Apocalypse System: The Disabled Doctor

Chapter 2. The Awakening of Digital Vengeance

​"This recording is my final message, Zac. I pray you never have to see this ruined face in your lifetime."

​A deeply familiar woman's voice trembled, shattering the absolute silence.

​Zac's consciousness violently jolted awake in the center of an infinite void. Everything was pitch black. There was no freezing cold from the morgue floor. There was no agonizing pain from the monster's bite on his neck. His physical body was dead, slaughtered by feral monsters. His soul was now trapped, floating inside an endlessly silent digital dimension.

​A semi-transparent blue screen forcibly ignited right in front of his retinas. The glow banished the darkness, displaying a high-resolution video recording.

​Zac stared intently at the screen. The face of a middle-aged woman appeared before him. Her eyes were bruised a sickly blue. The corner of her lip was split open, leaving a crust of dried blood. Her white lab coat was filthy, stained with patches of crimson. The background of the video revealed a solid steel wall emblazoned with a black scorpion. That symbol was the official logo of the mafia clan, their family's sworn enemy.

​"Mother." Zac tried to call out, but his voice only echoed inside his own mind. He had no physical vocal cords in this dimension.

​"Your father did not die from an accident in our old lab three years ago, Zac." The woman in the video swallowed hard. Her eyes radiated a profound, deeply rooted agony. "The leader of the Scorpion clan came that night. He shot your father in the chest right in front of my eyes. They intentionally rigged a massive explosion at our house to cover the tracks of that vicious murder."

​Zac's emotions churned violently. The revelation struck his sanity like a sledgehammer. Memories of his house, reduced to scorched ruins, spun relentlessly, torturing his brain.

​"They did not kill your mother and sister." His mother continued her sentence, her breath hitching. "They took us hostage, locking us inside their secret underground laboratory. They trapped your little sister inside a medical isolation tube. The mafia boss threatened to slowly torture her if I refused to work for them."

​"You miserable bastards," Zac shouted furiously in his mind. The imaginary veins in his head felt ready to burst.

​"They forced me to perfect the VX-19 virus." His mother lowered her head for a moment. Tears fell, dropping onto the collar of her lab coat. "It is a biological weapon capable of destroying the human frontal cortex. The virus turns living humans into mindless, cannibalistic monsters. The Scorpion clan intended to sell the formula on the international black market."

​Zac's chest tightened immensely, even though he no longer possessed physical lungs. The sheer tragedy that befell him today was rooted in the long-standing suffering of his own family.

​"I knew you were working as a janitor at the Central Hospital." His mother's face looked back into the camera lens. Her gaze was now filled with a heartbreaking depth of regret. "Bryan, the mafia boss's son, orchestrated everything. He deliberately blocked every job application you sent anywhere else. He forced the hospital to hire you for the absolute lowest position. He did it purely to torture you every single day."

​Zac's fury rapidly crystallized into a thick, lethal hatred. His heart froze over, turning into a block of jagged ice.

​"Bryan made your suffering his personal morning entertainment." His mother began to sob, losing her resilient facade. "He wanted to watch my husband's pride and joy forced onto his knees, scrubbing dirty floors. He relished every single second of destroying your dignity. Forgive me, Zac. I was so incredibly weak that I could not protect you from those demons."

​Zac closed his digital eyes. Every single insult, every vicious curse, and every arrogant smirk Bryan had thrown his way over the last three years spun rapidly through his head. None of it had been mere bad luck. Every ounce of his suffering had been a systematic design, specifically crafted to grind his pride into dust.

​"I managed to hide this prototype chip from them." His mother raised her head, showing the remaining shreds of a scientist's courage. "This chip contains all the research data for the absolute antidote to the virus. I swallowed this chip, then forced myself to throw it back up so I could secretly send it to you through a trusted courier. If you are watching this message, it means they have finally killed me."

​Zac clenched his fists tightly in his subconscious mind. Every last drop of his sorrow evaporated without a trace.

​"Save your little sister, Zac." His mother's voice slowly faded as the blue screen began to flicker erratically. "Promise me. Do not ever forgive them. Tear them all down to their absolute roots."

​The video cut to black, leaving nothing but a blank blue screen. Absolute silence once again strangled the void.

​Zac opened his eyes. There were no longer any traces of despair in them. The aura of the kind-hearted man who always played by the rules had died, chewed up by monsters in a freezing morgue. The man standing in this digital dimension was the pure manifestation of vengeance. He embraced the hatred, using it as fuel to set his own soul ablaze.

​[Audio-visual message playback complete. Physical damage analysis of the host body in the real world is complete. Initiating final diagnostic readout.]

​The system's mechanical voice suddenly buzzed from all directions, cutting through Zac's thoughts. The voice was freezing cold, sharp, and entirely devoid of emotion.

​"Display the status of my body." Zac issued a firm command. His tone no longer held even a fraction of a tremble.

​[Biological death confirmed at 2:15 AM. The host's carotid artery is completely severed. Remaining blood volume is less than twelve percent. A level-three viral pathogen infection is spreading rapidly toward the frontal cortex via the remaining bloodstream.]

​The system projected glowing green text across the blue screen. The diagnostic report definitively showed that Zac's body in the real world had completely turned into a corpse.

​"Stop reading that damn medical report." Zac snapped at the system without an ounce of fear. "You are inside my body. You possess my mother's cutting-edge technology. Put me back in my body right now."

