All Chapters of The Miracle Doctor : Chapter 201
- Chapter 210
210 chapters
Chapter 200
The tunnels smelled of wet stone, rust, and fear.Ethan moved silently, every step measured, every breath controlled. The corridors beneath Sector Nine were not unfamiliar,but they had changed since Leanna had been taken. Traps, rudimentary alarms, even discarded debris had been shifted,someone had known he would come.He didn’t hesitate,he had crossed his line yesterday,nothing would stop him now.His team followed close behind, shadows in the shadows, each member armed and alert. The air was thick,and it pressed against his lungs like it knew how much was at stake.“Confirm location,” Ethan whispered into the comm-link.A soft crackle. “Sector Nine, old water exchange,she’s alive, but guarded. Minimal movement,only one way in.”He nodded, more to himself than anyone else. “Then we go in quietly, fast, and get her out.”The first corridor ended at a rusted metal door,there were marks,scratches, faint fingerprints. Evidence of the past, the struggle, the waiting.Ethan crouched and in
Chapter 201
The city did not celebrate rescues.It absorbed them.Ethan learned that as dawn bled into the streets,gray light washing over broken rooftops, flickering generators, people already moving like nothing monumental had happened beneath their feet. Somewhere below, blood still stained stone,somewhere above, life went on.Leanna sat on the edge of the safehouse cot, her injured shoulder freshly bandaged, her jaw clenched not from pain but from thought. The medic had warned her not to move too much,but she ignored that advice immediately, rolling her shoulder once, testing the limits.“You shouldn’t….” Ethan started.She cut him a look,not angry,worse,quiet.“I’ve been restrained long enough,” she said.That ended the conversation.Ethan leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, eyes shadowed. He hadn’t slept,every time he closed his eyes, he saw the moment in Sector Nine when he’d chosen speed over mercy, certainty over restraint,he had neutralized men who might once have been salva
Chapter 202
Morning arrived without permission.The city woke in fragments,sirens cutting off mid-wail, markets opening late, patrols changing routes for reasons no one explained out loud. It felt like the aftermath of a storm that hadn’t fully passed, just shifted direction.Ethan stood in the shower far longer than necessary, water scalding his skin. He scrubbed his hands until they burned, as if heat could erase memory,but it didn’t.Sector Nine clung to him.When he finally stepped out, steam filled the room like fog on a battlefield,he caught his reflection in the cracked mirror,eyes too sharp, jaw too set. This wasn’t exhaustion alone,this was resolve hardening into something brittle.That was dangerous.Leanna was already awake, seated at the table with a data slate and a mug she hadn’t touched. Her hair was pulled back, expression unreadable,she looked like someone preparing for trial,not as the accused, but as the judge.“You’re going to hate this,” she said without looking up.“Try me.”
Chapter 203
Night did not fall in the city anymore.It descended.The kind of darkness that didn’t simply remove light but rearranged meaning,turning familiar streets into corridors of intent, every shadow a decision waiting to be made. Ethan moved through it without disguise, without haste. That alone felt like a provocation.People noticed.They always did now.Some turned away quickly, fear reflexive and sharp. Others stared too long, eyes burning with questions they would never ask out loud,a few inclined their heads, gestures small but weighted, like prayers offered to something they weren’t sure deserved worship.Ethan hated that most of all.He adjusted the strap of his jacket and kept walking.Korrin’s perimeter loomed ahead not a wall, not a gate, but a gradual shift in atmosphere. Surveillance density increased,patrol patterns tightened,the air itself felt watched. This was where the city stopped pretending it was shared.Ethan crossed the invisible line anyway.Immediately, his comm ch
Chapter 204
The city did not celebrate.That was the first thing Leanna noticed when they released her.No crowds,no cheers,no whispered legends rising up the way they always had when Ethan broke something that was supposed to be unbreakable,just streets moving at their usual pace, people stepping around each other with careful indifference, as if nothing monumental had happened at all.As if the world hadn’t tilted.She stood at the edge of the transport bay long after the guards unlocked her cuffs and shoved her forward,the metal doors slid shut behind her with a sound that felt final in a way she couldn’t explain,not imprisonment ending,but something else.Something quieter.Her wrists were raw,her body ached in the dull, exhausted way that came after fear had burned itself out,but it was her chest that hurt most tight, shallow breaths, like her lungs didn’t trust the air anymore.Ethan.That was the thought she couldn’t escape.Not where he was,but what did he do.She had seen the broadcast.
