Mc's POV
My eyes snapped open, and I coughed violently.
My body trembled as I sucked in a sharp breath, like I had been deprived of air for far too long.
Each inhale burned my chest, and my throat felt raw, as if I had been screaming without realizing it.
It took a few seconds for my vision to stop shaking.
When it finally settled, I looked around slowly.
Lyra stood beside me.
The Director of L Corp was looking down at me with an expression that was hard to read.
Relief was there, but buried beneath exhaustion and grief.
I was lying on a makeshift bed, hastily assembled from lab equipment and metal frames that hadn't been completely destroyed.
The lab itself was in ruins.
Containers lay shattered across the floor, their contents spilled and evaporating into the air.
Entire sections of the wall were missing, blown outward, exposing the structure behind it.
The pod was gone—completely obliterated—and the liquid that had once filled it was still dripping across the ground.
