The basement was pitch black, the air thick with the suffocating stench of chemicals, smoke, and burnt paper.
Vernon switched on his phone’s flashlight.
A narrow beam of white light sliced through the darkness—
—and revealed something hidden beneath the house.
A laboratory.
Secret.
Buried underground.
Untouched.
Whoever had destroyed the house upstairs never found this place.
Until now.
Long steel tables stretched across the basement, cluttered with scattered research files, chemical equations, broken instruments, and glass containers filled with strange liquids.
Some glowed beneath the flashlight.
Others looked unstable enough to explode if someone touched them wrong.
Near the corner sat a massive steel container overflowing with ashes and half-burnt papers.
Vernon’s eyes
