2026-07-26 10:28:02“Ah… Gavin, slow down… what if Melvin comes back early?”
A wet, breathless gasp echoed through the thin wooden door, followed immediately by the rhythmic creaking of bedsprings and a man’s low, patronizing laugh.
“Let that loser come back,” an arrogant male voice murmured, accompanied by the muffled sound of skin against skin.
Outside the bedroom door, standing frozen in the dark living room of the rented apartment he paid for, Melvin felt his world fracture into a million sharp pieces.
In his calloused right hand, his thumb was still pinned against the latch of a small velvet box. Inside sat a modest, half-carat diamond ring—the result of six grueling months of midnight rideshare shifts, skipped meals, and back-breaking thirty-six-hour rotations as an intern at Apex Medical Center.
Now, Melvin hear that man again. “What can a broke intern do anyway? Cry? He’s probably out driving his beat-up car until midnight like a servant just to afford your birthday dinner. Come on, babe, say it. Tell me what that pathetic boyfriend of yours is really like compared to a real man.”
A soft, flirtatious giggle drifted through the crack of the bedroom door—a tone Melvin hadn't heard from her in over a year.
“Melvin?” Vanessa’s voice rose, laced with unfiltered disdain and unrestrained desire. “He’s poor, ugly, and so completely useless. He smells like cheap hospital sanitizer and old instant noodles. He couldn’t fulfill my fantasies in a hundred lifetimes the way you do, Gavin… Ah!”
Tonight was Vanessa’s twenty-fifth birthday. He had rushed back early, his chest bursting with quiet anticipation, eager to drop to one knee and offer her a future he had spent five long years building from nothing.
Now, those five years felt like a cruel, sickening joke.
A sudden wave of cold fury crashed through Melvin’s veins. He slammed his palm against the handle and shoved the bedroom door wide open.
The scene inside was a nightmare.
Vanessa was tangled in the silk sheets, wearing a provocative black lace nightgown Melvin had never seen before. Beside her sat Gavin Vance, the pampered, arrogant son of Apex Medical Center’s Vice Director, Dr. Victor Vance. Gavin was clad in an unbuttoned silk bathrobe, a glass of dark red wine in his hand, his smirk widening the moment his eyes landed on Melvin standing at the threshold.
"Melvin?" Vanessa gasped softly, though there was no terror in her eyes—only momentary annoyance. She casually pulled the sheet up to her waist while resting her bare shoulder against Gavin’s chest.
Melvin stood paralyzed, his chest heaving as his eyes darted from Vanessa’s flushed cheeks to Gavin’s designer clothes scattered across the carpet. Five years. Five years of giving her his entire stipend, of enduring her rising demands, of dreaming about buying a home together once he finished his residency.
"Vanessa... why?" Melvin’s voice trembled, raw and barely audible over the torrential rain drumming against the window. "How could you do this?"
Before Vanessa could answer, Gavin stepped smoothly out of bed, tying the silk belt of his bathrobe with insouciant grace. He carried himself with the supreme confidence of someone born with a silver spoon.
"Why?" Gavin snickered, closing the distance until he stood barely two inches from Melvin’s pale face. He reeked of expensive cologne and wine. "Look at yourself, Melvin! You’re a broke, ugly, pathetic nobody who drives strangers around for pocket change. Did you really think a woman like Vanessa would stay loyal to a stray dog like you forever?"
"Shut up," Melvin growled through gritted teeth, his knuckles turning stark white as he clenched his fists.
"Make me, loser," Gavin sneered. Without warning, Gavin drove his palm hard into Melvin’s chest.
Having trained in martial arts for years, Gavin’s physical strength far exceeded that of an ordinary civilian.
Melvin, already exhausted to the point of collapse from a brutal hospital shift, was caught off guard. He stumbled backward violently and slammed into the hard wooden doorframe. Pain burst behind his eyes as blood trickled down his forehead, and he collapsed heavily onto the floorboards.
"Gavin, don't waste your energy on a dog," Vanessa said coldly, walking over and looking down at his bleeding form with eyes devoid of warmth. "He’s not worth dirtying your hands."
Melvin forced himself up on one elbow, his body throbbing with agony. With trembling, blood-stained fingers, he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the small velvet box, and held it up to her.
"Vanessa... I saved up for six months for this..." Melvin choked out. "I came back early tonight... to propose to you..."
Vanessa looked down at the box, then let out a sharp, mocking laugh.
"A proposal?" She snatched the box from his trembling fingers, popped the latch open, and glanced at the modest diamond with unadulterated disgust. "This tiny, pathetic speck of glass? Melvin, do you have any idea how much Gavin’s wristwatch costs? It could buy ten thousand of these worthless trinkets."
Without an ounce of hesitation, Vanessa flicked her wrist and tossed the velvet box directly into the metal trash can in the corner. The sharp, metallic clatter echoed like a death knell in the quiet room.
"I stayed with you for five years because you were the top graduate at the academy," Vanessa continued, her voice dripping with venom.
"I thought you had a bright future! But look at you now. You’ve been a lowly intern for two years while everyone else gets promoted. You hit a ceiling, Melvin. You’re weak, you have zero connections, and you’ll spend the rest of your life rotting at the very bottom of the medical world."
What Vanessa didn't know was that six months ago, Vice Director Victor Vance had secretly blacklisted Melvin from every promotion list in Apex Medical Center specifically to clear a path for his son Gavin's medical career.
