The biting Norwegian wind whipped around Dr. Elias Vance as he disembarked the small, chartered plane. The fjord spread before him, a tapestry of inky black water reflecting the bruised purple of the twilight sky. He pulled his coat tighter, the chill seeping through the expensive fabric. The message had been cryptic, a simple encrypted email containing only a location and a time. No name, no explanation, just an invitation to a secluded research facility nestled deep within the fjords. Elias, a synthetic biologist at MIT with a reputation for solving the unsolvable, had initially dismissed it as a prank or perhaps the misguided attempt of a competitor. But the accompanying financial offer – a sum that could fund his research for a decade – had been impossible to ignore. His skepticism warred with his curiosity, a familiar internal battle he’d grown accustomed to in his years of cutting-edge research.