Chapter 172 Unconfirmed Direction
Chapter 172 Unconfirmed Direction
2:40 AM. The lights in the medical bay three floors underground were cold and sharp as ice.
Grant sat alone at the lab bench. Around him, large sterile glass enclosures and high-frequency monitors hummed quietly, the faint warmth off the equipment mixing with the faintly acidic smell of filtered air in the dead silence.
On the bench in front of him lay a heavy, dark blue hardcover journal.
No label on the cover. No embossed lettering. Just a single line of small, precise — almost rigid — pencil writing in the bottom right corner of the inside page:
Project Code: Babel Tower. Day 21.
The graphite tip moved across the rough paper with a low, steady scratch. Grant's handwriting was meticulous, nothing like the standardized reports he typed into his tablet — every stroke pressed deep, as if he were engraving the data into the fibers of the page itself, leaving undeniable evidence for some future judge who might one day need it.
He reached back and flipped through the earlier pages. From twenty-one days ago, every page was packed with handwritten observation summaries and microscopic charts.
"Subject: J.C. (Unit Zero). Test type: combined hypergravity and hyperfrequency inducer stimulation. First official round. Hypergravity coefficient: 15G. Duration: 20 seconds per round, 3 rounds total. Hyperfrequency inducer dosage: 0.5ml. Physiological response: within controlled threshold. Metabolic recovery period: 18% shorter than projected model."
Grant's fingers rested on the edge of the page. His pen stopped in midair for half a second.
He paused, then bent back down and kept writing:
"Follow-up plan: second round in four days. Dosage doubled to 1.0ml. Hypergravity coefficient to remain at 15G, rounds increased to 4. Note: Subject maintained high-level consciousness throughout. However, during the latter portion of round three, there was one brief neural signal interruption — EEG showed an abnormal flat spike lasting approximately 0.3 seconds. Baseline has since been restored. Cause under investigation."
Click.
Grant shut the journal, pushed it into the bottom drawer on the left side of the bench, turned the brass key, and locked it.
He picked up the long-cold Americano beside him and tipped his head back, swallowing a large mouthful. The bitter cold cut straight down his throat and hit his stomach like a blade.
He took off his glasses, rubbed his dry, reddened eyes, then put them back on and fixed his gaze on the holographic comparison chart mounted on the wall ahead.
It was the latest gene sequence expression map from Jack's post-chamber session today.
Blue fluorescent lines marked the normal human baseline. The red jagged lines showed the gene expression profile after high-stress stimulation. Most of the red lines ran smoothly within the safety margin he had set — but a handful of peaks jutted sharply upward, impossible to ignore.
Those peaks clustered in the long arm region of chromosome 27, right along the edge of the FOXP4 gene segment.
Compared to the chart from after the first pre-adaptation session, the amplitude of those peaks had jumped by a full notch.
Grant stared at those sharp red spikes for a long time. He ran through the progression of every base pair in his head, again and again, making sure he hadn't miscalculated —
The peaks were expanding.
Not chaotic gene breakdown. Not cancerous mutation. This was something deliberate — methodical, tightly ordered, like an ancient set of instructions coming back online one step at a time.
Jack's body was responding to the damage with something violent. And that response was forming itself, on its own, into a stable pattern that had never once appeared in the entire history of human medicine.
Footsteps echoed down the long corridor.
Barely audible — but in the dead quiet of the small hours, they came through perfectly clear.
Grant didn't turn around. At this hour, with clearance to pass through the layers of access restrictions and walk into this lab, there were only two people in the entire base.
Aaron pushed the door open and stepped in. He was wearing that red-and-black plaid shirt, the one washed so many times it had gone soft and pale, the collar and cuffs fraying slightly at the edges — but everything about him was clean and neat. He was carrying a white ceramic mug, steam curling up from the rim.
Aaron walked over and stopped beside Grant, his cloudy eyes settling on the same red spikes on the wall.
"Still up?"
"So are you." Grant didn't move his gaze.
"I went through all of today's data." Aaron blew across the top of the mug, his voice rough like sandpaper. "Those loci — the expression widened again. Did you catch it?"
"Chromosome 27." Grant said quietly. "Every time there's high-stress stimulation, new expression chains form. Compared to last week's data, the amplitude is up twelve percent."
In Grant's vocabulary, "amplitude increase" was a neutral term. It could mean hope. It could mean a bottomless pit.
Grant turned and pressed both hands on the bench. "What do you think?"
Aaron pulled over a stool and sat down, holding the mug in both hands without drinking from it. He studied those sharp red lines with a gaze that held something close to awe — worn and distant.
"He's still within our physical control range. But the way these peaks are spreading... it doesn't match any of the twenty-seven mathematical models we've worked through. Not a single one."
"Be specific."
"What I mean is —" Aaron leaned forward and set the mug on his knee, something almost like reverence moving through his eyes. "His genes aren't 'repairing.' They're not being 'activated' passively either. They're rebuilding."
"The 15G and the inducer — those were just the hammer that broke the lock. But once the lock shattered, his body started reassembling itself according to its own logic. And that blueprint... isn't anywhere in our database."
The lab went dead quiet. Only the low hum of the cooling equipment drifted through the empty room.
"Are you scared?" Aaron asked, barely above a whisper.
Grant stood in front of the holographic chart. The cold blue and deep red light fell across his sharp cheekbones, cutting his face into pieces of light and shadow.
"It's not the unknown that scares me." Grant's voice was almost too quiet to hear. "What scares me is... if he ends up crossing into a place we simply can't follow, what do we use to bring him back from wherever that takes him."
Aaron said nothing.
The old man slowly stood up, left the empty mug on the corner of the desk, turned, and walked toward the door. At the doorframe he stopped, his back to Grant, and let out a long breath.
"Get some sleep, Grant. Busy day tomorrow."
"I know."
Aaron's footsteps faded down the corridor. The mechanical door sealed itself shut.
The cold white lights of the medical bay stayed on, harsh and unblinking.
Grant stood there for a long time. Then he pulled the left drawer open again, took out the dark blue journal, and turned to the last page of Day 21. He looked at the wide blank space of the paper.
He uncapped the pencil and, at the very bottom, wrote a single line — lightly, almost too lightly to see:
Day 21. Direction still unconfirmed.