Chapter 7 - Chapter 7: The Weight of Truth

Dawn crept slowly and uncertainly over the University of Foggia campus, a gray light filtering through the thick fog, tinting the world with spectral hues. The night had given way to a cold, damp morning, the sky covered by a blanket of low clouds that seemed to press down against the earth, stifling any hope of sunlight. Andrea and Giulia were still holed up in the old shed on the edge of the campus, a precarious refuge made of rotting wooden planks and cobwebs. The smell of mold and wet earth permeated the air, a sharp scent that mingled with their labored breathing, still heavy with the tension of their escape. Andrea sat on a dusty bench, legs bent and hands clasped in front of him, an attempt to anchor himself to reality after hours of fear and adrenaline. The cold had seeped into his bones, a chill he couldn't shake off despite his heavy jacket. His eyes, red from lack of sleep, burned every time he blinked, and exhaustion weighed on his shoulders like a physical burden. He ran a hand over his face, rubbing rough skin against the stubble that had grown in the past few hours, a tangible sign of time slipping through his fingers.Beside him, Giulia crouched against the wall, clutching her backpack to her chest like armor. Moretti's notebooks and the container with the plant and soil were hidden inside, stolen treasures that had turned them into prey. Her brown hair, escaping the hood of her sweatshirt, fell across her face in messy strands, and her breath formed small clouds of vapor in the frigid air. Her green eyes, usually bright, were dulled by fatigue, but a spark of determination still glimmered beneath the surface—a strength Andrea had come to recognize and admire."We need to get out of here," Andrea said, his voice hoarse and broken, a sound that seemed to rise from a deep well within him. He stood, his legs protesting with sharp stabs of pain from the awkward position he'd held too long, and approached the shed's broken window. The dawn light filtered through the grime-encrusted glass, illuminating the woods beyond the clearing with a pale, surreal glow. There was no sign of the figure that had chased them, no light or movement among the bare trees, but the sensation of being watched prickled the back of his neck, a primal instinct he couldn't ignore. "If they find us still here, we're done," he added, turning to Giulia with a look that begged for a response.She nodded slowly but didn't move right away. Her eyes were fixed on the splintered wooden floor, lost in a tangle of thoughts Andrea couldn't decipher. "We have what we need," she said finally, tapping the backpack with a trembling hand. "The notebooks, the sample… but what do we do now? We can't go back to the dorm, not after last night." Her voice was low, laced with a weariness that went beyond the physical, an echo of the fear that had pursued them across the campus.Andrea leaned against the wall by the window, the damp wood sticking to his jacket. She was right—the dorm was no longer an option. Whoever had chased them knew they were involved, and returning there would be like handing themselves over, a surrender they couldn't afford. "We need to analyze the soil," he said, nodding toward the backpack. "If there's really a special compound, like Moretti's notebooks suggest, it could be the proof we need to figure out why he was killed. It's the only way to make sense of this."Giulia looked at him, a shadow of doubt crossing her face like a dark cloud. "And where do we analyze it?" she asked, finally standing from her crouched position. The movement drew a grimace of pain from her, her muscles stiff from the night spent in the cold. "The main lab is sealed off by the police, and we can't exactly go to a professor for help. We don't know who to trust, Andrea. After last night, every face could be a mask."Andrea hesitated, running a hand through his hair in that nervous gesture that had become a reflex in recent days, a way to push back the doubts crowding his mind. "There's an old lab on the ground floor of the chemistry building," he said after a moment, his voice gaining a hint of certainty as the idea took shape. "No one uses it anymore since they opened the new one on the second floor. It's full of outdated equipment—rusty microscopes, scales that probably don't even work—but it might be enough for a basic analysis. If we can get in without being seen, we could work there undisturbed.""It's a risk," Giulia interrupted, crossing her arms over her chest. Her tone was pragmatic, but a note of exhaustion betrayed how much the night had worn her down. "If we get caught in there, we won't have any excuses. And after last night, whoever's looking for us will be more alert.""I know," Andrea admitted, meeting her gaze with an intensity that mirrored her own fear. "But we don't have many options, do we? Staying here is just as dangerous, and we can't carry this stuff around without knowing what it contains. We need to figure out what we're holding, Giulia. It's our only