Chapter 3 CHAPTER THREE: THE BLACK SUBSTANCE

The black stuff on Lily’s finger would not come off. She had scrubbed it with soap, then alcohol, then a solvent that Chen warned her would burn through skin if she left it on too long. Nothing worked. The substance just sat there, pulsing faintly, warm against her skin like a living thing pretending to be dead. She stopped scrubbing and held her hand up to the light, watching the way the blackness seemed to drink the fluorescence, leaving a tiny shadow on her fingertip that should not have been possible.   Chen stood across the lab table, holding a scanner that beeped every time he passed it over her hand. “It’s not organic,” he said, frowning at the readout.