2025-10-27 04:26:01Morning broke over Braxton City like liquid gold pouring between steel towers. From the top floor of Braxton Pharmaceuticals, Ethan could see it all—the heartbeat of a city that once worshipped his name but now no longer remembered it. Leanna stood by his side, her posture crisp and composed, dressed in a fitted black suit. She looked every bit the executive she had pretended to be while guarding his empire.
“You used to stand here every morning,” she said quietly. “Before the surgeries, before the press conferences. You said it helped you remember why you healed people, because every light out there represented a life depending on you.”
Ethan studied the horizon, silent. “I don’t remember saying that,” he admitted. “But… it sounds like something I would have said.” He let out a little chuckle.
Leanna turned toward him. “Are you ready?”
He nodded. “Show me.”
The elevator descended far below the building’s lobby, past the corporate floors, research departments, and pharmaceutical vaults, until it stopped with a soft chime at a level that didn’t exist on any blueprint. Leanna pressed her palm to a hidden scanner beside the door. A soft beep, then the metallic hiss of security locks sliding open.
Inside lay a corridor lined with reinforced glass walls. Beyond them, Ethan saw sterile rooms filled with surgical instruments, holographic displays, and prototypes of futuristic medical devices. Each bore his initials—E.B. The air was cold and smelled faintly of disinfectant and old memories.
Ethan walked slowly, his footsteps echoing against marble and metal. “I built all this?”
Leanna’s voice softened. “Every inch. This lab was your private project, a place where you experimented with neural restoration. You were trying to develop technology that could repair memory loss and brain trauma.”
He froze mid-step. “Memory restoration?”
She nodded. “Ironically… the very thing you were trying to cure was used against you.”
They stopped before a heavy steel door with a biometric scanner. Leanna placed her hand on the pad. “You used to keep your most confidential records here,” she said. “I’ve never opened it. You encrypted it under your DNA.”
Ethan hesitated, then pressed his palm to the scanner. A soft hum vibrated through the air, followed by a flicker of green light. The door unlocked with a low mechanical sigh.
Inside was a dimly lit chamber filled with holographic monitors. At the center stood a transparent capsule—a stasis pod, cracked and inactive. The screens flickered on automatically as Ethan stepped in, lines of data scrolling across the display.
Leanna approached a console, typing rapidly. “The system still recognizes your genetic signature. Everything you left behind is still here.”
Ethan’s eyes scanned the floating data until something caught his attention — a video file labeled “Project Lazarus – Final Test.”
He touched the icon. The screen shimmered, then came alive. The image of his younger self filled the room, confident, calm, wearing a white lab coat. His voice was steady.
“If this works, it could revolutionize neural science. Project Lazarus will allow damaged neurons to rebuild themselves through synthetic bio-stimulation.”
Beside him in the video stood another man, tall, sharp-eyed, and smiling faintly.
“Dr. Voss,” Leanna whispered, recognizing him instantly. “You worked with him.”
In the recording, Ethan and Dr. Voss exchanged a handshake.
“But remember,” Voss said, his tone unsettlingly smooth, “every miracle comes with a price.”
The video ended abruptly with static, and then a faint echo of an explosion before the feed cut out completely.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Ethan’s hands clenched at his sides. “That explosion… that was my accident, wasn’t it?”
Leanna’s gaze darkened. “Yes. I believe Voss was behind it. The same night you tested Project Lazarus, your car detonated. The media said it was a malfunction, but your personal logs suggest sabotage.”
Ethan turned toward the shattered stasis pod in the center of the room. “What was I testing that night?”
Leanna pulled up another file. It was heavily encrypted, but a few words were legible:
Subject Beta – Neural Restoration Phase 3. Status: Critical.
Last log entry: 11:42 PM, Day of explosion.
Ethan’s chest tightened. “There was someone in that pod.”
“Yes,” Leanna said quietly. “Someone you were trying to save.”
He stared at the cracked glass, feeling a cold wave of dread crawl up his spine. “Who?”
Before Leanna could answer, the lights in the lab flickered. The screens glitched, flashing red.
INTRUSION DETECTED.
Leanna spun toward the console. “Someone’s hacking the mainframe.”
The monitors scrambled into static. Then a distorted voice echoed through the speakers—male, calm, and hauntingly familiar.
“I see you’ve finally woken up, Doctor.”
Ethan froze. “Who are you?”
“An old colleague,” the voice said smoothly. “It’s been a long time since the fire. I’m glad to see you survived. But you should’ve stayed dead.”
The line cut. The monitors went dark.
Leanna’s face was drained of color. “He found us.”
Ethan’s pulse quickened. “Voss?”
She nodded grimly. “And if he knows you’re alive…”
He finished her sentence quietly, his voice laced with steel. “Then everyone else soon will.”
He turned back toward the shattered pod. His reflection glimmered faintly on the cracked glass—two versions of himself staring back. The man he was, and the man he was becoming.
“No more running,” he murmured. “It’s time I found out what really happened that night.”
Leanna looked at him, not as the broken man she’d rescued, but as the Miracle Doctor reborn. “Then we start now.”
Ethan straightened, the ghost of fear in his eyes replaced by a simmering fire. “Find everything you can on Voss. Every connection, every facility, every shadow he hides in.”
