Mariana's Pov

Black pants, black shirt, black baseball hat; that’s what I’m clad in—my usual uniform for whenever I have to meet my mother at our meeting point. Her laboratory in the estate.

As I approach the door, the soldiers pull open the door for me and I step in, the smell of smoke and chemicals filling my nostrils immediately.

It’s something I’ve become accustomed to. And I sometimes wonder why my father allows my mother to have her little research laboratory here in ...