The door to Sage's private office slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and Sasha led Zaeryn into a completely different world.
The change was immediate and dramatic.
Where Sage's office had been intimate, personalized with touches of warmth and that intoxicating lavender scent, the main laboratory sprawled before them like a cathedral of science, vast, sterile, and humming with barely contained power. The cold, clinical white light made every surface gleam, and the low-frequency thrum of machinery spoke of massive power consumption.
Directly ahead, seven cylindrical glass pods stood like silent sentinels, each nearly three meters tall, pulsing with eerie bioluminescent light. To the left, a massive machine dominated the floor, the Vitae Integration Matrix, a fusion of particle accelerator and organic incubator.
Tubes and cables snaked from it to dozens of monitoring stations where holographic displays rotated through three-dimensional molecular models.
