2025-08-21 15:02:21Night had barely let go of Amsterdam. Rainwater dripped down through the stone alleys and collected in shallowness that reflected the yellow light of electric lamps. The hum of surveillance drones seemed out into the rain, their lanterns zigzagging from building to building like crazed insects. Underground, where the city buried its secrets, Dr. Ken Ardent leaned over his patient.
His operating room was a stinking tunnel filled with rust and mold. Dripping regularly through holes in the ceiling, each water drop was a metronome patient marking time. A semiconscious smuggler lay on a salvaged cot, his ragged breathing rattling with pain. Clothes clung to his skin like second skin, torn and sodden, revealing patches of raw, reddened lesions across his ribcage.
Ken's gloves were tattered, the wear-and-tear latex faded. He drew them up his wrists while he managed his breath. The infection was spreading too quickly. The smuggler had come into the tunnel two hours earlier, accompanied by one of the street couriers who knew the whispered code phrases that led him to Ken's secret practice. "Only hope left," they'd growled as they left him on the cot. Then they were away before drones could follow them here.
Ken applied the swab to the wound, and the man bucked. The cutting edge of flesh struggled against antiseptic like fire against oil. "Be still," Ken urged. His voice contained none of the bedside manner's gentleness—no play-acting was possible in this lost corner. But beneath the abrupt tone, his hands were firm, eschewing jagging pain.
The eyes of the man opened, slit-like and unsteady. "They… tightening," he rasped.
Ken narrowed an eyebrow. "Tightening what?"
The smuggler wheezed, spitting out a blood clot into the bucket Ken had placed beside the cot. "Checkpoints. Drones at all street intersections now. Guards… men and dogs. Nobody moves without papers. Not even food sellers." His head canted weakly. "They're hunting harder.".
Ken inserted a gauze pad into the wound, his fingers feeling the throb of fever beneath. He had heard rumors of more stringent controls, but to receive confirmation from one who patrolled the fringes of the city was evidence enough. The regime was drawing its net tighter. His underground work had always relied on lapses between patrols, lost tunnels, the pace of inattentive officers. Without the gaps closing, his network would choke.
The smuggler pinched Ken's sleeve with a shock of sudden strength, the pointed fingernails digging through his clothing. "They say… someone's out there. Repairing people. Someone… like you."
Ken froze, eyes meeting fever-crazy eyes. "Rumors go faster than fact," he replied softly, trying to shake the hand loose.
The smuggler wheezed out a laugh that degenerated into another bout of coughing. "Doesn't matter. They believe it. And belief… makes the checkpoints worse."
Ken went back to the gear he'd salvaged from abandoned clinics years ago. The scalpel blade picked up the faint blue glow of a busted lantern. He cleaned it off and started to prepare the abscess forming near the lesion. But the words taunted him. Belief makes the checkpoints worse. If the city had even a whisper of his presence, the search atop would no longer be random.
He pushed the blade slowly. Pus and blood welled up, thick and foul-smelling, spattering the basin. The man groaned, arching back against the cot. Ken's jaw hardened, but he pushed on, sucking out what poison he could. He knew this treatment would not cure the underlying disease infecting the man's blood—only delay it. There was no cure, yet.
Once the worst of it was spent, Ken packed the wound with clumps of antiseptic-dipped cloth, binding them tightly. The smuggler eased back, his forehead beaded with sweat. His breathing eased, if only slightly.
Ken leaned back against the metal stool and ripped off his gloves. He rubbed his temples. The drips of water into the tunnel provided the only sound in the silence.
"Why… you risk it?" the smuggler hissed, half-veiling his eyes.
Ken didn't answer. He stared at the dim light overhead, a bulb powered by stolen current drawn from a hijacked power line. The truths were tangled: guilt, resistance, obsession. But what he answered was simple. "Because someone has to."
The smuggler chuckled softly, lips cracking with the motion. "That'll kill you."
Ken leaned forward, elbows resting on knees. "Not if I keep this place hidden."
The man coughed again, but more weakly now. "Roadblocks create difficulty in concealment." His voice faded into a whisper. "And rumors… spread like fire."
A few minutes passed before his body succumbed to restless sleep. Ken restyled the bandages one last time, then got up. The cot appeared smaller now that it supported its load, the smuggler's chest heaving raspingly.
Ken made his way to the tunnel's rear where shelves of supplies sloped drunkenly against the damp wall. The inventory was thin as usual—half-full vials, running out of bandages, and one pilfered case of antibiotics he had been dispensing drop by drop. With checkpoints converging, it was nearly impossible to hit another depot. But if he didn't… patients like the smuggler would come and come, each one nearer to death.
He rested his elbows on the cold of the brick wall. Above, the city throbbed through the stones, drone's hum a low but persistent note. He imagined the checkpoints, the guards, the white-scanning lights. His own face appeared in his mind—what then, if his own name were actually called out across Amsterdam? What if Inspector De Vries, sharp-eyed custodian of state order, learned of his whereabouts?
Ken shut his eyes. Already, the smuggler's words had planted something in him: unease, and a spark of fear. The web was closing, and soon it would catch more than smugglers.
A loud scrape sounded behind him in the tunnel. Ken turned, his heart pounding. But it was merely a rat scurrying over a piece of dropped pipe, its damp fur shining under the light from the lantern. Yet he was on edge, the scalpel still clutched in his hand though he hadn't realized he was holding it.
When he finally sat back in the desk chair, he opened the battered journal in which he recorded each case. His pen scratched across the paper: Male, late 30s, infection going quickly downhill. Lesions as Stage 3. Treated with drainage and antiseptic. Supplies used: 2 gauze, 1 vial (antibiotic). Prognosis uncertain.
He stopped on the line below, then wrote slowly: Patient reports more checkpoints, drones at all crossing points. Rumor making the rounds of someone healing in the city. Whisper directs to me. Dangerous escalation.
Ken closed the book with a snap and shot the lantern with a hostile look. Its weak glow groped for the shadows. The tunnel was narrower than ever, stifling in its secrecy. Above, the city shut itself up, wall by wall. And in the damp quiet, he knew: his work could no longer keep hidden forever.
The patient rolled in sleep, cursing senselessly. Ken rose from his seat, checked the bandages again, then extinguished the lantern. The tunnel was engulfed in darkness, with only the noise of water and the distant hum to break the silence.
Somewhere overhead, Amsterdam breathed deeply, ready to strangle the underground lifelines he had drawn.
And Ken knew—the whispers had already started their hunt.
---
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Chapter 298: The Silent Heir
The reports began as whispers, carried not by radio waves, but by the slow, patient network of traders and travelers. They were strange, fragmented stories, easy to dismiss as folklore born from desperate hope. A child in a mountain village near Innsbruck, surviving a fall that should have shattered her bones, the bruises fading to a faint, silvery sheen in hours. A boy in a Scottish coastal settlement, his severe fever breaking overnight, a curious, golden light glimpsed in his veins before it faded with the illness.In Amsterdam, they were busy. The business of life had replaced the drama of survival. The council debated trade agreements with the Rhine Confederation. Engineers plotted the restoration of a windmill. Sophia’s students now pestered her with questions about calculus and history, the science of the cure having become as foundational and unremarkable as the law of gravity.It was Elara, ever the pragmatist, who first connected the dots. She maintained correspondence with
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