2025-10-22 15:40:37Linda slipped her arm under Charlie’s, steadying him as he staggered slightly from the lingering weakness in his body. The IV drip still dangled loosely behind him, but he pulled it out with a calmness that startled even himself. For years he had endured humiliation, but something about this moment felt different—as though he was walking away from more than just a hospital bed.
Nancy’s shrill voice cut through the air. “You think you can just walk away from me, Charlie? Don’t forget—you owe everything to me! Without me, you’d be nothing!”
Linda didn’t even spare her a glance. Her focus was only on Charlie, her tone soft but firm. “You don’t need to respond to her. Some voices aren’t worth hearing.”
Charlie let out a small breath, neither confirming nor denying her words. He simply followed her lead, each step heavy yet strangely liberating.
Before Nancy could spit out another insult, the hospital door swung open and the doctor hurried inside, face flushed with excitement.
“Ms. Nancy! Your mother… she’s awake!”
Nancy’s eyes widened, her anger evaporating instantly. “What? She—she’s awake?”
“Yes,” the doctor nodded quickly. “She opened her eyes just now. Her condition is stable enough for you to see her.”
Without sparing Charlie another word, Nancy bolted past them and disappeared down the hallway, her heels clicking frantically against the tiles.
Linda’s lips curved in the faintest of smirks. “Fate has a funny way of silencing people when they’re not worth the breath.”
Charlie said nothing. His silence carried more weight than words could.
Together, they stepped out of the ward, and the moment they exited the hospital doors, Charlie froze.
The sight before him was surreal.
Dozens of luxury cars lined the entrance, gleaming under the sunlight. Their polished exteriors reflected the awestruck faces of bystanders who had gathered, whispering among themselves. A Rolls-Royce Phantom led the fleet, flanked by Bentleys and Maybachs, while bodyguards in sharp black suits stood at attention, forming a corridor of respect that stretched toward him.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
“Who is he?” someone whispered.
“I thought he was just some useless son-in-law…” another murmured.
“Look at those cars! Even the richest families in town don’t travel with a convoy like that!”
Charlie’s lips parted slightly, disbelief etching across his features. “What… what is all this?”
Linda’s expression softened as she leaned closer, her voice low and reverent. “Believe it or not, Charlie… this is the most low-key welcome I could arrange for you on such short notice.”
Charlie blinked, utterly speechless.
The bodyguards bowed in unison, their voices firm and disciplined. “Welcome back, sir!”
He felt a strange stir in his chest. Some distant part of him recognized this scene, as though buried deep within his lost memories, but the clarity refused to surface. All he could manage was a shaky breath as Linda guided him toward the Rolls-Royce.
Inside the plush leather interior, the world outside seemed to vanish. The hum of the engine was almost soothing, but Charlie’s mind swirled with questions. He finally turned to Linda. “You keep saying I was someone else… that I lost my memory. If that’s true, then why don’t I remember anything? Not even a trace?”
Linda folded her hands neatly in her lap, her gaze steady. “Because your memory loss wasn’t natural. It was forced. Years ago, you were attacked—someone wanted you erased, not just from power, but from existence. The blow you suffered damaged your mind, wiping away everything… your strength, your skills, your knowledge.”
Charlie frowned. “Skills? What kind of skills?”
“Medicine,” Linda said softly. “Not just ordinary knowledge, but mastery. You were once the most sought-after miracle doctor. The wealthiest, most influential people in this country—and beyond—begged for your treatment. Your hands saved lives that others had declared impossible to save.”
Her words echoed in the quiet of the car, every syllable heavy with truth.
Charlie gave a bitter laugh. “Me? A miracle doctor? Look at me now. I can’t even stop a nurse from draining me dry.”
Linda’s eyes flickered with something between pity and determination. “That may be true for now. The attack may have stolen your memories and dulled your skills… but not your legacy. Even without your medical prowess, the fortune you amassed from treating the elite remains untouched.”
He stiffened. “Fortune?”
Linda nodded. “Assets worth tens of billions. Properties. Companies. Networks. All hidden under layers of protection. While you were living like a beggar, the world outside still bowed to the name you’ve forgotten.”
Charlie fell silent, his chest tightening. Tens of billions? A hidden fortune? It all sounded like a cruel joke. Yet the conviction in Linda’s tone didn’t waver for a second.
He rubbed his temples, trying to process it all. “So what now? You expect me to just… accept this? Pretend I’m someone I don’t even remember being?”
“No,” Linda said firmly. “I expect you to reclaim what’s yours, piece by piece. Until the full truth returns to you, I’ve arranged something simpler—an identity, a starting point. From there, the rest will unfold.”
The convoy cruised smoothly through the city streets, finally pulling to a stop before a towering skyscraper. Its mirrored glass exterior gleamed against the skyline, the name emblazoned boldly across the top floors—Skydome Pharmaceuticals.
Charlie stepped out of the car, his jaw tightening as he tilted his head back to take it in. The building rose like a monument, dwarfing everything around it.
“This…” His voice trailed. “This is—”
“The largest pharmaceutical company in the city,” Linda finished for him, her tone carrying the weight of finality. She stepped closer, her lips curving into a small but knowing smile. “And from today onward… it’s yours.”
Charlie froze, stunned. “Mine?”
Linda’s eyes gleamed with quiet certainty. “Yes. You are the CEO of Skydome Pharmaceuticals. The board already awaits your arrival.”
The words thundered in his ears, leaving him dizzy. Just hours ago, he had been a man drained to the brink of death, mocked as useless, discarded like trash.
And now?
Now he stood before a towering empire that bore his name.
Charlie clenched his fists slowly, a strange fire kindling in his chest. Somewhere deep inside, something stirred—something fierce, something familiar.
Perhaps he wasn’t ready to believe it all just yet. But one thing was certain.
The world was about to remember him. It wasn't when, rather how?
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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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