Silence filled the car for a second.
Adrian did not deny it.
He simply looked at her, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.
“What if I say yes?”
Elara’s gaze shifted slightly.
“Why?”
Adrian leaned back against the seat, his eyes still on her.
“Because I owe you my life.”
“And also…”
He paused, his voice dropping, deep and steady.
“I don’t like seeing anyone give my doctor a hard time.”
Elara paused, a faint flush touching the tips of her ears before she realized it.
She quickly looked away.
“I can handle my own problems.”
“I know.”
Adrian gave a soft laugh.
“So I’m only helping keep some of the trouble away from you.”
“The one who really won that test was you.”
Elara looked at him.
For the first time, she suddenly felt this man was kind of different from everyone else.
He did not treat her like someone fragile who needed rescuing.
He believed she was capable of handling her own problems.
When she needed help, he would simply be there.
Elara went quiet for a second.
“Thanks.”
Then something clicked in her mind.
Why had Adrian shown up at the school today in the first place?
“But you didn’t come to school just to help me out, did you?”
Adrian glanced at her.
“Of course not.”
Elara nodded.
“Looking for someone?”
“Yeah.
Barnaby Crane.”
The moment she heard that name, her expression paused ever so slightly.
“What do you want with him?”
Adrian reached to the side and pulled out a file.
“This.”
Elara took it from him.
The second she opened the first page, her eyes sharpened, all business.
Neural repair technology.
It was an exceptionally difficult research project.
And the direction of the study just happened to line up with the issue she had previously discovered in Adrian’s condition.
“This is Barnaby Crane’s research?”
“Yeah.”
Adrian said, “His project focuses on repairing nerve fibers.
If it works, it could become key technical support for the neural repair surgery I’ll need later.”
Elara kept reading.
The more she read, the tighter her brows drew together.
A few minutes later, she closed the documents, her tone firm and certain.
“He can’t pull it off.”
A flicker of interest crossed Adrian’s eyes.
“You’re that sure?”
“Yeah.
I am.”
Elara handed the file back to him.
“The research direction itself isn’t wrong, but there’s a problem with his core deduction.”
“If he keeps going with this setup, the best he’ll get is some theoretical data.
There’s no way it can actually be used on the human body.”
Adrian went quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “What if it were you instead?”
Elara lifted her eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Could you do it?”
She didn’t answer right away.
Instead, she took the file back and read through it again.
This time, she looked far more seriously than before.
Her mind was already moving fast, breaking down the entire research structure piece by piece.
Neural induction, fiber reconstruction, drug-assisted support—and, with the Nexo-7 in her hands, several possibilities began to come together in her mind.
A moment later, she looked up.
“I can try.”
The corner of Adrian’s lips curved slightly.
“Good.
The project is yours.”
Elara froze for a second.
“You’re not going to Barnaby Crane anymore?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you said he can’t pull it off.”
Adrian looked straight at her, his voice calm and steady.
“I trust your judgment.”
Elara paused, clearly caught off guard.
She had spent years being doubted and challenged, to the point that she had grown used to having to prove herself first.
But Adrian had been different from the beginning.
He had never once asked—
“What makes you think you can do it?”
He only asked one thing: could she do it or not.
She said yes.
And he handed the project over to her, just like that.
That kind of direct trust was unfamiliar enough to make Elara slightly uncomfortable.
“You really trust me that much?”
Adrian kept his eyes on her.
“You saved my life once, so I’m willing to bet one more time.”
The man paused for half a beat.
“Bet on you.”
Elara’s pulse skipped.
She lowered her gaze before Adrian could read her reaction.
“Then give me the research files.”
“I already had Andrew get them ready.”
“When did you even get this ready?”
“While you were taking your exam.”
Elara looked up at Adrian.
“You really are…”
She stopped halfway, like the rest of the sentence got stuck in her throat.
Adrian laughed softly.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Elara turned away, trying to look unaffected, though the tips of her ears had already reddened.
Adrian noticed but said nothing.
Instead, he took out his phone as though he had seen nothing.
“Save my number,” he said.
“If anything comes up with the research, contact me directly.”
Elara took out her phone.
“Okay.”
She lowered her head and saved it.
When she reached the contact name, she paused before typing:
Adrian.
The man caught sight of it at once.
“No other name for me?”
“There is.”
Elara looked up at him.
“Mr.
Whitmore.”
Adrian raised a brow.
“That’s way too distant.”
“What do I call that, then?”
He went quiet for two seconds.
“Adrian.”
Elara looked at him.
“…”
“Alright.”
She put her phone away.
Adrian’s gaze stayed on her.
