CHAPTER 70
ARIA
The conference hall was colder than it had any right to be. The kind of cold that crawled beneath your skin and made your bones ache, no matter how many layers you wore.
I sat in one of the middle rows, surrounded by the low hum of whispers, the occasional nervous cough, and the scratch of pens against paper.
People were shifting, adjusting their jackets, murmuring over schedules, yet I barely heard any of it.
My eyes were locked on him.
Professor Lian.
He sat a few rows ahead, posture straight, shoulders set like marble, his expression carved into something unreadable.
His hands rested in his lap, folded so neatly, so perfectly still, that it felt inhuman.
Not a fidget.
Not a twitch.
He didn’t even glance around the hall like everyone else did—curious, restless, sizing up the competition.
I could have convinced myself he was just another academic—stern, private, perhaps aloof—but I knew better.
My gut screamed it.
He looked exactly like him.
The creature.
My Lean.
The one I had once believed dead.
And last night… God, last night was the only reason I hadn’t dismissed it all as some cruel trick of memory.
Because I felt him.
I knew I had.
The way he whispered my name, the gravity of his presence filling every shadow of my room—it hadn’t been some phantom dream.
No hallucination could have burned that deep, left me trembling with the echo of his touch.
It was too vivid. Too alive. Too real.
Even now, my body carried the memory of it, etched into my skin, into my very bones.
And yet here he was, sitting like nothing had happened.
Stiff, cold, indifferent.
Not a flicker of acknowledgement when our eyes met earlier.
No warmth, no hint of last night’s haunting closeness.
It twisted something deep inside me.
I was a mess, barely able to breathe right, while he was a statue.
I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady my racing pulse, but the harder I tried, the more panicked I felt.
My mind kept flashing back—blood, chains, sterile white walls, the sound of his laboured breathing when I first saw him years ago, broken and barely clinging to life.
And then, the silence that followed.
The belief that he hadn’t made it, that Lean was gone forever.
But he wasn’t gone.
He couldn’t be.
He was sitting right there.
Before I could untangle my thoughts, the atmosphere in the hall shifted.
A ripple of attention swept through the audience as a group entered from the back, their polished shoes clicking against the floor, their movements purposeful, rehearsed.
Heads turned.
Conversations stopped.
The sharp rhythm of polished shoes against the floor echoed through the hall, a steady, deliberate click that made the hair on the back of my neck prickle.
Something inside me seized.
My pulse faltered, then erupted into a wild, erratic rhythm, pounding so hard it felt like my ribs might crack beneath it.
I turned my head—slow, unwilling—like some part of me already knew who it would be.
And then I saw him.
Dr. Evers.
The laboratory director.
The sight hit me like a blow to the chest.
My stomach dropped, my breath snagged, and for one horrible second, I thought my heart would give way.
The air thinned, every sound around me muffled, as if the entire building had fallen silent just to emphasise that he was here.
Real.
Flesh and blood.
Not some shadow in the corner of my memory.
And worse—he was smiling.
The man who had orchestrated everything. The one who had imprisoned Lean, who had tortured him under the guise of “research.”
The man whose voice had haunted my nightmares for years.
The world seemed to tilt.
My stomach plummeted so fast it was like the floor had opened beneath me, a wave of nausea clawing up my throat so violently I almost doubled over.
My fingers curled tight around the edge of the chair, grounding myself against the urge to either run or retch.
He was older, yes—his hair touched with grey now, his skin lined in places where time had dared to leave its mark—but he was still unmistakable.
That same clinical sharpness in his eyes, that same predator’s smile curved just enough to look charming to those who didn’t know better. To those who hadn’t seen what that smile hid.
My breath caught, stuttering in my chest.
No. No. No.
He was here.
My vision blurred, my heart slamming so hard I thought everyone in the room would hear it.
Not him.
Not again.
My eyes darted instinctively toward Professor Lian.
Still. Silent. Stone.
He hadn’t moved, hadn’t even blinked, as if the presence of this man—this monster—meant nothing at all.
The contrast made me dizzy.
My heart was pounding, frantic and uneven, my body reacting like prey caught in the merciless gaze of a wolf. Every instinct screamed danger, screamed run—and yet… Lean sat there, calm, composed, as though he had no idea who that man truly was.
But he did. He had to.
Didn’t he?
I snapped my gaze back to Evers.
