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Chapter 172: Chapter 172 Father To Son
Liam stood quietly in the center of the room, still trying to process everything he had just seen. The diagrams, the charts, the strange medical tools—it was all too surreal. This had once been his father’s workspace, and now it looked more like the lair of someone obsessed with dissecting the human condition. It didn’t match the man he remembered as a child.
Without saying much, Liam slowly walked to the far end of the room. There, against the back wall, was a long metal table, old and untouched, with a single chair in front of it. Something about it called to him. He pulled the chair back and sat down, the cold metal creaking under his weight. He leaned back, staring blankly across the room.
His hands idly roamed under the table—a habit born from boredom or maybe a subconscious curiosity. That’s when he felt it. A small, smooth button. Hidden, flush with the underside of the metal table. His brows furrowed in confusion. What the hell?
Without much thought, he pressed it.
A low, mechanical hum filled the room instantly. Lana gasped, and Lilith shot to her feet, alert. All eyes darted to the center of the office floor. A round seam glowed faintly as if something had been triggered. Within seconds, the ground in the middle of the room began to shift with a soft grinding noise, rotating open like an enormous vault.
A perfect circle of floor split apart and slowly spiraled into the surrounding panels, revealing a hidden stairway descending into the unknown. It was pitch black inside.
Lilith stared at the opening, stunned. "What the hell did you just do?"
Still seated, Liam looked up at her and shrugged, almost too calmly. "I just pushed a button."
Lana took a cautious step forward, peering down into the eerie darkness below. The dim light from the room above couldn’t reach far into the depths of the stairway. She shivered, rubbing her arms nervously. "Guys... are we sure we want to go down there? This doesn’t feel right."
Before her question could fully leave her lips, Liam was already standing up. He reached to the side and grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight from a shelf near the wall. Its weight was reassuring in his hand.
His eyes were fixed on the circular entrance, curiosity and concern dancing in equal measure across his face. He had so many questions. Was his father involved in illegal research? Secret experiments? Was he hiding something darker?
Taking a deep breath, Liam stepped toward the stairs and began his descent, the flashlight beam slicing through the darkness.
"Liam!" Lana called out, but her voice didn’t stop him.
Lilith followed him without hesitation. Her eyes glinted with determination as she passed Lana. "See you down there."
"Wait, what? No, Lilith, come back!" Lana stammered.
But Lilith had already vanished down the stairs. Lana stood alone for a second, hugging her robe tighter around her body as she glanced between the wide opening and the room behind her. There was no choice now. She sighed in frustration.
"Goddamn it..."
Reluctantly, she stepped onto the first stair, taking a deep breath before descending into the unknown. As soon as her foot landed on the third step, the circular hatch above began to seal itself, closing quietly with a hiss and locking them in complete darkness except for the light from Liam’s torch.
Whatever lay ahead. There was no escaping it.
Lana’s feet finally touched solid ground. The descent had been long and eerily quiet, and she’d lost track of Liam’s flashlight. A cold sense of dread settled in her chest.
"Liam?" she called out, her voice trembling.
At that exact moment, the entire underground chamber flickered to life as light filled the space. Liam emerged from a side hallway, dust on his sleeves. "Backup generator," he said, brushing off his hands. "It still works."
But if the lab above had been unsettling, this place was something else entirely. The walls were lined with cold metal cabinets, rusted tools, and charts—some half-torn, others smeared with old blood. Deep red stains trailed across the floor like the ghosts of a hundred past horrors. In one corner, there was a rusted medical bed, its straps torn apart violently, the leather still stained and twisted.
Then in the center of the room stood a massive object, tall and wide, draped under a thick, dusty cloth. Liam instinctively stepped toward it.
But before he could pull the cloth off, Lana called out, urgency in her voice. "Liam, you need to see this."
He and Lilith both turned and walked quickly to where she stood. Lana pointed to a box, simple in design but clearly aged. Taped on the front were the words: To Liam.
Liam frowned, his heartbeat picking up. He reached for the box and slowly pulled it open. Inside was a single, unmarked videotape.
A long silence filled the space. Then Liam turned and spotted an old monitor system with a built-in tape player. He inserted the cassette carefully, the machine humming to life with a mechanical whir.
Lilith placed a hand on his arm. "Would you rather watch this alone?"
Liam shook his head. "No. It’s alright "
The screen crackled for a moment. Then the image came into focus.
It was his father. He was wearing a white lab coat, his hair thinner than Liam remembered, glasses perched on his nose. His expression was worn—exhausted and burdened by the weight of something heavy. He removed his glasses, sighed deeply, then looked directly into the camera.
> "My son... If you’re watching this, it means I’m no longer alive."
He paused. The way he sat—rigid and deliberate—made it clear that he had rehearsed this message many times.
> "I never wanted you to find this place. But if you’re here, I suspect you’ve uncovered part of the truth. What I’m about to tell you will change everything you thought you knew about me... and perhaps about yourself."
> "I was a researcher. Not for a university, not for a private corporation—but for a black division within the government. My team and I were tasked with a classified project: to develop biological augmentation through synthetic serums derived from altered human DNA."
> "Our test subjects were not volunteers. They were inmates—people sentenced to death, deemed expendable by the system. We told ourselves we were doing the right thing... that they were already condemned, and if our work saved future lives, it was worth it."
> "And we did make progress. Extraordinary progress. We discovered how to enhance strength, speed, reflexes—entire biological systems. We created humans who could survive bullets, outrun vehicles, regenerate tissue."
His voice caught.
> "But the government lied. We believed this was for military defense—for creating elite soldiers who could protect our country. But in truth... they never wanted soldiers."
> "They wanted products. The goal was never defense—it was commerce. They planned to auction our work to the highest bidder: the ultra-rich, the elite who desired eternal youth, unkillable bodyguards, and twisted forms of immortality."
> "When we found out, some of us tried to shut the project down. We were naive. We didn’t understand how far they would go. Members of my team began disappearing. Some were found dead. Others... simply vanished. I went into hiding, and I built this bunker."
> "I left everything I could here. Data. Fail-safes. Evidence."
He looked away from the camera for a moment, as if something behind it chilled him.
> "If you’re watching this, my son, I am sorry. I am so deeply sorry for dragging you into this, even in death. I swore I would give you a better life than mine. That you would never have to carry my burdens."
> "But if they’re still after this research, then the danger hasn’t passed."
His face hardened.
> "You may already have abilities... or maybe something inside you is changing. If that’s true, then they’ll come for you. You’re not just my son anymore. You may be the culmination of everything we created. The final product."
> "Whatever you do—do not trust them. Do not let them finish what we started. You are the last firewall between them and the end of humanity as we know it."
> "I love you, Liam. I hope you remember me as your father... not the scientist I became."
The screen flickered and went dark.
None of them moved. The silence in the room felt suffocating.
Lilith’s lips parted, but no words came.
Lana looked to Liam, eyes wide. "Liam..."
He didn’t answer. He simply stared at the black screen, his father’s final words echoing in his mind like thunder: You may already have abilities...
And suddenly, everything made sense—and nothing did.
