Chapter 4: The Underground Clinic
POV: Adam
"The man in Sector 7 who fixes the unfixable."
Adam hadn't wanted the reputation, but three cured infection survivors talked despite his warnings about secrecy. Now his safehouse door received midnight knocks like some twisted fairy tale—mothers carrying feverish children, men clutching infected wounds, refugees who'd exhausted FEDRA's limited mercy and had nowhere else to turn.
Desperation bred rumors in the QZ faster than cordyceps bred in warm flesh.
The knocking tonight was different. Urgent but controlled. Not panicked desperation—calculated need.
Adam opened the door to find a woman in her thirties holding a child who couldn't have been older than eight. The boy's breathing came in sharp gasps, his skin pale with the grayish tint that meant infection was winning.
"Are you him?" she asked. "The one who can cure the bite?"
Behind them stood four more people. An elderly man with a gunshot wound that had gone septic. A teenager with appendicitis that should have killed her days ago. A middle-aged woman whose left arm showed the telltale signs of Runner infection—fungal growths threading beneath the skin.
Five patients. Twelve hours until dawn. My stamina barely recovered from last week's surgeries.
"I'm a medic," he said carefully. "I can try to help."
Detection painted their conditions in his mind like x-ray overlays. The infected child was early stage—six hours since bite, cordyceps still contained to his bloodstream. Saveable. The woman's arm infection was more advanced but localized. Also saveable. The gunshot victim would require basic surgery. The appendicitis was routine.
The fifth patient made his breath catch.
An elderly woman, maybe seventy, whose infection signature read wrong. Not early stage—late stage. Runner transformation already beginning. Cordyceps replacing brain tissue, motor functions deteriorating. She held herself upright through willpower alone, but Detection showed the truth.
She was hours away from becoming a monster.
"I can try to save four of them. But her..."
"Please," the mother whispered. "My son. He was just playing in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Adam stepped aside, letting them into the abandoned apartment he'd converted into a makeshift medical facility. Surgical instruments scavenged from the QZ's overwhelmed hospital. Antibiotics traded for with desperate people. Everything he needed to perform miracles that would drain his enhanced body to the breaking point.
"Who goes first?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.
The infected child. Time was working against him faster than the others.
"Mom, I need you to hold him steady. This is going to hurt, but he'll be okay."
ROOM activated around the boy, blue energy creating a sphere of surgical precision. The infection was concentrated around a bite on his leg—clean puncture wounds where a Runner's teeth had found flesh. Cordyceps spreading through his bloodstream in dark threads that Detection showed him with painful clarity.
Amputate. The infected tissue separated cleanly, leaving the boy's leg intact but free of corruption. Counter Shock. Electrical current burned away remaining infection while promoting healing.
Thirty minutes of surgery. One life saved.
The boy's mother cried as he sat up, color returning to his face. "How did you—"
"Experimental treatment. Don't ask questions I can't answer safely." Adam moved to the next patient, fighting exhaustion that made his enhanced senses flicker.
The appendicitis was routine by comparison. ROOM allowed him to remove the infected organ without major incision, using spatial manipulation to perform keyhole surgery that belonged in a science fiction movie. The teenager would live.
The gunshot victim required cleaning infected tissue and removing embedded metal. Painful but straightforward. The man would recover.
The woman with the infected arm needed delicate work—cordyceps had spread through her bloodstream but remained contained. Amputate removed the infected limb. Counter Shock sterilized the wound. Mes let him examine her heart for signs of systemic infection.
Clean. She would live.
Four patients saved. Four families who would wake up with their loved ones still human.
But the elderly woman—Margaret Chen, Detection told him, eighty-one years old, infected three days ago—sat in the corner watching with eyes that flickered between human awareness and something else.
Adam knelt beside her, using Detection to map the infection's progression. Cordyceps had replaced sixty percent of her brain tissue. Motor control failing. Cognitive function deteriorating. Hours, maybe less, before full transformation.
"I know what I am," she said, voice clear despite everything. "I know what's happening to me."
"I can try—"
"No." Her hand, still human enough to be gentle, touched his cheek. "You've done enough miracles tonight. Some things can't be fixed."
Detection showed him the truth. The infection was too advanced. Any attempt to remove it would destroy the brain tissue she had left. He could try to save her and fail, or accept that some battles couldn't be won.