It was only a contact entry, yet
For the first time, Adrian felt some of the distance between them ease.
A moment later, he finally said, “There’s one more thing.
Vanguard Medical Center.”
Elara’s expression turned cold in an instant.
“What about Vanguard Medical Center?”
“They made Nexo-7.”
Elara’s eyes darkened sharply.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Adrian handed her another file.
“Someone got a vial from Vanguard Medical Center.
Publicly, they’re claiming it’s Nexo-7.”
Elara flipped through the documents, and the more she read, the colder her eyes became.
Vanguard Medical Center.
The Crane family.
So it all led back to the Crane family after all.
“You suspect them?”
“Yeah.”
Adrian spoke in a low, steady voice.
“I don’t think they’re capable of finishing Nexo-7 on their own.
But the thing is, they really did put out a finished product.”
Elara closed the file with a soft snap.
“Then let’s go take a look.”
Adrian lifted his eyes to her.
“You’re coming too?”
“Works for me.” A chill flashed across Elara’s eyes.
“I also want to know what the Crane family is actually playing at.”
…
At the same time, inside Vanguard Medical Center’s lab.
Rosalind had already run the experiment more than a dozen times in a row.
Every attempt had failed.
She stared at the analyzer, her face gradually paling.
“That’s impossible…”
How could this be?
She clearly remembered the procedure Elara had used that day.
She had even secretly written down every key ratio.
So why did every attempt fail when she followed the same steps herself?
“One more time.”
Rosalind gritted her teeth and started preparing the materials all over again.
The solution blended slowly, and the machine kicked into operation.
A few minutes later, the alarm sounded again.
“Experiment failed.”
Rosalind went pale and shut the machine off immediately.
“Why?”
She braced both hands against the lab bench, her breathing turning quicker and quicker.
What really scared her wasn’t the failed run itself.
It was the fact that she was running out of materials.
To make Nexo-7, she had already burned through a huge amount of rare, high-value raw compounds.
A few more failures and she would not even have enough material left to continue testing.
And right when things were already a mess, Abigail came looking for her again.
“Rosalind.”
Rosalind forced a smile.
“Professor Warnock.”
“Go to Vanguard Medical Center tomorrow.”
Abigail handed her the documents, her tone leaving no room for argument.
“Bring Nexo-7 with you.
I want to see your research results with my own eyes.”
Rosalind took the file, her fingertips turning cold.
“Okay.”
That was all she could say.
But the second Abigail walked away, the smile on Rosalind’s face vanished completely.
Nexo-7…
She hadn’t actually made it.
Not for real.
The only reason she’d dared to claim it before was because she thought all she had to do was memorize Elara’s method and run it again herself.
But the second she really got hands-on, she realized the truth.
The steps looked simple on paper, but reproducing them was another matter entirely.
What exactly had Elara hidden?
She didn’t know.
And at this point, she didn’t even have time to figure it out.
Because by tomorrow, she had to put a “finished product” on the table.
Rosalind stared at the scraps of materials left on the lab bench, her fingers curling bit by bit.
Then, out of nowhere, a thought flashed through her mind.
What if…
No one actually knew what the real Nexo-7 looked like?
Then why did she have to make the real thing at all?
As long as she could put together one that looked convincing enough, then find someone to back her up and say it was real…
Wouldn’t that be enough?
Something shifted in Rosalind’s eyes.
Slowly, she reached out and picked up an empty test tube.
What color was the real Nexo-7?
Nobody knew.
At least…
ordinary people didn’t.
All she had to do was create something convincing at a glance, falsify the experimental data, and send the vial to Vanguard Medical Center.
As long as nobody caught it, she would still be the genius developer everyone admired.
And Elara would remain nothing more than the daughter the Weston family had cast out.
At that thought, Rosalind finally relaxed, and a faint smile touched her lips.
“Elara, you think you’re so impressive.”
“Let’s see what you can do this time.”
She lowered her head and started mixing the formula again, adding different solutions into the test tube bit by bit, careful and slow.
At last, a pale yellow liquid settled inside the glass tube.
Rosalind lifted it and held it under the light, checking it over again and again.
She had no idea what the real Nexo-7 actually looked like, but at least…
on the surface, this one looked convincing enough.
At last, she let out a long breath.
“It’s done.”
But she didn’t know.
The real Nexo-7 was never something judged by color alone.
Nor was it something that could be convincingly faked with a single vial and fabricated data.
What she knew even less was this—
the counterfeit drug she had made with her own hands just to keep her lie alive
would soon become the clearest piece of evidence against her, stripping away the story she had built around herself.