The Healing Fist: Richard Walter

Chapter 7 – The Descent

Darkness pressed against them like weight.

Only the echo of dripping water broke the silence.

Lina flicked the manual flashlight on her rifle. A cone of light carved a tunnel through the dust corrugated steel, torn cables, rusted signage that once read Sub-Transit Line 12. Everything beyond the beam felt alive, listening.

“Keep quiet,” Kael murmured. His breath made small clouds. “Sound carries down here.” Behind them Richard stumbled. “Where … are we?”

“The old maintenance levels,” Lina answered softly. “No sensors, no power grid. Genesis abandoned them decades ago.”

Kael checked his wrist scanner nothing but static. “They didn’t abandon them,” he said. “Frost mapped every tunnel that could carry a Qi current. She wanted redundancy.”

Richard rubbed his temples. “She’s whispering again. Faint. Like she’s under the floor.”

“Block her out.” Lina caught his arm. “Focus on my voice.” Kael kept walking, boots scraping metal. “Talking won’t help if she’s inside the resonance field. The more he speaks, the more she listens.”

Lina shot him a look. “He’s still human. Treat him like one.” 

Kael didn’t reply. He only raised the light on his gauntlet, scanning the walls. Strange glyphs were etched into the steel circles within circles, faintly glowing.

Richard stared at them. “Those are her calibration marks.” “Meaning?” Kael asked. “She used them to test neural drift.” He swallowed. “These tunnels … they’re part of her lab.”

A distant clang echoed down the corridor. Everyone froze. Lina whispered, “Could be debris.”

“Could be her.” Kael drew his sidearm, low and steady. “Move.”

They advanced in silence. Every few meters, another glyph burned faintly to life as they passed, like the tunnel itself was waking up.

Richard winced. “She’s in the wiring.” “Explain,” Lina said. “She’s using my link as a transmitter. Anything metal she can ride the current.”

Kael’s voice dropped. “So she hears every word we say.”  Richard nodded. “And every heartbeat.”

Ten minutes later, they reached a junction chamber. It looked like an abandoned surgical ward tables, broken monitors, IV stands coated in dust. A cracked mirror leaned against the wall, reflecting their flashlight beam into distorted shapes.

Kael circled the room, weapon ready. “We rest here. Two minutes.”Lina guided Richard to a bench. “Sit. Breathe.”

He obeyed, but his gaze fixed on the mirror. “Don’t you see it?” “See what?” Lina asked. “Her. The mirror surface rippled. Frost’s face appeared within the cracks—smiling faintly, eyes unreadable.

Kael aimed immediately. “Illusion.” Her reflection spoke. “Still trying to shoot ideas, Kael?” The sound came from everywhere walls, vents, even the floor. The temperature dropped.

Lina stepped between them. “You’re not welcome here.” “Welcome?” Frost’s voice echoed, smooth and amused. “I built this place.”

Richard trembled. “Get out of my head!” “You invited me, Richard. Every time you used what I gave you.”

Kael fired once. The bullet shattered the mirror; Frost’s image dissolved into mist. For a moment the air cleared.

Lina turned on him. “That accomplished nothing!” “It shut her up for ten seconds,” he said. “That’s something.”

A low hum rose beneath their feet, like machinery rebooting. The walls pulsed with crimson light. Richard clutched his skull. “She’s redirecting power she’s going to collapse the tunnel!”

Kael grabbed his arm. “Then guide us out. You can sense the flow, can’t you?” Richard’s breathing quickened. “Left corridor. Hurry.”

They sprinted. The tunnel lights flashed in alternating bands of red and white, strobing like a heartbeat. The hum turned to a roar.

Lina shouted over the noise. “She’s using the conduit to push us where she wants!” “Then we don’t go where she wants!” Kael veered toward a side passage.

Richard hesitated. “That’s”  The floor behind them erupted, cutting him off. Fire rolled through the main corridor, consuming the glyphs in white flame.

“Go!” Lina pushed him after Kael. They emerged into another chamber smaller, lined with old hospital cots and oxygen tanks. Faded charts covered the walls, scrawled with equations in Frost’s handwriting.

Kael stared at them. “This was her prototype lab.” Lina approached one of the charts. “She was mapping neural resonance against physical stress thresholds … Richard, these formulas she was using her own cells as the control variable.”

Richard shook his head. “That means” “That means she grafted her pattern into every subject she touched,” Kael said grimly. “Including you.”

The lights flickered again. A single monitor crackled to life on the far wall, its screen snowing with static.  Then Frost’s face appeared once more, calm amid the distortion.

“Progress,” she said. “You’ve made it farther than I expected.” Kael raised his weapon. “End the broadcast, Frost.”

“You always mistake dialogue for surrender,” she replied. “You could still join me, Kael. You built half my systems before you pretended to grow a conscience.”

Lina’s eyes widened. “He what?” Kael kept his gun trained on the screen. “Don’t listen.”

Frost’s smile widened. “He was my architect. The Crimson Fist, his idea, not mine. A convenient myth for control. You should ask him how many test subjects it cost to perfect your precious resistance.”

Lina looked at him. “Is she lying?” Kael’s jaw flexed. “We don’t have time for this.” The monitor brightened. Frost’s voice turned sharp. “You’ll have all the time you need inside his head.”

