I am 15 chapters ahead on my patreón, check it out if you are interested.
Patréon.com/emperordragon
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Chapter 146: The Cells That Wouldn't Die
The clinic was buried in a suffocating kind of silence—the kind that made every sound sharper, every movement louder than it had any right to be. Only two noises broke through it: the steady, mechanical hum of the centrifuge in the corner and the faint, rhythmic ticking of the wall clock above the counter. Each second seemed to drag, marking time in deliberate, fragile increments.
Dr. Alan Deaton leaned over the microscope, eyes narrowing behind the lenses of his glasses. His shoulders were tense, his breath shallow and measured. The fluorescent light above the workstation cast a pale sheen across the counter, illuminating glass slides, scattered notes, and half-emptied vials. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and old metal—clean, but not quite comforting.
He'd been staring at the same slide for hours. The tissue sample—small, gray, unremarkable—should have been utterly lifeless. Weeks had passed since he'd collected it. It had been preserved, cataloged, and tested until there was nothing left to learn. At least, that's what he thought.
Then, beneath the lens, one of the cells twitched.
Deaton blinked. For a moment, he assumed it was fatigue playing tricks on him, the subtle vibration of the centrifuge, or even a slip of focus. But then it happened again—this time slower, more deliberate. The membrane flexed, stretched, and began to divide. It wasn't random. It wasn't dying. It was doing something.
He twisted the adjustment knob on the microscope, tightening the focus. What he saw made the back of his neck prickle. The cells weren't decaying—they were reorganizing. Splitting and reforming with eerie precision, arranging themselves in a delicate, deliberate lattice pattern that looked almost… neural.
Deaton straightened slowly, disbelief knitting his brow.
"That's not possible," he murmured, his voice barely audible over the hum of the centrifuge.
He checked the timestamp on the slide. The tissue had been dead for weeks. Every biological law, every textbook, every research paper he'd ever read told him this sample houldn't be alive. And yet—here it was. Moving. Dividing. Persisting.
He hesitated, then carefully slid the sample into the spectral scanner. The machine hummed to life, lights flickering as data scrolled across the screen. The signal jittered once, twice—then leveled off. Just before it did, a faint spike flared across the readings. Deaton froze, staring at it.
Synaptic potential. Faint, but undeniable.
He whispered the words aloud, as if saying them would make them less terrifying. "It's… thinking."
A pulse of dread ran through him. He rubbed a trembling hand across his jaw, forcing himself to steady his breathing. This wasn't just a stubborn parasite clinging to life—it was adapting. Evolving. Reassembling itself into something more complex. Something aware.
Deaton returned to the microscope, needing proof that his mind wasn't inventing this. He adjusted the focus again and watched, transfixed, as a fine, hairlike thread extended from one cluster of cells toward another. Slowly, delicately, it reached out, made contact, and fused—like two neurons forming a synaptic bridge.
His stomach dropped.
It was mimicking the structure of a brain. Rebuilding itself one nerve at a time.
He stepped back from the workstation, pulse quickening. The microscope's glow cast a cold reflection in his eyes, and for a moment, the quiet clinic felt unbearably small. His thoughts tumbled through possibilities—containment, isolation, sterilization, incineration—but they all dissolved into one, terrible certainty.
What if this isn't all of it?
If this fragment—this decaying scrap—was still alive, still barely aware, then the original parasite, the one Lucas said he'd destroyed, might not be gone at all. Organisms like this didn't die easily. When threatened, they adapted. When cornered, they divided. When destroyed, they endured.
Deaton's hand drifted to the light switch but hesitated there. He could feel the weight of the dark hallway behind him, stretching into the rest of the clinic—empty rooms, cold instruments, shadows that suddenly seemed too deep. His heartbeat thudded in his ears.
Deaton felt the chill rise up his spine, an instinct older than reason. The parasite might be out there, in another host, rebuilding itself, waiting.
And none of them would know until it was too late.
He swallowed hard, the sterile air suddenly tasting bitter. "Lucas," he whispered to the empty clinic, his voice barely more than breath. "I hope you're ready for this."
Back at the estate.
Lucas jolted awake in the middle of the night, lungs dragging in air as though he'd been drowning. His chest rose and fell in frantic rhythm, heart pounding so violently it seemed to rattle the stillness around him. For a disoriented second, he didn't know where he was — the world had no shape, no sound, just the echo of panic thrumming through his veins. The air itself felt thick, heavy with the phantom scent of ash, blood, and the faint, sharp bitterness of smoke.
And then, just as quickly, it was gone — dispersed like smoke in the dark.
He blinked, vision swimming until the familiar outlines of his room came into focus. His sheets clung damply to his skin, twisted into knots from some unseen struggle. The night outside was still and deceptively calm, the kind of silence that only existed after storms. Yet his pulse refused to slow. His body knew something his mind didn't — a trembling deep in his core, as though he'd just survived someone else's death.
He sat up slowly, every motion deliberate, wary. The room around him was draped in moonlight, soft silver spilling through the tall windows and glinting off the polished edges of the furniture. It should have felt safe. But instead, the quiet pressed in on him like a weight.
His gaze drifted to the garden beyond the glass — neat hedges, old trees, the faint shimmer of dew. Harmless. And still, his head throbbed, pulsing in rhythm with some invisible heartbeat. Then, without warning, it came again.
A flash.
Fire. Orange and gold devouring the woods, the air itself burning.
Talia Hale stood amid the inferno, her claws gleaming like molten steel, her eyes calm in that terrifying, resolute way that only warriors knew.
Then — pain. Not his pain. Something alien, unbearable, as though every nerve inside him was being shredded and remade all at once.
Lucas stumbled forward, catching himself against the edge of the table. The vision shattered, but the world didn't feel real yet. The air still crackled with phantom heat. A scent lingered — scorched flesh, damp earth, wolfsbane smoke — and beneath it all, a sound: the parasite screaming as it burned, a sound no living thing should ever make.
He swallowed hard, his voice breaking the silence. "…What the hell was that?"