The blinds in Wil's office were drawn halfway, casting faint diagonal shadows across the polished desk.
The room was quiet except for the soft hum of the air conditioning unit and the rhythmic tap of a silver paperweight nudged back and forth by his restless hand.
In his other hand, he held a sheet of paper, standard white, unmarked except for the top-left corner bearing the embossed seal of a high-profile biomedical lab in Ares City.
His eyes hadn't left the line at the bottom of the page for over five minutes.
99.9% match.
He exhaled, long and deep, as though releasing something that had been coiled in his chest for far too long.
His hand lowered, and the page fluttered slightly from the air currents, trembling like it understood its own gravity.
"Even until a minute before I received this paper…" he muttered to himself, lips curving in a bitter smile, "…I was still hoping I wasn't the father."
