Chapter 2: Divine Whispers, Vital Currents!
1605 Words
(St. Mary’s ER: The instant Robert Locke’s tear fell, time congealed.)
Plink.
A droplet’s chime, resonating like thunderclaps within every skull present.
Absolute silence.
Sole trespasser: the cardiac monitor’s relentless metronome.
Beep... Beep... Beep...
Steadier now! Green waveforms surged—amplitude expanding—a frozen heart reclaiming its ancient rhythm, thrusting vigor into desolation!
"Holy... shit..." A nurse’s whisper ruptured the stasis, palm clamped over her mouth, eyes saucer-wide.
Victor Locke lunged forth as if lashed! Trembling fingers hovered near his father’s face, suspended like wind-tossed leaves.
"Fa... Father?" Victor rasped—voice shredded by awe and frantic hope. "Father! Can you hear me?!"
Robert Locke’s withered finger twitched—a spectral affirmation!
Dr. Greene felt his sanity fray. Three decades of practice, medical tomes devoured—none explained this blasphemy! He seized the monitor, eyes scanning, fingers stabbing frigid controls.
"Pulse! Spontaneous respiration! Oxygen saturation—God above, rising! This... defies nature!" Greene’s words crumbled, foundational truths pulverized. He whirled toward Leo, gaze clutching at horror. "What... sorcery is this?!" Reverence and terror cracked his voice.
Leo swayed, brine-drenched and hollowed. Vision tunneled; arms anchoring Robert’s sternum trembled like overtaxed rigging.
Triumph? Silencing the fools?
Oh, yes.
Yet his soul lay flayed. That colossal expenditure had siphoned his essence—no, his very animus! A cacophony of cathedral bells tolled within his skull. Only one sensation pierced the din: beneath his palms, a patch of cooling skin now radiated warmth, cradling a frail but obstinate... cadence.
Alive. The old man breathed.
"Huff... huff..." Leo gulped air, knees buckling. He yearned to recoil.
No!
An inner shriek tore through exhaustion: Not yet! The spark wavers! A guttering candle—one breath from extinction! Yield now? Snuff the miracle!
Christ!
Leo gritted his teeth, marshaling final reserves, pressing down.
He shut his eyes, severing the clamor and bodily anguish. Focus resurged.
Hummm...
The resonant murmur resurged—fainter now, a weary susurrus. That uncanny perception bloomed anew: between their fused torsos, an invisible, searing conduit blazed!
He felt it!
Rivulets of warmth—fragile yet unwavering—drained from his depleted core, coursing through that channel, flooding the billionaire’s near-cadaverous frame!
Bizarre alchemy!
Not blood. Not volts.
Something... primal. Life-force itself—a pyre consuming its flame to reignite another!
Leo’s consciousness rode the thermal current. He plunged into Robert’s necrotic inner world.
Abyssal cold. Stagnant gloom.
Vessels silted like choked estuaries; organs shrouded in funereal ash; neural pathways entombed in ashen silence…
Yet—at its stygian core!
A mote of gilded radiance! Struggling against gale-force oblivion!
The very spark he’d perceived!
Encircling it—scorching argent torrents from Leo’s palms deluged the void!
They shattered blockades, scoured decay, their vital hum a symphony only Leo could hear!
*SsssshhhhHH—!*
The argent flood surged—violent, imperative! Scouring! Sanctifying! Mending fractures wrought by collapse and decay!
Darkness frayed at its edges! The radiant mote, engulfed by the torrent, drank deep draughts of fierce vitality!
*Thrum!*
The light convulsed! Swelled! Intensified and steadied!
*Thrum! Thrum!*
Brighter now! Tempo escalating! A slumbering star—dragged from cosmic sleep!
Outside, the monitor shrieked—staccato and strident!
"Stable sinus rhythm!" Greene choked on digits. "Heart rate 75... 80... SpO2 at 92%! BP—systolic 110! By all damned devils!"
Each digit hammered Brandon Grayson’s face—a percussive degradation!
Brandon stood petrified.
Alabaster pallor. Cheek spasms uncontrolled.
Arrogance once glacially contained within cerulean eyes now devoured by a hungrier, uglier specter: soul-scouring dread. Consuming envy. The unforgivable shame of public exposure.
Impossible!
He had certified Robert Locke’s demise! Twenty minutes flatlined! Cerebral silence!
This violated every axiom!
This mocked rationality!
This... vermin! This fodder named Leo Yang!
How?! HOW?!
Brandon’s jaws locked. Blood welled beneath blanched gums. His gaze welded to Leo’s hands—those custodial implements stinking of cheap disinfectant—now pressed to aristocratic flesh!
Those hands! Brands searing his retinas! Tormenting his soul!
"Daemon..." Brandon whispered, skull-shivering tremors seizing him. Permafrost crawled up his spine. Destroy him! This abomination—this singularity shattering his throne! Must. Be. Erased!
"Security!" Brandon’s shriek clawed the air, deranged. He leveled a damning finger at Leo—an archfiend loosed from Gehenna. "He perpetuates profane rites! Possesses great Locke’s shell! Tear him away! NOW! Spare us his pestilent sorcery!"
The security duo quaked. The billionaire’s rhythmic respirations... the implacable EKG... Grayson’s unraveling screech... What infernal pact was this? Resurrecting corpses?
A cursed endeavor! Yet... the Grayson scion commanded.
With sacramental terror, they advanced—pincers poised to sunder that unholy contact!
