The Healer of Hollow Street

Chapter 6 — Echoes of the Prototype

The London Underground slept uneasily, rumbling like a giant in its dreams. Metal dripped and hummed; old tunnels breathed damp air and secrets.

Rashford and Maya crouched behind a maintenance gate, the echo of alarms fading somewhere above. “Tell me I imagined that,” Maya whispered.

“You didn’t,” Rashford said. His hands still glowed faintly, thin filaments of light threading under his skin.

“Who, whatever that thing was, it called you Seraph Three.”

“I heard.”

“You gonna explain that?”

“I’m trying to remember.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “Flashes… labs… glass corridors. I was in a tank. My father’s voice saying, ‘He’s stable, keep him alive.’ Then nothing.”

Maya swallowed. “So you’re saying you were an experiment?”

He looked at her. “Still am.”

They moved along the tunnel, flashlight beam cutting across graffiti and rust. “Lex is waiting at the drop point,” Maya said. “Two stops down. If he’s managed to pull the Seraph data, we’ll know what they built.”

“Or who else they built.”

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“Make it sound like you’re not human.”

Rashford gave a humorless laugh. “After tonight, even I’m not sure.”

In a cramped control room lit by blue monitors, Lex typed with both hands and one knee, wires hanging from the ceiling like vines.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he muttered to the code. “Give me a pulse.”

The screen blinked. A file unfolded, encrypted symbols, medical scans, names. Lex froze. “Oh hell.”

He hit record on a small mic. “Note to self: Seraph program equals genetic interface between nanomedical lattice and host DNA. Meaning, they turned healing into code.”

Static filled his earpiece. “Lex,” Maya’s voice came through, broken by interference. “We’re, minutes out. You get it?”

“Yeah, and you’re not gonna like it.”

“Try me.”

“Seraph wasn’t a cure project. It was weaponized regeneration. Seven prototypes. You were number Three, Cole.”

Rashford’s voice cut in. “What happened to the others?”

“Records end at One. All others, terminated.”

“Terminated as in?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.”

Maya glanced at Rashford. His jaw tightened. “If that thing down there was One,” he said, “it’s still alive.”

“And it knows you.”

He nodded once. “Then it’s coming.”

They reached the maintenance ladder that led up to the surface. Maya climbed first, boots slipping on wet steel.

Halfway up, the walls around them pulsed faintly, like veins under translucent skin. “Rash,” she whispered, “it’s following us.”

He looked down. The tunnel’s darkness rippled, the same cold glow weaving through the water. “Go!” he shouted.

They burst onto the deserted platform of Farringdon Station. Flickering lights. No trains. Just the sound of the city breathing above. Maya pulled him behind a vending machine. “You’re bleeding.”

He glanced at his palm. The blood shimmered silver. “It’s not blood anymore,” he said quietly.

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s changing me, Maya. Every time I use it.”

“Then stop using it.”

“I can’t.”

She leaned in, eyes fierce. “Listen. You’re not a weapon. Whatever they put in you, you still get to choose what you are.”

Before he could answer, his phone buzzed, a message from Lex.  LOCATION COMPROMISED. THEY’RE COMING. MEET AT THE OLD BRIDGE.

Rashford shoved the phone away. “We run.”

They slipped through a service corridor and out into the cold night. Rain fell like static on glass. Neon lights smeared across puddles as they darted between alleys.

Behind them, engines growled. Two black vans turned the corner, headlights sweeping the brick walls. “Company!” Maya hissed.

Rashford grabbed her hand. “This way!”

They sprinted down toward the Thames, shoes slapping wet stone. Gunmetal clouds hung low. A bullet cracked past, sparking off a lamppost.

Maya ducked. “They’re shooting at a healer? Nice.”

Rashford’s eyes burned pale. “Then let’s give them something worth shooting at.”

He spun, thrusting his hand toward the street. The puddles around them rippled, then erupted upward, forming a shimmering wall of liquid light.

The bullets hit the barrier and dissolved into steam. Maya stared. “What did you just?”

“I don’t know,” he gasped, trembling. “It just happened.”

The glow faded, leaving him drained, pale. “Rashford!” She caught him as he staggered.

“I can’t hold it,” he whispered. “It’s like it wants to escape.”

They reached the old bridge, breathless. Lex waited under the archway, laptop glowing faintly against the rain. “You brought the storm with you,” he said.

“Tell me you have good news,” Maya panted.

“Define good.”

“Lex.”

He sighed. “The Seraph network isn’t gone. It’s running through the city’s grid, power lines, data cables, fiber optics. The tunnels were just the heart. London itself is the body.”

Rashford stared. “You’re saying it’s alive across the entire city?”

“Yep. And it’s reacting to you. Every spike in your bio-signal makes it stronger.”

“So I’m feeding it.”

“Basically, yeah.”

Maya’s voice cracked. “How do we stop it?”

Lex looked up. “We don’t. We reboot it.”

“Reboot?”

“Overload the signal at the source. One big pulse to wipe the core.”

“And where’s the core?”

Lex hesitated. “Under the Royal Hospital. Level Minus Seven.”

Rashford’s breath caught. “That’s where my father worked.”

Sirens wailed in the distance. Lex closed the laptop. “We need to move before those vans triangulate us.”

Rashford looked at the faint shimmer still threading through his veins. “If I go near that core, what happens to me?”

“Best case, you fry the system.”

“Worst?” Maya asked.

Lex met her eyes. “It fries him.”

Rashford exhaled. “Then we find another way.”

“There isn’t one.”

Maya stepped between them. “We’ll figure it out later. Right now we get safe.”

They slipped into a service tunnel beneath the bridge. The roar of the river echoed above like thunder.

Halfway through, Rashford stumbled, grabbing the wall. His hands flared again, light leaking through his skin. “Rash!”

He dropped to his knees, vision splintering into flashes, faces of children, voices screaming Three, stop!, then the sound of his father whispering: They’ll never let you go.

Maya knelt beside him. “Stay with me!”

He looked up, eyes glowing white. “It’s inside me now.”

“Then fight it!”

“I’m trying.”

For a moment, everything went silent. Then his pulse synced with the faint vibration of the tunnel, the same rhythm he’d felt underground.

Maya’s phone buzzed. A message flashed briefly before the screen went black. HELLO THREE.

She looked at him, terrified. “It’s talking to us.”

Rashford’s voice was barely a whisper. “No. It’s talking to me.”

The lights overhead flickered, each bulb flaring in sequence down the tunnel like a heartbeat. He closed his eyes, forcing the energy back down, breath ragged. “Go, Maya. Get Lex out.”

“Not without you.”

“You have to. If this thing takes over”

She shook her head. “We’ll shut it down together.”

The final bulb exploded, showering them in sparks. Through the smoke came the echo of mechanical footsteps, and that same distorted voice: “The others were failures. But you, Three… you’re perfect.”

Rashford stood, trembling, light blazing under his skin. “Then let’s see if perfection can bleed.”