The Cursed Laboratory

Episode 5: The Experiment Log

Adrian did not take me to a dungeon. He took me to his bedroom in the east wing, the largest chamber on the third floor. One wall was entirely hidden behind leather-bound books. A pressure catch in the fireplace opened a seam. The shelves split apart, revealing a metal door with a retinal scanner.

The corridor beyond led to an elevator. We descended to level seven underground.

The laboratory below the castle was the size of a football field and blindingly white. Rows of cultivation pods lined one side, each filled with blue liquid and a human-shaped figure. On the other stood consoles and suspended data screens. In the center, a holographic DNA helix rotated slowly in the air.

Adrian enlarged a sequence I recognized at once. "Porphyrin metabolism genes. The source of your sister's disease. And the flaw at the root of all of us."

He showed me a comparison between normal human DNA and a modified chain marked by silver tracer bands.

"Three hundred years ago," he said, "you discovered that the genes of porphyria sufferers briefly activated a dormant sequence under moonlight. You amplified it. The result was phase one: test subjects who could survive under moonlight and regenerate at unnatural speed."

"But they developed a fatal dependency," I said, staring at the modeled proteins. "A blood-based nutrient source."

Lucien entered with three glasses of dark red liquid. "Early versions drank blood directly," he said. "We have refined the process since then."

Adrian handed one to me. "Your nutritional solution. Without it, your cells would begin digesting themselves. We have already been dosing you since dinner last night."

My stomach turned.

Then Talia's file appeared above the console. She lay in a medical chamber wearing a hospital gown, thin and pale.

"Clone forty-six," Adrian said quietly. "She lived twenty-seven years. At twenty-five, her genes began to collapse. We sent her back to you, hoping blood kinship would stabilize the deterioration. It did not."

The image changed to hospital footage. Talia on the bed. The monitor flattening into a line.

"She accelerated her own death using a gene-collapse agent stolen from this lab. Before she died, she encrypted the final research and transmitted it back here. Her last message was: Tell my sister not to come back."

I had to grip the console to remain standing.

"And yet she still led you here," Lucien said. "Because she believed only you could end this."

Adrian's expression shifted then. For the first time I saw real exhaustion beneath the poise.

"There have been three phases. First, create modified humans who can survive under moonlight. Second, reduce dependence on blood proteins. That failed forty-six times, including your sister. Now comes phase three: finding a way for the modified body to escape the original defect completely.

"If we fail, every three hundred years all experimental bodies undergo synchronized cellular collapse. We call it the Great Reset."

A roster unfolded across the air, names and dates spanning centuries.

"The last reset was three years ago," Adrian said. "Forty-seven residents. Thirty-nine died. Eight survived, including me. We are all still degrading. Calvin was the first to reach irreversible death."

"What happens if I die?" I asked.

His smile was bitter. "You are archived. We clone Prototype Forty-Eight from your genes, erase her memories, and let her begin again. We have done this sixteen times."

He showed me a row of pods deeper in the lab. Versions of me. Different ages. Different faces. All recognizably mine.

Then he led me into a smaller chamber containing only an old bronze mirror and a leather notebook.

On the cover, in elegant script, were the words:

Lilian's Experiment Log, Volume I, 1623-1653.

The first page began with plague, moonlight, and survival. The last ended with despair.

The moon stopped us from dying, Lilian had written. It also stopped us from truly living. They call me mother, but I am only the village doctor's daughter. If another version of me reads this someday, please make a different choice.

When I looked up, the mirror clouded.

My face changed in it. My hair lengthened into a seventeenth-century style. Hard years settled around my eyes. The woman in the glass spoke in a distant voice.

"What will you do this time?"