Leanna nodded. “What are you planning?”
He looked once more at the cracked pod. “What I do best.”
A faint smile touched his lips—not of kindness, but of resolve.
“I’ll bring the dead back to life.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 208
The city did not announce Mara’s disappearance.It never did.Disappearances were absorbed the way rain was absorbed by cracked pavement,quietly, unevenly, leaving darker patches that no one wanted to step in. Leanna learned of it the way she learned everything now, indirectly, through absence.Mara did not answer her comms.Mara did not show up for the morning briefing.Mara did not argue when Leanna proposed rerouting supplies.At first, Leanna told herself it was caution,that Mara was lying low,that this was what survival looked like now silence, misdirection, patience.By noon, denial tasted like ash.Leanna stood in the small office behind the clinic, hands braced against the desk, staring at the empty chair opposite her. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and old paper,outside, volunteers moved in low voices, their steps careful, as if sound itself had become dangerous.She replayed the last conversation with Korrin again and again, searching for the moment she might have mi
Chapter 207
The city did not react all at once,and that was what unsettled Leanna most.There was no riot after the Council’s announcement,no cheers either,just a slow, uneven ripple,conversations in doorways, pauses in broadcast chatter, eyes lifting from screens and then dropping again. People absorbed the news the way one absorbed a change in weather,warily, with the instinct to adapt before questioning whether it was deserved.Leanna Hale appointed Civil Liaison to the Council,temporary mandate,oversight of humanitarian coordination.Temporary.Everything dangerous was always temporary at first.She watched the broadcast from a quiet room above the clinic, the sound turned low,her name looked strange in official typography, stripped of context and blood and fear,cleaned,sanitized.Legitimized.Mara stood behind her, arms folded so tightly her knuckles had gone white.“You didn’t warn us,” Mara said.Leanna didn’t turn. “I didn’t know until an hour ago.”“You could have refused.”“Yes.”Silenc
Chapter 206
The city learned restraint the way a wounded animal learned stillness.Carefully,suspiciously,with flinches that never quite went away.Leanna felt it every morning when she walked through the lower districts,the pauses in conversation when uniforms passed, the way shopkeepers kept their hands visible, the way laughter died down too fast,peace had arrived, but it had not been welcomed,it sat heavy in the air, like humidity before a storm.She had stopped pretending this was temporary.That was the first lie leadership burned out of you.There was no until Ethan returns,no until Korrin overreaches,no clean turning point waiting just beyond the horizon. There was only now messy, compromised, fragile,and the question of what kind of damage you were willing to accept in order to keep it standing.Leanna stood in the clinic doorway and watched volunteers work in practiced silence. Bandages. Rations. Quiet reassurances murmured to people who didn’t ask for hope anymore just relief.Mara joi
Chapter 205
The city learned how to live without Ethan faster than it should have,and that was the cruelest part.Leanna noticed it in the small things first the way patrol routes stabilized, the way blackouts became scheduled instead of sudden, the way people stopped looking over their shoulders every time a rumor passed through the streets. Order settled in like dust, quiet and persistent, coating everything.Korrin’s order.She hated how efficient it was.Three days after Ethan left, Leanna stood on the balcony of the safehouse and watched the city breathed,morning traffic crawled below,vendors argued over prices,children ran across cracked pavement chasing something that looked like hope but might have just been boredom.Life went on.That should have been comforting.Instead, it felt like betrayal.She pressed her palms against the railing, grounding herself. Sleep had become optional these past nights,brief, shallow, full of half-dreams where Ethan was always just out of reach,not dead,not
Chapter 204
The city did not celebrate.That was the first thing Leanna noticed when they released her.No crowds,no cheers,no whispered legends rising up the way they always had when Ethan broke something that was supposed to be unbreakable,just streets moving at their usual pace, people stepping around each other with careful indifference, as if nothing monumental had happened at all.As if the world hadn’t tilted.She stood at the edge of the transport bay long after the guards unlocked her cuffs and shoved her forward,the metal doors slid shut behind her with a sound that felt final in a way she couldn’t explain,not imprisonment ending,but something else.Something quieter.Her wrists were raw,her body ached in the dull, exhausted way that came after fear had burned itself out,but it was her chest that hurt most tight, shallow breaths, like her lungs didn’t trust the air anymore.Ethan.That was the thought she couldn’t escape.Not where he was,but what did he do.She had seen the broadcast.
Chapter 203
Night did not fall in the city anymore.It descended.The kind of darkness that didn’t simply remove light but rearranged meaning,turning familiar streets into corridors of intent, every shadow a decision waiting to be made. Ethan moved through it without disguise, without haste. That alone felt like a provocation.People noticed.They always did now.Some turned away quickly, fear reflexive and sharp. Others stared too long, eyes burning with questions they would never ask out loud,a few inclined their heads, gestures small but weighted, like prayers offered to something they weren’t sure deserved worship.Ethan hated that most of all.He adjusted the strap of his jacket and kept walking.Korrin’s perimeter loomed ahead not a wall, not a gate, but a gradual shift in atmosphere. Surveillance density increased,patrol patterns tightened,the air itself felt watched. This was where the city stopped pretending it was shared.Ethan crossed the invisible line anyway.Immediately, his comm ch
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