All Chapters of Healer’s Wrath: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
13 chapters
CHAPTER 1 — THE SEVEN MINUTES
Each drop slapped the windshield like glass beads hurled by an angry god. Fred Miller gripped the steering wheel tighter, eyes flicking between the road and the dim outline of his phone buzzing on the passenger seat.Rhea: “If you’re late again, don’t bother showing up.”Her message flashed, cruelly precise. He muttered under his breath, “Story of my life.”Headlights blurred against the torrent. The wipers groaned. He’d worked twenty hours straight, back-to-back ambulance shifts, a body running on caffeine and guilt.Then, A horn screamed. A truck burst from the opposite lane. “Shit!”Fred jerked the wheel. Tires screamed, the world spun, metal crunching, glass exploding, weightless chaos. The last thing he saw was his own reflection in the rearview, calm, almost relieved.Then nothing. Voices came first. Distant. Warped. “Pulse dropping!”“Clear!”“Again!”White flashes cut through the dark. Pressure on his chest. Air that wouldn’t come. “Time of death”No. The word echoed inside hi
CHAPTER 1B – THE SEVEN MINUTES
Light tore through the corridor like a flash grenade. Nurses screamed. Machines shrieked. Fred’s hand was locked on the dying man’s chest, glowing veins of gold and red crawling up his arm like living fire.The bleeding stopped. The man gasped, air flooding his lungs. Then something went wrong. Pain hit Fred’s chest like a blade. His spine arched, vision warping, breath stolen. The energy didn’t stop, it fed back.He tried to pull away, but his hand wouldn’t obey. The patient’s eyes snapped open, bright, unblinking, wrong. “Let go!” a nurse shouted.Fred yanked back, staggering into a tray. Metal clattered. The man on the bed convulsed violently, then lay still. Flatline. Everyone froze.Fred’s hand was smoking. His pulse was wild. The world hummed, every heartbeat in the room vibrating in sync with his own.He looked up. Rhea Cole stood at the end of the hallway, watching. No surprise. No panic. Just quiet approval.She mouthed two words: “You see?”Security rushed in, dragging him b
CHAPTER 2A – RESONANT BLOOD
Smoke. That was the first thing Fred tasted, bitter and electric, like burnt metal and ozone. The corridor that had been white and sterile seconds ago was now a tunnel of flickering shadows.“Move!” Kane’s voice thundered through the haze. “Stay low!”Fred coughed, forcing his body to crawl behind a toppled gurney. Every inch of him pulsed with that strange vibration, stronger now, louder. His palms glowed faintly through the black gloves.“What was that?” Fred gasped.“Hunters,” Kane said, crouching beside him. His eyes glinted with something close to excitement. “They follow resonance spikes like sharks follow blood.”“I didn’t call anyone.”“You didn’t have to.” Kane grabbed Fred’s collar. “You screamed through the energy field, kid. The whole city felt you wake up.”Fred blinked. The smoke swirled, forming a silhouette, a tall, thin figure walking through the chaos, its footsteps echoing like hollow drums. “Stay down,” Kane warned.The figure stepped into the light. Its eyes shimm
CHAPTER 2B – RESONANT BLOOD
The city swallowed Fred whole. Rain hissed down the glass towers, washing the ash from his hair. Sirens howled somewhere behind him, chasing ghosts through the night.He ducked into an alley, pulse hammering in sync with the thrum inside his chest. The glow under his skin dimmed, barely.He whispered to himself, “Okay, Fred. You just exploded through a wall. You can handle… whatever this is.”“Talking to yourself now?” Fred froze.A figure leaned against the graffiti-smeared wall, hood up, cigarette tip glowing ember red. The stranger’s voice was dry, almost amused. “Don’t worry,” the man said. “I’m not with them.”Fred’s stance stiffened. “Who’s them?”“Anyone hunting what you’ve become.” The man stepped forward, rain catching on his coat. His eyes shimmered faint blue. “Name’s Silas.I heard your resonance from three blocks away. Thought I’d see if the stories were true.”“Stories?” Fred repeated.“About a kid who survived a death surge. About someone who balanced both polarities.”
