As Barmon crept through the dim corridor, he saw Dr. Mystorium slip into one of the restricted rooms. Barmon recognized it immediately. It was where Lian, Larman’s newborn son, was being kept in a specialized containment incubator.

The infant had been born prematurely, and his life was sustained by delicate equipment. Brent’s fiancée was asleep on a couch nearby, exhausted from long nights at the hospital.

Neither Brent nor Larman was there; they were still attending the funeral of Larman’s wife, who had died after giving birth to Lian.

Barmon pressed himself against the wall and peered through the glass slit in the door. Dr. Mystorium moved inside, his steps eerily calm. He took a syringe from his coat pocket and approached the sleeping woman.

Without hesitation, he injected her arm.

The woman gasped softly in her sleep, her eyes fluttering open for a second. Her expression turned to horror, then faded as her body went limp again.

Barmon’s breath caught in his throat. He could barely process what he was seeing.

Dr. Mystorium turned next toward the incubator. He smiled faintly. "I wonder how this serum reacts on newborns," he whispered. He opened the container, pulled another syringe, and injected the tiny infant’s arm with clinical precision.

Barmon’s blood ran cold. He couldn’t move. He just stood there, frozen in disbelief.

Then Mystorium left the room swiftly, his coat swaying behind him.

That was when Barmon snapped out of his shock and ran after him.

As Dr. Mystorium exited the lab’s back door, two men stood waiting near a black car. One of them was Barmon’s father. The other was the country’s president at that time, the man who would later lose his position to President Alfred Lan.

Dr. Mystorium’s expression darkened slightly when he saw them, but the president gestured for him to get in. Without a word, Mystorium climbed into the back seat. Barmon’s father took the driver’s seat while the president sat beside him.

As the car pulled away from the lab, the president broke the silence. "How’s your progress?"

Mystorium glanced out the window before replying. "I retrieved the data you wanted. But I need test subjects. Real ones. To prove the serum works."

Barmon’s father’s hands tightened on the wheel. "Is that why you did something so reckless? You’re lucky Larman and Brent weren’t there. I already deleted the security footage. If the alarms had gone off, it would’ve been over for you."

Mystorium’s lips curved into a smirk. "Didn’t you want them gone? You sent me there to observe their actions, to find the Helix data. I’m only helping you achieve what you asked for."

He paused, his tone turning disturbingly casual. "Now, we just need to observe how the serum takes effect."

He thought of the sleeping woman and the newborn baby he had just injected. The image made him smile faintly.

Barmon’s father exchanged a quick glance with the president, both men realizing the gravity of what they had just enabled, but neither spoke.

The car disappeared into the night, carrying the men and the beginning of a tragedy that would haunt everyone connected to the Helix Project.

The Helix Project had been revived—not by Cassius, not by Elias, not by Soren—but by the government itself, working hand in hand with corrupt scientists and powerful families.

---

Back in the present, inside the tunnel, silence filled the air.

Cassius’s voice softened as he reached this point of the story. His eyes were distant, as if he were still seeing the images play out in his mind.

"That was the night everything began," he said. "Mystorium didn’t just experiment with the serum. He weaponized it. And when we found out what was being done with his formula, it was already too late."

Reynold’s breathing was uneven, his anger slowly giving way to shock. "You knew this. All along."

Cassius nodded slightly. "I tried to stop it, but by the time I discovered the extent of the operation, the government had erased every trace. They called it containment. They killed witnesses, wiped the files, and blamed us for everything."

Zephany’s voice trembled. "And what happened to Dr. Mystorium?"

Cassius’s jaw tightened. "He died during the explosion, along with his remaining test subjects. Some of them were children taken from the lower districts. And the only ones we managed to save were the two of you, Zephany and Kendrick."

Zephany’s heart sank as realization struck her. She could barely speak. "You mean... that’s how we—"

Cassius closed his eyes. "Yes. You two were injected with the stabilized version. The one Mystorium believed would create perfect hosts."

Brent exhaled slowly, finally understanding the pieces of the puzzle. "So all this time, the serum in their bodies came from Mystorium’s final experiment."

Sophia whispered under her breath, "And that’s why The Archive has been monitoring them."

Brent’s heart still couldn’t believe it, especially the part about what had happened to his fiancée. His nephew Lian had somehow survived the injection because he was an infant.

Infants’ and children’s bodies are still developing; that’s how their systems managed to adapt to the Helix serum. But his fiancée was an adult. The sudden changes from the serum’s effects were too much for a fully developed body to handle, and her organs failed after only a few months. That was how she died.

Only this year, with Cassius’s return and Lian’s rapidly deteriorating health, did Brent finally discover that it was connected to the Helix serum—and that what had happened to his fiancée was one of its side effects. Larman had finally told him about the Helix.

That was why Brent became desperate for the truth, wanting to know how his fiancée had been injected with that serum.

He took the risk and sought help from his superior, the Military Chief of Staff, to investigate the incident from twelve years ago. But he never expected that the Chief was actually using him for his own advantage.

Cassius then looked at Zephany and Kendrick. His voice was quiet but filled with regret. "You were never supposed to carry that burden. None of you were."

Silence settled again, the kind that carried the weight of too many years and too many sins.

Outside the tunnel, the faint echo of gunfire reminded them that the world was still burning. The past they were uncovering had never truly ended—it had only evolved.

Kendrick remained silent, his mind in turmoil. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard.

Cassius is his father Patrick?

His father is still alive.