Antidote

Overnight, everything flipped—ups and downs, happy one moment, scared the next. They’d barely made it this far, and right now, they were all like spooked birds—too shaken to handle any more chaos.

Raina stepped up to the door, right in front of the keypad lock. She closed her eyes, and in her head she could hear the crackling of the fire, the noisy chatter of the others...

But then, in the next second, all that noise started to fade away like a miracle. A scene from way, way back popped up in her mind.

“...Raina, remember, you might never open this door. But if you do, your whole life might change because of it... Are you scared?”

Scared?

She suddenly opened her eyes and caught a glimpse of Leif standing right beside her. In that moment, she felt like she suddenly had the courage to open the door.

Taking a deep breath, she stopped hesitating and punched in a few numbers on the keypad.

Click.

The metal door swung open, and a heavy, old, dusty, musty smell hit her right away.

For a split second, something flashed through Raina’s mind. She tried to grab it, but it disappeared before she could catch it.

She frowned a little but didn’t think much of it—probably just the strong, stale smell catching her off guard.

She stood at the doorway and said, “I’ll go in first and check it out.”

She’d gotten used to being the first to step into any situation. After all, you couldn’t always expect someone else to take the risk. Sometimes you just had to grit your teeth and go.

But before she could move, Leif grabbed her wrist. He was strong—she winced a little and looked up at him. “Mr. Vexley, you…”

His face was half-hidden in the dim light, but for some reason, Raina thought he looked mad.

Then he said quietly, “Don’t move around. Stay behind me.”

Yeah, right. There was no way he was gonna let a woman walk ahead of him in a situation like this.

Without giving her a chance to argue, he pulled her behind him and stepped through the door.

Raina was speechless.

Just then, there was a click sound, and the pitch-black room suddenly lit up—it had lights inside!

Raina felt a rush of relief. “There’s light inside. Everyone, come in!”

Outside, the fire was raging hotter, clearly closing in. Inside, the temperature kept rising, and the air was getting thinner. Everyone was already suffocating. At her words, they hurried toward the door.

Raina was the last one in. Once inside, she closed the door behind her and turned to look around.

This wasn’t some dark cave or narrow tunnel. It was a huge space—about half the size of a soccer field—with a bunch of medical equipment scattered around.

The musty smell she noticed wasn’t from the door being unopened for years. It came from the medical machines and some unknown liquids stored inside.

“Holy sh— is this a secret underground lab?!” someone said, eyes wide, scanning the room with a mix of excitement and crazy intensity.

The others looked around, amazed by what they saw. For a moment, they even forgot how close they’d been to dying.

Raina didn’t care about the machines or anything else. She stood facing one wall and stared.

All over it were scribbles—some messy, some neat—mostly experimental data. Sometimes it looked carefully written, other times like random doodles. There were numbers, formulas, notes about experiments... it was like someone was studying something big.

The wall was covered, a chaotic mess, and Raina couldn’t figure out what it all meant.

After staring for a while, she pulled out her phone and snapped several photos to capture everything on the wall. Once she was sure she’d gotten it all, she put the phone away and looked back at the wall.

From the very first glance, she recognized it—these were her mother’s notes.

Suddenly, a shocked voice said, “This, this can’t be… No way…”

Raina turned around instinctively. Mr. Shaw was standing there, looking at the wall too—but his face was pale and grim.

She frowned slightly. “Uncle Shaw, do you know what’s written here? What exactly was my mother researching?”

Mr. Shaw was silent for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m not sure. But it looks like some kind of antidote... medicine to counteract poison. Still, I can’t say for sure.”

“Antidote?”

He studied the wall a bit longer. “I’m not really sure. It’s such a mess, you’d have to study it carefully to figure out exactly what she was working on.”

The whole wall was covered with a chaotic jumble of numbers and formulas. Some were barely even legible.

“Holy crap, why are there so many used needles here?! What the hell was this place used for?” someone suddenly asked, staring at a small square box.

Raina immediately walked over, Leif right behind her. They quickly reached the box.

Inside were tons of discarded needles. Some still had dried blood on them, like someone had used them here.

The blood was blackened, old. Raina studied it but couldn’t make sense of it. She wanted to go back and look at the wall again when out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of scratches on a nearby wall.

The scratches were mostly hidden behind a metal table. You’d never notice them unless you looked closely.

Raina paused, then moved forward to lift the table—but Leif beat her to it and pulled it away.

He was acting weird today, but Raina didn’t have time to think about that. When the table moved, it revealed the scratches.

Deep and shallow, spread all over the wall.

Looking closely, it was clear those marks weren’t from anything else—they were finger scratches.

At that moment, Raina’s shock hit its peak.

Who on earth had been here? What kind of pain would make someone leave marks like this?

Could it have been her mother?

***