Gavin walked over, a cruel grin stretching across his face, and stepped heavily onto Melvin’s hand lying flat on the floor. He ground his heel down with crushing force. Pain shot up Melvin’s arm, but he gritted his teeth, refusing to give them the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.
"Listen to me carefully, trash!" Gavin leaned down, his voice dropping to a vicious whisper.
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Chapter 214
The public did not recover its trust that week, yet it stopped sliding. The families who had met Melvin in the small room went home and told their neighbours what they had heard. The anchors kept logging their pulses at the gates, and the cold patches kept walking in the same order.Chen came to the window with the ledger under his arm. He looked out at the car park, at the striped canopies and the folding chairs, and at the volunteers who sat on their positions with their hands folded."It will not come back fully, Doctor. Not in a month, and perhaps not in a year.""No. It will hold, though, Chen. That is the most a broken trust can give us at the start."Evelyn's raw data reached the western hospital by the second bell, and the anchors sent copies of every log down the line to the car park. For the first time since the eastern arc, the volunteers heard the census read aloud in their own voices, and they listened without fear.Lin's frame chirped on the sill beside them. She had bee
Chapter 213
"Why did nobody warn us?" the next family asked. Melvin told them about the census, the rotation, and the four hundred anchors who were learning to read a pulse by hand. He told them what the cold patches had done to the north wing, and what Yan Shou had done to the chamber under the delta.Nobody in the room interrupted him. When he finished, the father nodded slowly and asked for a copy of the map.Ruth Alden's husband came last, and he did not sit down. He held a folded cushion against his chest, the same faded blue cushion his wife had carried to the car park every morning for nine weeks."She brought this every day, Doctor. The chair was hard, and she said she would not sit on bare concrete for anyone." His voice was steady, and his hands were not."Then she should have it back on her position, and the anchors will put it there. Chen, record the cushion against her name.""It is already recorded, Doctor," Chen said quietly, and he wrote a line in the margin.By the afternoon ther
Chapter 212
The councillor wrote the figure on his slate and underlined it twice.Merrow took the stand in a grey suit that hung loose on his frame. He described the afternoon he had stood in a doorway and watched his own hands. The councillors wrote it down without looking up from their slates.Lu was not in the hall. Mo's wardens had kept him at the crater with his plates and his brush, and the high table had not asked for him. Melvin noticed that the seat Lu had been promised stayed empty all morning."Councillor, it is being read aloud by a voice that has already decided how the sentence ends." Merrow's voice cracked only once, on the last word.A murmur ran along the benches. Iris Varga sat at the centre of the high table in her grey federal coat, and she did not write anything down. She waited until the murmur died before she spoke."Doctor Melvin, the council has heard that a man on a slab can be spoken through. Can you show us how it is stopped?""Doss will show you, Councillor, with a pr
Chapter 211
"Sun Wen, do you give your consent? Freely, and in your own voice, with the right to stop whenever Doss says so.""Given," the old carrier said, and he crawled across the gravel on his hands and knees.He reached the litter and laid his palm flat on Merrow's wrist. Merrow's body went rigid under the blankets, and the cords stood out along his neck. The core under Sun Wen's hand gave one deep note that Melvin felt through the stone."Old carrier, you have no right to this vein." The voice hissed through Merrow's throat."I had no right to a thousand years in the dark, Yan Shou. I took them anyway, and I am still holding."Merrow's heart stuttered. Doss's hand flew to his throat, and her lips began to count aloud. Melvin watched the old carrier's palm darken and then brighten against the wrist.The voice fought him for almost a minute. It pushed up through Merrow's chest in short hard waves, and each wave broke against the full core. The blankets slipped from Merrow's shoulders, and his
Chapter 210
Melvin looked at Lin's frame. The sixty-fourth chamber's readings glowed beside the census map, and the thread from the carrier's socket ran up the shaft toward the disc beneath him. He had read that carrier for an hour that afternoon, and he had felt a patience in the slow beat that no living man should have.The council had sealed Yan Ming alive so that his brother could keep a seat on the deputy's bench. Melvin understood now that the bargain had never been fair to both of them. He had spent two days learning the carrier's architecture, and he had begun to think of the sixty-fourth entry as a living man who had been filed away."Doctor, do I stop him?" Doss asked over the line, her voice thin."Not yet. Let him talk, and get me every word. Then tell him I need a reason to bring anyone up out of the stone."Lin's voice cut in from the frame. "The thread is warming, Melvin. The sixty-fourth socket has started reaching for the line again.""Let it reach. It can't pull what it hasn't g
Chapter 209
"So Yan Shou's proxy came through the gate wearing Lu's face. Hui saw the face and let it in, and then someone killed him and wrote a fever over the death," Melvin reasoned."That's the reading, Doctor. I have entered charges against the dead man for the record, as the law requires. The charge is obstruction of a sealed escort, and the defendant is Gate Warden Hui," Chen said, and his voice did not change at all."Enter a second charge against the physician who signed the record, in the same ink.""Already entered, Doctor.""Then keep every entry open for the federal observers, Chen. Varga will want to read every name before she reads a single rule."Outside, the light had turned copper over the crater rim, and the cots along the edge of the stone threw long shadows across the disc. A cold wind came off the far ridges, and the marshals pulled their coats tighter.Lin had not spoken for several minutes. She stood with the frame in one hand and the day's sheet in the other, and she was
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