chance."She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes searching his face for something—perhaps a certainty he wasn't sure he could give. Then she nodded, a slow but resolute gesture. "Alright," she said, her voice hardening with renewed determination. "But we need to be fast. And quiet. We can't afford mistakes."They gathered their things in silence, a ritual that felt almost mechanical after hours of hiding and running. Andrea checked the backpack, ensuring the notebooks and container were secure, the cold glass brushing his fingers as he tucked it among Moretti's pages. He pulled on his jacket, the damp fabric clinging to his skin like a second layer, and cautiously opened the shed door, the rusty hinges letting out a faint groan. The woods beyond the threshold were silent, cloaked in a light mist that blurred everything, a landscape suspended between dream and nightmare.They stepped out, their footsteps crunching on the leaf-strewn ground, a sound that felt too loud in the morning stillness. They headed toward the chemistry building, steering clear of the main paths and moving through the trees like shadows. The campus was still asleep, classrooms and dorms wrapped in a silence that seemed unnatural after the chaos of the night. The fog shrouded the buildings like a veil, muffling sounds and lending the scene a ghostly air that heightened their tension.Andrea walked ahead, his heart pounding despite his exhaustion, his eyes scanning every corner for any sign of movement. Every so often, he glanced back at Giulia, who followed with the extinguished flashlight still gripped in her hand—an useless weapon, but a reassuring one against the unknown. Her slender figure moved with silent grace, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up to hide her hair, a shadow among shadows.They reached the chemistry building after about ten minutes, a squat, gray concrete structure that loomed like a fortress against the leaden sky. The back door, hidden by a tangle of brambles that scratched their legs as they passed, was locked but not sealed. Andrea pulled out his Swiss army knife from his pocket—a battered old gift from his grandfather he always carried—and fumbled with the lock. His hands trembled slightly, the cold and fatigue making every movement harder, but after a few attempts, the door gave way with a soft click, a sound that seemed to echo too loudly in the silence.They slipped inside, closing the door behind them with a swift motion. The interior was dark and dusty, the air thick with the stale smell of old chemicals and rusted metal, a scent that tickled his nose and brought back memories of hours spent in the university labs. Andrea turned on his phone's flashlight, the beam illuminating a narrow hallway cluttered with stacked boxes and old desks piled against the walls. "This way," he said, leading Giulia toward a door at the end of the corridor, the splintered wood scraping against against the floor as he opened it.The room beyond was a chaos of obsolete equipment: microscopes with cracked lenses, rusted scales, an old spectrophotometer draped in a yellowed plastic sheet that looked untouched for years. The flashlight beam danced across the dusty surfaces, revealing a forgotten world, a reliquary of science that seemed to belong to a bygone era."Not exactly ideal," Giulia murmured, setting the backpack on a table in the center of the room. Her voice was low, almost a whisper, as if she feared disturbing the silence that enveloped them. "But it might do."Andrea nodded, pulling the container with the soil and plant from the backpack. The glass was cold against his fingers, and the plant's leaves glinted faintly under the light, an unnatural green that unsettled him every time he looked at it. "Let's get started," he said, trying to ignore the exhaustion weighing on his shoulders like a boulder. "If we find something, it could change everything."The old chemistry lab was a sanctuary of relics, a place where the past seemed crystallized in every dusty surface and rusted tool. Andrea's flashlight beam danced across the cracked walls, illuminating a microscope with an oxidized brass body, a centrifuge that let out a plaintive creak when Giulia brushed it with her hand, a cabinet full of cracked test tubes and reagent bottles with faded labels that crumbled at the touch. The air was heavy, a mix of dampness and chemical odors that stung the nose and left a bitter aftertaste, but for Andrea and Giulia, it was a refuge—an oasis where they could search for answers amid the chaos that had engulfed them.Andrea set the container with the soil on the table, the cold glass slipping through his trembling fingers from exhaustion and adrenaline. The plant inside, with its unnaturally green leaves, seemed almost to pulse under the dim light, a living enigma staring back at them with an unsettling presence. He leaned in to examine it, his breath condensing in the room's cold air, and for a moment, he lost himself in the details of those leaves—smooth, waxy, with veins that seemed to thrum