The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 102

The capital, two in the morning.

The laboratory lights were still blazing.

Garrison Foster sat at the console, his eyes glued to the petri dish under the microscope. He had been staring at it for four straight hours. The surrounding equipment emitted a low, continuous hum, sounding like some restless, mechanical beast.

The city outside the window had long since gone to sleep. Only a solitary red warning beacon on the roof of the opposite office building blinked in the darkness.

He rubbed his temples, then lowered his head to resume his work.

The Vitas Strain was gone.

The only thing left in the lab was a minuscule remnant—the "active culture residue" sealed at the bottom of the liquid nitrogen tank. More accurately, it was marginal tissue leftover from when the mother strain was initially isolated. Its viability was incredibly low, and whether it could be revived was entirely unknown. But he was out of options.

For the past few days, he had practically lived in the lab.

By day, he ran revival cultures; by night, he analyzed the data. When exhaustion took over, he would collapse onto his desk for a brief nap before getting right back to it. He was there when Assistant Dawson clocked in, he was there when Dawson clocked out, and when Dawson returned the next morning, Garrison was sitting in the exact same spot.

Dawson didn't dare ask questions; he simply and quietly placed a fresh coffee at his boss's elbow.

Garrison knew this routine was unsustainable, but he couldn't afford to stop.

Because the moment he stopped, a certain face would surface in his mind—that cold, resolute expression bathed in the morning light as she said, "Take care of yourself, Garrison." And then she had vanished into the dawn without looking back.

Garrison gripped the instrument in his hand tightly, taking a deep breath to force his focus back to the microscope.

In his field of vision, the edges of that tiny culture remnant showed incredibly faint signs of growth. He narrowed his eyes, adjusting the focus to observe it meticulously for ten minutes. It wasn't an illusion. It was growing—agonizingly slowly, but definitely growing.

He let out a long breath, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

It was 2:14 AM.

Garrison pulled out his phone, deciding to scroll aimlessly to give his brain five minutes of rest.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify