Contract Marriage with My Secret Partner in Crime-Chapter 163: Start and Ending

Cassius’s jaw tightened, his fingers curling against the edge of the table. The present blurred around him, replaced by the weight of a past that pressed like iron against his chest. Memories rose unbidden, not as images but as sensations—the smell of chemical solvents, the hum of old laboratory equipment, the low voice of Elias explaining theories that made the air feel electric.

He had been so young then.

He could still see the boy he once was, trailing after Elias down dim corridors lined with chalkboards and microscopes. Papers drifted across benches like fallen leaves. Glass tubes glowed faintly under dull lights. It had been a hidden world, their world, where the impossible became simply another formula to solve.

Elias had been the center of it. A steady voice, unyielding and somehow gentle all at once. He had a way of explaining the extraordinary as if it were inevitable. Cassius had hung on every word, half believing Elias was some kind of prophet.

Soren had been beside him. Sharp-eyed, restless, always ahead. While Cassius needed time to absorb, Soren consumed knowledge like a man starved. Every answer only seemed to unlock another door for him to pry open. He was tireless, obsessed, brilliant.

And Alisha—now Christy—had been different. She had not been driven by obsession or hunger for precision. She had been balance. Her laughter had softened the cold walls of the lab, her hands often stained with ink as she transcribed Elias’s dictations or catalogued results. She teased them both when they grew too grim. Cassius had always found himself watching her when she laughed, though he never admitted it aloud.

He had been the shadow. Carrying samples, cleaning glassware, repeating calculations when Elias needed a check. Not the brightest, not the boldest, but steady. Reliable. He had thought it would be enough.

Then Elias created the Helix serum.

At first, it was everything they had dreamed. A cure for the incurable. A way to regenerate failing tissue, to erase suffering from disease and decay. They had believed in it, all of them, every last one. But the moment the serum touched the world outside their circle, everything shifted. Men with greed in their eyes saw not a cure but power. Control. The noble dream twisted.

Cassius could still recall the first failed trials. The screams. The silence afterward.

Soren had been the one to argue with Elias the most, his voice sharp, sometimes breaking, torn between awe and dread. Cassius had never seen him so consumed. Alisha had tried to comfort them both, tethering them to humanity when science began to burn too hot.

But then came the purge.

Elias vanished, leaving no trace.

Soren tried to move on. He left the lab, changed careers, became an investigative journalist. He found a wife and dreamed of a peaceful life.

Alisha became someone else. Her memories suppressed, reshaped until she lived only as Christy, a woman with no shadow of the past. She had survived, but at the price of erasure.

Cassius was the one left holding it all.

Years passed. Then a tragedy struck. The country reeled from a sudden epidemic. Cassius’s father, who at that time served as the Archive’s Watcher, gave the order to retrieve old data from the Archive to search for a cure. That was how the buried data of the Helix serum once again came into light.

The government created an official Project Helix Movement led by Dr. Julian Vance. Vance, who at the same time served as one of the Erasers, assembled a team of scientists including Dr. Farah. Together they studied the serum. Out of a small component of its healing factor they crafted a cure for the epidemic.

The country was saved. But the taste of power had been taken. They began to wonder what else the serum could do if perfected.

Cassius had watched from the edges as history repeated itself.

The Project Helix Movement became an obsession. Vance pushed harder, trying to remove the serum’s dangerous side effects, trying to create super soldiers. He had the backing of the country’s leader at the time. But every attempt led to failure.

Eventually, Operation Null Bloom was initiated to stop him. Project Helix was once more erased from public record. Even at the Archive the data was removed so it would never fall into the wrong hands again.

Cassius decided to move on. He created another identity as Patrick Montclair. He married Christy. For a time there was peace.

Until the knock at his door.

It had been late. He remembered Christy asleep in their bedroom. He remembered the lamp’s dim light across the living room. And he remembered opening the door to see Soren.

