2025-10-22 15:39:25Charlie stared at the business card with trembling hands. "Miracle Doctor… Linda Sarman?" he muttered under his breath. That woman… she couldn’t have known about Nancy’s mother by coincidence. Could she really be who she claimed?
He pulled out his phone with what little energy he had left and dialed the number on the card.
It rang once.
Twice.
Then a calm, assertive voice answered, “Charlie?”
It shocked him that she already knew his name. “I… I need help,” he whispered hoarsely.
“I know. I’m already on my way,” Linda replied, her voice firm. “Don’t let anyone draw another drop of your blood.”
The line went dead before Charlie could even respond.
Charlie tucked the phone under the pillow just as footsteps echoed outside the hallway. Carl’s voice drifted in first—low, urgent, and laced with impatience.
“I don’t care if the real miracle doctor’s impossible to find,” Carl snapped. “Just get me someone. Anyone. Put a lab coat on a half-decent actor and call him the best doctor in the country. Nancy doesn’t know any better.”
The man on the other end of the line said something indistinct, but Charlie heard the frustration in Carl’s reply. “We’re wasting time! My father’s been pressing me to solidify an alliance. If I can marry Nancy now—before the truth comes out—I’ll have access to her family’s entire medical network. After that, the old woman can die for all I care.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. So, all of this—the care, the support—was a lie? Carl was just using Nancy… just like Nancy used him?
The betrayal layered upon betrayal made Charlie’s stomach turn.
“I’ll handle it myself,” Carl barked. “Just make sure that fake doctor is convincing.”
Charlie involuntarily let out a small gasp.
Carl turned sharply toward the curtain separating the beds. “Who’s there?”
Charlie didn’t answer. He lay completely still, hoping Carl would think he imagined it. But his pale face and tensed frame gave him away.
Carl yanked the curtain aside, and his eyes narrowed. “So, you’re still alive?”
Charlie stared back, silent.
Carl walked closer and leaned in, lowering his voice to a hiss. “Eavesdropping is dangerous, especially for someone as useless as you. What you heard—forget it.”
Charlie didn’t flinch. In fact, despite his weakness, a strange calm washed over him. A small part of him—one long buried—was beginning to stir.
Carl smirked. “I’d warn you to keep your mouth shut, but let’s be honest—you won’t be around long enough to talk.”
Just then, the door opened. Nancy entered, holding a tray of food and sipping tea like nothing was wrong.
“Oh, look who’s still pretending to be on death’s door,” she sneered when she saw Charlie lying weakly on the bed. “Are you hoping to guilt me into keeping you around? Pathetic.”
Charlie said nothing.
Carl quickly regained his composure and smiled at Nancy. “He was just complaining that 600ml was too much. I told him he was exaggerating. After all, you said your mom’s life was at stake. What’s a little sacrifice, right?”
Nancy chuckled and placed the tray down. “Exactly. Besides, he has nothing else to offer.”
Charlie’s fingers tightened into a fist beneath the blanket.
“Anyway,” Carl said, turning toward Nancy with a practiced smile, “I spoke to one of my contacts in the medical council. They might’ve found a lead on the miracle doctor.”
Nancy’s eyes lit up. “Really? That’s amazing!”
“Well,” Carl said slowly, “he hasn’t agreed yet. But don’t worry—I’ll pull some strings.”
Nancy’s face softened. She reached out and touched Carl’s arm. “You’ve already done so much for us…”
Carl glanced sideways at Charlie and smirked. “It’s the least I can do.”
Before Nancy could respond, a nurse peeked through the door. “Excuse me. Miss Nancy? There’s a woman asking for Mr. Charlie. She says her name is… Linda Sarman.”
Nancy frowned. “Who?”
Charlie’s eyes snapped open. He sat up, wincing at the sudden movement.
Carl’s expression darkened. “Impossible. That name—”
The nurse looked confused. “She says she’s a doctor. And she insisted on speaking to him privately.”
“I’ll see her,” Charlie said, his voice raspy but steady.
Carl stepped forward. “There’s no need. If this is about your blood tests or something, I’ll handle it.”
But Charlie didn’t even look at him. “No. I’ll see her myself.”
Nancy rolled her eyes. “So dramatic…”
Moments later, the door opened, and Linda Sarman stepped in.
She wore a simple black coat, but there was something about her presence—something magnetic. Her posture was poised, her eyes sharp and intelligent.
Carl visibly tensed.
Nancy frowned, clearly unimpressed. “You’re the so-called doctor?”
Linda glanced briefly at Nancy, then Carl, before her gaze settled on Charlie. “I’m here for him. Not you.”
She walked over to Charlie and pulled a small scanner from her pocket, waving it over his wrist. A faint beep sounded.
Charlie blinked. “What’s that?”
“A reminder,” she said softly. “That you’re more than what they made you believe.”
Nancy snorted. “Please. He’s a street rat we picked up. He should be thanking us.”
Linda turned slowly. “Is that so?”
Carl stepped forward, trying to take control of the situation. “Look, I don’t know what your angle is, but this is a private matter—”
“No,” Linda cut in, “this is a national matter.”
She turned to Charlie and handed him a sealed envelope.
“Inside is your first clue. Proof of who you were—and who you still are. You’re not just some pawn in their twisted game, Charlie. You’re someone they all feared once.”
Charlie hesitated, then took the envelope.
Linda gave him a faint smile. “I’ll give you time. But be warned—more danger is coming. And when it does, you’ll need to decide whether to run… or rise.”
She turned and walked out, leaving stunned silence behind her.
