It honestly didn't take Penny very long to settle into a new routine.
She spent the first few days scouting the city, looking for various hideouts and places to sleep. She met a few other homeless people, but they respected her wish to keep to herself once she'd convinced them she was 18. (Apparently, they tried to find some sort of guardian for minors when they could. The homeless were surprisingly organized, honestly.)
After having a good idea of the layout of the city and what was safe vs not safe, she went looking for a library. She still had her textbooks, of course, but it'd be easier to concentrate in the library anyway, and it was warm and dry and they left her be so long as she didn't cause trouble. Plus, she had new things to research now. Her second time at the library, she went straight to the maternity section. She was going to learn everything she needed to about pregnancy.
After a few days of research, it occurred she had no idea if her pregnancy would be normal. Or her baby, for that matter. What if it was some sort of mutant spider? She ended up in the biology section, finding all the books on spiders and searching for the chapters on reproduction. They weren't very helpful, unfortunately; spiders laid eggs, after all, and she was clearly pregnant.
Oh god was she going to lay an egg????
Fortunately, several of her fears were put to rest a week and a half after she made it to Boston. Unfortunately, a bunch of new fears took their place.
She felt the baby kick.
She felt the baby kick, and she couldn't be more than two and a half months along.
Her research had made it pretty clear: the baby should begin moving between week 16 and week 24. If her last period was in December, she couldn't be more than 9 weeks along. She shouldn't even be out of her first trimester yet.
It was almost like her pregnancy was just… sped up. If she was around 8 weeks along, and the baby started kicking at 16…
Her pregnancy appeared to be progressing twice as fast as it should.
Which meant she would start showing sooner rather than later.
She figured she could claim to be further along than she was, but enough people around the city had seen her to know she couldn't be more than 4 months along, tops. Which meant they expected another 5 months of pregnancy at least. And if her math was correct (and it usually was)… she had maybe 14 weeks left. At absolute most. Possibly less. That was only 3 months. So, she'd have to make it seem like she was just in her regular second trimester for a few weeks, until she got too big for it to be normal, and then she'd leave and stuff her shirts before she got to her new place. She'd calculated a due date sometime in May, so if she stayed here a few more weeks, she could arrive "7 months" along wherever she chose to go next and hopefully ride out the rest of the pregnancy. Then, once the baby arrived, she could decide her next step.
With a plan in place, Penny let herself relax a little again. She fell back into her routine of going to the library in the morning, studying (about pregnancy and childcare but also about genetic modification and technology and biochemistry and anything she found interesting). She managed to scrounge up a few notebooks and started writing down notes and later ideas. Sketches of cameras and microphones, code for computers (though that was more Ned's strong suit), she even had a crazy idea involving a synthetic spiderweb fluid and a sort of projectile to use it with.
Time passed more quickly than Penny really expected. Her belly finally began to swell her second week in Boston, but due to her genetically engineered abs, it remained subtle. She wished more than anything she could head to a doctor and get a check up, but it was just too risky. The baby seemed well enough anyways; it kicked regularly, and with enough strength Penny suspected the pregnancy wouldn't be the only thing unusual about her baby. She only hoped the baby stayed pretty similar to Penny herself; if the thing came out with 8 eyes, Penny wasn't sure she'd be able to handle it.
March finally arrived, and with it came an increase in circumference for Penny. Her belly apparently decided to catch up to where it was (kind of?) supposed to be. Penny had read that particularly athletic women could take longer to show, but most showed eventually, and it seemed that two and a half months was her limit. According to her research and homemade timeline, she was probably between 18-24 weeks right now (she was having a little trouble narrowing it down, what with her enhancements and how distracted she'd been all winter. She vaguely remembered a light period sometime in December, but stress had apparently gotten to her because starting in November until the day she ran away, her memory was failing her).
Her habit of wearing heavy coats was coming in handy - as she started to show, people assumed it was just her puffy jacket. She knew the illusion wouldn't last forever, and made sure she had everything in place to leave when it became necessary. But she hoped to remain at least until the beginning of April.
Her money was being saved for an emergency. She went to shelters for food whenever possible, but ended up shoplifting and outright breaking into supermarkets more often than she'd like. If it were only her, she'd try to live off whatever food she could scrounge up, but she had her baby to think about, and if that meant breaking the rules, then Penny was willing to do it. She was willing to do anything for her child, and they hadn't even been born yet.
She'd read in the pregnancy books that some mothers struggled to get attached to their babies, especially before they were born, double especially if they weren't planned. Penny was able to guess that rape babies were the hardest to get attached to. And yet, the moment she'd realized she was pregnant, she'd known she would do anything to project her child. And when the baby kicked… Penny already loved her baby, no matter the circumstances.
Maybe it helped that she'd always liked kids and hoped to be a mother someday. Obviously not any time as soon as this, but her dreams did include children in her future. Well, now they included a baby in her present, so she supposed her desires were coming to fruition… a few decades early, but still.
According to what she'd read, her symptoms were pretty mild - she still got occasional nausea, but she'd only thrown up once since the baby kicked. She was constantly sore, but that had kind of been true for a while now, so she was able to handle it. The need to pee every few hours was starting to get irritating, but again, to be expected.
Finally, around mid-March, as the weather got warmer and she had to drop the biggest coat, people at the shelters noticed that she was clearly pregnant. She claimed to be 5 and a half months along. She evaded the question of the father, and no one pushed, which she was grateful for. She knew most people had figured out a little - that it likely wasn't consensual - but she didn't really mind so long as no one treated her like she was delicate. The shelters had started giving her bigger portions, too, and pointed out that there were a few shelters for homeless people that wouldn't ask any questions so long as she followed the rules - mostly to show up at x time if she wanted a spot and to not cause any trouble, both of which were easy. Sleeping in a real bed, after weeks on the streets, was pretty nice.
It was just at the end of March when someone finally made the comment she'd been waiting for.
"You're getting pretty big, honey! Are you sure it's not twins?"
Penny, of course, had just laughed and said "No idea! We'll find out in a few months, eh?"
But she took that as the sign to leave.
The shelters had helped her find the occasional odd job, and her money had actually increased while in Boston, and since she was used to the luxury of the shelters, she decided that rather than trying to either hitchhike or stow away on a truck, she'd splurge and take a Greyhound so she could go exactly where she wanted. She'd, of course, done research and thought about it, and ended up choosing Chicago as her next destination - it was big enough that she could probably get truly lost there, so less people to notice anything unusual, and she was pretty sure that when the time for the baby came, if she went to a crowded enough hospital, nobody would bother asking many questions.
On April 1st (she liked the irony of the date), she boarded a bus headed to her newest destination, shirt already stuffed to make her seem more pregnant than she was.
As Boston slowly vanished into the distance, she mentally thanked the city for taking such good care of her. For once, she was feeling a little hopeful about her choices.
She settled into her seat, and opened one of her textbooks