Chapter : 268

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Risa watched him shuffle past her toward the building. She fell into step beside him, her medical bag clutched tightly. She did not say anything. She just walked next to him, close enough to grab him if he stumbled into something dangerous.

Ken glanced at her. “Bodyguard duty?”

"The facility could be dangerous," Risa said, her voice soft but serious. "I am ensuring nobody gets hurt. That includes you."

“Sure,” Ken said, grinning. “Flank security. That is definitely what this is.”

Risa's cheeks turned slightly pink. She quickened her pace and moved ahead of him, taking up a position by the entrance. Ken watched her go with a lazy smile, then shrugged and followed her inside.

Inside, the facility was worse than the outside. The entrance hall was dim, lit only by thin blades of daylight cutting through the boarded windows. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust that rose in small clouds with every footstep.

Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like sad, forgotten decorations, draping across overturned filing cabinets and shattered glass. The air smelled like old paper and abandonment.

Risa sneezed. Twice. Then three times. Then she lost count. Luna, still half asleep, patted her back with drowsy concern.

The main laboratory was through the second door on the left. It was a large, rectangular room filled with the skeletal remains of scientific ambition. Workbenches lined the walls, their surfaces cluttered with broken glassware, dried-up bottles, and rusted instruments.

Overturned filing cabinets lay on their sides like fallen soldiers. Drawers had spilled their contents across the floor, scattering yellowed papers in every direction. The chalkboard on the far wall was covered in faded equations that nobody could read anymore.

Laxmi ran her finger along one of the workbenches and held it up, examining the thick layer of dust. “This place has been dead for a long time.” She wiped her finger on Ken's jacket. He did not seem to notice or care.

“Alright,” Iris said, stepping to the center of the room and surveying the destruction. “We split up and search systematically. Sayma, focus on any documents or research notes. The encrypted journal Finlay mentioned might still be here somewhere.”

Sayma nodded, already pulling on a pair of thin white gloves from her pocket. She approached the overturned filing cabinets with the careful, methodical precision of a surgeon entering an operating room.

“Zinia, Naomi, Laxmi, check the equipment and storage areas. Look for anything that seems out of place or deliberately hidden,” Iris continued.

“Risa, Luna, check the side rooms for personal effects. Anything that tells us who Carrion was outside of his work.”

Luna, who had been sleepwalking since they entered the building, gave a slow, drowsy nod. Risa gently guided her toward the side corridor, one arm around the sleepy lightning user's waist.

"Risa, guard the entrance and watch our exit route," Iris said. Risa nodded, adjusting her medical bag on her shoulder. She took up position by the front door, standing perfectly still, a quiet sentinel with her pink hair catching the dim light.

“Ken, Ira, take the back storage room,” Iris said, pointing toward a narrow doorway at the far end of the lab. “Search every shelf, every box, every corner. Do not touch anything that looks reactive or dangerous.”

Ken saluted lazily. “Yes, Captain. No touching the explodey things. Got it.”

Ira turned toward the back doorway without a word. Ken followed, shoving his hands into his pockets and dragging his feet across the dusty floor, leaving long trails in the grime like a bored child in a sandbox.

Meanwhile, Sayma knelt beside the overturned filing cabinets and began sorting through the scattered papers with her gloved fingers. Most of the documents were routine: supply orders, equipment receipts, standard chemical safety forms. Nothing useful.

She moved deeper into the room, her sharp eyes scanning the walls and floor for anything the initial police sweep might have missed. She tapped the walls, listening for hollow spaces. She checked the baseboards for uneven seams.

And then she found it.

A thin line of lighter-colored mortar along the bottom edge of the far wall. Fresh enough to be different from the original construction. Hidden enough to be invisible to anyone who was not specifically looking for it.

Sayma pressed on the wall panel. It clicked. A narrow section of the wall swung inward, revealing a dark, narrow cavity that had been sealed behind the false panel.

Inside, tucked into a recessed shelf, was a leather-bound journal. It was thick, heavy, and locked with a small brass clasp. The cover was blank except for a single symbol stamped into the leather: an hourglass with its sand falling upward.

“Princess Iris,” Sayma called, her voice controlled but unmistakably excited. “I have found something.”

---

Iris crossed the laboratory in quick strides, Sayma, Zinia, and Naomi close behind. Sayma carefully lifted the journal from its hiding place and set it on the nearest intact workbench.

The brass clasp was not really a lock. It was more of a decorative gesture. Sayma flicked it open with her fingernail and began turning the pages.

The journal was dense. Page after page of cramped, meticulous handwriting filled with alchemical formulas, chemical equations, and detailed procedural notes. Diagrams of molecular structures were drawn with careful precision in the margins.

“This is his life's work,” Sayma breathed, her eyes widening behind her glasses as she flipped through the pages. “Everything Carrion researched, everything he discovered. It is all here.”

“What was he working on?” Iris asked, leaning over Sayma's shoulder to study the pages.

Sayma turned to a section near the middle of the journal and laid it flat on the workbench. The heading at the top of the page was underlined three times: PROJECT ETERNAL YOUTH - FINAL SYNTHESIS PATHWAY.

“An Eternal Youth potion,” Sayma said, her voice quiet with disbelief. “He was trying to synthesize a chemical compound that would halt the aging process entirely. Permanently reverse cellular degradation.”

Laxmi let out a low whistle from across the room. “Eternal Youth? Like, live forever kind of youth? That sounds like something out of a fairy tale.”

“It would be, if the science were not so thorough,” Sayma said, flipping through the complex formulas. “Carrion was not a dreamer. He was a meticulous researcher. Every compound, every reaction, every variable is documented with painstaking precision.”

She paused, pushing her glasses up. “And based on these notes, he was close. Very close.”

Iris studied the formulas, her violet eyes narrowing in concentration. “If he was this close to success, that gives a very clear motive for murder. An Eternal Youth potion would be the most valuable substance in the Empire.”

“Worth killing for,” Naomi said quietly. “Worth silencing the creator to monopolize.”

Sayma nodded slowly. “And worth destroying the evidence that it ever existed, so nobody else could replicate it.” She looked at the scattered, ransacked laboratory around them.

“Which explains why this place was torn apart. Someone was not just covering up a murder. They were looking for this journal.”

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