Carl scowled. “What kind of circus stunt was that?”
Nancy looked confused, but also slightly uneasy.
Charlie stared down at the envelope, the seal unbroken.
Somewhere deep inside, something was awakening. And though his body was still weak, his mind was clearer than it had been in years.
For the first time in a long time… he didn’t feel like a victim. He felt like a ticking storm. And it was only just beginning.
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Chapter 36
The once-impenetrable fortress of Prometheus lies in ruin. What was once a monolith of glass, steel, and ambition now smolders under a sky bruised purple by smoke and rain. Flames lick the jagged remains of the central spire, casting long, trembling shadows over the shattered emblem of Prometheus that had once crowned the skyline. For a brief moment, silence reigns—the kind of silence that follows cataclysm, heavy and unnatural.But the quiet doesn’t last. Within hours, the world begins to rebuild the story.Every news feed across every continent lights up with a single, stunning image: a lone figure in surgical whites walking through the inferno, calm and unburned. The footage—grainy yet mesmerizing—shows the figure’s face illuminated by firelight, his eyes pale and resolute. The caption below it reads: “The Miracle Doctor Survives.”The clip spreads faster than the flames ever did. News anchors frame it as a symbol of resilience; influencers call it divine intervention. Governments
Chapter 35
Two hours before dawn, the storm rolled in over the mountains like a living thing, its clouds swollen and bruised, dragging sheets of rain across the jagged skyline. The Prometheus complex loomed beneath it—a black monolith of glass and steel carved into the mountain’s edge, veins of blue light running through its frame like liquid electricity. Lightning ripped across the sky, briefly illuminating the fortress’s defense turrets and drones that patrolled the perimeter with mechanical precision. Every surface glistened under the storm’s lash, reflecting the pulse of a civilization that thought itself immortal. Inside a silent stealth transport descending through the mist, Charlie’s team prepared for insertion. The air was thick with static and tension, the kind that hums before a war no one will write about. Raiden sat opposite him, armor patched with old scars of conflict, running final checks on his weapon’s magnetic coils. “Systems green,” Raiden muttered, his deep voice steady as gr
Chapter 34
The boardroom at Prometheus Tower hung over the city like an altar, glass walls reflecting a skyline that pulsed in sympathy with the company’s heartbeat—billboards and clinics and ticker feeds all dressed in the same pale flame logo, the promise of eradicated sickness stitched into every commercial. Investors lounged in leather chairs, generals in crisp uniforms nodded with the relieved posture of men who had bought an insurance plan for civil unrest, and a chorus of analysts lauded forecasts that read like sermons. Carl stood at the head of the table, silhouette thin against the panoramic light, and his voice moved through the room with the soft, practiced cadence of a man who had learned to sell absolution. “The era of disease is over,” he declared, palms open as though offering a benediction. “Prometheus doesn’t just cure—it improves.” Applause rose like a tide; the applause was polite, rehearsed, and hungry. The cheer sounded to him like the rustle of paper—noise that could be fo
Chapter 33
The night over Skyvale sat heavy as a held breath, neon halos bleeding into the wet gutters, washing the city in a pale, electric sorrow. Charlie had been awake for hours; sleep had the same cowardice it always did around him now—an indulgence the world could not afford. He sat before a dozen encrypted servers that glowed dim and patient like the eyes of some sleeping beast, their fans whispering the only hymn in the concrete cellar. Each terminal displayed a lattice of code, packet traces, and routing paths; each decryption he pried open peeled back another layer of the city’s veneer—dead biotech shell companies reanimated as data routers, defunct military satellites repurposed as dark nodes, medical boards trading signatures like favors. He traced one signal after another in the blue light and watched them braid toward a single heart of shadow: a network that had no public face, a ghost cartel that sewed together science, capital, and force. On his screen the symbol blinked into bei
Chapter 32 — The Storm Returns
Charlie sealed himself in the underground lab, the concrete walls echoing with the hum of dying machines. Three days. No rest. No sunlight. Only the rhythmic pulse of data streams and the steady drip of condensation from rusted pipes. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands trembling—not from exhaustion, but from rage. The virus under his microscope wasn’t natural. It wasn’t random. It was an echo of his own creation.Each viral strand folded in patterns only he could recognize—his old algorithms, the self-adaptive healing code he once built to make medicine evolve alongside human biology. But here, the code didn’t heal. It was consumed. It rewrote DNA to obey a silent command embedded within the genome itself. It learned the body’s defenses, then turned them against the host.“They didn’t steal my work,” Charlie whispered, voice rough from silence. “They perfected my nightmare.”He zoomed deeper into the molecular structure, tracing the logic of its evolution. The base sequence pulsed lik
Chapter 31 — The Signature of Shadows
Weeks had passed since the memorial at Skydome. The world had moved on in its usual rhythm of gratitude and forgetfulness, polishing statues of heroes while quietly erasing the ones who refused to kneel to power. Charlie walked through the outskirts of the city, the air thick with rain and distant sirens. The skyline, once powered by AETHER’s pulse, now shimmered under human hands again—flawed, imperfect, alive. He should have felt peace. Instead, there was only the quiet ache of purpose unspent.He’d returned to the shadows where he’d always belonged. The old warehouse he turned into a clinic barely held together—peeling paint, flickering lights, and the faint hum of solar batteries scavenged from old drones. A fading sign at the entrance read: Free Treatment – No Questions Asked. Every day, wounded workers from the reconstruction sites came limping through his door—men with shattered bones, women coughing from chemical dust, children carrying infections too small for the new hospita
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