"STAY YOUR HAND!" Victor Locke whirled, eyes feral. He had witnessed Lazarus-twitch! Death-tear! Resurgent breath! This orderly—this scum he’d condemned—had resurrected his sire!
"First man to touch Master Yang," Victor roared—civil veneer incinerated by mob lord ferocity, "shall curse his Fog City birthright! BACK!"
Security froze mid-lunge, expressions funereal.
Brandon seethed! "Mr. Victor! His witchery blinds you! Nether-forces invade Mr. Robert! Intervention is mercy!" He lunged for Leo.
"‘Mercy’?" Victor slammed Brandon backward with bruising force! "Where was mercy when you entombed him? Had Master Yang not breached this sanctum, your ‘mercy’ would have nailed my father’s coffin!" He jabbed a damning finger at Brandon’s face. "Mark me, Brandon Grayson! Harass Master Yang again—I flay the privilege from your bones!"
Brandon’s complexion purpled then blanched—a bruising humiliation. His lips writhed, throttled retorts choked by Victor’s homicidal glare. Rage, venomous and impotent, near-sundered his breastbone!
"Haaaahhhh—!"
Leo’s eyes snapped open—a lungful of scorching air expelled!
At that exhalation—
*HUMmmmm—!!!*
The argent river torrenting below his palms... vanished. The conduit disintegrated!
Mission discharged, Leo’s frame crumpled. Vision imploded. Knees dissolved. He plummeted backward—consciousness shredded to gossamer!
"Master Yang!" Victor caught the collapsing savior, voice frayed with urgency.
Every heart in the ER stalled.
Relapse? Finality?
All eyes speared the monitor!
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Steady at 82 BPM!
Normotensive!
SpO₂: 96%!
Unshakeable equipoise!
Then—the coup de grâce...
Robert Locke’s rheumy eyelids—splotched by mortality—
Flickered.
Epic struggle against infinite weight. Slivered apertures pried open—revealing pupils milky with confusion.
Lids ascended further! Greater expanse of cornea and iris!
Ancient orbs, cast no longer in death’s monochrome, now gleamed with nascent sentience! They moved—slow, torturous—sweeping the panorama: blinding surgical lamps... sterile walls... physicians gaping as at vengeful ghosts... and...
At last!
Those eyes locked—focused—upon the near-comatose youth braced by Victor. Leo Yang: ashen, ephemeral, clad in custodial rags.
Robert’s lips parted. Faintest exhalation. Victor pressed an ear to the cracked flesh.
Hssss... Ssss... Air scraped from ravaged pipes.
Victor held his breath—heart battering ribs.
Clarity pierced the whisper:
"Ha... hand..."
Robert’s gaze slid downward.
Victor followed—to Leo’s slack limb dangling at his side! Pale, knuckles pronounced, skin calloused.
The very hand that had wrenched life from Hell’s maw!
"Yes, Father! His hand! The hand that reclaimed you!" Victor choked, gaze blazing toward Leo—scorn transmuted to veneration! He cradled Leo’s arm as a sacred relic.
"KNEEL!" Victor thundered at his entourage.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
No hesitation! Suited titans—who moments prior sought Leo’s expulsion—prostrated themselves! Foreheads pressed to frigid linoleum! Their posture: unalloyed homage!
Locke dynasty honor—thus bestowed! Upon an Asian orderly!
A phantasmagorical tableau!
Brandon’s mind detonated into whiteness! Ultimate pallor claimed him.
Undone. Utterly.
Humiliation! Profanation! Theatrical abasement!
His celestial perch—obliterated by this human refuse! Agony surpassed extinction! Brandon tasted copper on his tongue. Palms bled where nails pierced flesh. His stare, sulfuric and ravenous, devoured the youth—those hands... those ruinous hands...
Hate!
Envy!
Disgrace!
Serpents feasting on his heart! He would flense Leo Yang! Grind his bones! Salt his ashes!
Victor had dismissed the cur. Cradling Leo, his voice distilled to reverence: "Master Yang! How fare you?! Physician! Attend him! Apothecaries’ finest! Our penthouse suite! No—helicopter! To Locke Manor!"
Greene lurched into motion. "Gurney! Now! Support Master Yang!"
Nurses scrambled, gazes upon Leo now alloyed of awe... and deep-seated terror. What manner of being...?
Chaos reigned—all orbit fixed on Leo and Robert Locke. Brandon stood discarded—a grubby doll on a midwinter pavement. His meticulous stratagems, his patrician grandeur, his scientific divinity—crushed today into cosmic jest by a mendicant orderly!
Amidst the maelstrom—
Robert Locke’s gaze never strayed from the half-conscious youth encircled by devotion.
A minuscule ripple distorted the patriarch’s lips—not gratitude, but the cruelest crescent moon surfacing on a lightless sea.
Appraising. An incalculable... hazardous... asset.
Breath scarcely stirred the air, drowned by surrounding din:
"Secure... him... conscripted... to... Locke... Manor..."
Only Leo, plummeting into oblivion, sensed the abyssal gaze. His lids slit open one final time—just enough to meet Robert’s fathomless stare!
Gelid!
Calculus!
A crushing umbra!
Leo’s core contracted!
Christ! Wolf’s den to tiger’s jaws?!
Consciousness dissolved.
Victor bellowed on: "Lift Master Yang with reverence! One hair displaced—your lives forfeit!"
None perceived the distant window’s obsidian embrasure—where phantasmal wraiths had observed... then seeped into walls like liquid shadow.
Vanished.
Only the air hung thick with lingering peril—a final acrid note beneath the antiseptic reek.
- Writer