CHAPTER 3A – THE WOMAN IN CRIMSON
The rain had stopped, but the city hadn’t exhaled. Fred stood beneath the flickering streetlight, soaked and trembling.The woman’s image burned behind his eyes, those same gold-red irises, that same impossible calm. For a heartbeat, he’d thought he was looking into a mirror that lied. “She saw me,” he whispered.Then the power grid died. Every light in a two-block radius blinked out at once. The air went still, electric in its silence. A low voice from the shadows: “You shouldn’t have followed the signal.”Fred spun. “Silas?”But the alley behind him was empty. Something hummed overhead, a drone, sleek and silent, scanning with a narrow red beam.Fred pressed against the wall, watching the beam drift past. Subject Miller located. He froze.The voice wasn’t coming from the drone. It was inside his head. “Who’s there?” he hissed.Don’t struggle. The link stabilizes faster if you’re calm. He clutched his temples. “Get out of my head!”You invited me the moment you wore the ring.Fred ri
CHAPTER 3B – THE WOMAN IN CRIMSON
Fred burst through the wall expecting pain, but instead found air that shimmered like glass and a floor that didn’t feel solid. He stumbled into darkness, coughing, his pulse vibrating like a drum inside his chest.A pale glow pulsed ahead. Lyra stood a few meters away, her back to him, surrounded by floating screens, old monitors, some cracked, others flickering with encrypted feeds. The place smelled of metal and damp earth.Fred blinked. “Where are we?”“Below the city,” she said, not turning. “One of the last safe channels the Board doesn’t own yet.”Fred glanced around. Cables crawled across the walls like veins. Every screen showed fragments, faces, city grids, genetic readouts marked RESONANT: CLASSIFIED.“This is insane,” he murmured. “You live here?”“I exist here,” she corrected. “Living stopped meaning much after they pulled me out of the lab.”He hesitated. “Pulled you out?”Lyra finally faced him. “I wasn’t born, Fred. I was grown, from a failed experiment in cellular res
CHAPTER 4A – ECHO CHAMBER
The message wouldn’t disappear. Fred tried every key, every command. Still, the red letters pulsed on the cracked monitor like a heartbeat: PHASE THREE INITIATED: RECLAMATION PROTOCOL – TARGET MILLER.He whispered, “Reclamation… of what?”Of you.The voice wasn’t his own. It was inside the room, but not from the speakers. Fred turned sharply. “Who’s there?”A calm voice echoed from the shadows. “Easy, Mr. Miller. I’m not your enemy.”A man stepped into the dim light. Gray suit. Impeccably clean despite the dust. His hair was white at the temples, his eyes unreadable behind tinted lenses. Fred squared his stance. “You with the Board?”The man smiled faintly. “Once. Now, I’m… an observer.”“That supposed to make me trust you?”“Trust,” the man said, stepping closer, “is the illusion that keeps chaos polite.”Fred didn’t lower his guard. “Name.”“Doctor Helix,” he said simply. “Though I imagine Rhea didn’t mention me.”Fred’s chest tightened. “You worked with her.”Helix nodded. “Worked
CHAPTER 4B – “ECHO CHAMBER”
The blast wasn’t light, it was sound. A low-frequency hum rippled through the air, shaking Fred to his core. He staggered back, clutching his chest, waiting for pain, but there was none. Only… silence.“Kane, what did you”“Shut up and listen,” Kane said, striding toward him. The weapon hummed in his grip. “If you can still hear me, it worked.”Fred blinked. “Worked? You shot me!”Kane’s voice was calm, deliberate. “That wasn’t a bullet. It was a disruptor pulse. Fried the node Helix planted in your neural lattice, temporarily.”“Temporarily?”Kane nodded. “You’ve got six hours before your brain starts syncing with the Reclamation frequency again. That’s when they’ll take you.”Fred’s pulse quickened. “You’re saying I’m a walking receiver?”“More like a ticking one,” Kane replied.Fred clenched his fists. “You knew about this all along, didn’t you?”Kane didn’t deny it. “I tried to stop them.”“By putting me on the table?”Kane exhaled. “You were already dying, Fred. You think I wante
CHAPTER 5A – “Grayline Ghosts
The air smelled like ozone and rust. Fred’s eyes snapped open to a flicker of fluorescent light, buzzing, stuttering. For a moment, the ceiling above him looked like it was breathing, stretching with each pulse of the bulb.He sat up fast. The room wasn’t familiar. White tiles, shattered glass, and a humming resonance coil mounted to the wall. “Where” His voice cracked. “Kane?”No answer.He stood, swaying slightly. His hands glowed faintly, red and gold currents sparking like lightning veins beneath his skin.He shut his eyes, forcing it down. The glow faded, but the hum didn’t. It was inside his skull now, a steady rhythm he couldn’t silence. Reclaim the flame.He spun around. “Stop it.”A voice laughed softly from the corner. “You’re talking to yourself again, Fred.”He froze. “Who’s there?”From the shadows, a figure stepped forward, a woman in crimson. Rhea. But her expression was wrong. Too calm. Her eyes, too bright. “Not possible,” he whispered.She tilted her head. “Why not?
CHAPTER 5B – “Grayline Ghosts
When the white faded, cold wind took its place. Fred blinked into the gray morning light. Dust swirled around broken concrete pillars, and the skyline of what used to be the north district leaned like a row of cracked teeth.He touched the ground. Real dirt. The air bit at his skin. Am I awake? A voice from somewhere above answered the thought. “You tell me, Miller.”Fred spun. Kane, the real Kane this time, covered in ash, one arm bandaged. Fred hesitated. “You’re actually here?”Kane gave a tired smirk. “Unless we’re both inside the same bad dream.”Fred stared. “You were glowing, your eyes”“That wasn’t me,” Kane said quickly. “That was the failsafe trying to copy my voice. You fought it off.”Fred’s head pounded. “So I’m free?”“Free enough to run.”Fred exhaled, half a laugh, half disbelief. “Where are we?”“Grayline,” Kane said. “The old medical sector. What’s left of it after the Board cleaned house.”Fred looked around. The ruins stretched as far as he could see, collapsed tow