That same day, Robert found himself at a crossroads.

As he pulled into the lab’s parking lot, he spotted two of his researchers loading large brown boxes into the trunks of their cars. He immediately flung his car door open, his heart sinking as he ran across the parking lot’s concrete floor.

“Guys! What’s with the boxes? What’s going on?” he called out, trying the best he could to mask the panic in his voice.

“We’re leaving, Robert,” one of them said bluntly.

“Leaving? You guys can’t leave. Not now. We’re on the verge of a major breakthrough! If you turn your back now, everything we’ve worked so hard to build will be for nothing. The sleepless nights, the years of our children’s lives that we can’t get back, will all be wasted!”

“Robert, all that may be true,” one of them said, “but living off a dream that isn’t paying us isn’t sustainable. We have families, mouths to feed. Promises of a breakthrough aren’t going to keep our lights on, now are they? You’ve still got the university salary. We don’t. And even if we did, it’s still not enough, Robert. We’ve been offered positions that can actually allow us to support our families. We’d love to stick around and see this through, but our families come first. I’m sorry.”

Robert stepped forward, heart beating fast as frustration began creeping into his voice.

“Just give me a little more time. You’ll be paid soon. I promise.”

“Soon’ isn’t good enough, Robert. We need a definitive time scale and regular monthly paycheques just like any other worker. We’ve worked on promises and good faith, and none of them were seen through. I’m sorry. We hope that you find the breakthrough. You deserve it for all the hard work you’ve put in, and science could do with another breakthrough, but we’re out.”

The two men turned back to their cars, loading the last of their things as fast as they could. Robert stood frozen, helpless.

“Wait!” he called out.

The two scientists paused.

“If I can get both of you your full salary and back pay by the end of the week, will that change things?”

The taller one looked over his shoulder. “And moving forward, we get paid on time, like normal employees?”

Robert nodded. “Yes. Of course. Whatever it takes to keep you both here.”

The two scientists exchanged glances. A beat passed.

“Then we’ll stay. But if there is one missed or late payment, Robert, we’re gone.”

“Understood.”

Relief broke across Robert’s face, but it didn’t last long. As they turned back toward the building, Robert let out a huge sigh. His heart was still beating fast. His chest tightened and his mind raced. He had bought himself some time, but he still had no idea how he would pay the scientists or if he ever could.

Robert made his way into his office and closed the door gently behind him, as if slamming it might make everything collapse just that much sooner. He crossed the room, opened the drawer under his desk, and pulled out the bottle of whiskey and a glass he kept in there for celebrations. But this time, there was nothing to celebrate. He popped it open and watched as the drink slowly filled the glass. The stress had become unbearable, and he saw his glass of whiskey in that moment as his only way out, even if it was a short escape.

He had no way of paying his team. Not this week, not even next month. But without them, the project was dead. He raised the glass to his lips, taking a few sips before stopping. His mind flashed to a memory: the moment Derrick handed him that card. He stared into the cup at the brown liquid, contemplating whether to take another sip, before placing it down and to the side. Robert threw his head back and his hands over his face. He didn’t want to call Derrick, but his options were shrinking by the hour. Either make the call, or lose everything.

The ticking of an old analog clock on the wall beat time like a slow metronome for his collapse.

1:43 p.m.

He hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

Papers lay scattered across his desk, calculations, rejected grant proposals, and half-written pleas for funding. But what sat at the center of his desk, weighted like an equation notice, was the one that mattered the most:

“Final warning: lab closure imminent due to non-compliance with funding quotas.”

He had fought that warning. After all, he’d won the prestigious award only just last year. Shouldn’t that have bought him time? Prestige? Something?

Apparently not.

This year, the money had gone to Dr. Wentworth and his “theoretical nonsense.” Robert couldn’t think or hear the man’s name without the bitterness returning to the tip of his tongue. The university had chosen abstract equations over something with the potential for real world impact. It felt personal.

Research had always been a battlefield, but Robert never imagined he’d be the one on the front line, battling without any help from anyone. The hero that could make a difference to the world, but left to bleed out in the trenches while others with less to offer thrived.

He had spent five years developing this, something that could revolutionize medicine. He had tested it. He knew it worked. The only issue was integrating the foreign DNA into the human body without triggering catastrophic rejection. It was close. The data backed it. His team believed in it , and in him , but that wasn’t enough because no one else did.

He picked up his phone again, scrolling through his endless industry contact list, hoping to find a lifeline. The rejections played on his mind like a cruel highlight reel that he couldn’t escape.

“Too theoretical,” said the private investor from Tech Consortium.

“Come back when you have something to commercialize,” said the VC in San Diego.

“Interesting... any military applications?”

Being turned down by BioDeon Tech, after they’d nearly courted him the year prior, was the final straw. They said it was about the work, but that was a lie, Robert was proof of that. It always came down to two things: profit or power, while some courted both.

His research wasn’t flashy. It was all about healing. Recovery. Stabilizing trauma victims. Helping burn victims. Rebuilding tissue. But no one had the patience for that kind of progress.

The phone slipped from his fingers and landed on his desk with a heavy thud. He had exhausted all his contacts, all but one.

He turned slowly toward the bottom drawer on the left side of the table, the one that hadn’t been opened in a year.

With a quiet breath, he reached down and pulled it open. Inside, there it was , Derrick’s number. As fresh as when he’d handed the card to Robert.

Derrick wasn’t a tech magnate. He was merely a man who made things happen, for a price. They had grown up on the same block. Same gritty streets, busted streetlights, and late-night gunshots that became part of the norm. As teenagers, they’d had each other’s backs, a survival bond more than a friendship.

Robert had escaped thanks to keeping his head in his books, scholarships, and parents who wanted to give their child a better life than them. Derrick? He built power from fear. They drifted apart. Then years later, Derrick popped up out of the blue. His words at the time were laughed off, but now... it didn’t feel so funny.

Robert could already hear Derrick’s condescending voice: “Robert James. I knew you’d come crawling back. Took you long enough.”

Robert already knew where that dark road led. Even if Derrick promised to stay out of the lab, he wouldn’t mean it. And once Derrick was in, there’d be no way to get him out.

Robert stood up abruptly. He left his office, headed into the lab, and stepped in front of the prototype, encased behind reinforced glass. It looked rough , coils, sensors, thermal regulators, but in his mind, it was already revolutionary. He placed his hand on the glass. This was it. His life’s work. His gamble.

He couldn’t stomach letting it die by the wayside. Not now. Not ever. Not when it was this close.

But he couldn’t help but imagine Derrick’s men walking through his lab, ash tipping on the ground from their cigarettes, their boots dirtying his floors, their mere presence intimidating his staff, laughing while they put his integrity as a scientist in jeopardy.

His team would quit. And eventually, they would talk. And when things went bad, and with Derrick, they always did, Robert wouldn’t just be a scientist caught in a scandal, he’d be an accomplice.

Robert sat down in a nearby chair as he stared at his phone, then at the prototype, then back again. His mind was relentless. Thought after thought plagued him as his body sat frozen, caught between survival and surrender.

He didn’t want to do this. But if he didn’t, the research would die. The lab would be gone. And with it, everything he and his parents had sacrificed for, all in vain.

He thought of his sons, Gabriel and Daniel. They depended on him.

He thought of his wife. Of the version of himself that once believed integrity and hard work were enough.

But as he stood at a crossroads, he could only whisper,

“God help me,”

and made the call.