All Chapters of Lifeline Protocol: The Exiled Doctor: Chapter 61
- Chapter 70
110 chapters
CHAPTER 61 — The Surgeon’s Signature
The tunnels beneath Sector Nine smelled like rust, wet concrete, and forgotten crimes. Raymond and Lira moved through the dim corridor as their synced pulses thrummed between them, three hours on the System’s countdown, each second prickling across their nerves like static.The temporary link was intoxicating, dangerous and alive.Raymond felt each flicker of Lira’s implants like phantom limbs. Lira felt the vibration of his heartbeat in her bones. Neither spoke; the sync drowned out the need for words.Ahead, a heavy blast door loomed, tagged with gang symbols and bleeding neon paint. Lira tilted her head slightly.“Three inside,” she murmured, though Raymond heard the information echo in his mind before her lips moved. “All armed. Pulse pistols. No armor.”Raymond inhaled. “Open quietly or fast?”Lira smirked. “Fast.”They nodded.The blast door cracked open just wide enough, and the two of them slipped inside like a shadow made of two bodies.The room erupted.Three gang members of
CHAPTER 62 — The Zero Healer’s Ultimatum
The white flash swallowed everything. Sound. Thought. Light. Even Lira’s grip on Raymond’s arm evaporated into nothingness.And then...A low, metallic heartbeat began pulsing in his ears.Thump. Thump. Thump.When Raymond’s vision snapped back, he found himself standing in a half-real space, a shimmering projection overlaid atop the ruined laboratory. The real world flickered beneath his feet; the holographic layer hummed like a surgical simulation caught between loading and collapsing.SV-0 stood across from him.No longer slumped.No longer failing.Here, within this ghostly interface, it was whole.Its exosuit gleamed with polished chrome.Its eyes blazed with sterile white light.Its presence weighed on the air like gravity itself.Lira was nowhere to be seen.Raymond swallowed. “Am I inside the System?”The Zero Healer inclined its head, movements unnaturally smooth.“Not inside,” it said, voice echoing with glitching layers. “You are standing in the border between code and cons
CHAPTER 63 — Duel of the Dying Code
The world of fractured holograms shattered as SV-0 lunged. Raymond barely raised his Neon Scalpel before the Prototype’s blade slammed into it with a shockwave that rippled through the entire liminal field.“Too slow,” SV-0 murmured.Raymond flew backward, boots skidding across the flickering ground. Static burst under his heels like sparks. He steadied himself and spat blood.“Yeah?” he said, wiping his mouth. “Give me a second to warm up.”SV-0 vanished.Raymond’s instincts screamed, he ducked just as a blade carved through the air where his throat had been.He rolled away, shouting, “You’re supposed to be dying! Take a break!”SV-0 materialized behind him. “No.”It swung again.Raymond blocked, but the force drove him to one knee.Every strike vibrated through his bones. Every step SV-0 took distorted the liminal plane, its presence rewriting the battlefield itself.Raymond pushed back, teeth clenched. “You’re glitching reality!”“Reality,” SV-0 said calmly, “is merely tissue.”It
CHAPTER 64 — VEINS OF GLASS, RIVERS OF FIRE
The descent into Vault Theta didn’t feel like entering a building, it felt like being swallowed.A cylindrical shaft spiraled downward beneath the abandoned sanitation hub, lit only by intermittent pulses of red emergency strips.Raymond followed Lira’s lead, his boots thudding against grated metal stairs slick with condensation. Jax trudged behind them, plasma rifle cradled against his hip.Above them, the city’s noise faded into a hollow mechanical hum.Below… something else hummed back.A resonance. A bass note that made Raymond’s teeth buzz.The System stirred.Alert: Anomalous Signal Detected. Source Match: 37% — Forbidden Healer Prototype Node.Raymond’s pulse quickened. Prototype node? Ahead? Here?Lira glanced at him, catching the change in his breath. “Your toy is pinging again,” she whispered.“Not a toy,” he murmured. “A… sibling.”She smirked. “Creepy.”They reached the bottom of the shaft and stood before a reinforced door carved with warning sigils and old corporate bran
CHAPTER 65 — SURGEON VS. PROTOTYPE
The blast of light snapped outward like a rupturing star.Raymond’s barrier shattered instantly. He hit the floor hard, the force flinging him across cracked tiles, skidding past broken cryo-pods and a toppled surgical frame.Alarms echoed through Vault Theta, long-dead systems suddenly flaring to life as the entity stepped forward, leaving ripples of distortion in the air behind it.Lira landed beside Raymond in a crouch, blades drawn and crackling with neon charge. Jax slammed into a pillar, groaning as he rolled to his feet.The Prototype, Healer Zero, examined its hands with detached curiosity, as if testing the feel of motion for the first time in decades.Then its glass-blue eyes locked on Raymond. “Vital anomaly confirmed.”Its voice didn’t come from its mouth. It came from inside Raymond’s skull, broadcast directly through the System.System Warning: Unauthorized Root-Level Connection Attempt.Raymond clutched his head. “It’s trying to overwrite me!”Lira blurred forward, slic
