Scientect

Webnovel Series by A Amankwaa
©2026 A Amankwaa. All rights reserved.

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The traumas that formed us are wicked, they follow us like the endless darkness of the sky to the grave.

Dr. Nhyira sat alone in the dim glow of her laboratory monitors, the phrase echoing in her mind like a secular prayer. The lab was silent, save for the hum of the cooling fans, but the data on her screen was screaming. The door to Caseline Forensics hissed open, and Inspector Ansah stepped in. He didn’t look like an officer of the law; he looked like a man who had been hollowed out. He leaned against the doorframe, his gaze lingering on the floor before he could meet Nhyira’s eyes.

“You said it couldn’t wait,” Ansah said, his voice a dry rasp. “Nana Ako is stabilised, but the doctors say her heart is tired. Too much grief, Nhyira. It wears the muscle down.” “I may have found the source of the grief, Kwame,” Nhyira said. She didn’t look at him. Instead, she pointed at the sharp, jagged peaks on the screen. “I ran the Touch DNA against the Caseline unofficial database. The one from Operation Waterfalls.” Ansah walked over, his boots heavy on the tile. As he looked at the names mapped to the DNA profiles, his face went gray. His hand went to his collar, tugging at the uniform that suddenly seemed to be choking him. “The Vice President?” Ansah’s voice was a whisper. He looked at the second profile, and his knees seemed to buckle. “And Brako.”

Nhyira watched him. She saw the exact moment his world fractured. Brako wasn’t just his superior; he was the man who held Ansah’s upcoming promotion in his desk drawer. He was the man who had promised Ansah a future that could finally put his children through university. Now, that promotion felt like a bribe he had already cashed. Ansah’s integrity, the very thing he wore like armour, was dissolving in the light of the monitor.

“The evidence is extremely likely if he handled the safe box, Kwame,” Nhyira said, her voice softening as she saw the betrayal in his eyes. “And the VP… his skin cells are embedded in the texture of the gold. They didn’t just order this. They touched it. They counted it.” Ansah looked at the photograph of Nhyira’s daughter. He felt the weight of his own badge, a piece of metal that now felt like a brand of shame. “If I report this to our boss, I’m reporting it to the killers. My career is over, Nhyira. Everything I’ve worked for…”

“Your career isn’t what’s at stake here,” Nhyira replied, but her own voice trembled. She looked around the room, at the millions of dollars of equipment she had mortgaged her soul to acquire. Every centrifuge and sequencer represented a massive bank loan, a debt that would crush her if this lab failed.

Suddenly, a sharp, biting scent cut through the ozone of the equipment. It was oily and thick, crawling up their nostrils. Nhyira’s head snapped up. “Gasoline.” A muffled, heavy crump shook the floor. The smoke detectors screamed as a wall of orange flame bloomed in the hallway. Outside, through the reinforced glass, three dark SUVs peeled away from the East Legon facility, their tires screeching on the asphalt.

“They’re burning it!” Nhyira lunged for the server, her hands shaking. “No! I still owe… I haven’t paid for…” “Nhyira, move!” Ansah grabbed her waist. The fire was moving with unnatural speed, fueled by the laboratory’s own chemicals. Everything was happening too fast. The heat was a physical blow, melting the plastic casings of the computers. Nhyira reached for the external drive, but the cable was fused to the port by the blistering heat.

“The drive! I can’t get it out!” she shrieked, her voice breaking. “Leave it! We have to go!” Ansah roared, physically hoisting her off her feet as the ceiling tiles began to rain down in liquid fire. “The cloud!” she gasped, her face pressed against Ansah’s soot-stained shoulder as he charged through the inferno. “The upload was at ninety percent… I used the secured cloud… I hope the internet stayed up… I hope it finished!”

They burst through the side exit into the cool night air, coughing up grey ash. But the relief was short-lived. Just outside the door, slumped against the brickwork, was the laboratory’s night security man. He hadn’t been lucky enough to be in the reinforced office. The fire had taken him in his chair. He had succumbed to the smoke before he could even draw his whistle.

Ansah looked at the man’s charred uniform, then at the roaring furnace that used to be Caseline Forensics. The fire reflected in his eyes, a twin to the rage building in his chest. Nhyira collapsed onto the gravel, her eyes fixed on her burning kingdom. Her wealth was gone, her lab was a pyre, and her only hope was a digital ghost floating in a cloud that the killers were currently trying to erase from the earth.

Nhyira sat on the damp gravel of the parking lot, her lungs burning and her clothes reeking of high-octane fuel. She clutched her phone with trembling, soot-stained fingers, staring at the screen. The “Upload Complete” notification she prayed for wasn’t there. Instead, the screen showed a spinning wheel of death, a connection error triggered by the server room’s final, molten collapse.

Behind her, the security man’s body was being draped with a rough tarp by a responding officer. Ansah stood over the body, his face a mask of stone. He didn’t look at the fire anymore; he looked at his phone. A message had just arrived from the police internal system. It was from Brako. “Heard about the unfortunate accident at the lab, Kwame. Tragic loss. Report to my office at 06:00 sharp to discuss the suspension of the Big Tree file. Without the science, we have no case. Go home and rest.”

The word accident felt like a spit in the face. Ansah deleted the message, his hands shaking with a fury that transcended his fear of the Vice President or the loss of his promotion. The monsters were no longer just in the woods; they were sending him condolences from the desk next to his.

Miles away, the wheels of a Boeing 787 touched down on the tarmac of Kotoka International Airport with a screech that echoed Akyere’s internal scream. During the final moments of the descent, she had looked out the window and seen an orange glow pulsating from the direction of East Legon, a fiery wound in the city’s night skyline.

As the plane taxied toward the modern gate, she turned off airplane mode. Her phone immediately exploded with alerts, frantic messages from her mother’s neighbours and news headlines already scrolling across the bottom of the local sites: Massive Fire at Caseline Forensics; Casualties Feared.

Akyere stood up, her face reflected in the dark window of the cabin. The Ghana she remembered was gone, replaced by the orange glow of a horizon on fire. She didn’t reach for her carry-on; she reached for the notebook where she had written her targets. She ran a thumb over the cold, sterile plastic of the DNA collection kit she had packed in Maryland. Her plan had been simple: reach the hospital, kiss her mother’s forehead, and then take the swab that would link her DNA to the bones in the forest. She had intended to walk into Caseline Forensics with a daughter’s resolve and demand the truth that science owed her.

“I’m here, Mama,” she whispered to the empty air. As she stepped off the jet bridge into the humid air of the terminal, she didn’t smell the tropical salt of the ocean. She smelled smoke. The war for the Big Tree had crossed the Atlantic, and the “Overseer” had no idea that a new hunter had just cleared customs.