The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 316

Garrison booked the earliest flight to South America.

He carried very little luggage—just some essential winter gear and... a small, silver portable cooler.

Opening the cooler, the cold mist dissipated to reveal a tiny glass vial lying peacefully inside. It was no bigger than a thumb, filled with a clear liquid that emitted a faint, ethereal blue glow. This was the culmination of five years of relentless, agonizing work. This was his entire life's focus—Vitas-1.

He pushed it a little deeper into the foam padding, securing it firmly before closing the lid and locking it. His movements were incredibly slow. Incredibly gentle. As if he were locking away an answer he had waited far too long to find.

After a ten-hour flight, the plane touched down in Atacama, the closest city to Antarctica.

However, Garrison didn't head straight for the Antarctic port. Instead, he rented a car and drove north. He needed to see someone.

The scenery outside the window grew increasingly desolate—first grassy plains, then scrubland, until there was nothing left but gravel and shattered rocks. The Atacama Desert. The closest place on Earth to the surface of Mars.

The sky was an impossibly vivid blue, like a freshly polished sheet of enamel, utterly devoid of clouds.

Following an old address listed in the Project Deep Ice registration logs from five years ago, he arrived at a dilapidated shantytown on the outskirts of the city. The house was a patchwork of corrugated iron and scavenged wood. Faded laundry hung by the door, flapping listlessly in the arid wind.

He knocked on the door. No answer.

He knocked again. The wooden door of the neighboring shack creaked open, and a deeply wrinkled older woman poked her head out, rattling off something in heavily accented Spanish.

Garrison couldn't understand a word. He pulled out his phone, opened a translation app, and typed: "Excuse me, does Mrs. Solano live here?"

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