Richard screamed. The room filled with light.  Light swallowed sound. For a heartbeat Lina felt weightless, then the tunnel was gone.

She blinked. The air was sterile, humming. White walls, instruments, the smell of antiseptic. A hospital room, Genesis Medical Wing 3, the letters read. Frost’s domain.

“Kael?” Her voice bounced off glass. No answer.  A soft footstep behind her. Frost stood in the doorway, immaculate as ever. “Welcome home.”

Lina backed away. “This isn’t real.” “Reality is conductivity,” Frost said. “You’re just traveling through his synapses. Do you like the décor?”

Lina’s hand went to her sidearm. It wasn’t there. Only a patient bracelet around her wrist, her own name, her old ID number.

Frost approached. “You remember the day I found you. Broken spine, no hope of recovery. I fixed you. You owe me your legs.”

Lina forced her breathing steady. “You fixed me so you could own me.” “Ownership is perspective.” Frost smiled. “You walked because of me. You still do.”

The walls flickered. For a moment she saw the real tunnel behind the illusion, Kael shouting, reaching for her, but then Frost’s voice drowned it out.

“Tell me, Lieutenant. Why protect Richard? Guilt? Or the fantasy that he can forgive what you helped create?”

Lina met her gaze. “He’s not you.”  “No,” Frost murmured. “He’s better, because of me.”  Lina lunged forward, grabbed Frost’s coat, and the world fractured like glass.

Kael landed hard on metal, alone in the dark. “Lina!” His voice echoed down a dozen corridors at once.

A light flickered overhead, then another, and another, until the tunnel glowed faint blue. Footsteps approached.

“Still shouting orders,” a voice said. Not Frost’s. Deeper. Familiar.

Kael turned and froze. A younger version of himself walked out of the light, clean uniform, eyes unscarred. “Remember me?”

Kael raised his weapon. “Another trick.”

“You can’t shoot a memory.” The younger Kael smiled. “You built everything Frost needed. Without your algorithms she’d still be guessing. All this blood, yours.”

Kael’s finger tightened on the trigger. “You’re a projection.” “Maybe. But tell me why you started Crimson Fist. To fight her? Or to atone?”

Kael’s breath hitched. “To stop her.” “Liar. You wanted control back. She stole your project, so you renamed it and called it resistance.”

The walls quivered. Kael steadied himself. “If you were real, you’d know I changed.”  “You didn’t change,” the echo said softly. “You redirected your ego.”

Kael’s eyes narrowed. “Then maybe it’s time to kill it.” He fired. The illusion burst into static light and the tunnel around him cracked open, revealing a blinding white void.

Lina crashed through that same light and tumbled back into metal and dust. The hospital illusion dissolved; Frost’s laughter faded.

Kael staggered from the opposite side, smoke rising from his gauntlet. “You alive?” “Define alive.” She pulled herself up. “Where’s Richard?”

They looked around. The lab chambers were gone; only a narrow shaft remained, half-collapsed, air vibrating with faint residual energy.

Kael tapped his comm. “Richard! Respond!” A whisper answered through the static: “She’s leaving me.”

Lina grabbed the device. “Richard, where are you?” “Below. Can’t… hold her much longer.”

Kael checked the schematic on his wrist pad. “Tglanced back once. The shattered screen still glowed, Frost’s face flickering for an instant amid the code. “Thank you for the upgrade.” 

Then it went dark. When they reached the upper hatch, Kael forced it open. Cold night air swept in city lights pulsing in strange patterns, streetlamps flashing in pehere’s an old elevator junction under us. If he’s down there, it’s collapsing fast.”

“Then we dig. ” Lina holstered her light and started prying at the debris. Kael joined her, both straining against twisted steel. “Frost’s link is breaking. She’s transferring into the network.”

Lina froze. “The city grid?”  “Every comm tower, every data node. If she gets out, she won’t need him.”

They forced open a gap wide enough to slip through. Below, sparks flickered over a broken elevator cage. Richard sat against the far wall, pale but conscious, surrounded by faint gold motes.

Lina climbed down first. “We’ve got you.” He looked up, voice weak. “She’s not in me anymore.” Kael knelt beside him. “Where did she go?”

Richard gestured to the cracked monitor on the wall. It glowed faintly, numbers streaming across the glass.

“Into the system,” he whispered. “I couldn’t stop her.” Kael studied the code, then straightened, face grim. “She’s rewriting the grid. Turning the entire city into a receiver.”

Lina pressed a hand to her temple. “She’s everywhere now.” Richard tried to stand; Lina helped him. “We have to warn the Fist,” he said.

Kael nodded. “If the surface still exists.” They moved toward the maintenance ladder. Above, faint daylight seeped through cracks, dim, gray, uncertain.

As they climbed, Lina rfect synchronization.

Lina stared. “She’s already there.” Kael holstered his weapon. “Then we start again. New war, new rules.”

Richard’s eyes caught the reflection of the city’s lights, each one pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

He whispered, “She left something behind.” Kael frowned. “What?”

Richard opened his palm. A faint holographic sigil burned there the same crimson circle Frost once used to tag her experiments.

Lina’s breath caught. “You’re still linked.” Richard met her gaze. “No. I’m the firewall now.” Wind carried the sound of distant sirens rising through the night. 

Kael looked over the ruined skyline. “Then we’d better learn how to use it.”