregnant, not shattered!” Her voice cracked on the word, giving away the terror beneath the anger. “If you leave me here, I’ll just… vibrate apart. The waiting will be worse.”
He studied her, his gray eyes searching for cracks, for lies. He saw the fear, yes, but beneath it, a desperate, stubborn steel. He’d seen that steel before, in glimpses, when her back was against the wall. It was the part of her that wasn’t from this soft time.
“You’ll stay in the car,” he said finally, the words ground out like a concession. “You will not exit the vehicle under any circumstances. You will be our comms link, our eyes on the surveillance feeds Armin sets up. You are mission control, not ground team. Is that clear?”
Relief, sharp and sweet, flooded her. He wasn’t caging her. He was giving her a role. A purpose. “Yes,” she breathed.
“Good.” He released her face, his hands dropping to his sides. “Now, eat something. The ginger chews. Then get dressed. Practical clothes.”
He left her in the bathroom, closing the door softly behind him. She heard his footsteps pause in the hall, then the low rumble of his voice as he addressed the others. “The test is positive. The plan stands, but Aria is vehicular containment only. No arguments.”
A moment of stunned silence was broken by Eren. “Fuck,” he breathed, a single syllable packed with awe, dread, and a strange, fierce pride.
“Statistically, the first trimester carries the highest risk of miscarriage, especially under conditions of extreme stress,” Armin’s analytical voice floated through. “The mission introduces significant variables.”
“The mission is non-negotiable,” Levi stated, his voice final. “We adapt. We protect. Both things.”
Aria leaned her forehead against the cool mirror, the two pink lines blurring in her vision. She wasn’t just a collection of symptoms anymore. She was a secret. A conditional. A new, fragile layer of complexity in a plan that was already a house of cards. She placed a hand over her stomach, flat and quiet. “Okay,” she whispered to the unknown thing inside her, to herself, to the ghost in the mirror. “Okay. Let’s go get our girl.”
She emerged twenty minutes later, dressed in black leggings and a loose sweatshirt, her hair pulled back. The ginger chews had taken the razor’s edge off the nausea, leaving a dull, persistent ache. The living room was a hive of focused activity. Armin had three laptops open, feeds of traffic cameras and satellite imagery glowing on the screens. Eren was checking the magazines of two handguns, his movements economical and sure.
Maya stood by the door, holding a large tote bag. “Sparkling water, more ginger chews, bland crackers, barf bags, and a power bank for your phone,” she said, handing the bag to Aria. “You’re basically packing for the world’s worst picnic.”
“Thanks, Maya,” Aria said, shouldering the bag.
“Don’t thank me,” Maya said, pulling her into a tight, brief hug. “Just keep your head down and your breakfast down. I’ll hold the fort here.” She lowered her voice. “And for what it’s worth? Congratulations. Or, you know, whatever feels like the right word right now.”
Levi approached, holding out a sleek, black communication device. “Earpiece. You hear everything. We hear you. You see anything on the feeds that we don’t, you say it. Clear?”
“Clear.” She took it, fitting the snug piece into her ear. A low hum of static greeted her, then Armin’s voice, crisp and clear.
“Comms check. Aria, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Good. The target vehicle is a white Freightliner M2. Ohio plates, mirroring the manifest. It is currently stationary at a truck stop off I-71, fifty-three miles north. Driver appears to be solo. We move now.”
Levi gave a final, sweeping glance around the room, his gaze lingering on Aria for a half-second longer than the rest. It wasn’t softness. It was a targeting laser, locking on. “We move,” he echoed, and it was an execution order.
The garage door opened, revealing Eren’s black Challenger, a beast of modern machinery that still looked alien to Levi’s eyes. Armin slid into the passenger seat, a laptop already open on his knees. Eren took the driver’s seat, his hands gripping the wheel like he was about to wrestle it.
Levi opened the back door for Aria. She climbed in, the leather seat cool through her clothes. He slid in beside her, his body a solid, radiating line of heat and tension. He didn’t look at her. He was already scanning the street, the feeds on Armin’s screen, his mind three steps ahead.
The engine roared to life, a deep, vibrating growl that Aria felt in her teeth. Eren backed out with controlled aggression. The world outside the tinted windows—the quiet suburban street, the manicured lawns—slid away, replaced by the blur of the highway.
Aria watched the city dissolve into scrub and concrete, her hand resting unconsciously on her abdomen.