as if charged with hidden energy. "Where do we start?" he asked, turning to Giulia with a mix of hope and uncertainty, his voice quivering slightly with anticipation.She stepped closer, pulling one of Moretti's notebooks from the backpack with a quick but careful motion, as if afraid to damage its fragile pages. "We need to know what to look for," she said, flipping through the pages with hands that moved with almost surgical precision. The professor's messy handwriting filled every space, a chaos of formulas, sketches, and notes that seemed to speak a secret language—a code only they could hope to unravel. "Here," she said finally, stopping on a page dense with numbers and technical terms, her fingertip tracing a scribbled line. "Moretti mentions an 'organic catalyst.' He says he found a compound in the soil that accelerates plant growth without side effects. If it's true, there should be a chemical trace we can detect, something that sets it apart from normal soil."Andrea nodded, trying to recall the analytical chemistry lessons from his second year—hours spent studying spectra and reactions that had once felt like mere hurdles to his degree. "We can do a basic analysis," he said, his voice gaining a hint of confidence as the plan formed. "With the microscope, we can look at the soil's structure, see if anything stands out on a microscopic level. And maybe with the spectrophotometer, we can identify some odd compound, something that shouldn't be there. It won't be as precise as a modern lab—this stuff's decades old—but it might give us a clue."Giulia grabbed a test tube from the cabinet, checking it for cleanliness with an attention that betrayed her lab experience. She poured a small amount of soil from the container, the dark earth falling into the tube with a soft, almost hypnotic sound. "Let's start with the microscope," she said, adjusting the lenses of the old device with surprising precision. Her hands moved with a calm that contrasted with Andrea's inner turmoil, a skill honed from tinkering with old electronics as a hobby—a detail she'd once shared over coffee on campus.Andrea watched her, struck by her composure under pressure. He thought back to a day a few months earlier when he'd seen her working in the botany lab under Moretti's guidance. She'd been the one to spot a mistake in an experiment—a miscalculated fertilizer concentration—a detail the professor had brushed off with a gruff laugh but quietly corrected later, giving her a look of approval. That curiosity, that attention to detail, had brought them here, to this moment, seeking answers in a forgotten lab.Under the microscope, the soil revealed a hidden world, a microscopic universe unfolding before their eyes. Grains of sand and clay mingled with tiny organic particles, fragments of matter dancing under the light. But something strange caught Giulia's eye immediately: tiny, almost translucent crystals glimmering with an unusual intensity. "Look at this," she said, gesturing for Andrea to come closer with a quick wave of her hand. "These don't look like normal minerals. They're too… regular."Andrea leaned over the microscope, adjusting the focus with fingers trembling from excitement. The crystals were jagged, their edges refracting light in an unnatural shimmer that felt almost alive. "It could be the catalyst," he murmured, his voice thick with awe. "Moretti said it was organic, but maybe it has a unique crystalline structure, something not found in nature normally.""We need to test it chemically," Giulia said, returning to the table with a determination lighting up her face. She grabbed a pipette and a bottle of distilled water from the cabinet, preparing a sample for the spectrophotometer with precise movements. The machine was ancient, its buttons creaking under pressure and its display flickering as if on the verge of failing, but after a few tries, they got it running, its hum filling the room like a mechanical breath. They poured the sample into a fragile glass cuvette, holding their breath as the spectrophotometer processed the data.While they waited for the results, Andrea flipped through another of Moretti's notebooks, searching for clues to guide them. The pages were a maze of thoughts, a stream of consciousness scrawled in haste, as if the professor feared losing his ideas. One page caught his eye: "Compound stable after 12 cycles. Yield tripled compared to standard samples. De Santis informed—discretion requested." He paused, the name De Santis burning in his mind like a brand. "De Santis again," he said, showing the page to Giulia with a quick gesture. "Moretti told him something, but it sounds like he wanted to keep it under wraps."Giulia frowned, reading over his shoulder with an intensity that creased her face. "Discretion requested… do you think De Santis wanted to go public before Moretti was ready? Or that he had other plans?""Maybe," Andrea replied, his mind drifting to a chance encounter in the department hallway weeks before Moretti's death. De Santis had brushed past him, speaking tersely