Chapter 986:

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Hilliard’s eyes found it immediately. A small, unassuming bottle filled with a dark purple fluid. The label was simple: RK-7.

Regent’s Kiss.

He pointed to it, his voice a low, appreciative murmur. “That one. It looks significant. Is that your masterpiece?”

Giselle beamed, her ego swelling. “It is,” she boasted, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “It can induce complete cardiac and neurological collapse. Untraceable. The perfect weapon.”

A wave of pure, murderous rage washed over Hilliard, so cold and intense it almost made him dizzy. He had found it. The source. The poison that was killing Cailin.

Giselle turned to a nearby technician, demanding a data slate to show Hilliard the compound’s molecular structure.

In that brief moment of distraction, Hilliard’s hand moved. He pressed a tiny, magnetic device, no bigger than a grain of rice, onto the underside of the main control panel’s data port.

A silent, invisible Trojan horse. It began to slice through the system’s firewalls, its sole purpose to locate and download the formula for the antidote.

Suddenly, the world exploded into noise and red light.

The lab’s highest-level security sirens began to shriek, a deafening, piercing wail. Red alarm lights flashed, plunging the sterile white room into a pulsating, hellish crimson. Heavy steel blast doors slammed down over every exit, sealing the lab like a tomb.

𝘠оu𝗋 nех𝘵 𝖿а𝘃𝗼𝗋і𝘵𝗲 𝗿𝗲a𝖽 𝗶s о𝗇 g𝖺𝘭ո𝘰v𝖾𝗅ѕ.сo𝘮

Giselle spun around, her face a mask of confusion and terror.

Hilliard didn’t move. He stood before the glass vault, his hands in his pockets, his expression as cold and calm as the grave. He was trapped.

Giselle slammed her palms against the thick alloy of the blast door. The metal didn’t even vibrate. It was like hitting the side of a mountain.

“What’s happening?” she shrieked, her voice thin and sharp against the deafening siren. “Why is everything locked down?”

The technicians around them were frozen, their faces pale masks of terror under the pulsating red lights.

Hilliard didn’t answer. He remained entirely unfazed by the chaos unfolding around him, his dark silhouette stark against the flashing crimson. Rather than a trapped prisoner, he looked more like a connoisseur admiring a rare vintage as his gaze lingered on the RK-7.

His calm was monstrous. It was a deep, unnatural stillness in the heart of a hurricane, and it terrified Giselle more than the blaring alarms.

“Hilliard, do something!” she screamed, turning on him.

His attention shifted at a glacial pace. As he finally met her panicked stare, his eyes reflected the strobing light like cold, empty voids.

He lifted his left wrist. His movements were unhurried, almost lazy. He pressed his thumb against a custom-made cufflink on his shirt sleeve. There was a faint, inaudible click.

Instantly, the world went silent.

The piercing shriek of the sirens cut off. The pulsating red lights died, plunging the lab back into its sterile, white glow. The only sound was the low hum of the ventilation system.

The blast doors, however, remained shut.

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