Novel Lab Novels & Stories

Chapter 27: The First Edition The floor of The Narrative was really quiet but you could feel the excitement in the air as Elena and Julian got out of the elevator. The big studio in Brooklyn with its brick walls and huge windows was a big change from the crazy and stressful places Elena used to work when she was writing books for other people. Downstairs the teams that did research and design were sitting around a table looking at the final versions of the book before it was printed. They were getting ready to launch the Nora Vale imprint.

The scent of the damp earth under the grass is almost overwhelmingly sharp, completely washing out the cheap cologne Jason usually wears. We finally enter the science building, the empty, echoing halls smelling strongly of industrial floor wax and the faint, lingering bite of sulfur. Jason leads me to our shared bench at the very back of the main lab. A restart of our last experiment is already bubbling away in a round-bottom flask, the heating mantle glowing a low, dangerous orange. I pull over the heavy lab notebook, my new, razor-sharp vision scanning his frantic handwriting with immediate ease.

He pushed them open and stepped aside. "Your laboratory, Miss Anastasia." I walked inside and stopped. My breath caught in my throat. The laboratory was huge. Sunlight poured through a wall of windows that faced the forest. The workstations were brand new, with gleaming steel surfaces and state-of-the-art equipment. Microscopes. Centrifuges. Genetic sequencers. Machines I had only ever read about in journals. A glass cabinet along one wall held rows of labeled samples. A computer screen on the main desk displayed a three-dimensional model of werewolf DNA.

With the spellbook tightly clenched under his arm, Collin followed Nicolas and Beverly as they slowly went through everything that was in the laboratory. Collin had to admit that he was surprised. The place was a lot more sophisticated than he ever expected. They were going to need a truck. The cars they brought weren’t enough to transport this lot back home.