The man who had once been brilliant and tireless now looked like he had been hollowed out. His hands trembled. His eyes were frantic.

"Please help me, Cassius," Soren said the moment the door opened. His voice cracked. "I need to save my son. My Rey... he’s only three. I don’t want him to die. My wife will not be able to take it if something happens and she’s pregnant with my daughter. Help me, please."

Cassius had reached for his arm immediately, steadying him. "Tell me how I can help," he said. His voice was low, urgent, but calm. "Breathe, Soren. Tell me what you need."

"I need the Helix serum data," Soren whispered. His eyes burned with desperation.

Cassius froze. "What? You know how dangerous that thing could be. My father already erased the data of it."

"I know you still keep the originals from our mentor, Elias." Soren’s voice was almost a plea. "I know you, Cassius. You would never throw them away."

Cassius stared at him for a long moment. "Are you serious about this?"

"I will do everything to save my son," Soren said, his tone leaving no doubt.

Cassius’s eyes flicked toward the closed bedroom door where Christy was sleeping. Earlier that day she had told him she was pregnant. He had been overjoyed, thinking at last he would be a father.

He looked back at Soren. The man was kneeling now, his shoulders shaking, his face drawn and pale.

Cassius exhaled slowly. "Okay," he said at last. "But we must keep this a secret just between us. The Diamond family has the best laboratories. I cannot let my father learn about this so I will ask Larman to arrange things for us."

"Thank you," Soren whispered. His eyes glistened. "Thank you."

Soren succeeded in creating a cure for his son Reynold. Just as always, he managed to find a solution to an impossible problem. But the serum he used was not the full Helix serum. It was a small fraction, a component of its healing effect, just enough to save his boy.

The rest remained hidden. The perfected version still existed only in fragments.

But other people wanted more than healing. They wanted the power the serum could grant. And unfortunately Soren was no longer around.

Cassius clenched his fist against his knee beneath the table, pulled from the memory with a shudder. To remember was to bleed all over again. Elias, the mentor who vanished like smoke. Soren, the brightest flame snuffed out. Alisha—Christy—living inside a life she believed was her own. And himself, the last witness to all of it.

He forced himself back into the present. The lab’s hum filled the silence. Brent stood nearby, watching him with a seriousness that mirrored the gravity of Cassius’s thoughts.

Cassius lifted his gaze. The weight of the memories still pressed on his chest, but the present clawed its way back into focus. He let out a breath, slow and deliberate.

"We need to find Elias," he said quietly.

Brent blinked. "You think he’s still alive?"

Cassius rubbed a hand over his face. "He went underground before anyone else. If anyone knows how to fix what we started, it’s him. Without him, none of this stabilizes. We can keep chasing fragments forever but it won’t matter."

Brent crossed his arms, leaning on the edge of the counter. "If he’s alive, he’s buried deeper than anyone. You’ve been looking for him for years."

Cassius met his eyes. "Then we look harder. Someone out there is trying to replicate Helix from corrupted versions. If they succeed, it will not just be another epidemic. It will be extinction."

Brent was quiet for a moment, studying him. Then he said, "You’re sure this all ties back to Ted Frin’s case?"

Cassius’s lips pressed into a thin line. "I can feel it. The same markers, the same desperation. They want what we buried. They think they can make gods out of men."

Brent straightened, the weight of the plan settling on his shoulders. "Where do we start?"

Cassius glanced toward the sealed case containing the remnants of the serum. His eyes were colder now, focused, the scientist and strategist rising above the wounded man. "We start where it ended," he said. "With the data Soren left behind and the traces Elias might have used to cover his path."

Cassius did not blink. His voice remained steady, clipped and certain. "I can feel it. This is the same cycle starting again." The words seemed to hang between them like a blade poised over old wounds.

Brent leaned back slightly, his brows knitting. "What about twelve years ago?" he asked quietly, as if afraid to prod too hard.