Frustration gnawed at Adrian. He wasn't one to sit idly by while Moss enacted his twisted experiment on Ariana. His eyes scanned the chamber frantically, searching for any hidden mechanism that could grant access. Each fruitless glance chipped away at his hope, and a string of ragged sighs escaped his lips.

Just as despair threatened to engulf him, a glint of metal caught his eye.

"Look!" he barked, pointing towards the wall beside the chamber.

"There's a vent. Maybe we can crawl through it to reach Ariana."

Holden reluctantly tore his gaze from Ariana and looked in the direction Adrian had pointed at.

He weighed Adrian's suggestion for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. “We don't know where that vent leads," he said, shaking his head. “And vents are notorious for being cramped and long. Even if we squeezed through, there's no guarantee we'd reach Ariana in time."

Adrian understood the logic in Holden's words. The flicker of hope he had nurtured dimmed. He pivoted, a frown etching his features as he resumed his search.

He clung to a sliver of determination-they had unearthed hidden mechanisms before, they could do it again.

While Adrian and Bennett split up to cover more ground, a semblance of calmness settled over Holden. His gaze landed on a series of wires snaking along the wall.

An idea sparked in his mind. Those wires powered the equipment in the ice chamber. If he could trace them back to the source, perhaps he could find the electrical box and cut the power, effectively crippling Moss' experiment.

Driven by intuition, Holden followed the wires until they met a metal box.

A glimmer of hope pierced through his despair, but it was short-lived.

The box was welded shut. Holden tried to pry it open. But even when he started to bleed from his fingernails, he couldn't open it.

Faced with a dead end, he resorted to his gun. Firing at the corners of the box, he finally chipped away at the metal.

He opened the box. Inside, a chaotic tangle of colored wires awaited him.

Time seemed to stretch thin as his anxiety clawed at him. Fearing he wouldn't save Ariana in time, Holden ripped out a handful of wires in a desperate gamble.

Meanwhile, in the sterile confines of the ice chamber, Moss vibrated with barely contained excitement.

Five more minutes-that was all it would take to resurrect the woman he loved.

This time, he was certain he would succeed. After twenty years of relentless research and countless failed experiments, he had found the perfect candidate, Ariana, whose biological data mirrored Emilia's perfectly.

A laugh escaped Moss' lips, his body trembling with anticipation.