Chapter 10: The Dragon's Lair

Chapter 10: The Dragon's Lair

The headquarters of Croft Industries was not a building; it was a statement. A sterile white tower that sliced into the overcast sky, it had more in common with a mausoleum than a place of business. There were no friendly logos, no welcoming receptionists. Just seamless glass doors that slid open into a lobby of polished marble and oppressive silence, a modern-day sepulcher where the air itself smelled of antiseptic and ozone. Elara felt the weight of the place settle on her shoulders, a physical pressure of institutional power.

Beside her, Kaelen was a study in rigid calm, his expensive suit a suit of armor for this new, unfamiliar battlefield. He had prepped her in the car, running through corporate structures and potential lines of attack, treating the upcoming meeting like a hostile takeover negotiation. It was the only way he knew how to process the churning guilt that still radiated from him in waves. For Elara, his presence was a strange, grounding force. The boy who had been her personal storm was now her only shield.

They were escorted not by a person, but by silent, green lights that blinked on along the corridors, guiding them through a labyrinth of white walls and frosted glass. It was a place designed to intimidate, to remind visitors of their insignificance. This was the fortress Julian had warned her about, and Elara felt its walls closing in.

They were led into a spacious office that was less an office and more the heart of a laboratory. One wall was a vast window looking down into a cleanroom filled with humming, chrome machinery. The other walls were lined with screens displaying complex genetic sequences and cellular models. And behind a large, stark-white desk sat the dragon himself.

Dr. Alistair Croft was a gaunt man in his late fifties with thinning grey hair and eyes that were the same piercing, intelligent blue as his son’s. But where Julian’s held a shy warmth, his father’s were like chips of ice. They held no welcome, only sharp, weary assessment. He did not stand.

“Mr. Blackwood,” he said, his voice a dry rustle. “Your Chief of Staff has an exceptionally aggressive definition of ‘consultation.’ You have ten minutes.” He completely ignored Elara, his gaze fixed on Kaelen as if she were a piece of furniture he’d brought with him.

Kaelen didn’t flinch. “Dr. Croft. This is my associate, Elara Vance. The consultation is on her behalf.”

Croft’s icy gaze finally flickered to Elara, lingering for a moment before dismissing her entirely. “I see. The Blackwood heir has taken up philanthropy. How quaint. Your ten minutes are ticking.”

This was the moment. Elara’s heart hammered against her ribs, but her voice came out steady, honed by years of reciting medical facts to dismissive doctors. “Dr. Croft, my sister, Maya Vance, has been diagnosed with a rare glycogen storage disease, a variant of Laforey. Your research into ASGPR-targeting enzyme therapies…”

“Is experimental and unpublished,” Croft cut her off, his tone sharp as broken glass. “And I am not a clinician. I am a researcher. I do not take on patients.”

“We’re not asking you to,” Kaelen interjected, his voice firm. “We’re asking for access to the therapy protocol. Compassionate use. We have a medical team ready to administer it.”

Croft leaned back in his chair, a small, cruel smile touching his lips. It was a look of profound cynicism. “Compassionate use. A lovely term for when desperate people want to use their loved ones as lab rats for unproven science. The answer is no.”

The finality of it sucked the air from the room. Elara felt a wave of nausea. This was it. The end of the line.

“Every life is a risk,” she said, her voice tight with a desperation she could no longer hide. “My sister doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for proven science. She’s losing herself, piece by piece, every single day. Your data, the preliminary animal trials—they showed a seventy percent reversal in neuronal glycogen accumulation. It’s the only hope she has.”

For the first time, a flicker of something other than disdain crossed Croft’s face. It was a deep, haunting pain. “Hope,” he scoffed, the word tasting like poison in his mouth. “Let me tell you about hope, Miss Vance. Hope is a charlatan. It promises a miracle and delivers only a more painful, prolonged agony. That therapy you read about in some obscure journal? It does reverse the glycogen buildup. A stunning success, on a cellular level.”

He leaned forward, his icy eyes boring into her. “What the journals don’t tell you is what happens next. The therapy creates a cascade of autoimmune responses. It saves the brain cells only to have the body’s own immune system attack them with a vengeance. It replaces a quiet, degenerative decline with violent, uncontrollable seizures and systemic organ failure. It doesn’t save the patient. It simply trades one death sentence for another, more horrific one.”

The room spun. Elara grabbed the edge of the desk to steady herself. The dark side of his research wasn’t failure; it was a monstrous kind of success.

Croft’s gaze became distant, lost in a memory that was clearly a fresh, open wound. “I know this because my late wife, Eleanor, had a similar condition. I poured everything I had into this research to save her. And when the time came, I used my ‘unproven science’ on her. I was full of that same hope you have now.” His voice cracked, the sound utterly raw. “I didn’t save her. I tortured her. I turned her last six months into a living hell. A hell of my own making.”

The fortress wasn't built of paranoia; it was built of grief and guilt. The dragon was guarding not a treasure, but a tomb.

“So you will forgive me,” he said, his composure returning like a mask being lowered, “if I refuse to help you inflict that same horror on your sister. I will not allow my failure to ruin another family. Now get out. Your ten minutes are up.”

The words were an execution. It was over. All of it. The scholarship, the fight, the desperate alliance with Kaelen—it all ended here, in this sterile white room, at the hands of a man broken by his own tragedy. Kaelen stood frozen, his power, his money, his family name utterly useless against a wall of such profound and personal pain.

Just as Elara turned to leave, her body numb, a side door to the office swished open.

Julian Croft stood there, his face pale, his expression horrified. He had clearly heard everything.

“Father,” Julian said, his voice shaking but firm. “You can’t just send them away.”

“Julian, this is not your concern,” Dr. Croft snapped, his face hardening at the sight of his son.

“It is my concern!” Julian stepped fully into the room, planting himself between his father and the door. He looked at Elara, his eyes filled with a desperate apology, and then at Kaelen. “What he said… about the side effects… it’s true. For the original formula. But he’s lying by omission.”

Dr. Croft shot to his feet. “Julian, do not say another word!”

“No!” Julian’s voice rose, filled with a strength Elara had never seen in him. He was defying the dragon in his own lair. “You’ve been working on a second-generation carrier molecule. One that bypasses the autoimmune response. I’ve seen the data on your private servers. It works, Father. The animal models are stable. You’re just… you’re too afraid to try again. You’re letting your grief sentence this girl’s sister to death because you can’t bear to face what happened to Mom.”

The accusation hung in the air, electric and terrible. Dr. Croft looked at his son with utter betrayal, his face a mask of cold fury. “You are confined to your quarters. We will discuss your outrageous breach of my trust later.”

He turned his back on them all, a final, unassailable dismissal. Hope, which had been so brutally extinguished, flickered with a tiny, impossible spark. As Elara and Kaelen were silently ushered out by the building’s invisible systems, Julian caught Elara’s eye. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of his head, his lips forming a single, silent word.

Wait.

Minutes later, as they stood defeated in the sterile marble lobby, Kaelen’s phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number.

He will never give it to you. Meet me at the coffee shop off campus in one hour. We’ll have to take it.

Elara looked at Kaelen, her heart pounding with a new, terrifying rhythm. The path of persuasion had ended at a locked door. Julian Croft had just offered them a key—a key that would lead them down a dangerous new road of theft and conspiracy, with no turning back.