"First do no harm. Sometimes that means accepting when you can't help."
"Is there anyone you want me to tell?" he asked quietly.
She smiled. "Tell my granddaughter in Jackson that I loved her. Tell her I died human."
Margaret Chen closed her eyes and never opened them again. Her heart stopped eighteen minutes later, infection claiming her before transformation could begin.
Adam sat beside her body while the others slowly filed out, carrying their healed loved ones into the night. Four saved. One lost.
"This is what it means. Every surgery drains me. Every miracle has a cost. And some people I can't save no matter what powers I have."
Dawn found Adam on a rooftop six buildings away from his clinic, practicing sword forms with a blade scavenged from QZ security. His hands shook from exhaustion, but the movements helped him process the night's emotional weight.
Stone Breathing flowed through him in careful patterns. First Form: Serpentinite Bipolar moved like water, precise and controlled. But Second Form: Upper Smash broke his rhythm, power fluctuating as his concentration wavered.
Stone Skin flickered around his body for seconds at a time before collapsing. Each breath had to be perfect or the enhancement failed. Each movement required focus he didn't have after five surgeries in six hours.
Detection tracked FEDRA patrols three buildings over, their radio chatter carrying warnings about unauthorized medical practice and investigations into biological anomalies. Too close. Training cut short by necessity.
Frustration mounted like pressure behind his eyes. The abilities felt instinctive yet required mastery he didn't have time to develop. Every moment spent training was time not helping people. Every moment helping people left him too drained to train properly.
"I need to get stronger. But how do I find time when people are dying?"
A sound below made him freeze—Detection showing a teenage heartbeat moving through his clinic, elevated pulse suggesting fear rather than aggression. Someone was inside his medical facility.
Adam climbed down fire escapes and slipped through the back entrance, moving with enhanced stealth toward the main room. A girl, maybe seventeen, knelt beside his medical supplies. She wore clothing that screamed QZ scavenger—layers of practical fabric, multiple pockets, everything chosen for survival rather than appearance.
She was stealing antibiotics. Not randomly—selecting specific medications with practiced efficiency.
"Those are expensive," he said quietly.
She spun, knife appearing in her hand faster than most people could think. Combat reflexes that spoke of street education. But Detection showed her elevated heart rate—fear, not malice. Desperation, not greed.
"I can pay," she said, though her clothes suggested otherwise.
"With what?"
"Information. Ration cards. Service."
Adam studied her through enhanced senses. Malnourished but not starving. Injured—old bullet graze on her left arm, recently treated but not professionally. Alone, which meant either very good at survival or very lucky.
She expected punishment. Violence. The brutal mathematics of QZ survival where taking from others meant taking their lives.
Instead, Adam handed her a bottle of broad-spectrum antibiotics and three food cards from his personal stash.
"Why?" she demanded, suspicion replacing fear.
"Because you'll die without them," he said simply.
She studied him like a puzzle piece that didn't fit the picture she understood. "Nobody helps for free. Everyone wants something."
"I do."
The girl—Tess, though neither of them knew how important that name would become—stared at him with confusion that went deeper than simple surprise. In a world where kindness was weakness and mercy was suicide, genuine altruism looked like insanity.
"What's the catch?"
"No catch. Just..." He gestured at the medical supplies around them. "If you know other people who need help, send them here. Quietly. FEDRA doesn't need to know about everything that happens in Sector 7."
She pocketed the antibiotics but left the food cards on his table. "Keep those. Someone else needs them more than me."
Then she was gone, disappearing through windows with parkour skills that spoke of years learning the QZ's hidden pathways.
Adam knew he'd just changed another future. In the original timeline, Tess became Joel's smuggling partner through circumstances he couldn't remember clearly. But this version—younger, encountering kindness instead of brutality at a crucial moment—might choose a different path.
"Another butterfly effect. Another change spreading through the timeline like ripples."
Detection flared with warning—FEDRA scientific team requesting his medical records, flagged for biological anomaly investigation. They were coming.
Seventy-two hours, maybe less, before they found reasons to make him disappear into a laboratory where his abilities would be dissected rather than used to heal.
Time to vanish into Boston's underground before becoming FEDRA's next research project.
The clinic had served its purpose. But the legend of the man who could cure the incurable was just beginning.
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