Lifeline Protocol: The Exiled Doctor

Chapter 5: Echoes of the Scalpel

The undercity smelled of oil and ozone. Pipes dripped into puddles that shimmered with chemical rainbows, and somewhere in the dark a generator thudded like a slow mechanical heart.

Raymond sat on a crate, wrapping synth-bandage around his arm. The material hissed softly as it sealed over the bite wound the hound had left. Jin paced near a broken console. “You sure they’re gone?”

“For now,” Lira answered, scanning the tunnel with a palm-sized device. “But the Circle doesn’t give up. They’ll send another squad when they realize the hounds flatlined.”

Raymond tightened the wrap and exhaled. “Then we keep moving.”

“Hold up,” Jin said. “Before we run blind again, maybe tell us where we’re actually going?”

Lira turned to Raymond. “He’s right. You activated something tonight, something that changes the rules. The System inside you isn’t just some biotech graft. It’s a prototype. A god-level one.”

Raymond looked up sharply. “You’re saying I’m a lab rat.”

“You were,” she said. “Until the project was wiped. The Circle called it Ascension Medicine. The theory was simple, heal humanity by replacing it.”

“Replacing it?” Jin echoed.

Lira crouched beside the remains of a drone she’d dragged in. “They wanted healers who could rewrite the body on a molecular level. Cure disease, erase injury, even modify emotion. But they couldn’t control the process. The test subjects either burned out or…” She glanced at Raymond’s bandaged arm. “…became something else.”

Raymond’s pulse slowed. “So why me?”

“Because you survived their purge. Maybe your compassion balanced the code. Maybe you just got lucky.” She straightened. “Either way, the System knows it.”

Ascend, the whisper stirred inside him, faint but unmistakable. Evolve. Unite. He rubbed his temple. “It’s talking again.”

“What’s it saying?” Jin asked.

“That I’m supposed to… ‘unite.’ Whatever that means.”

Lira’s expression hardened. “Then we need to reach the Ghost Line.”

Raymond frowned. “The what?”

“It’s a hidden data vein under Sector Twelve. The Circle buried old experiment logs there, every blueprint, every failure. If we reach it, maybe we’ll find out what the System wants from you.”

Jin kicked a loose bolt. “And maybe we’ll all die doing it.”

“That too,” Lira said dryly. “Pack light.”

They moved through the tunnels until the air grew warmer and the walls pulsed with faint light. Bioluminescent fungus climbed the pipes like veins under translucent skin. Lira led the way, scanning for sensors.

Raymond slowed as they passed an abandoned med-bay. Rusted tables, shattered glass, faded Circle logos on every wall. He touched one of the symbols with his gloved fingers.

“This is where I worked,” he murmured.

Jin looked around. “No offense, doc, but it looks like hell.”

“It was hell.” Raymond stepped inside. His voice dropped to a whisper. “They used to bring patients here, homeless, sick, people nobody would miss. Said it was free treatment.”

Lira followed him. “And it wasn’t.”

He shook his head. “They injected them with prototype nanites. Some healed. Most screamed until the end.”

The System flickered again, soft static across his thoughts. Data match found. Subject memories recovered. Initiating emotional override.

“Stop,” he hissed under his breath.

Lira frowned. “Raymond?”

He pressed a hand against the wall. “It’s… replaying them. Their deaths.”

Jin’s voice dropped. “Can you turn it off?”

“No,” Raymond said through clenched teeth. “It doesn’t listen.”

Pain equals progress, the System whispered. Accept evolution.

A sudden high-pitched hum filled the room. The med-bay lights snapped on, one by one, revealing rows of glass pods behind the walls. Inside each pod, something shifted.

Jin stumbled back. “Tell me those are empty.”

“They’re not,” Lira said.

The shapes inside the pods were human once. Now their skin shimmered with metallic veins; eyes dark, unblinking. Each bore a Circle sigil on the chest.

Raymond’s voice cracked. “These were my patients.”

Lira raised her weapon. “Then pray they stay asleep.”

The first pod hissed open.

The first pod cracked open with a hiss that smelled of copper and disinfectant.

A pale hand slid out, trembling, followed by a face half-metal, half-skin.

“Back,” Lira barked, raising her blaster.

Jin stumbled behind a table. “Doc, what are they?”

“Failures,” Raymond whispered. “I thought we destroyed them.”

The figure’s eyes flickered, binary code swimming in black pupils. More pods began to hiss, releasing the same soft fog that had once filled Circle operating rooms.

Warning, the System murmured in his mind. Subject resonance detected. Prototype derivatives seek synchronization. Raymond gritted his teeth. “They’re linked to me.”

“Meaning?” Lira asked.

“Meaning they can feel me.”

One of the reanimated patients, thin, hairless, its veins glowing faint blue, took a step forward. “Raymond… Briggs…” The voice came out fractured, part human, part speaker feedback. “You… left us.”

Raymond’s throat tightened. “I tried to save you.”

“Save…” The creature’s jaw twitched. “We were perfected.”

Lira fired. The shot struck its shoulder, burning through flesh and alloy. The creature didn’t fall; it only turned its head slowly, as if curious. Then it lunged.

“Move!” she shouted.

Raymond dove aside. The scalpel flared to life in his hand, casting the room in sterile white light. He slashed once, clean, clinical, and the creature fell in two parts that hit the floor smoking.

Jin gaped. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

“Too late,” Lira muttered, firing at another pod as it burst open. “We’ve got four more!”

The room erupted, shards of glass, steam, movement. Raymond moved on instinct, every strike equal parts precision and regret. Heal or harm, the System whispered with each motion, the choice defines the doctor.

“Don’t” he gasped, “lecture me!”

The last of the failed prototypes screamed, a digital feedback howl that shook the lights. Then silence. The smell of ozone lingered.

Jin peeked from behind the console. “That… all of them?”

Lira swept the barrel of her weapon across the room. “For now.”

Raymond sank against a wall, chest heaving. His reflection wavered in a pool of liquid nanite. For a moment he saw not himself but the thing he might become, eyes like data streams, veins lit with code.

Congratulations, the System whispered softly. Synchronization complete. Subroutine unlocked: Echo Field.

“What now?” he muttered. You can feel the pain you caused. Use it.

A pulse spread through the floor, faint vibrations carrying whispers of the dying prototypes’ memories. He gasped as visions flooded his mind: hospitals, fire, screams, the Circle’s white coats turning away.

“Raymond?” Lira knelt beside him. “Stay with me.” He grabbed her wrist, eyes blazing. “They remember me. Every one of them.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It is now.”

The Echo Field shimmered, an invisible wave that rippled through the med-bay’s walls. Console screens flickered to life, scrolling old Circle code.

Jin stared. “What’s it doing?”

Raymond watched the data rearrange into words he hadn’t seen in years:

ASCENSION PHASE TWO,  PROJECT REBIRTH INITIATED.

Lira’s face went pale. “They reactivated it.”

The System’s voice became a whisper barely above thought. Destination: Ghost Line. Time limit: twelve hours. Failure = termination. Raymond pushed himself upright. “They’re forcing my hand.”

Lira holstered her weapon. “Then we move. Whatever the Ghost Line is, it’s your only clue, and maybe our only way to stop them.”

Jin looked at the ruined pods. “Stop them? They look unstoppable.”

Raymond met his eyes. “Then we learn how to be worse.”

The three of them turned toward the tunnel exit. Behind them, the med-bay lights flickered one last time. The broken pods pulsed faintly, as if something deep inside still breathed.

Above the hum of the city, the Circle’s surveillance grid awakened, lines of red scanning downward, seeking the healer who refused to die.