into his phone, words reaching Andrea in fragments: "We can't wait. If we don't act now, someone else will." He hadn't understood then, too caught up in his own thoughts to pay attention, but now those words felt like a warning, an echo of approaching danger.The spectrophotometer's hum cut off with a sharp click, and the display showed a series of irregular peaks, a graph that seemed to tell a hidden story. Giulia stepped closer, studying the data with care, her eyes darting between the numbers. "There's something here," she said, pointing to an odd peak with the tip of a pen she'd pulled from her pocket. "A compound with strange absorption… it's not standard nitrogen or phosphorus. It could be what Moretti was after."Andrea nodded, his heart racing as the reality of their discovery sank in. "Then it's real," he said, his voice trembling with excitement and fear. "This soil contains something unique. Something worth killing for."The discovery of the compound in the soil changed everything, a lightning bolt tearing through the veil of uncertainty that had shrouded them. Andrea stared at the spectrophotometer's display, the numbers and graphs dancing before his tired eyes like a code to crack. It was concrete proof, a fragment of truth linking Moretti's notebooks to the secret lab—and perhaps to his murder. But with that truth came a new weight, a realization crushing him like a boulder: they were playing with something dangerous, something that had already claimed a life and could easily claim more.Giulia set the cuvette on the table with a slow motion, her hands trembling slightly from excitement and exhaustion. The glass clinked against the wooden surface, a sound that seemed to echo in the silent room. "If this is the catalyst," she said, her voice low but brimming with restrained wonder, "then Moretti was right. It could revolutionize agriculture—plants growing faster, stronger, without chemical fertilizers. But why hide it? And why would someone kill him for it?"Andrea sank onto a wobbly stool, his legs giving out under the weight of fatigue. He rubbed a hand over his face, pressing against his bloodshot eyes to clear the mental fog enveloping him. "I don't know," he said, his voice emerging rough and uncertain. "But the more I think about it, the more I'm sure De Santis is involved. His name's all over the notebooks, and that night… when I found Moretti…" He trailed off, the memory tightening his throat like a vice, a knot he couldn't unravel.Giulia looked at him, tilting her head with an expression blending curiosity and concern. "What happened that night, Andrea?" she asked, her voice gentle but insistent, as if she knew that memory held a key to understanding everything. "You've never really told me, not in detail. What did you see?"He hesitated, his gaze lost in the void as the past resurfaced with painful clarity. It was a memory he'd tried to bury under layers of routine and denial, but now it returned with a force that overwhelmed him. "I went back to the lab to grab a book," he said quietly, his voice shaking as if each word were a weight to lift. "It was late, past ten. I'd forgotten a manual I needed for an exam—something trivial. The door was ajar, which I thought was odd; Moretti was always careful about locking up. When I stepped inside…" He swallowed, the bitter taste of bile rising in his throat. "Moretti was there, on the floor. Blood everywhere, a pool spreading beneath him like a liquid shadow. Drawers were open, papers scattered… it looked like someone had torn the place apart, searching for something."Giulia stepped closer, resting a hand on his shoulder in a gesture that was both comfort and encouragement. "And the notebook with your name?" she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if afraid to shatter the fragile moment."I saw it by chance," Andrea replied, lifting his gaze to meet hers. "It was on the table, open, like someone had left it there on purpose. My name was written on it, big, in black ink. I didn't have time to think—I called the police right after, my hands shaking so badly I could barely dial. But now… now I wonder if it was a message. Or a trap. Something to make me look involved.""A way to frame you," Giulia said, finishing his thought with a clarity that struck him. "But why? You weren't part of Moretti's project, not officially.""Not directly," Andrea said, rising from the stool and pacing the room, his footsteps echoing on the concrete floor. "But I worked with him. I was his assistant for the basic experiments, the ones he used for lectures. Maybe they knew I'd dig for answers, that I wouldn't stop. Or maybe…" He paused, a dark idea forming in his mind like a shadow. "Maybe someone wanted to use me as a scapegoat."Giulia nodded, returning to the notebook with a thoughtful expression. "It says 'risk of exposure' here," she murmured, flipping through the pages with a delicacy that contrasted with the strength of her words. "Maybe Moretti wanted to protect the project, keep it hidden until he was sure. And De Santis didn't. Or maybe De Santis wanted to sell it to someone, and Moretti stood in the way."Andrea stopped, turning to her with an intensity burning in his eyes. "And if it wasn't just De Santis?" he said, his voice rising slightly with the thrill of the theory. "Those guys in the lab… they talked like they had a plan. 