CHAPTER 66 — THE SURGEON WHO CUT THE STORM
The storm fell.Thousands of glass shards screamed downward in a spiraling kill-pattern, each one sharpened to a molecular edge by Healer Zero’s nanofield. The air shimmered with refracted neon, turning the chamber into a bladed kaleidoscope of death.Raymond sprinted straight into it.Lira swore. Jax yelled something about “terminal stupidity.” But Raymond didn’t hear them.His pulse synced with the System.His footfalls fell into surgical rhythm.And the Neon Scalpel burned in his hand like a sliver of living light.Cut precisely. Cut efficiently. Cut everything that intends to kill you.The System whispered with cold, clinical calm, its words flowing through his blood like chilled anesthesia.SWIPE. One arc of the blade carved a clean line through thirty shards, splitting them like brittle bones.STRIDE. Raymond angled his body, letting several shards skim his coat but never touch skin.DIVE. A twist, a slide, a pivot, every movement calculated with surgical perfection, every vecto
CHAPTER 67 — THE NAME THEY FEAR
The chamber smelled of burnt ozone and dissolving code.The last fragment of Healer Zero evaporated into drifting pixels, each one fading like dying embers. Raymond knelt in the aftermath, breathing hard, coat scorched, blood dripping from a wound inches from his heart.Lira held him upright, her voice tight. “Raymond, Ray, look at me. Stay awake.”He tried. His eyelids felt like slabs of metal.Jax hovered behind her, panic barely contained. “Dude, your chest, your chest is open. I can see systems. Those aren’t organs, those are—”Raymond forced out a rasping breath.“Don’t… say it.”But Lira’s expression said everything.What they saw inside him wasn’t fully human anymore.Neon circuits pulsed faintly beneath exposed muscle, threading through him like a second bloodstream.Lira swallowed hard. “Raymond… how long have you been like this?”“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Since the wastelands. Since the System awakened.”Your architecture is evolving beyond normal parameters. Your biolo
CHAPTER 68 — THE DOCTOR’S BRAND
The chamber vibrated with a low, bone-deep hum.Incisor stood motionless, perfectly still, perfectly lethal, red incision-line pulsing like a heartbeat. Lira and Jax backed toward Raymond as he clutched his bleeding arm, neon nerves flickering beneath torn skin.“Raymond,” Lira whispered, “tell me you have a plan.”“Working on one,” he muttered through clenched teeth.You cannot defeat Model Two in your current condition. Evade. Escape. Stabilize.“Yeah,” he whispered under his breath, “not really in the mood for suggestions.”Incisor tilted its head. “Subject Raymond Briggs. You are ordered to comply.” “Reclamation protocol has been initiated.”Jax blinked hard. “Reclamation? That sounds like recycling. Bro, they’re gonna melt you down into parts.”Raymond didn’t respond.He couldn’t.Because Incisor’s voice was familiar, not in sound, but in precision. The cadence. The sterile detachment.The surgical cadence drilled into him by the one man he spent his whole life trying to escape.
CHAPTER 69 — CHASE THROUGH THE NEON VEINS
The chamber erupted into chaos. Sparks rained from shattered conduits. Smoke choked the air.Raymond’s boots skidded across twisted metal as Lira yanked him toward the far exit. Jax followed, firing bursts at anything that moved.Incisor and the Helix Enforcer faced each other across the wrecked floor, two impossibly precise predators. Neon light flickered along their frames as they circled each other, neither yielding.Raymond gasped. “We need to move now before they finish their little duel.”Lira shot him a glare. “We’re not running this time, we’re surviving.”The System buzzed in his skull, whispering through every nerve.Structural integrity of chamber: failing. Recommended exit route: northern maintenance shaft. Probability of survival if engaged: <37%.Raymond ignored it. He sprinted anyway.They hit the shaft, sliding through a narrow crawlspace as the room behind them detonated in a blaze of neon sparks. Warning: pursuit detected.Incisor’s voice echoed, calm and omnipresent
CHAPTER 70 — COUNTERMEASURE: NEON ASSAULT
The rain hissed against the cracked pavement. Neon reflections shimmered in puddles, painting the city streets in fractured blues and reds.Raymond crouched behind a rusted cargo container, Scalpel in hand, breathing ragged, blood dripping down his arm. Lira leaned beside him, blade still active, eyes scanning every shadow. Jax was crouched farther back, muttering curses and wiping rain from his plasma rifle.Raymond’s chest burned, not from the wound, but from adrenaline. His System thrummed inside him, alive, awake, hungry.Every nanosecond was a calculation, every heartbeat a protocol. Incisor had chased them here. The Helix Enforcer’s path remained unknown. For now, survival depended on turning the hunters into the hunted.System Alert: Primary threat detected, Prototype Incisor.Suggested Countermeasure: Engage selective offensive tactics.Raymond exhaled slowly. Offensive tactics… He hadn’t fought proactively in months. His life had been reaction: survive, evade, heal, repeat. N