Then to Lian.
Then back again.
The two of them were suddenly in the same frame, like a nightmare brought to life—past and present colliding so sharply it hurt to breathe.
The monster who had broken Lean.
The man who might be Lean.
Something icy slithered down my spine.
My pulse roared in my ears as though my body was trying to drown out reality itself.
My vision tunnelled, flickering between their faces, my mind screaming that this wasn’t a coincidence, that the universe wasn’t so cruel as to put them both here unless—
Unless he was still in Evers’ grip.
My throat tightened. I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink.
“Good afternoon,” he began, his voice smooth, practised, laced with false charm.
“It’s an honour to be here among such esteemed colleagues.”
My fingers clamped around the edge of my chair so tightly that the blood drained from them, leaving my knuckles stark white.
He wasn’t supposed to be here.
Not among people who respected him, who clapped politely at his arrival as if he were some genius to be celebrated.
He didn’t deserve to stand here.
He didn’t deserve to stand anywhere.
He was a monster—dressed in a suit, hiding behind polished words and credentials, but a monster all the same.
And yet, not only was he here, he was leading them—experts, researchers, people who looked at him like he was some sort of visionary instead of the monster he truly was.
I wanted to scream.
To tell them all what kind of man he really was—what he had done, what he was capable of.
To strip away the false respect, the authority, the applause that followed him into every room.
I wanted to stand and shout that behind the tailored suit and charming smile was a sadist, a jailer, a monster who had broken something precious and irreplaceable.
But my throat locked up, the sound stuck somewhere between my chest and my mouth, leaving me silent and trembling
“As many of you know,” he continued,
"Our field is on the cusp of breakthroughs once thought impossible. And today, I am pleased to share with you an advancement that could redefine the very limits of human life.”
My stomach churned.
Every word dripped with that same poisonous confidence I remembered too well.
“We have developed a special medicine,” he said, pausing for effect,
“capable of repairing cellular damage. A treatment so advanced it can restore what was lost, rejuvenate what was broken… even achieve functional immortality.”
The room erupted in whispers.
Gasps.
Pens scribbled furiously against notebooks.
Phones were discreetly recorded.
Eyes widened with awe, with greed, with disbelief.
But I just sat there, frozen.
My heart stopped.
Cellular repair.
Immortality.
No.
No, no, no.
I knew exactly what this meant.
He was still using him.
My eyes darted back to Professor Lian—Lean—and suddenly everything made sense in a way I desperately wished it didn’t.
He wasn’t just Professor Lian.
He was still the experiment.
And Evers still had his claws in him.
My breaths came shallow, uneven.
The walls of the hall seemed to press in closer, the sound of the audience fading to a dull roar behind the pounding in my ears.
If Evers had found a way to perfect the formula, then Lean hadn’t escaped at all.
Not really.
Maybe he was here under some new arrangement, maybe he was paraded around as a professor, but beneath it all… he was still bound.
Still used.
Still theirs.
I felt sick.
I couldn’t stop staring at him, my mind screaming questions.
Did he remember me?
Did he know I was here?
Was last night his way of reaching out before retreating into this mask again?
Or had I just imagined it all—my desperation stitching together fantasies I wanted too badly to be real?
No. I wouldn’t let myself believe it was just a fantasy.
But then why was he sitting there so calm, so utterly detached, while I was falling apart?
Dr. Evers’ voice droned on, presenting data, slides, and figures that drew nods and gasps from the audience.
To them, it was brilliance.
To me, it was horror dressed up in statistics.
Every number was blood.
Every chart was painful.
And all I could see was Lean sitting still as stone, letting it all wash over him as if it meant nothing.
I wanted to run to him, to shake him, to beg him to see me. To tell him I hadn’t forgotten, that I still remembered who he really was, not this cold, distant façade.
But fear pinned me to my seat.
Fear of Evers’ eyes finding me in the crowd, fear of what would happen if I drew attention.
Fear that if I reached for him now, he would only turn away.
I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, tasting copper. My hands trembled in my lap, hidden beneath the table.
Evers spoke of miracles.
Of longevity.
Of rewriting the future of humanity.
The crowd ate it up, blinded by ambition and wonder.
But all I saw was a cage.
And I was left with the unbearable truth pressing against my ribs:
He wasn’t free.
And maybe… neither was I.