Chapter 172 Father To Son
Liam stood quietly in the center of the room, still trying to process everything he had just seen. The diagrams, the charts, the strange medical tools—it was all too surreal. This had once been his father’s workspace, and now it looked more like the lair of someone obsessed with dissecting the human condition. It didn’t match the man he remembered as a child.
Without saying much, Liam slowly walked to the far end of the room. There, against the back wall, was a long metal table, old and untouched, with a single chair in front of it. Something about it called to him. He pulled the chair back and sat down, the cold metal creaking under his weight. He leaned back, staring blankly across the room.
His hands idly roamed under the table—a habit born from boredom or maybe a subconscious curiosity. That’s when he felt it. A small, smooth button. Hidden, flush with the underside of the metal table. His brows furrowed in confusion. What the hell?
Without much thought, he pressed it.
A low, mechanical hum filled the room instantly. Lana gasped, and Lilith shot to her feet, alert. All eyes darted to the center of the office floor. A round seam glowed faintly as if something had been triggered. Within seconds, the ground in the middle of the room began to shift with a soft grinding noise, rotating open like an enormous vault.
A perfect circle of floor split apart and slowly spiraled into the surrounding panels, revealing a hidden stairway descending into the unknown. It was pitch black inside.
Lilith stared at the opening, stunned. "What the hell did you just do?"
Still seated, Liam looked up at her and shrugged, almost too calmly. "I just pushed a button."
Lana took a cautious step forward, peering down into the eerie darkness below. The dim light from the room above couldn’t reach far into the depths of the stairway. She shivered, rubbing her arms nervously. "Guys... are we sure we want to go down there? This doesn’t feel right."
Before her question could fully leave her lips, Liam was already standing up. He reached to the side and grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight from a shelf near the wall. Its weight was reassuring in his hand.
His eyes were fixed on the circular entrance, curiosity and concern dancing in equal measure across his face. He had so many questions. Was his father involved in illegal research? Secret experiments? Was he hiding something darker?