All Chapters of Lifeline Protocol: The Exiled Doctor: Chapter 51
- Chapter 60
110 chapters
CHAPTER 51 — STREET INCISION
The neon rain slicked streets of Zenith reflected in puddles like fractured holograms. Steam hissed from vents, and the faint hum of distant drones vibrated through the air.Raymond adjusted the hood of his jacket, concealing the faint glow of white light pulsing along his veins. He had emerged from the BioWaste Network a different man: the System thrummed stronger than ever, his senses sharper, his resolve hardened.Phase 2 XP retained. New combat modules integrated with medical protocols. Moral directive intact.“Ray, you sure this is safe?” Jin asked, eyes darting to every shadow as they followed Raymond down a narrow alley lined with flickering holo-ads and graffiti in luminescent inks.“It’s the only place they’ll let me operate,” Raymond said. “People here are dying, and no legal clinic will touch them. Not after the Core’s experiments leaked.”Jin groaned. “Illegal street surgeon. I can’t believe I’m following a criminal now.”Raymond didn’t answer. System advisory: local popul
CHAPTER 52 — IMPLANT REDEMPTION
The storm over Zenith intensified, neon reflections smeared across the wet rooftops as if the city itself bled light. Raymond stood on the edge of an abandoned sky-lane platform, the skyline stretching around him like a jagged crown.Lira leaned against a rusted railing, sparks flickering intermittently from the malfunctioning port behind her left ear.“You stabilized the vision module,” she said, tapping her cybernetic eye. “But the neural relay still shorts whenever I push too hard.”Raymond approached, scanning the faultline of energy threading through her implant. The System whispered diagnostic threads into his consciousness, overlaying symbols and pathways in white light.“It’s deeper than I thought,” he muttered. “Your combat OS tries to override your organic nerves when you're under stress. You weren’t meant to survive this kind of interface failure without a full clinic.”Lira smirked. “Good thing I’ve got you then, street doctor.”Jin groaned from behind a stack of crates. “
CHAPTER 53 — NEON UNDERWORLD SYNDROME
The neon arteries of Lower Zenith throbbed beneath the smog-choked sky, flickering sickly blues and toxic greens as if the city were ill.Raymond moved through the narrow underpass with Lira beside him, Jin trailing close. The air tasted metallic, every breath carrying the faint chemical sting of malfunctioning scrubbers.“This place is worse than the BioWaste Zone,” Jin muttered softly.Lira scoffed. “No, kid. This place pretends it’s better. That’s what makes it dangerous.”Raymond didn’t respond. His eyes locked on the holo-map projected from his palm, thin red lines pulsed across Zenith’s sewer grid, converging on a blinking beacon deep in the district.“That’s the signature he left behind,” Raymond said. “Same modulation as the drones. He wants us to follow.”Jin shivered. “Feels like a trap.”“It is a trap,” Lira replied. “He’s trying to pull Raymond deeper into whatever game he’s playing.”Raymond’s voice was quiet. “And that’s exactly why we follow. The more he pushes me, the
CHAPTER 54 — Nanite Corruption Protocol
Raymond hit the floor hard.His knees cracked against the metal grate, hands clawing at the air as the nanite swarm invaded every open pore and neural port. White-hot static burned behind his eyes. The lab lights stretched, warped, then shattered into prismatic streaks like the world was dissolving.Jin’s voice cut through the distortion, raw and terrified: “RAYMOND! GET UP! PLEASE...GET UP!”Raymond tried to move.He couldn’t.The nanites surged deeper, tunneling through his bloodstream like micro-blades. The System screamed warnings directly into his skull, a staccato of electronic panic.CORE BREACH. FOREIGN CODE ENTERING SYNAPSE. DEFEND! DEFEND! DEF...A second voice overrode it, cold, calm, ancient: Be still, Raymond Briggs. Adaptation begins where fear ends…Raymond gasped. System…?You are no longer alone in this process. I will guide the evolution… if you allow it.Not like this, he thought. Not forced.But the swarm pushed harder, twisting his neural lattice, rewriting impuls
CHAPTER 55 — Pulse of a New Enemy
The rain over Lower Prism drummed like impatient fingers against metal rooftops, each drop echoing the tension threading through the undercity. Raymond felt it in his bones, an unease, a pressure building behind his sternum, as if the System itself were holding its breath.[SYSTEM WARNING: Incoming anomaly detected.]The message flashed in pulsing red across his vision before dissolving like smoke.Raymond exhaled sharply. Not tonight… He had just finished a triple-bypass on an old smuggler whose heart implant had been running on mismatched firmware. His gloves were still slick with simulated adrenalin, his mind still half in surgical mode.And then...The lights flickered.Not in the building. Not in the block.The entire sector blinked out for exactly one second.The undercity froze. Every neon strip went black. Every hologram died. Every cybernetic limb locked in place.Then the power snapped back, only the colors were wrong.Neon blues now hummed an eerie violet. Projected signage
