Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 153: The Anchored Soul Initiative

The corridor remained silent as the emergency doors sealed shut, a pneumatic hiss following as if all the air had been sucked out.

Two feet away from the door, Leon stood there, his palms pressed hard against his face.

The white light of the hospital hummed overhead, casting a sterile glow on the polished floor, where tears from his damp clothes had formed a puddle at his feet.

"LEON!"

The thin voice exploded louder and closer, followed by warm hands touching his shoulder.

From behind Leon, Mr. Lee paused, the unemotional expression on his face shifting to dreadful shock.

On Mr. Lee’s right side, Feng lingered near the reception desk, whispering to a nurse whose face had transformed into that of a ghost.

"She’s strong," Mr. Lee murmured, breaking free from his sudden stillness and moving a step closer to Leon. "Your mother has survived worse than this."

Leon’s jaw tightened, his eyelids raising slightly. "What could be worse than dying?"

Mr. Lee let the words sit in the air, then squeezed Leon’s shoulder for a minute before releasing it.

The red light above the emergency doors blinked as if following the pulse of Leon’s heart.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes into hours as time began to race. But the wall clock at the reception desk showed only forty minutes had passed.

The bones in Leon’s legs gave out, but he refused to sit, not even turning his gaze from the door.

His heart lurched every time a nurse moved past him. He held his breath, eyes wide, when two other nurses exited and walked past him, their eyes filled with death.

At the entrance of the Bastion Hospital, tiny leaves waved as the door was pushed open. From the other side, Lily’s thin voice slipped into the hall and struck Leon’s ears.

"Brother."

Min-seo stood at the entrance, holding Lily’s hands, when Leon turned.

Lily’s cheeks, her neck, and her eyes had all swollen as more tears continued to spill from her amber eyes.

For the first time after two hours, Leon turned and crossed the distance in five steps. Lily crashed into him the moment he dropped to one knee.

She held him so tightly that even the remaining air was forced out of him, leaving him breathless.

"Will Mom be okay?" she asked, pulling back and locking eyes with him.

"Mom will be fine. She’s just... tired."

Leon knew his own words weren’t strong enough to stop her from crying more, yet he placed everything aside and warmed his sister’s heart.

Three hours passed like water, making it five hours locked outside the emergency room.

Then, as soon as the receptionist changed and the afternoon staff arrived, a doctor emerged from the emergency doors, wearing blood-filled gloves.

She swept her gaze across the corridor; Mr. Lee and Feng standing closer to the walls, Min-seo holding the now-sleeping Lily, and finally the boy who stood up the moment the door swung open.

"Leon Storm?" she called out with a voice stripped of emotion.

Leon swallowed dry saliva, then moved two steps forward, nodding.

"Your mother is..." The doctor paused when she saw the frantic intake of his breath, then gestured at Mr. Lee.

Both Mr. Lee and Feng closed in around Leon, one on his right and the other on his left.

"Your mother is stable."

She paused, letting the words sink deep into the boy’s gut.

"She experienced a severe autonomic nervous system collapse."

Mr. Lee moved a step forward. "Doctor, in simple terms, what does that mean?"

The doctor lowered her head and shook it lightly. ’I forgot not everyone has a medical background,’ she thought, then raised her head.

"Her body went into shock. We’ve stabilized her with a neural regulator, but..." she hesitated, her breathing intensifying slightly.

Leon blinked, then stepped forward, the shock reshaping his face. "But what?"

"We found something unnatural in her scans."

The doctor pulled a datapad from her white coat pocket and tapped on it twice.

She flipped through a series of images as the screen lit up.

"There is an old implant in her brainstem. It’s very small, and very old."

She showed the image to Mr. Lee, who passed it to Feng, and finally to Leon.

"It’s been dormant for years, possibly decades. But with this same condition activating, it has shown signs of coming back to life."

Leon squinted at the image on the datapad, then handed it back to Mr. Lee, who returned it to the doctor.

