It was the twenty-eighth day.
The silence in the underground laboratory was absolute, thick, and suffocating. Without the hum of the massive machines, the basement felt exactly like what it had become: a cold, concrete tomb.
Roxy was barely clinging to the physical realm. Her heartbeat was incredibly slow, a faint, erratic flutter against her prominent ribs. She was unconscious far more than she was awake, her brain shutting down entirely to protect her from the catastrophic agony of starvation and untreated wounds.
Elias had completely given up on his grand experiment.
The older man sat on his wooden stool, his tweed coat hanging loosely over his hunched shoulders. He was staring at her bound, skeletal form, but the manic, obsessive light in his gray eyes had entirely burned out, replaced by a cold, bitter resentment.