CHAPTER 56 — The Surgeon in the Static
The city’s violet neon haze still shimmered unnaturally as Raymond and Lira moved deeper into the undercity grid. The air felt thick, heavy, like the atmosphere before a storm, charged, waiting. Raymond’s mind raced with the dying man’s words.Someone out there used surgical code more advanced, and more twisted, than anything his System had ever shown.And that terrified him.They crossed the bridge that overlooked what used to be the BioWaste canals. Lira’s boots crunched glass shards as she kept a tight perimeter.“Ray,” she said, tone low. “Talk to me. You look like you’ve seen your own autopsy report.”He didn’t answer immediately. The System was still silent, no guidance, no diagnostic overlays. It felt like trying to examine a patient blindfolded.Finally he spoke. “Whatever did that to him… It wasn’t surgery. It was conversion. Like someone reprogrammed his biology.”“Into what?”Raymond clenched his jaw. “Into a message.”A message meant for him.Lira’s silver eye flicked to m
CHAPTER 57 — The Faultline Surgeon
The alleys of Neon District 9 were unusually quiet. Not dead, nothing in the undercity ever truly slept, but holding its breath, as if the whole zone sensed Raymond’s pulse hammering beneath the neon glow.Raymond and Lira moved fast through the maze of metallic corridors, past vapor vents and flickering holosigns. Lira kept scanning the rooftops; Raymond kept replaying the bridge encounter in a loop he couldn’t shut off.The Prime Scalpel. The override. The drones that behaved like surgical instruments. The way his System obeyed the stranger’s interference without resistance.He couldn’t shake one thought: If he can silence my System once, he can do it again.Lira glanced over. “You’re gripping your implants like they owe you money.”Raymond unclenched his hands. “My System shouldn’t be vulnerable. Not like that.”“He didn’t just jam it,” Lira said. “He walked straight into your code like he owned the place.”Raymond nodded grimly. “He did.”They stopped at a fractured holo-terminal,
CHAPTER 58 — Scalpel storm
The ceiling vibrated with another bone-deep boom.Dust rained down from Dex’s lab rafters, mixing with flares of violet emergency light. Machines rattled on their hinges. Stray drones flitted in confused circles, their wings buzzing erratically as system interference scrambled their navigation.Raymond didn’t wait for a third blast.“Lira, move!” he snapped.She was already pulling him toward the exit corridor, eyes blazing with urgency. Dex sprinted behind them, clutching a neural pad overflowing with cascading threat alerts.“Ray, he’s not just tracking you,” Dex panted. “He’s rewriting the damn block grid. He’s forcing the city to bend so you can’t leave.”Lira barked a sharp curse. “How?! Who has that kind of access?!”Dex skidded beside a wall console, typing frantically. The screen sparked, glitched, and dissolved into static.“That’s the thing,” Dex said, voice trembling. “No one should.”Raymond clenched his fist, igniting the Neon Scalpel in a thin, trembling blade of blue. “
CHAPTER 59 — The Man Who Cuts the Future
The cyber-district was still trembling from the trial when Raymond, Lira, and Dex slipped into the abandoned transit tunnels beneath District 9.Water dripped from rusted pipes. Neon filters overhead flickered like dying stars. The air hummed with a static charge, residual code from the Prime Scalpel’s dissolved drones.Raymond walked ahead, breathing hard, fists clenched. Not from fear. From fury.Lira kept pace beside him, blades still drawn. “Ray… slow down.”“No.”“You’re not thinking straight.”“I am thinking exactly straight,” Raymond growled. “He steps into my world. He rewrites my System. He calls it a lesson.”Lira cut in sharply. “Then learn the right one: don’t run blindly into a trap.”Raymond halted.The tunnels shuddered as a train passed far overhead, metal echoing like a metallic heartbeat. He stared at the cracked concrete beneath his feet.Italicized internal voice: « Emotional destabilization detected. Recommend surgical breathing. »Raymond ignored it.Dex finally
CHAPTER 60 — Pulse fire in the Alleyways
Rain hit the metal rooftops in uneven metallic rhythms as Raymond sprinted through the narrow corridor between two abandoned data-storage towers.Neon signs flickered overhead, casting stuttering lights across the puddled path. The chase had stretched across five blocks already, and his lungs burned, not from fatigue, but from the stuttering warnings of the Forbidden Healer System fighting to stabilize his damaged ribs.Behind him, the heavy thuds of armored boots closed in.Helix Enforcers. Not the usual patrol variants. Their footsteps were too synchronized… too heavy… too enhanced.Raymond slid behind a rusted vent stack as a volley of pulsefire evaporated a section of wall inches from his head. He exhaled, letting the steam of the rain-warmed air fog around him. The System pulsed a warning.SYSTEM ALERT: Tissue degradation at 12%… Vitality Stabilizer running hot.He whispered under his breath, “Not now. Just hold.”Another blast of pulsefire carved through the vent housing, sendin