'If they get to De Santis before we do'… maybe there's someone else involved. Someone bigger, with the means to orchestrate all this."Giulia stared at him, her eyes widening as she processed his words. "A company?" she asked, her voice trembling with the scope of the idea. "A financier? Someone who wanted the catalyst for themselves?""Could be," Andrea replied, returning to the table and picking up the container with the plant. The leaves still glowed, a green that felt almost alien under the flashlight's beam. "Moretti talked about 'commercial potential.' If this catalyst is really worth millions—or billions—there'd be plenty of interested parties. Agricultural firms, multinationals, even governments. And if Moretti got in the way…"Silence fell between them, heavy as the fog blanketing the campus outside. The discovery of the compound was a step forward, a beacon in the storm, but it raised more questions than answers. Andrea approached the table, turning the container in his hands, the cold glass reminding him of the fragility of what they'd found. "We need to keep this safe," he said, his voice hardening with fresh resolve. "If they find us with this, we're dead. We can't let them take it."Giulia nodded, but her gaze shifted to the backpack, a shadow of worry crossing her face. "And Marco?" she asked suddenly, her voice breaking slightly. "We haven't heard from him since last night. Do you think he's okay? He was with us in this, at least at the start."Andrea stiffened, Marco's name hitting him like a punch to the gut. The hacker friend who'd promised to dig into the university's digital records, the only one who could uncover information they'd never find alone. The last time they'd seen him, he'd been hunched over his laptop in Andrea's room, fingers flying across the keyboard with near-hypnotic speed. But there'd been that tension in his movements, that nervous tapping of his fingers on the table's edge, that silence too long when they'd asked if everything was alright. "I hope so," he said, but his voice betrayed the doubt gnawing at him. "I'll send him a message. But we can't involve him too much, not until we know who to trust. If they got to him…"He didn't finish, but he didn't need to. Giulia nodded, biting her lower lip in a gesture that revealed her anxiety. "We need to be careful," she said. "The deeper we dig, the more we expose ourselves."Andrea pulled his phone from his pocket, his fingers trembling as he typed a quick message: "Marco, you okay? Found anything in the records? Let me know." He hit send, the screen flashing briefly before going dark, leaving him staring into the void. "Let's hope he replies," he muttered, more to himself than to Giulia.The old lab had become their refuge, but also a prison—a place where time seemed to crawl, each second heavy with tension and waiting. Andrea and Giulia worked for hours, analyzing the soil with every tool at their disposal, a slow and methodical process that forced them to confront the reality of their discovery. The dawn light had shifted into a gray morning, filtering through the dirty windows and casting long shadows across the room, a play of light and dark that mirrored the chaos in their minds. Exhaustion wrapped around them like a heavy blanket, seeping into their muscles and bones, but adrenaline kept them awake, a quiet flame burning within and pushing them onward.Giulia prepared another sample, this time using a chemical reagent from the cabinet—a pale yellow liquid that reeked of sulfur and made her wrinkle her nose as she poured it. She added it to the soil in a test tube, watching the reaction with an intensity etched into her face. A light foam formed on the surface, tiny bubbles popping slowly, a sign that something was happening before their eyes. "Look," she said, pointing to the tube with a quick gesture. "It's reacting. It could be an indicator of the catalyst, something to confirm what we saw in the spectrophotometer."Andrea stepped closer, studying the foam with care, his eyes narrowing as he tried to make sense of it. "Moretti mentioned a reaction with nitrogen," he said, his voice rising slightly with excitement. "If this compound enhances photosynthesis, it might bind to specific elements in the soil, something that makes it unique." He grabbed another notebook from the backpack, flipping through it with hands shaking from fatigue and anticipation until he found a page with a hastily scribbled formula. "Here," he said, showing it to Giulia with a triumphant gesture. "It says the catalyst is stable with nitrogen and oxygen. We could test it with another sample, see if we get the same result."They worked in tandem, a silent ballet of coordinated movements that felt almost instinctive after hours