Gary opens the door.
It's not locked. It isn't ornate. Just a flat metal plate that slides aside with a sound like breath being released.
The room beyond is long and narrow. Not a chamber—more like a work corridor widened into a workspace.
The smell hits first.
Chemicals. Something metallic and sweet, layered over old heat. Like a forge that once cooked meat by accident and never quite forgot.
Tables line both sides of the room. Stone slabs reinforced with iron bands, their surfaces etched with shallow grooves that drain toward channels cut into the floor. The channels feed into covered basins along the walls. Some of the grates are newer than the stone beneath them.
Someone had replaced them.
Glass cylinders rise from the tables—thick-walled, clouded with residue. Tubes snake out of their bases and disappear into the floor or ceiling. A few still have liquid inside. Not full. Not empty. Just enough.
I step closer to one and touch it.
Inside floats something that might have been tissue. Muscle, maybe. Or something grown to resemble it. Fibers twitch faintly, reacting to nothing I can see.
I gasp and pull my hand back.
Along the far wall, racks hold tools.
Clamps shaped for joints. Rings with adjustable diameters. Needles too thick to be medical, too precise to be crude. Some of them are bent. Not from use—like they were pushed back against resistance.
Ashlynn slows her pace here.
"These aren't for killing," she says, her brows frown. Her eyes drifting between tools.
"No," Gary agrees. "They're for keeping things alive."
He moves past us, already scanning the room like he knows what matters and what doesn't.
At the center of the room is a platform. Not raised much—around our knees. The surface is stained darker than the surrounding stone, layered so thick the texture has changed. Anchor points ring its edge, some snapped clean, others warped.
Above it, the ceiling is reinforced.
Chains once hung there. The marks are still visible.
I feel the heat under my skin stir again. It's not pain but something else. Recognition.
I'm taken aback then steady myself afterwards.
Nothing in the room reacts to us. No alarms. No movement.
Which means this place isn't abandoned.
It's simply finished with what it was doing.
Gary finally turns around.
"This is an application lab," he says, scanning the room. "Not theory. Not research."
He looks at me—
Ashlynn breaks the silence.
"So what is alchemy supposed to be?" she asks. Not defensive and certainly not curious. Just practical. Her eyes still locked on the platform.
"Because this doesn't look like magic."
Gary snorts softly. "It isn't."
He moves to one of the tables and drags a finger along a shallow groove. Whatever once ran through it has stained the surface permanently. His glove comes away dark.
"Alchemy is applied transformation," he says as he looks at his stained glove. "You don't ask reality for permission. You prepare it so it can't say no."
Ashlynn turns around. She frowns. "That doesn't explain anything."
"It does," Gary replies. "Just not in a way people like."
He gestures at the glass cylinders, the pipes, the channels cut into the floor.
"Alchemy doesn't create," he continues. "It modifies. Redirects. You start with something that already exists, then decide which parts of it are negotiable."
I look at the platform again. The anchors. The stains that never quite fade.
"And the rest?" I ask.
Gary glances at me. Just long enough to study my face.
"The rest fails," he says.
Ashlynn folds her arms and looks down the floor. "So what—potions? Body modification?"
Gary lets out a short laugh. No amusement in it.
"Potions are delivery systems," he says. "Temporary ones. Body alteration is where the work actually happens."
He taps the side of one of the glass cylinders.
"Alchemy is slow. Costly. And it needs control. That's why most places don't use it unless they're desperate—or insulated from consequences."
"And this place?" Ashlynn asks, looking at Gary.
Gary looks around the room.
"This place had both."
Ashlynn hesitates, then asks, "If alchemy is this dangerous, why write notes at all? Why leave instructions behind?"
Gary doesn't answer right away.
"When you repeat a process often enough," he says finally, "memory becomes a liability."
He straightens. Moves away from the table.
"Those who delve in alchemy tend to be forgetful. That's what I believe."
Gary watches me for a moment longer than necessary.
"You didn't freeze back there," he says as he approaches me closer then stops, two feet close.
"Most people do."
I don't answer him.
"I'm leaving this place," Gary continues. "Soon."
"If you stay, you go back into containment. Maybe not a cell. Maybe something worse."
He turns then shrugs.
"If you come with me, you get evaluated instead."
"That's it?" I ask.
Gary nods. "That's all anyone gets at first."
I don't answer him.
"Let's open the next door."