Contract Marriage with My Secret Partner in Crime-Chapter 162: The Last Hope

Up on the rooftop, Reynold checked his watch. The second hand ticked softly in the cold air. His earpiece buzzed with static before Jeric’s voice came through.

"Any news?" Reynold asked quietly, his eyes fixed on the windows below.

Jeric’s tone carried hesitation. "I cannot find anything special on her record. Everything about her education and training at Diamond Public Hospital is recorded. She started there right after graduation and stayed, dedicated her work like she had no life outside those walls. There’s nothing on her before that. No past jobs, no other affiliations. It’s clean... too clean."

Reynold’s jaw tightened. "It seems they deliberately erased her involvement."

Jeric’s voice dropped lower, wary. "If that’s the case, then it will be hard for us to investigate further without alerting them. One wrong move and they’ll know we’re watching."

For a moment Reynold said nothing. He stood in silence, the city wind tugging at his coat, until finally he spoke. "Set it aside for now. We have something more important to deal with. Gather all our men and come here as soon as possible. I’ll send you the location. Be prepared for a battle. This time we will catch them in the act."

There was a pause before Jeric answered, his words sharp with concern. "What do you mean? Cassius is there? You’re watching them right now?"

Reynold’s lips pressed into a thin line. "Yes."

Jeric exhaled audibly. "What’s he doing?"

"Digging," Reynold said through clenched teeth. "Files. Old data. Possibly the same documents we flagged two weeks ago. He knows exactly what they did, and he’s just hiding it."

"You sure you want to do this? If you’re wrong—"

"I’m not wrong." Reynold cut him off firmly. His hand slipped inside his jacket, fingers closing around the cold steel of his pistol. "I’ll send the location. Move fast."

He ended the call without waiting for a reply and slipped the pistol into his coat. Without another word, he headed for the rooftop’s lower service entry. Each step echoed with purpose.

Inside the lab below, Ted stirred on the operating table. A faint groan escaped his lips. Dr. Farah rushed to his side, checking his pulse, her voice steady despite her worry.

"Ted. You’re safe. You’re stable. Just breathe."

His eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and wild. His gaze shifted weakly to Cassius. "You have to stop them..."

"We will," Cassius said quietly.

"No... not just them..." Ted’s lips trembled. He struggled for breath. "The one... wearing the..."

His voice broke off and his head fell back against the pillow, unconscious once more.

Cassius exchanged a tense look with Brent. "He was trying to say something."

"Sounded like he was describing someone," Brent replied.

"Find the footage from his original recovery. Maybe he said more back then."

Meanwhile, deep in the vault, files were being scanned and digitized for cross-reference. Cassius leaned over the glowing terminal as names, numbers, and dates flickered across the screen. Then his eyes froze on a name.

"Brent. Look at this."

Brent stepped closer. The highlighted text read: Dr. Julian Vance.

"He worked under the Null Bloom project," Cassius said slowly. "Disappeared in 2003."

Brent frowned. "I remember. They said he was killed during the purge."

Cassius’s tone sharpened. "We never found a body."

The words hung heavy in the air.

Outside, across the street, Reynold slipped through the access door of a neighboring building. He began descending the narrow staircase, each step deliberate. In his mind, this was not infiltration. This was justice.

Back in the lab, Larman returned, tossing a small flash drive onto the table. "Footage from Sector 14. Survivor rescued two months ago from one of the counterfeit labs."

Cassius slotted the drive into the console. A video flickered to life. On-screen, a young man appeared—half-starved, shaking. His voice cracked as he spoke.

"They said we were chosen. That they were making gods. But the injections... they burned. I saw one man melt from the inside. He screamed for an hour before he stopped."

"Did you see their faces?" asked the voice of the interviewer.

"One of them..." the survivor’s eyes darted. "He wore a necklace. Gold. A cross."

The lab fell silent. Cassius’s shoulders stiffened. Brent’s eyes widened. Dr. Farah gasped softly.

She whispered, almost to herself. "Julian always wore one. Even in the lab. Said it was a gift from his daughter."

Cassius turned, his voice cold with certainty. "Then he’s alive."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

"And he’s the one making copies," Cassius continued.

