2025-10-27 04:26:26The soft hum of machines filled the underground lab as the last line of static faded from the screens. Ethan stood still, his jaw tight, staring at the darkened monitors. The name Voss echoed in his mind like a ghost.
Leanna placed a steady hand on his shoulder. “We should leave this floor. If he hacked the system, he might have our location.”
Ethan’s gaze didn’t move. “He already does.”
She hesitated. “Then what are you thinking?”
He turned toward her, the flicker of the old surgeon in his eyes. “That if he’s watching, we make sure he sees exactly what I want him to see.”
Upstairs, the executive boardroom buzzed with cautious curiosity. The return of Ethan Braxton, once a legend in the medical world, had already leaked through whispers. Dozens of directors and department heads sat stiffly around the long glass table as Leanna entered with Ethan behind her. Every conversation died instantly.
Leanna’s voice rang clear. “Gentlemen, as of today, Dr. Ethan Braxton resumes his position as Chief Executive Officer of Braxton Pharmaceuticals.”
A murmur rippled through the room. Ethan scanned the faces—half awe, half fear. Some of them, he realized, had been with him before the accident. Others were strangers wearing polite masks.
“Many of you believed I was dead,” Ethan began, his voice calm but commanding. “In truth, part of me was. But I’m here now. And things are going to change.”
One of the older board members, Dr. Quentin Hayes, cleared his throat. “Dr. Braxton, with all due respect, your… absence left gaps in leadership. Braxton Pharmaceuticals has new partnerships now, many of them tied to Voss Industries.”
Ethan’s gaze sharpened. “Then that’s where we start cutting ties.”
Uneasy glances exchanged around the table.
Leanna stepped forward. “You all know the company’s medical division once pioneered neural regeneration therapy. Under Voss’s guidance, that research was corrupted. From this day forward, any operation connected to Voss Industries is suspended.”
Quentin frowned. “You’ll make enemies.”
Ethan’s lips curved faintly, staring directly at Quentin. “I already have.”
Later, in his new office—a sweeping glass chamber overlooking the skyline—Ethan sat at his desk, flipping through the files Leanna had placed before him. Each one carried the Braxton insignia, but what lay beneath it was poison: embezzlement, falsified trial results, patient exploitation. Voss’s fingerprints were everywhere.
Leanna approached quietly. “You were partners once,” she said. “He helped fund your early research.”
Ethan leaned back, eyes darkening. “And when I refused to sell Project Lazarus, he destroyed me.”
She hesitated, then slid a sealed envelope across the table. “You should see this. It was delivered this morning, no sender.”
Ethan tore it open. Inside was a photograph. It was him, before the accident, standing beside a woman. She had kind eyes, dark hair, and a warmth that even the photo couldn’t contain. His hand was around her shoulders.
On the back, scrawled in hurried ink, were five chilling words: She’s still alive. Find her.
Ethan’s breath caught. “Who is she?”
Leanna frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe a former patient? Or…”
Ethan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Someone from before the crash.”
A fragment of memory jolted through his mind—a flash of surgical lights, the smell of antiseptic, and that same woman’s voice saying, Don’t let go, Ethan.
He gripped his head, eyes squeezing shut as pain shot through his skull.
Leanna rushed to his side. “Ethan! What’s wrong?”
“I—remember something,” he gasped. “She was there… before everything went black.”
Leanna helped him to his feet. “We need to find out who she is.”
He nodded weakly, his breathing uneven. “Start with the hospitals I used to work at. Check for any patient records matching her face. And… find out if Voss ever mentioned her.”
Leanna hesitated. “You think he’s holding her?”
Ethan’s expression hardened. “He took everything from me once. I won’t let him do it again.”
That night, long after the building had emptied, Ethan sat alone in the research wing, the photo propped against a monitor. Rain beat softly against the glass walls, a rhythmic pulse that echoed his thoughts. He turned the photo over again. Beneath the message, faintly pressed into the paper, was an imprint—a pattern like coordinates.
Ethan quickly input the numbers into his computer. A map appeared on the screen, zooming in on a desolate mountain region miles outside the city—Sector Nine, a place marked years ago as “restricted medical property.”
“Sector Nine…” he murmured. “Why does that sound familiar?”
The answer came like a whisper from the past, a memory of Voss smiling across a sterile laboratory table, saying, If Project Lazarus ever fails, the prototype will be relocated to Sector Nine.
Ethan’s blood ran cold.
He picked up the phone. “Leanna? Prepare the car. We’re going to Sector Nine.”
Meanwhile, in a dimly lit penthouse across the city, Dr. Voss stood before a wall of surveillance monitors. On one screen, Ethan’s face glowed under the lab lights at Braxton Pharmaceuticals. A slow smile spread across Voss’s lips.
“He remembers,” he murmured. “Good. It’s more fun when they remember.”
He turned toward the shadow standing at his side—a woman with dark hair and empty eyes.
“Keep watching him,” Voss ordered. “And when the time comes… bring him back to me.”
The woman nodded silently, her face hidden in the dim light.
As the monitors flickered, one camera zoomed in on Ethan’s desk, capturing the photo he’d been studying.
The same photo Voss had mailed him.
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
You may also like
The Almighty Dominance
Sunshine1.7M viewsSon-In-Law: Love and Revenge
Mas Xeno86.3K viewsTRILLIONAIRE ON TOP
Sweet savage221.9K viewsIncredible Oliver Storm
Dragon Sly103.6K viewsTERO MANDEM Subtitle: From Street Boss to Saved Soul
Prudent797 viewsThe Accidental Son in Law
Olivia654 viewsFrom Janitor To God: The System Chose Me
Aurora Wynter1.6K viewsFrom Damnation to Dominance: Revenge of the Abused Heir
Inkspread196 views