I Was Reborn as the Apocalypse's Weakest Healer

Chapter 7: Outside the Gate

The high-pitched scratching against the steel hatch intensified, a sound so sharp it felt like a needle being dragged across Lucas’s eardrums. It wasn’t the blunt, rhythmic thudding of the mindless horde they had encountered earlier. This was surgical. This was patient.

"What is that?" Lucas whispered, his voice cracking. He tried to scramble backward, but his legs felt like they were made of lead. "Valentina, that doesn't sound like those things from before."

Valentina didn’t look back at him. Her eyes were fixed on the door, her hand already gripping the hilt of her blade. "It’s not. Those things outside are just hunger. This? This is a Seeker. It’s a specialized unit designed for one thing: finding high-value essence signatures. In other words, it’s here for you, Lucas."

"For me?" Lucas gulped, his heart hammering against his bruised ribs. "I’m in debt for a million credits, and now there’s a bounty hunter monster?"

"Commander!" Valentina barked, her voice cutting through the rising panic. "Tell me your secondary exit is ready, or we’re about to have a very short, very bloody standoff in this hallway."

Commander Vorn was staring at the hatch, his amber eyes flickering with a rapid stream of data. "The integrity of the reinforced steel is dropping at an impossible rate. It’s using a high-frequency vibration to destabilize the molecular bonds of the alloy. We don't have secondary defenses calibrated for this!"

"I didn't ask for a status report, Vorn! I asked for a way out!" Valentina snapped.

"The maintenance elevator at the end of the hall," Vorn said, finally snapping out of his shock. He pointed toward a shadowed alcove behind the sleeping pods. "It leads to the surface ruins, near the old rail yards. But it’s been inactive for decades. We don't even know if the rails are intact."

"Make them intact!" Valentina ordered. She reached down and hauled Lucas to his feet with a grunt of effort. "Come on, spark. We’re leaving."

"I can’t... everything hurts," Lucas wheezed, clutching his chest. The amber warning text from the System was still pulsing in his vision, a rhythmic reminder of his failing cellular integrity.

"Pain is a luxury we don't have right now," Valentina hissed into his ear, her grip on his arm like iron. "Move your feet or I’ll let that thing have your legs first."

A sudden, deafening screech of metal filled the room. The center of the heavy hatch didn't just dent; it dissolved. A jagged hole appeared in the middle of the steel, and a long, multi-jointed limb—shining like polished obsidian and tipped with a razor-thin claw—poked through the opening.

"Open the elevator! Now!" Vorn shouted to his remaining guards.

"It’s jammed, Commander! The power coupling is fused!" one of the guards yelled back, frantically punching a keypad.

"Lucas!" Valentina shoved him toward the elevator. "The lock! Do the thing you did earlier! Push your mana into the mechanism! Don't heal it, just force the gears to turn!"

"I’m empty, Valentina! I’m literally falling apart!" Lucas cried out, even as he stumbled toward the elevator door.

"If you don't do it, we’re dead!" she yelled, turning back to face the hatch.

The obsidian claw ripped a larger hole in the door. A creature squeezed through—a nightmare of sleek, black plates and glowing red ocular sensors. It didn't have a face, just a cluster of lenses that immediately swiveled to lock onto Lucas.

"Target acquired," a synthesized, melodic voice drifted from the creature. "Lucas Wijaya. Collection initiated."

"Not on my watch, you piece of scrap!" Valentina lunged. Her violet blade hummed as it collided with the creature's obsidian limb. The impact sent a shower of sparks flying, the sound like two freight trains colliding.

"Lucas! The door!" Valentina’s voice was strained. She was being pushed back by the sheer force of the Seeker’s advance.

Lucas slammed his palms against the elevator’s control panel. He closed his eyes, ignoring the searing heat in his chest. Just move. Please, just move. He felt the liquid fire in his veins move toward his hands. It wasn't a healing warmth this time; it was a desperate, jagged surge of raw power.

Click-clack. Whirrr.

The elevator doors groaned and shuddered open just as the Seeker swiped at Valentina, its claw narrowly missing her head and burying itself in a sleeping pod, shattering the glass and the occupant within.

"Go! Go! Go!" Vorn screamed, pushing his guards toward the lift.

They scrambled inside—Lucas, Valentina, Vorn, and the two remaining guards. Valentina was the last one in, her blade still glowing as she kicked the Seer’s obsidian head back just as the doors hissed shut. The lift lashing upward with a violent jolt that threw them all to the floor.

"Is everyone... alive?" Lucas panted, his forehead resting against the cold metal floor.

"For now," Valentina said, breathing hard. She leaned against the back wall, her eyes never leaving the closed doors. "But that thing isn't going to stop. It’s a Seeker. It’ll track your scent through a mile of concrete."

"What did it mean by 'collection'?" Lucas asked, looking up at her. "Am I a specimen now?"

"You're an asset with an unpaid debt, Lucas," Vorn said, his voice regaining its cold, corporate edge. "To the System, you're a wandering credit balance that needs to be brought back into the fold."

"I didn't ask for any of this," Lucas muttered, his voice trembling. "I just wanted to help that guy."

