Chapter 4 - The Ghost AwakensThe removal of the spinal transceiver was a masterclass in microscopic precision. One millimeter to the left, and Vance’s panic button would have triggered. One millimeter to the right, and Sebastian’s spinal cord would have been severed for real.
For forty-five minutes, the basement was completely silent save for the hum of the heart monitor and the quiet instructions I gave Sebastian as he bit down on a leather strap to suppress the agony of raw nerves waking up after two decades of artificial dormancy.
“Almost there... steady, Sebastian... breathe through it...”
With a final, sickening click, I pulled the miniature titanium cylinder out of his lumbar sheath, dropping it into a sterile metal basin where it hissed against the chemical solution.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Sebastian slumped forward, gasping for air, sweat soaking through his shirt. His legs hung limply over the footrests of the wheelchair.
Vance let out a hysterical laugh from the examination chair. “You see?! You failed! He’s still paralyzed! You just tortured him for—'
Crack.
Sebastian’s right foot twitched.
Vance’s laughter cut off mid-gasp.
Sebastian slowly raised his head. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the armrests of his wheelchair. He closed his eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath, and concentrated every ounce of his legendary willpower into his lower limbs.
Slowly.
Painfully.
The muscles in his thighs—wasted and tight from twenty years of disuse, yet fundamentally intact—bunched together.
With a low, guttural growl that sounded like a caged wolf breaking its chains, Sebastian Lombardi pushed himself up.
For the first time in twenty years, his feet touched the cold concrete floor of the basement.
He swayed dangerously. I rushed forward, grabbing his elbow to steady him, but he shook me off with a fierce, terrifying glare of pride. He stood at his full height—six-foot-two, towering over me, towering over Vance, towering over the very chair that had been his tomb.
He took one step.
Then a second.
The concrete beneath his Italian leather shoes groaned. He didn't look like a cripple. He looked like an apex predator who had just returned from the dead.
Sebastian turned his head slowly toward the trembling doctor.
“Vance,” Sebastian’s voice boomed through the basement, rich and resonant, unburdened by the whispery rasp he had forced for two decades.
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“B-Boss...” Vance whimpered, pissing himself in terror.
“Tell my cousin Vincent,” Sebastian said, walking with heavy, purposeful strides toward the weapons locker on the far wall, “that the king is back from exile.”