"An implant? My mother has never—"

The doctor cut in before Leon could finish. "We don’t know what it is or where it came from. But it’s connected to what she has."

She turned the datapad off and placed it back in her coat pocket.

"The neural regulator we administered suppressed it for now, but..." She locked eyes with him, then exhaled sharply.

"Whoever put that implant in her did so with technology that surpasses anything our world has ever seen. Not even what future technology can do."

Mr. Lee’s jaw clenched, his face turning pale. "May I see the scans again?"

The doctor hesitated, then nodded.

Leon watched Mr. Lee’s face as he studied the images a second time.

Mr. Lee’s pale face didn’t change. His eyes didn’t even blink. They remained perfectly still, as if assessing the body of a dead god.

Feng stepped away from Leon’s right side and joined Mr. Lee. A smile tore across his face the moment his eyes locked onto what Mr. Lee had been staring at for too long.

"I know what that implant is. But not why your mother has it."

The doctor shot Feng a sharp stare. "Really?!"

She kept her professionalism, forcing the word down before it could turn into a scene.

"Follow me."

She led them toward another corridor, where the consulting chamber was located.

Lily’s eyes fluttered open the moment the echoing footsteps reached her.

Inside the consulting room, Leon sat across from Mr. Lee, Feng at the doctor’s side. The table between them remained empty except for the datapad, which the doctor placed down the moment they entered.

The doctor adjusted herself, then locked her gaze onto Feng.

"Now tell me."

She crossed her legs, placed her left arm on her lap, and rested her right hand on the table.

"Twenty-three years ago, there was a project."

Feng’s voice shocked everyone, including Mr. Lee, who thought he knew more than Feng.

"The project was classified at the highest level. It was so secret that even most of the Continuum Council didn’t know anything about it. They called it the Anchored Soul Initiative."

Everyone except Mr. Lee repeated it flatly.

"The Anchored Soul Initiative."

Mr. Lee locked eyes with Feng, then began scratching his jaw with his fingers as thoughts moved through his mind.

’Interesting.’

"The idea was simple."

Feng’s voice deepened.

"If you could anchor a person’s consciousness—their soul and lifespan—to something permanent, then they could theoretically survive any physical destruction."

"Is that the same as caging a soul in another person’s body?" Leon asked.

"Kind of. But it’s far more than just caging a soul."

Feng gave a short answer, then continued.

"The body could die, but the person would persist, waiting to be reborn or re-embodied."

The doctor’s skin prickled. "That’s insane."

"Yes, that’s what many thought."

Feng let out a chilling laugh, then calmed.

"People with terminal conditions, soldiers willing to sacrifice for the cause. The implants were placed in the brainstem."

Feng paused and locked eyes with Mr. Lee.

"So, what is the brainstem?" Leon interrupted, then cleared his throat.

"The brainstem is a location that can monitor and preserve neural patterns even as the body fails."

Feng turned away slightly, exhaled deeply, then faced Leon again.

"Your mother’s name isn’t in any of the files I saw when the subjects were taken."

The doctor’s stillness shattered as she slammed her palm on the table and stood up.

"So how is she having that? Was it that she escaped before everyone could see, or what?"

Feng turned to the doctor.

"The implant she carries—the specific model captured on the scan and the serial number—all match the ones we used in the final phase of the initiative."

The room fell silent.

The doctor scanned through the images on the datapad. Mr. Lee tried to piece together the mystery behind the initiative he had never known.

"I nearly forgot. That final phase was supposedly destroyed," Feng added, increasing the pressure in the room.

"Supposedly?" The doctor brushed her palms across her face, sweating lightly.

"Yeah. Not all the implants were recovered. Some subjects walked out of the program with the technology still in their heads, living normal lives."

Leon cupped his face, then slowly curled his fingers into a fist.

"You’re telling me my mother has been walking around with some ancient mind-preservation device in her brain for over twenty years or more... and no one noticed?"

Feng stretched his hand and placed it on Leon’s shoulder. "The implant was dormant. It would have looked like nothing more than a tiny tissue on any standard scan."