"And look what that got you," Valentina said, though her tone was less sharp than before. "A dead man, a mutated monster, and a hunter on our heels. Welcome to the new world, kid."

The elevator screeched to a halt, the doors sliding open to reveal a landscape of skeletal skyscrapers and mounds of rusted metal. The air was thick with the smell of wet ash. They were back in the ruins, but this area was different—a labyrinth of collapsed overpasses and deep, jagged craters.

"This way," Vorn said, gesturing toward a narrow path between two leaning towers. "There’s a transit tunnel a few blocks from here. If we can get underground, we might be able to mask your signature."

"Wait," Lucas said, stumbling as they stepped out onto the uneven ground. "I feel... dizzy."

"Keep moving, Lucas," Valentina urged, grabbing his shoulder. "We don't have time for a break."

"No, it’s not that. It’s like... the ground is humming," Lucas whispered.

"Humming?" Valentina paused, her eyes scanning the debris.

Suddenly, the ground beneath them buckled. A massive tremor shook the ruins, sending a cascade of concrete and rebar falling from the nearby towers.

"Get back!" Vorn shouted, but he was too late.

The slab of asphalt Lucas was standing on cracked down the center. He didn't even have time to scream before the earth gave way completely.

"Lucas!" Valentina lunged for him, her hand outstretched.

"Valentina!" Lucas yelled, his fingers brushing against hers for a split second before he plummeted into the darkness of a collapsing sub-level.

The world turned into a roar of falling stone and choking dust. Lucas hit a slanted metal beam, tumbled into a pile of soft insulation, and finally slammed into a concrete floor twenty feet below. The sound of the collapse above him was deafening, a final, heavy thud sealing the hole he had fallen through.

Silence followed. Heavy, oppressive silence.

"Ugh... help..." Lucas gasped, coughing up a cloud of dust. He tried to move, but his body felt like it had been put through a meat grinder. His vision was dark, save for the flickering amber light of the System notifications.

[WARNING: PHYSICAL TRAUMA DETECTED.]

[CELLULAR DEGRADATION: 12% INCREASED.]

[SENSORY RADIUS REDUCED.]

"Valentina? Vorn?" Lucas called out, his voice small and muffled in the cramped, dark space. "Anyone?"

No answer. Only the distant, rhythmic dripping of water and the groan of shifting rubble. He was alone. The fear he had been suppressing since he woke up in the crater finally surged to the surface, a cold, suffocating wave of panic.

"Calm down," he whispered to himself, his teeth chattering. "Just... think. You're a healer. You can sense things."

He closed his eyes, trying to reach out with that strange, internal sense he had discovered. He didn't try to heal himself—the cost would be too high right now—but he focused on the life around him. He looked for the familiar, sharp violet pulse of Valentina’s essence.

Where is she? Where is she?

At first, there was nothing but the cold, dead hum of the ruins. Then, a flicker. A faint, rhythmic throb of energy, deep and steady, but muffled by layers of debris. It was her. It had to be.

"I see you," Lucas whispered, a spark of hope igniting in his chest.

He pushed himself up, his hands scraping against jagged rocks. He began to crawl toward the signal, his body screaming in protest with every movement. He navigated through a narrow gap in the fallen beams, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps.

"I'm coming, Valentina. Just... stay there," he muttered, using the pulse of her life force as a compass in the pitch black.

The signal grew stronger as he rounded a corner into what looked like an old service tunnel. He could see a faint light now—the violet glow of her blade, partially obscured by a massive pile of concrete and steel.

"Valentina!" Lucas scrambled forward, his heart leaping.

He reached the pile and began frantically pulling away the smaller pieces of rubble. The violet light was coming from underneath a massive, reinforced support beam that had fallen diagonally across the tunnel.

"Lucas?" a voice rasped from beneath the wreckage. It was weak, strained, and filled with a pain he had never heard from her before.

"I’m here! I'm here, I found you!" Lucas shouted, his hands bleeding as he clawed at the dust.

He cleared enough of the debris to see her. Valentina was pinned from the waist down under the massive beam. Her face was pale, covered in a mask of gray dust and blood. Her blade lay a few inches from her hand, its light flickering weakly.

"You... you're an idiot for coming back," she whispered, a ghost of a smile touching her bloodied lips.

"Yeah, well, you're the one who said we were partners," Lucas said, his voice trembling as he looked at the massive weight pinning her down. "Just hang on, okay? I'm going to get you out."

"Lucas, don't," she gasped, her eyes fluttering. "The beam... it’s crushing my femoral artery. If you move it... I’ll bleed out in seconds."

"Then I'll heal you while I move it," Lucas said, his hands already glowing with a desperate, golden light.

"You can't," she insisted, her voice dropping to a whisper. "The debt, Lucas. If you heal this... it’ll kill you."

Lucas looked at her, then at the amber warnings still flashing in his eyes. He knew she was right. But as he looked into her violet eyes, he didn't see an asset manager or a cold operative. He saw the only person who hadn't left him for dead.

"Then we'll both be in debt," Lucas said, his jaw setting with a resolve he didn't know he possessed. "Get ready, Valentina. This is going to hurt both of us."