​[The probability of successful cellular regeneration is below one percent. The host's physical body is too severely damaged to be repaired using standard medical methods. Regeneration can only be achieved through a forced genetic assimilation procedure.]

​"Explain that procedure in a language I can understand." Zac narrowed his gaze.

​[The system must completely destroy the host's old, infected nervous system. The system will then weave a new DNA network using the blueprint data stored within the prototype chip. The host's crippled left arm will be reconnected using microscopic electrical currents.]

​The green screen flickered, displaying a visualization of a human DNA structure unraveling and shattering. That image was quickly replaced by brilliantly glowing, brand-new genetic threads.

​"Do it right now." Zac gave his absolute consent without a second of hesitation. "I do not care how insane the procedure is. Bring me back to life."

​[Critical level warning. The DNA reconstruction process will trigger physical pain thousands of times beyond the tolerance limit of a normal human brain. If the host loses consciousness during the assimilation process, permanent brain death is unavoidable.]

​"You severely underestimate the limits of my sanity." Zac laughed coldly in his mind. "Physical pain means absolutely nothing compared to watching my family tortured by those mafia bastards. Initiate the procedure, Machine."

​The system fell silent for exactly one second, processing the absolute command.

​Rows of green digital code streamed rapidly, entirely covering Zac's vision. In the real world, Zac's stiff body, sprawled on the morgue floor, began to react in impossible ways. The prototype chip in his stomach released electromagnetic nanobots.

​The dark blood pooling on the ceramic floor slowly began to rise. Defying the laws of gravity, the liquid crawled back up and seeped directly into Zac's severed neck veins. The muscle tissues torn apart by the monster's bite began to writhe wildly, frantically searching for living cellular connections.

​[Initiating forced genetic assimilation. The host is absolutely required to maintain consciousness. Countdown starting now.]

​Pain exploded instantly without a single warning.

​Zac screamed violently in his mind. The sheer agony felt as though billions of incandescent needles were being violently driven straight into his spinal cord all at once. His physical body in the real world convulsed violently, thrashing against the white ceramic floor. The two monsters sniffing his body were thrown backward by a wave of static shock erupting from Zac's pores.

​[Maintain host consciousness. Synchronization level has reached twenty percent. Do not close your digital eyes, host.]

​Zac forced his eyes to stay open. His blue vision began to crack from the tidal waves of agony flooding the pain receptors in his brain. He locked his mind onto a single, solitary object: the arrogant smirk on Bryan's face as he tossed that coin into the filthy water.

​He recorded every single curve of that condescending smile. He memorized the sharp click of those expensive leather shoes trampling on his dignity. Zac used those fragments of bitter memories as iron nails, hammering down his consciousness to prevent it from drifting away into the afterlife.

​"You will not die here, Zac." Zac spoke to himself, chanting a dark curse. "You will rise. You will carve Bryan's chest open on an operating table without an ounce of anesthesia. You will force that demon to watch his own heart stop beating."

​[Synchronization level at fifty percent. Anomaly detected in the nerves of the left arm. Double electrical voltage required to penetrate dead nerve tissue.]

​In the real world, Zac's left arm jerked upward unnaturally. His fingers, curled stiffly like dead branches, slowly snapped and forcibly straightened themselves out. The loud crack of grinding joints echoed violently in the silent room. Blood surged relentlessly back into the capillary vessels that had been withered and dead for three full years.

​An absolutely horrifying burning sensation roasted his left arm alive. Zac swallowed his screams. He bit down on his imaginary lip until it was utterly mangled. Vengeance flatly refused to let him surrender. The crippled man who had passively accepted his fate was completely pulverized beneath the sheer torture of this healing.

​[Synchronization at eighty percent. The system detects an extreme surge of negative emotions. Host adrenaline levels have vastly exceeded human rational limits.]

​"Keep raising the voltage." Zac shouted, directly challenging the absolute maximum limits of his own pain. "Burn away every single trace of my physical weakness. Give me the weapon I need to destroy them all."

​[Command acknowledged. Diverting all core chip power directly to the heart muscle. Initiating final-stage forced resurrection protocol.]

​The red screen in front of Zac's eyes flashed at an incredibly rapid pace. The synchronization percentage numbers leaped wildly, hitting exactly one hundred percent right on time.

​Zac's consciousness was violently yanked from the digital dimension. He was thrown back into his physical body at the speed of light. The empty void shattered into a million pieces, leaving Zac teetering on the brutal edge of reality.

​The loud hum of static energy filled the morgue. The air immediately surrounding Zac's body grew incredibly hot, incinerating the remaining oxygen. The hair on his right arm stood on end from the sheer electricity crackling in the air.

​The two nurse monsters that had been thrown back quickly scrambled to their feet. They growled savagely, baring rows of sharp teeth dripping with thick black saliva. They leaped wildly into the air, fully preparing to pounce on Zac's chest and snatch away the life that had only just returned to him.

​The system absolutely refused to let that happen.

​[Resurrection protocol complete. Executing absolute cardiac shock.]

​A blinding flash of blue light exploded outward from behind Zac's ribcage. A five-million-volt electrical current slammed directly into his dead heart. The young man's chest arched violently upward. Both of his eyelids snapped wide open, radiating a deeply lethal, glowing blue light as he stared directly at the two monsters suspended midair.