The Healer’s Code

Chapter 5 – The Vault

The silence felt alive. Every second the red emergency lights stayed dark stretched the air thinner until even breathing sounded like breaking something.

David pressed his palm against the wall where the golden caduceus had faded. “He left us breadcrumbs.”

Lena tried a flashlight app on her cracked phone; the screen flickered weakly. “Breadcrumbs that vanish. Real considerate.”

A soft click answered her sarcasm, metal shifting inside the wall. A narrow seam glowed faintly gold. David’s pulse jumped. “That’s new.”

“Please tell me that’s not another booby trap.”

He slid his fingers into the seam. The panel shifted, smooth as skin, revealing a small chamber no deeper than a closet. Inside sat a plain steel case with an old-fashioned lock and a single sticky note on top.

Lena read over his shoulder. “ ‘For DF. Trust the rhythm.’ He really loves being mysterious.”

David knelt, traced the lock with his thumb. It hummed faintly at his touch, recognition, not resistance.

He inhaled, matched his breathing to the faint pulse he remembered from training, and the lock popped open with a quiet sigh.

Inside: a slim black tablet and a vial filled with something that glimmered between liquid and light. Lena whistled. “That’s either medicine or alien espresso.”

David powered the tablet. It woke instantly to a recording, Elias’s face, pale in the glow, eyes tired but intent. “If you’re seeing this, they’ve reached the clinic. I had to draw them away. Don’t follow yet.” pause

“The Vault isn’t a place, it’s a memory. Your father built it, and you carry half of the key. I hid the rest where even the Black Vein wouldn’t look: inside their own house.”

Lena frowned. “Their house?”

Elias continued, voice lower now, edges shaking. “Michael Foreman discovered that a healer’s energy could be reversed, turned inward to destroy instead of restore. He refused to weaponize it. They killed him for that refusal… or so I believed. Now I’m not sure he died at all.”

David froze. “What?”

“If he’s alive, he’s somewhere inside the Vein’s research wing under the name Project Echo. Find him before they finish what we started.”

He looked straight at the camera, softer now. “And David, trust your hands, not your history.”

The screen dimmed to black. Lena exhaled. “So your dad might be alive and working for the people who keep trying to kill us.”

“Or he’s a prisoner. Or he’s the reason they’re after me.” David set the tablet down carefully, as if it might explode from truth alone. “Either way, I have to find out.”

Before Lena could answer, a distant thud rolled through the floor, something heavy landing above them. Dust drifted from the ceiling. “They found the hatch,” she whispered.

David grabbed the vial and the tablet. “There another way out?”

“Not unless your miracle powers come with a drill setting.”

He scanned the wall again, desperate. Then the faint hum returned to his palms, the same rhythm from the sphere, deeper now, like the building itself had joined the beat.

The gold seam reappeared, this time forming a doorway outline on the opposite wall. Lena blinked. “You’re kidding.”

“Apparently not.” He pressed his hands to the outline. Light flared. The wall dissolved into air, revealing a staircase spiraling downward into blue light.

She stared at him. “You go first.”

“Ladies first.”

“Hero complex first.”

They descended together, the hum growing stronger with each step until it felt like walking inside a heartbeat.

At the bottom waited another chamber, larger, circular, lined with dormant consoles. In the center, a glass capsule stood upright, empty except for a single metal chair.

On the chair rested a second vial identical to the one David carried, and a handwritten tag: “Echo – Phase Two.”

Lena whispered, “Phase Two of what?”

Before he could answer, the capsule lights flicked on. A voice, not Elias’s, not mechanical, but familiar, spoke from unseen speakers. “Hello, David. It’s been a long time.”

David’s throat went dry. “Dad?”

The capsule hissed open. A silhouette stepped out, taller than the man in the recordings he barely remembered, eyes glowing faintly gold. “They told you I was dead,” the voice said softly. “They lied.”

Lena’s flashlight sputtered out, plunging them into blue darkness. “Now,” the figure said, closer, “let’s finish what you started.”

The hum in David’s palms exploded into light.