# Chapter 9: The First Sample
The elevator doors slid open with a whisper, revealing a world away from the grit and desperation of the Lower East Side. Pres Sanchez stepped out into the pristine, white-on-white environment of the ninety-fifth-floor laboratory at Sanchez Biotech. The air here was cool, filtered, and carried the faint, sterile scent of ozone and polished steel. It was a sanctuary of order and control, a fortress of logic built to dissect the mysteries of the universe. To her, it was home. The city lights of Manhattan twinkled beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, a sprawling carpet of diamonds laid out under the velvet darkness of the night sky, but Pres paid them no mind. Her focus was absolute.
She moved with a fluid, unhurried grace across the polished concrete floor, her heels making no sound. The resonant spectrometer was cool in her hand, its mission complete. The device had done its job perfectly, siphoning a microscopic sliver of energy from Relly Moe's transmutation. It was more than just a sample; it was a ghost, an echo of a power that should not exist. Her heart, a muscle that hadn't beat in its own right in over two centuries, felt a phantom flutter of anticipation. This was the thrill of the hunt, the intellectual chase that had sustained her through the long, monotonous decades. Relly was a fascinating anomaly, a puzzle wrapped in a lie, and she intended to take him apart piece by piece.
At the center of the lab stood the Spectral Analyzer, a masterpiece of Concordat engineering that looked like a chrome sculpture of a blooming flower. Its petals were arrays of quantum sensors and crystalline lenses, all converging on a central containment chamber. Pres placed the spectrometer into a docking port. A soft chime confirmed the data transfer. With a few precise taps on a holographic interface that shimmered in the air before her, she initiated the sequence.
"Analyze sample designation 'RM-01'," she commanded, her voice crisp and clear in the silent room. "Full-spectrum deconstruction. Cross-reference with all known magical signatures, including the Black Archives."
The machine responded with a low, resonant hum that vibrated through the soles of her feet. The chrome petals began to rotate slowly, and a beam of pure white light shot from the lenses into the containment chamber. The air inside shimmered, and then, the light exploded. It wasn't a violent explosion, but a silent, brilliant bloom of impossible color. Hues she had no names for swirled and coalesced, fractal patterns of light unfolding and collapsing in on themselves. It was chaotic, beautiful, and utterly wrong. Every known magical signature, from the disciplined blood magic of the Concordat to the wild nature magic of the Fae, had a structure, a predictable rhythm. This was a symphony of beautiful, terrifying noise.
The holographic interface flickered, streams of data scrolling past too fast for a human eye to read. The lab's AI, a sophisticated consciousness named Helios, began its work. *Analyzing energetic matrix... Incongruent with all registered paradigms. Detecting quantum entanglement across multiple temporal states. Signature exhibits properties of both creation and entropy simultaneously. Probability of spontaneous reality warping: 97.8%.*
Pres's eyes narrowed. This was beyond her initial assessment. She had expected something rare, perhaps a lost branch of hermetic magic. This was something else entirely. "Helios," she said, her voice losing some of its clinical detachment. "Run the cross-reference. Prioritize the Black Archives. Use Regent-level clearance."
*Acknowledged. Accessing Aegis Concordat Deep Archives... Bypassing standard firewalls... Searching for harmonic resonance...*
The swirling light in the analyzer intensified, casting dancing shadows across the pristine white walls. The hum grew louder, a chord of power that seemed to press in on her from all sides. She could feel the raw potential of the sample, a primal force that made her own ancient power feel like a candle flame next to a star. It was intoxicating and deeply unsettling. For the first time in a very long time, Pres felt a sliver of genuine fear. Not for her safety—she was confident in her ability to handle Relly—but for the implications of what this power represented. It was a crack in the foundation of their carefully ordered world.
*Search complete,* Helios announced, its synthesized voice devoid of emotion. *One match found. File is heavily redacted and flagged for immediate destruction under the authority of the First Regent, circa 1042 AD.*
Pres froze. The First Regent. Valerius's predecessor, a figure of myth and terror who had forged the Concordat in the fire of the Inquisition. An order for destruction that had stood for nearly a thousand years was not to be taken lightly. "Display the file, Helios. Authorization Sanchez-Omega-Nine."
On the main screen, a single line of text appeared, stark against a black background.
**PROJECT CHIMERA - ZERO-POINT ANOMALY**
The rest of the document was a wall of black bars, entire pages redacted into oblivion. It was a digital tomb, a secret so profound that the Concordat had tried to erase it from history. But they hadn't erased it completely. They had buried it. And Pres, with her insatiable curiosity and unparalleled access, was a master gravedigger.
"Helios, analyze the redaction layers. I want to see what's underneath."
*Warning: Bypassing Regent-level encryption is a direct violation of Concordat Protocol 7. This action will be logged.*
"Do it," she commanded, her voice like ice.
The screen flickered as the AI went to work, peeling back layers of digital security that had been in place for centuries. The black bars began to fracture, revealing glimpses of text beneath them: fragments of ancient languages, equations that defied known physics, and terrified, scrawled notes from long-dead alchemists. It was a puzzle box of cosmic horror. The air in the lab grew thick with a palpable tension, the energy from the analyzer seeming to react to the forbidden knowledge being unearthed.
Finally, one section of the file resolved. It wasn't text. It was an image. A symbol.
Pres's breath hitched in her throat, a reflex she hadn't experienced in decades. It was a simple, elegant design: a serpent eating its own tail, the Ouroboros, but its body was a double helix, and within the loop was a single, unblinking eye. She knew that symbol. She had seen it just hours ago, etched into the worn leather cover of the book Relly Moe guarded with his life. The First Codex.
Her mind raced, connecting the dots with terrifying speed. The Codex wasn't just a book of lost magic. It was the key to this Zero-Point Anomaly. It was the source.
"Helios," she whispered, her gaze locked on the symbol. "Correlate this symbol with any other data in the file. Find a name."
The AI worked for a fraction of a second. A single, unredacted word appeared next to the symbol, a name that had been purged from every history book, every Concordat record, a name spoken only as a curse in the darkest corners of the immortal world.
**THE FIRST ALCHEMIST**
The name hit her like a physical blow, a wave of cold dread that washed over her centuries of composure. The First Alchemist. The boogeyman. The progenitor of the one power the Concordat had never been able to control, the reason for their millennia-long crusade of extermination. They weren't just hunting a rogue magic user. They were hunting the last echo of their greatest enemy. And she had just led him right to their doorstep, offering him a partnership.
Her mission had just changed. Lord Valerius wanted the Codex as a trophy, a tool to consolidate his power. He saw Relly as a curiosity, a minor threat to be neutralized. He was wrong. This was not about control. This was about extinction. The Purge ritual he was so fervently preparing wasn't just about eliminating lesser supernaturals; it was a failsafe, a final solution to eradicate the Alchemical threat once and for all. And Relly, with his raw, untrained power, was the living embodiment of that threat.
Pres looked from the screen to the analyzer, where the chaotic light still swirled, a captive universe of impossible potential. She had walked into Relly's bar thinking she was the predator. Now, she realized she was standing on the edge of an abyss, and the man she had been sent to capture was the only one who truly understood the darkness that lay within. Her duty to the Concordat, to her clan, to Valerius, warred with a new, terrifying imperative. To control this power, she couldn't just take the book. She had to understand it. She had to understand *him*. And she had to do it before Valerius realized what she had found and ordered them both to be purged from existence. The game was no longer about acquisition. It was about survival.