While Alicia and Theron were patiently waiting and browsing the grocery's shelves, at the back room of the store, where the surplus stock and the products who arrived that day were stored, three bags made of some kind of rough fabric were placed on a squared table at the corner.
Inside of them were the vegetables, spices and greens which were written on Alicia's groceries' list. Mister Gren had expertly found them all already and put them neatly in bags, ready to be sold to Alicia. But the bags were sitting on the table alone, mister Gren was nowhere to be seen in the small storage room.
Behind an apparently heavy and unmovable fruits' shelf, a well camouflaged hidden door existed. Its color and texture, the same plastic grey as this storeroom's walls, making it undistinguished to the naked eye.
Past this secret door, a dark dimly lit corridor adored with patches of moss, extended for dozens of meters, leading to a dark brown wooden door at its end. Beyond it there was a private and likewise hidden room.
Glass vials, beakers, burners and other intricate machinery and glassware were but a few of the things placed atop a marbled counter and two metal tables in the middle of the room and at the sides respectively.
All the objects were illuminated in a faint green light originated from nearby mekron crystals, from a green powder inside some of the glass vials but also from some kind of liquid inside a couple of beakers. The brightest green glow though, which was the main light source of the room, came from the few mekron crystals embedded on the four walls.
These crystals had the same rhombus shape and size as each other. Green luminescence lines grooved to the walls, horizontally connected them, forming an autonomous lighting system made of and powered by their crystal energy.
Offsetting somewhat the cold green lighting and giving some form of warmth to the room were a couple of candles in low iron candlesticks, placed at the counter's and tables' corners.
This was clearly a laboratory of sorts, with its main focus of research being the mekron crystals. The applied autonomous lighting system using the crystals' energy and glow, was only the simplest of the products, realized from the aggregation of the laboratory's many successful research findings.
In front of the table on the left of the marbled counter the short figure of mister Gren Voger was seated on a metallic stool. From the secret dark corridor only his hunching back could be seen.
*Shkr shkr shkr!* His bald head was shining from the flickering of the candles and the green glow from the surrounding mekron crystals but there was nothing funny about it.
*Shkr shkr shkr!* The combination of the two light sources was instead giving his figure a disturbing appearance while he leaned forward against the table, writing something on a piece of paper with great intensity.
If someone was at the side watching him, he wouldn't spot his calm demeanor and friendly attitude from earlier.
His brows were as high as they could go, the thin muscles underneath them stretched to their limit.
*Shkr shkr shkr!* His eyes were open wide, staring hard at the at the table, a fanatical and excited gleam flashing in their core as he wrote.
Even his warm welcoming smile that greets his customers was replaced with its distorted counterpart, oozing madness and pure thrill from its inverted crescent gap and outstretched corners.
The piece of paper the scribing sound was coming from turned out to be just a page of a thick book. Its worn leather cover and the yellowed edges of the pages spoke volumes of the years it has been of use.
This was Gren Voger's research compendium that still accompanies him from all the way back from his teenage student years.
Starting from its very first pages where he kept notes from his school's classes, written with a young and naive mindset, but abruptly changing entirely to contain solely pained grievances and tortured and paranoid thoughts, its already later used pages eventually ended up being filled with insane theories, complex diagrams and hair raising experiments focusing around the mekron crystals and their properties, with surprisingly well-proofed results beyond the current crystal technology.
In his new entry, occupying three whole pages so far, the name of Theron was written many times over, with the ink from the blackwood fountain pen sank deeper into the paper at those six letters. It could also be seen from the sharp edges on the paper how much force was used when writing the name. Anymore and the hard paper should have probably ripped through.
Similarly written with force were a couple of others, like the words "mental capacity" and "subject". They were both with sharp edges at their outlines; their letters' black lines etched deeply on the paper.
Especially so was the word "subject". The twisted feelings of Gren Voger were so great when writing it, their intensity seemed to have been transmitted in its inky paths; his insanity and obsession over his research flowing within its blackened currents.
Theron was clearly being targeted, and for a malicious purpose too.
The mad mind of Gren Voger was quick in making the decision to target him. Not even a long period of time to consider and review the boy's qualifications for the theorized experiment was required. All that was needed to pique his interest were just mere seconds of his mature disposition and beyond his age intelligence.
From the twisted way that deranged mind of his work and from the fact that Theron's name was associated with, and went in package, with the eerie terms of research subject and experiments in his new entry, it was clear as day he had already chosen him for the task.
By the time he finished his crazed scribing, he had begun forming nefarious plans and ploys for capturing Theron in secret, to use him for his research's advancement and benefit.
*Pat!* closing his thick book of madness, he closed his eyes and took a few slow breaths.
When he opened them again, he turned around and started walking towards the wooden door of the hidden corridor. His creepy smile was restored to its warm and welcoming shape while his face adopted again the friendly visage Alicia and Theron saw just minutes ago.
And yet, a dangerous gleam still couldn't be controlled from escaping his amiable eyes every now and again as he opened the wooden door and vanished behind it.