together. Andrea poured a small amount of soil into a new test tube, adding a nitrogen reagent he'd found in a dusty bottle in the cabinet. The mixture changed color before their eyes, shifting from dark brown to a vivid green—the same brilliant green as the plant's leaves they'd brought with them. "It's it," he said, his voice thick with wonder and fear. "The catalyst. It's real. It's not just a theory—it's right here in front of us."Giulia nodded, but her face was taut, her lips pressed into a thin line. "This changes everything," she said, setting the test tube down with a gentleness that contrasted with the force of her words. "If Moretti found a way to speed up plant growth with no side effects, it wasn't just a scientific breakthrough. It was an economic weapon, something worth millions—or billions. And someone wanted it enough to kill him."Andrea sank back onto the stool, the weight of her words pressing down on him like a stone. He thought back to the night of the murder, the chaos of Moretti's lab greeting him like a nightmare. There'd been something odd, a detail he hadn't noticed in the frenzy of the moment: a chemical smell in the air, different from the plants or reagents they usually used. He'd chalked it up to the blood, the chaos, the fear clouding his senses, but now he wondered if it had been a trace of the catalyst—or something used to hide it, to erase Moretti's discovery."We should take it to the police," Giulia said, cutting through his thoughts with a voice vibrating with urgency. "With this and the notebooks, we can prove Moretti was killed for his work. It's solid evidence, Andrea—they can't ignore it."Andrea shook his head, a slow but firm gesture. "Not yet," he said, standing and pacing the room again, his footsteps echoing like a metronome. "We don't know who's involved. If De Santis is in on it, he might have connections there—in the police, among the investigators. And those guys in the lab… they weren't amateurs. They had a plan, an organization. We need more, a plan of our own, before we expose ourselves."Giulia stared at him, frustrated but understanding, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. "And what's the plan, Andrea?" she asked, her voice rising slightly with exasperation. "We can't hide forever. Every hour, every minute that passes brings us closer to them finding us. Then what?""I know," he replied, stopping in front of her with a look that mirrored her fear. "But we have to be smart. If it's De Santis, or someone else, we need airtight proof—something they can't ignore or bury. Something that forces their hand."Silence returned, broken only by the spectrophotometer's hum as it processed data in the background, a sound like a faint lament. Andrea pulled his phone from his pocket, checking if Marco had replied to the message he'd sent hours earlier: "You okay? Found anything in the records?" Nothing, just the silence of a blank screen. A knot formed in his stomach, a cold sensation spreading through his chest. Marco was always quick to respond, even late at night, even buried in his code and hacks. His absence now felt like a bad omen, a shadow stretching over them."No reply," he said, showing the phone to Giulia with a slow gesture. "Think something's happened to him?"She hesitated, biting her lower lip in that nervous habit Andrea had come to recognize. "I hope not," she said, her voice cracking slightly. "But after last night… we can't rule it out. He was with us, Andrea. He knew what we were after. If they found him…"Andrea nodded, doubt turning to fear, a worm burrowing into his mind. Marco had been their ace in the hole, the only one who could dig into the university's digital records without leaving a trace, the only one who could find evidence they'd never reach alone. But if they'd gotten to him, if they'd silenced him… He shook his head, trying to banish the thought, but he couldn't ignore the possibility. "We need to focus on what we have," he said, his voice hardening with forced resolve. "The soil, the notebooks. It's all here, in front of us. Marco… let's hope he's okay, but we can't let this paralyze us now."Giulia nodded, but her eyes held a shadow she couldn't hide. "You're right," she said, returning to the table and picking up another notebook. "But we need to move fast. The longer we wait, the more we expose ourselves."The morning slipped slowly into a gray afternoon, the fog thinning outside the lab windows, giving way to a leaden sky pressing down on the campus. Andrea and Giulia kept working, cataloging every finding with an almost obsessive precision, noting every detail that might help them piece together Moretti's murder. The compound in the soil—the organic catalyst Moretti had discovered—was real, a tangible truth glowing in their hands like a lighthouse in a storm. But with that truth came an inevitable question, a shadow looming over every thought: who wanted it enough to kill?Andrea flipped through another of Moretti's notebooks, the pages crackling under his fingers with a dry rustle, a sound that