Chapter 15

Lila Evening crept in soon and I realized I had to start heading home. The warm glow of the setting sun filtered through the windows of the orphanage, casting a soft golden hue on everything. I grabbed my bag and was about to say goodbye to the kids when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced at the screen—Liam, my research partner from school. “Hey, Lila,” his voice came through the line, a little too excited for the end of the day. “You won’t believe what we found today. The latest data from our experiment on neural regeneration came in, and it's insane. The cells responded far better than we anticipated. I’m emailing you everything now. We need to analyze it by tomorrow.” Neural regeneration? That was the research project I’d been dedicating countless hours to—studying the brain's capacity to repair itself after trauma. If our recent findings were as promising as Liam made it sound, this could be groundbreaking. “I’ll check the email as soon as I can,” I said, trying to match his e