Lorraine's Posthumous Gift
The final white rose trembled in Sienna's hand.
Its stem—slender, near-translucent—split down the middle like a wound reopening. Nestled inside was a vial the size of a fingertip, filled with a swirling, pearlescent liquid. Handwritten script coiled around its glass body:
"For My Daughter-in-Law."
Sienna's breath hitched. Lorraine's voice echoed in her mind: "Your father hid it in the nursery… your lullaby…"
She turned, pressing the vial gently to Silas's chest. "It's the original 1898 antidote. Your mother found it. It's yours."
Silas stared at her—eyes dull from fever, but burning with something else entirely.
Then, slowly, he took the vial in hand... and smashed it against the nursery floor.
The shatter rang like crystal bells. Pearlescent mist exploded from the shards, billowing around them like fog woven from silk and memory.
"We breathe the same air now," Silas said, gripping her hand and pulling her into the vapor. "Same poison. Same cure."
The mist clung to their skin. Their lips met like dying stars. The kiss was urgent—part prayer, part promise.
It tasted of opium and old orchids.
And as it deepened, something inside their blood shifted. The Veritas strain—Sienna's dormant version and Silas's decaying one—synchronized, like twin serpents finally coiling around the same spine.
When they broke apart, Sienna's pupils dilated, and Silas—God help her—was smiling.
Military Base Infiltration
Twelve hours later, the world was already changing.
At a covert military base buried beneath Mount Tianzi, alarms screamed as Silas walked calmly through the biohazard gate, flanked by Sienna in a stolen officer's uniform. His skin glistened with sweat, but his steps were steady.
"I'm fine," he muttered.
He was not.
He coughed once—and a fine mist drifted from his lungs, like frost in the cold. The guards inhaled it without knowing.
Minutes later, a monitor nearby blinked red.
"Target antigen neutralized," it read.
Veritas was crumbling—because Silas's body had turned into its airborne antidote.
The Lie Detector
Sienna adjusted her cap as they entered the secure records room. Her reflection flickered in the glass walls.
Her birthmark glowed faintly.
"Do you trust me?" she asked a young tech who guarded the entrance.
"Of course," he said.
The glow intensified.
"You're lying," she said softly, and knocked him out cold.
It had started two hours ago—her birthmark responding to lies about Veritas. The chip wasn't just a regulator. It was now... a living truth detector.
Her face had become the one thing no one in the conspiracy could deceive.
The Shocking Revelation
Down in the vaults, Lin Zhao stood waiting beside a massive safe containing the master Veritas sequence. His clothes were torn, blood on his collar, but his expression was calm.
"We're almost there," Sienna said. "We'll finish what our teacher started."
Lin turned, slowly.
"You still think I'm your shixiong?"
She blinked.
"What are you talking about?"
Lin pulled a worn photo from his coat. Two boys. One girl. A man in a white lab coat behind them.
"I'm not your teacher's student," he said. "I'm his son."
Sienna's mouth went dry.
"And your half-brother."
Behind them, the antidote code unlocked the vault with a final hiss. But the real danger... had just been born.