The Ghost Doctor

CHAPTER 4 – The Anatomy of a Lie

The tunnels no longer echoed only with dripping water, they pulsed with whispers. Lydia’s flashlight threw long shadows across the cracked brick as they moved deeper.

Justin followed, his mind racing. Every footstep seemed to thud in time with the question pounding in his skull: Who built me into this?

She stopped at a metal hatch covered in rust. “This leads to the old subway maintenance hub. Off-grid. Nobody goes there.”

“Except you,” Justin said.

“Except me,” she admitted. “You’ll be safe for an hour, maybe two.”

He climbed through first. The room beyond looked like a forgotten lab, scattered monitors, surgical trays, a dead generator.

Justin ran a hand across the dusty equipment. “This stuff… it’s medical grade. Experimental.”

Lydia’s eyes flicked to the floor. “Yeah. Belonged to someone who tried to expose the government’s clinical trials before disappearing.”

He turned to her sharply. “What kind of trials?”

She hesitated. “On soldiers. Regenerative medicine. Unapproved.”

Justin’s throat tightened. “Project Helix.”

Her head snapped up. “You know it?”

He laughed without humor. “I designed half of it.”

She blinked. “You what?”

“I was a research resident at St. Mark’s when they approached me. Said it was stem-cell work, accelerated healing. But when patients started seizing, I walked. Next week, my funding vanished. Then… the malpractice scandal.”

Lydia whispered, “They buried you to protect the project.”

He nodded slowly. “And then I wake up with hands that rewrite cells. Guess the experiment didn’t stop with them.”

Silence hung between them, broken only by the distant rumble of trains above. Finally Lydia said, “If they’re still running Helix, there’ll be records, genetic logs, subject lists.”

“Where?”

“The central archive, Health Ministry tower, Level 19. Locked tighter than Fort Knox.”

Justin paced. “We break in, get the data, prove they did this to me.”

“We?” she echoed. “I’m a journalist, not a thief.”

“You’re already both,” he said dryly.

She gave him a glare that almost hid the flicker of a smile. “You really think we can walk into a government fortress?”

“We won’t walk,” he said. “We’ll heal our way in.”

Before she could ask what that meant, a faint beeping cut through the dark. Justin looked down, his wristband, the old hospital ID he’d never removed, was glowing red.

“Tracker,” Lydia breathed. “You’ve been tagged since St. Mark’s.”

“Impossible. It’s been dead for years.”

“Apparently not.”

A metallic clang echoed from the tunnel they’d entered. Voices followed, distorted through radios. “Unit Two, movement confirmed below. Prepare for retrieval.”

Justin’s pulse spiked. “They found us already.”

Lydia killed the flashlight. “Back exit, now.”

He grabbed the nearest medical case and ripped out a vial of fluorescent fluid. “Bio-signal suppressor,” he muttered. “Let’s hope it still works.”

He smashed it against the wall. The liquid hissed, releasing a dense, blue vapor that swallowed the room. “Go!”

They sprinted through the smoke toward the far hatch. Boots thundered behind them. Lydia coughed. “How many?”

“Too many.”

They climbed the ladder into an old subway tunnel. The sound of the city roared overhead like a living beast. Justin looked back once, silhouettes moving in the fog, laser sights cutting through the blue haze.

He slammed the hatch shut and whispered, “We’re not the only experiment down here.”

Lydia landed hard on the tunnel floor. “Next time,” she gasped, “remind me to bring running shoes.”

Justin slid down after her, wrenching the hatch shut and jamming a metal bar through the handle. Distant pounding echoed, agents trying to break through. “They’ll burn through that in minutes,” Lydia said.

“Then we keep moving.”

The tunnel curved ahead, black except for a line of emergency bulbs flickering like dying fireflies. Justin took the lead, stepping through ankle-deep water. The smell of oil and rust filled the air.

“Tell me something,” Lydia whispered. “If Helix was a soldier project, why you? You weren’t military.”

“I was their control,” he said. “The clean baseline. They wanted to prove anyone could be enhanced.”

“So you were their proof of concept.”

“Or their mistake.”

A metallic clatter stopped them both. Justin lifted his hand instinctively, blue light flared across his palm. From the shadows, a voice rasped, “Don’t shoot. Please.”

A figure stumbled forward, a man in torn hospital scrubs, skin pale, eyes almost luminous. Lydia raised her light. “Who are you?”

The man winced at the brightness. “Name’s Marcus. Subject 47.”

Justin froze. “That’s a Helix designation.”

Marcus nodded weakly. “You’re 31. I remember your file. The only one who survived clean.”

Lydia glanced between them. “Survived what?”

Marcus coughed, blood spattering the concrete. “Helix wasn’t about healing soldiers, it was about harvesting them.

They tried to graft regenerative cells into living hosts. When the hosts rejected them…” He gestured to his ravaged skin. “…this.”

Justin knelt beside him. “They said the human body couldn’t hold the sequence. But I”

“You stabilized it,” Marcus interrupted. “They used your DNA to perfect the serum. You’re the source.”

The words hit like a blade. “They used me?”

“They own you,” Marcus whispered. “Every cure you perform feeds the code. It’s transmitting.”

Lydia stiffened. “Transmitting where?”

Marcus’s eyes flicked upward. “To them.”

A shrill tone pierced the tunnel, the same red light blinking on Justin’s wristband. “Get away from him!” Marcus shouted. “They’re tracing”

The ceiling above them erupted. Concrete rained down, dust choking the air. Armed figures dropped through the breach, masks, rifles, precision.

“Move!” Lydia yelled, firing her small stun pistol. Sparks burst; one soldier fell.

Justin grabbed Marcus under the arms, dragging him through the smoke. “Stay with me!”

“Too late,” Marcus coughed. “They don’t want me. They want you.”

A shot rang out. Marcus jerked, eyes wide, then went limp in Justin’s hands. “Marcus!”

Lydia pulled him behind a pillar as bullets shredded the air. “We can’t save him!”

Justin’s breath came in ragged bursts. “They turned me into their cure. And their weapon.”

Lydia’s face was streaked with grime. “Then what now?”

He looked down at his glowing hands, the blood of another failed subject dripping from his fingers. “We stop the infection at its source.”

“Meaning?”

He met her eyes, voice low and certain. “We bring down the Helix project, and everyone hiding behind it.”

Sirens wailed above, blending with the storm outside. The tunnel shook with another explosion, but Justin didn’t flinch.

For the first time, he wasn’t running from the truth. He was running toward it.