Chapter 205
The city learned how to live without Ethan faster than it should have,and that was the cruelest part.Leanna noticed it in the small things first the way patrol routes stabilized, the way blackouts became scheduled instead of sudden, the way people stopped looking over their shoulders every time a rumor passed through the streets. Order settled in like dust, quiet and persistent, coating everything.Korrin’s order.She hated how efficient it was.Three days after Ethan left, Leanna stood on the balcony of the safehouse and watched the city breathed,morning traffic crawled below,vendors argued over prices,children ran across cracked pavement chasing something that looked like hope but might have just been boredom.Life went on.That should have been comforting.Instead, it felt like betrayal.She pressed her palms against the railing, grounding herself. Sleep had become optional these past nights,brief, shallow, full of half-dreams where Ethan was always just out of reach,not dead,not
Chapter 206
The city learned restraint the way a wounded animal learned stillness.Carefully,suspiciously,with flinches that never quite went away.Leanna felt it every morning when she walked through the lower districts,the pauses in conversation when uniforms passed, the way shopkeepers kept their hands visible, the way laughter died down too fast,peace had arrived, but it had not been welcomed,it sat heavy in the air, like humidity before a storm.She had stopped pretending this was temporary.That was the first lie leadership burned out of you.There was no until Ethan returns,no until Korrin overreaches,no clean turning point waiting just beyond the horizon. There was only now messy, compromised, fragile,and the question of what kind of damage you were willing to accept in order to keep it standing.Leanna stood in the clinic doorway and watched volunteers work in practiced silence. Bandages. Rations. Quiet reassurances murmured to people who didn’t ask for hope anymore just relief.Mara joi
Chapter 207
The city did not react all at once,and that was what unsettled Leanna most.There was no riot after the Council’s announcement,no cheers either,just a slow, uneven ripple,conversations in doorways, pauses in broadcast chatter, eyes lifting from screens and then dropping again. People absorbed the news the way one absorbed a change in weather,warily, with the instinct to adapt before questioning whether it was deserved.Leanna Hale appointed Civil Liaison to the Council,temporary mandate,oversight of humanitarian coordination.Temporary.Everything dangerous was always temporary at first.She watched the broadcast from a quiet room above the clinic, the sound turned low,her name looked strange in official typography, stripped of context and blood and fear,cleaned,sanitized.Legitimized.Mara stood behind her, arms folded so tightly her knuckles had gone white.“You didn’t warn us,” Mara said.Leanna didn’t turn. “I didn’t know until an hour ago.”“You could have refused.”“Yes.”Silenc
Chapter 208
The city did not announce Mara’s disappearance.It never did.Disappearances were absorbed the way rain was absorbed by cracked pavement,quietly, unevenly, leaving darker patches that no one wanted to step in. Leanna learned of it the way she learned everything now, indirectly, through absence.Mara did not answer her comms.Mara did not show up for the morning briefing.Mara did not argue when Leanna proposed rerouting supplies.At first, Leanna told herself it was caution,that Mara was lying low,that this was what survival looked like now silence, misdirection, patience.By noon, denial tasted like ash.Leanna stood in the small office behind the clinic, hands braced against the desk, staring at the empty chair opposite her. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and old paper,outside, volunteers moved in low voices, their steps careful, as if sound itself had become dangerous.She replayed the last conversation with Korrin again and again, searching for the moment she might have mi
Chapter 209
The city did not sleep after Mara returned.It pretended to.Lights dimmed at the usual hours,curfews were observed on paper,broadcasts hummed softly with neutral language and carefully balanced reassurance. But beneath it all, something stayed awake,alert, restless, listening.Leanna felt it in her bones.She stood at the clinic window long after dawn had broken, watching the streets fill with people who moved like they were bracing for impact. Conversations stopped when patrols passed,faces turned just enough to see, never enough to be seen seeing.Truth had entered the bloodstream of the city.Not fully formed. Not spoken aloud.But felt.Mara sat on a cot behind her, wrapped in a blanket she didn’t seem to notice. Bruises were blooming along her wrists and collarbone,dark, ugly constellations. She hadn’t said much since arriving. Shock had a way of making silence feel safer than words.Leanna turned at last. “You should rest.”Mara snorted quietly. “If I sleep, I’ll remember the s