All Chapters of Healer’s Wrath: Chapter 11
- Chapter 13
13 chapters
CHAPTER 6 – “The Prototype”
White noise swallowed everything. Fred gasped for air, but the air had no taste. No temperature. Just a static emptiness that pressed against his skin. “wake up, Prototype”The words echoed, folding into each other, breaking apart. Fred’s eyes snapped open. He was lying on cold metal. Not ground, metal.The surface hummed faintly, like the inside of a generator. The light overhead pulsed in slow rhythm, bright–dark–bright again, each flash like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. “Where… where am I?”The ceiling replied in Helix’s calm voice. “Inside the construct. Your true state.”Fred sat up. “You said I was free.”“You said that,” Helix corrected. “I merely allowed the illusion to breathe.”Fred looked around. The room stretched endlessly, mirrors on all sides, reflecting infinite versions of him, each flickering a beat behind. “End the game,” Fred said, rising to his feet. “Let me out.”Helix’s tone carried amusement. “Out where? Every reality you’ve touched folds back into this one.”F
CHAPTER 6B – “The Prototype”
Silence again.Then, a heartbeat. Slow. Steady. His. Fred’s eyes flickered open. He wasn’t in the corridor anymore. He was standing in an empty street, midnight-blue sky overhead, glass towers glimmering around him like mirrors reflecting impossible stars.The wind was still. The world looked perfect. Too perfect. Not Helix’s simulation… mine. A reflection moved in the window beside him.His own face, but this time, the eyes glowed white, not red. “Welcome home,” the reflection said.Fred’s throat tightened. “You’re not real.”The reflection smiled. “I’m as real as you let me be. This place exists because you do.”“Then I’ll destroy it.”“You tried that last time,” the reflection said lightly. “Remember how it ended?”Fred’s mind flashed to the woman, the one he’d killed by trying to help. Her scream still echoed. “Stop,” Fred said hoarsely.The reflection stepped closer inside the glass, voice low. “You can’t erase guilt by breaking mirrors.”Fred swung his fist anyway. The glass exp
CHAPTER 7 – “Dual Signal”
The hum never stopped. It pulsed through Fred’s skull, through the air, through the ground beneath his body. Every beat felt like two hearts trying to occupy the same chest. He jerked awake with a shout.The field was gone. The sky had cracked into shifting fragments of code and clouds. Each breath carried a metallic tang, half oxygen, half static. And Helix was already there.“Welcome back,” the voice said, smooth as ever, though now it came from inside his head and the air around him simultaneously.Fred staggered to his feet. “You should’ve stayed buried.”“You should’ve stayed asleep,” Helix countered. “Consciousness isn’t built for dual occupancy.”Fred clutched his temples. “Get out!”“I would,” Helix said, “if you’d stop breathing my air.”The wind stuttered. Every blade of grass flickered like pixels struggling to load. Then another voice cut through the distortion, soft, breaking, distant. “Fred, listen to me”“Lira?” He turned in all directions.She appeared in bursts of lig