Larman’s jaw tightened. "Then we’re not just hunting a rogue group. We’re hunting a ghost."

Brent checked his watch, urgency in his tone. "Do we move now, or wait?"

Cassius glanced at Ted’s unconscious form, then at the faces of his team. Determination burned behind his calm eyes.

"We move now."

And outside, unseen, Reynold closed in. To him, Cassius and his people were not saviors. They were the villains.

Unaware that the people he was about to confront weren’t the villains of the story at all.

They were the last hope.

---

The chamber emptied slowly. Dr. Farah carefully returned the shimmering vial of pure Helix to cold storage, sealing it with a hiss.

When the others left, only Cassius and Brent remained. The hum of machinery filled the silence like the slow breath of something ancient, restless.

Brent broke the quiet. "This thing has ruined too many lives."

Cassius didn’t answer right away. His eyes lingered on the storage chamber before shifting to the far wall. Memories pressed against him like ghosts.

"It was never meant to be a weapon," Cassius said at last, his voice heavy.

Brent raised a brow. "Then what was it meant to be?"

Cassius crossed the room and slid open a hidden compartment. From within, he pulled an old, locked briefcase, the leather cracked, the corners worn. He set it on the table and snapped it open.

Inside lay yellowed files, faded photographs, handwritten notes, and a single black notebook bound in leather.

"Project Helix started thirty years ago," Cassius said, lifting a photo. In it, a younger Cassius stood beside a tall, pale man with silver hair and a wrinkled lab coat. "Dr. Elias Mern. My mentor. A genius. A man who believed in the impossible."

Brent leaned closer. "That name never showed up in the records."

"Because it was erased," Cassius replied. His mouth twisted in a faint, bitter smile. "Just like the project itself."

He opened the black notebook and turned to the first page. The handwriting was elegant, deliberate. The words read: To change what we are, we must first understand what makes us.

"Project Helix was never about creating super soldiers," Cassius said. His voice had softened, carrying a trace of respect.

"It was about repairing the human body. Reconstructing broken cells. Regenerating damaged tissue. Elias wanted to defeat cancer, reverse neurological disease, even slow the process of aging."

Brent exhaled slowly, shaking his head. "So what went wrong?"

Cassius flipped a few pages forward. Charts. Diagrams of cell regeneration. Chemical compounds. DNA strings that no longer looked human.

"It worked," Cassius said, his voice dark. "Too well."

Brent blinked. "Wait. It actually worked?"

Cassius nodded. "On one subject. A boy. Eleven years old. His body was riddled with disease. Leukemia. Stage four. Elias administered the serum... and within three days, the cancer was gone."

"So what happened?"

Cassius looked up. "The boy’s metabolism accelerated. His muscles developed rapidly. His mind sharpened beyond average intelligence. But something else changed. Something... in his core. He became aggressive. Violent. Unstable."

Brent went still. "He mutated."

"We called it ’Deviation,’" Cassius said. "The human body isn’t built to handle sudden perfection. There are checks and balances. Remove too many, and the mind breaks."

Brent paced slowly, running a hand through his hair. "So they shut it down."

"They buried it," Cassius corrected. "And Elias? He disappeared. No records. No trace. Some think he went underground. Others believe he was killed by the same people funding the project."

"And the formula?"

Cassius tapped the vial still glowing faintly in its container. "I kept the original. Everything else people are using now... is a copy. A mutation of a mutation. And every copy gets more unstable. More dangerous."

Brent turned toward him, suddenly serious. "And you think the people behind Ted Frin’s case were trying to replicate it from those corrupted versions?"

"Exactly. They don’t understand the science. They think it’s a miracle drug. But it was never stable. Not without Elias and Soren."

Cassius’s jaw tightened, his fingers curling against his side of the table. He had spoken of Elias and Soren aloud, but the names carried more than weight. They carried entire years.

A silence stretched between them, heavy with the weight of truth. Brent finally asked, "And what about you? Why didn’t you destroy it?"

Cassius’s eyes darkened. "Because I want to fix it. The right way. So no one else ever has to suffer because of it again."