Chapter 79 The Burn

• The lab crouched between a boarded-up bakery and a laundromat, its cracked stucco façade bleeding ivy.
• A faded sign read *Evergreen Diagnostics*, the letters peeling into obscurity. Inside, the air hummed with the ghosts of a thousand experiments—sharp notes of formaldehyde, the sweet rot of forgotten specimens. But tonight, it would burn.
• Adam tossed the gas canister to Solo, its slosh echoing in the hollowed-out shell of the building. “Make it quick. Cops patrol this block at 9.”