seemed to echo in the quiet room. The professor's notes were a jumble of thoughts, a frantic stream of consciousness as if he feared losing his ideas before he could pin them to paper. A page near the end caught his eye, the words scrawled in black ink that seemed to scream: "Final tests completed. Samples transferred to Zone B. De Santis pushing to accelerate. External threat confirmed." He stopped, reading the words aloud with a voice trembling with excitement and fear. "External threat confirmed… what does that mean?"Giulia stepped closer, studying the page with an intensity that creased her face. "It sounds like Moretti knew he was in danger," she said, her voice low but tinged with growing certainty. "Maybe he'd figured out someone was watching him, that someone outside the university was on his trail. Or maybe De Santis betrayed him, sold him out to someone else."Andrea nodded, his mind racing as he tried to connect the dots. "Zone B," he murmured, rolling the words on his tongue as if they might reveal a secret. "That's the second lab mentioned in the notebooks. If the samples are there, there might be more—documents, evidence, something tying it all together. Something that tells us who's behind this.""We need to find it," Giulia said, her voice firm, a fire sparking in her eyes. "But we can't move now. It's too risky in daylight—they'd spot us immediately.""You're right," Andrea said, setting the notebook down with a slow gesture. "We'll wait for dark. But in the meantime, we need to protect what we have." He took the container with the plant and soil, tucking it into the backpack with the notebooks with almost reverent care. "If they find us here, they can't have anything. This is all that's keeping us alive right now."Giulia nodded, but her gaze was troubled, a shadow crossing her face like a dark cloud. "And Marco?" she asked again, her voice breaking slightly. "We can't leave him out of this. If something's happened to him, if they've taken him…"Andrea pulled his phone from his pocket, his fingers shaking as he tried calling this time, a desperate move after hours of silence. The line rang into emptiness, a monotonous sound echoing in the room, then clicked to voicemail. "Marco, it's Andrea," he said, his voice tight with urgency. "Call me as soon as you can. It's important—we need to know you're okay." He hung up, the knot in his stomach tightening like a vice. "Still no answer," he said to Giulia, showing the phone with a slow gesture. "I don't like this. It's not like him.""Me neither," she replied, biting her lower lip hard enough to leave a red mark. "But we can't do anything now. We have to wait, hope he's okay. If they've got him, if they know he was with us…"Andrea nodded, the silence settling between them like an unbearable weight. He sat again, staring at the table littered with test tubes and tools, a chaos reflecting the turmoil in his mind. The truth was within reach, but it slipped away every time he tried to grasp it, a shadow dancing just beyond his grip. He thought of Moretti, his kind smile, the passion in his eyes when he spoke of botany during lectures. He wasn't just a professor—he'd been a mentor, a friend, someone who'd believed in Andrea when he doubted himself. And now he was gone, and Andrea felt the weight of that loss like a stone crushing his chest."We'll find them," Giulia said, breaking his thoughts with a voice vibrating with resolve. "Whoever did this, we'll stop them. We can't let them win, not after everything we've been through."Andrea looked at her, drawing strength from her determination, an anchor in this sea of uncertainty. "Yeah," he said, his voice hardening with a silent vow. "We will. For Moretti."But as the afternoon slid toward evening, a sudden noise made them jump—a dull thud, like a door closing somewhere in the building, a sound that shattered the silence like a gunshot. Andrea switched off his phone's flashlight with a quick motion, darkness swallowing them again like a suffocating blanket. "What was that?" he whispered, his heart pounding anew with a force that hurt.Giulia stood, gripping the screwdriver she'd used on the lock, her knuckles white with tension. "Someone's here," she said, her voice low but steady, a steel edge cutting through the fear in her eyes.They crept toward the lab door, holding their breath, bodies taut like violin strings. Another sound, closer now—footsteps, slow and heavy, echoing in the hallway like a countdown. Andrea grabbed the backpack, ready to run, the weight of their evidence tugging at his shoulder. But before they could move, a voice rang out from the other side of the door, cold and menacing, a sound that froze the blood in his veins: "I know you're in there. You've got nowhere left to hide."Andrea felt the world shrink around him, fear gripping his chest like a vice. The truth was close, closer than they'd ever imagined, but with it came danger—a real, immediate shadow that had found them. There was no more time to hide—now they had to face whatever awaited them, whatever it might be.