Before long, Manuel had sessfully mixed the semi-finished potion Ben had been working on with some other solutions. With a steady hand, he used a dropper to add two drops into a ss vessel set aside for testing. Inside that vessel? Just blood.


    Afterpleting this series of steps, Manuel stood off to the side, eyes fixed on the ss vessel, watching the chemical reaction with bated breath. If this potion, designed to enhance human cellr molecules, worked, it could be a game- changer for folks in certain specialized fields.


    A minute ticked by, and the readout on the detection instrument stayed t. No movement, no reaction.


    Manuel frowned, pacing in front of the vessel, hands sped behind his back. How could there be no reaction? Last time, the potion had a clear response with the blood in less than ten seconds.


    "Hang tight," Ben said calmly from beside him.


    Manuel nodded, trying to stay patient. Another two minutes slipped by, and then the data on the instrument began changing rapidly.


    Manuel adjusted his sses and moved closer to the bioputer, scanning the chaotic data that was wildly different from before. The printer beside him hummed to life, spitting out a detailed report. What once had over fifty parameters now showed less than twenty.


    He grabbed the printout, eyes darting over it quickly. The values were all over the cepared tost time. His brow furrowed, and he handed the sheet to the other two professors nearby. "Take a look at this."


    “Is this..... the fusion and breakdown of over fifty elements into just eighteen?" one of them asked.


    "What would happen if we used this on a person?" the other wondered aloud.


    The professors exchanged bewildered looks, clearly thrown off by this unexpected twist in their research.


    Manuel raked his fingers through his hair, took back the printout, and after nce, shook his head


    a adding up. There''s gotta


    "This


    be a mistake somewhere."  swnovel


    Ben peered at the printout, a mysterious glint in his eye. "I follow


    the integrated data steps to


    the letter when mixing. We shouldn''t have any issues, right?"  swnovel


    As soon as Ben mentioned the data, Manuel moved over to a nearby table,


    picked up the internal phone, and dialed out.


    A momentter, he was connected. "Could you get... Mirabe, yeah, ask them to swing by my office?"


    A few days back, after surgery on a test subject, Manuel had nned to hash things out with Nick, but Dr. Ray had pulled him away in the middle of it all.


    "Mirabe hasn''t been around the med schooltely," Nick''s colleague on the line said, unruffled.


    Manuel paused, surprised. "Not at the med school? Where''d they go? Any clue when they''ll be back?"


    Ben perked up at the mention of the


    call, ncing over at Manuel. He''d noticed something was off with that guy from the T5 Research Institute-the way his hands shook during surgery, and the lingering scent of blood afterward...  swnovel


    Lost in thought, Manuel hung up the phone and turned back.


    Ben, snapping back to the present, casually asked, “Thinking of running those numbers again, Manuel?"