SSS-Class Profession: The Path to Mastery-Chapter 245: Fault Lines

She didn’t say anything at first.

Neither did I.

Alexis stood in front of me—barefoot, pale, bruised, but unmistakably alive. Her gown was too thin for the cold lab air, the IV ports still taped to her arms, one cheek scratched and reddened from the restraints.

My breath hitched. All the words I had lined up—they slipped. I couldn’t speak. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

She moved first. Not a question, not a warning—just wrapped her arms around me and squeezed.

And for a moment, all the static stopped.

I felt her heartbeat against mine. Fast. Desperate.

"You’re here," she whispered. "You’re actually here."

"You too," I rasped. My throat was dry. "I thought..."

She pulled back. Looked me over. Really looked.

Her fingers ghosted over my jaw, where the bruise was swelling.

"You’re injured," she said. "Badly."

I nodded once. "It’s not too bad."

She didn’t believe that. I could tell.

But then she tilted her head slightly.

"You’re... off," she murmured. "Not just hurt. Mentally. You’re—you feel scrambled."

That stopped me.

"Wait. How... how do you know that?"

I could understand her reading bruises, muscle strain, pulse changes. That was Biometric Insight. But my mental state?

I squinted. Activate: Scan.

Failure: System Efficiency Compromised – Scan Request Requires Subject Approval

What?

Then I saw her.

Alexis had spaced out slightly—eyes glazed, head tilted like she was listening to something only she could hear.

My breath caught.

Her system interface just got the request.

A second later, she blinked and nodded. I felt the green-light ping travel back through my interface.

Scan Active. Subject: Alexis H.

And what I saw didn’t make sense.

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Name: Alexis Harrington

Job: Medical Expert (S-Rank)

Skills:

Advanced Trauma Care (Lv. 9) – Master-level proficiency in stabilizing life-threatening injuries under extreme conditions. Capable of managing compound fractures, organ trauma, and critical bleeding using improvised or minimal tools. Enables near-surgical precision under duress.

Emergency Diagnostics (Lv. 7) – Quickly identifies internal injuries, infections, and medical abnormalities through external observation, vitals, and subtle physical cues. Functions faster and more accurately than most automated scan systems.

Vital Surge (Lv. 6) – Accelerates a patient’s recovery by stimulating cell repair and immune responses. Shortens healing time dramatically in acute situations.

Biometric Insight (Lv. 8) – Interprets micro-expressions, heart rate variability, muscle tension, and breath patterns to assess mental states, hidden injuries, emotional stress, and truthfulness. Effective even under deception or duress.

Tactical Medic (Lv. 7) – Provides combat-ready medical knowledge for high-stress environments. Enables fast triage, patient relocation, and field treatment under fire. Enhances movement efficiency and resource management in hostile zones.

Stamina Reserve (Lv. 8) – Grants a deep physiological reserve of energy, allowing the user to function at high performance for long durations without rest. Maintains peak focus and endurance.

Pharmacological Engineering (Lv. 5) – Allows synthesis and modification of chemical compounds, including painkillers, stimulants, and sedatives, using available materials. Includes resistance profiling and compatibility prediction for patients.

Rapid Field Surgery (Lv. 6) – Enables instant preparation and execution of life-saving surgical procedures without full medical equipment. Can remove shrapnel, cauterize wounds, and stabilize organs with expert precision.

Neural Sync Mapping (Lv. 4) – Detects and aligns neurological patterns between subjects and devices. Used to diagnose or counteract skill suppression, mental interference, or neurological implants.

Cellular Reconstruction Primer (Lv. 3) – Initiates regenerative protocols in soft tissue and organ systems. Accelerates healing in damaged cells and restores biological function efficiently.

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I stared.

This wasn’t the same Alexis.

"Your... job. It changed."

She gave me a sheepish smile. "Yeah. I didn’t have much say in it."

"What did they do to you?"

"They gave me a job title," she said, quietly. "Job Merger (S-Rank). It lets me combine other jobs together if they are under the same domain."

I swallowed. My throat was dry.

"They fed me artificial jobs. Nurse. Combat Medic. Surgeon. Biotech Assistant. Pharmacist. All low- or mid-rank. One after another. Injected. Calibrated. Stimulated. Monitored. And every time a job settled in, the merger tried to absorb it."

She rubbed her arm, eyes distant.

"I think they thought... that it wouldn’t make me dangerous. A healer. Nothing more. Someone who stitches up holes, not pokes them."

"They were wrong," I muttered.

"I know," she said. Then, quickly: "We can talk more later. I heard footsteps when you came in. They might be close. We need to go."

She moved toward the far wall, pulling me with her by the sleeve.

Her fingers paused.

She lifted the fabric.

"Rey..."

She saw them.

The cuffs. Still clamped on. Burned from friction. Bent from the collar jam.

"We need to get these off," she said. "Now."

I nodded. No time to argue.

Alexis scanned the corners of the room. She spotted the access vent.

"There. Help me open it."

We crossed over quickly. She crouched, pressed a palm against the corner panel, and pulled out the wire grille. Behind it, a narrow maintenance shaft.

She turned to me, holding out her hand. "Your wrist."

I gave her the cuffed arm. She rotated it carefully, examining the locking ring. Then pulled a flat piece of metal from the vent’s base.

"Lucky," she whispered. "Screw plate. Metal’s soft."

She wedged it under the screw and twisted. Slow. Careful. The cuff shifted.

I winced but stayed still.

Another twist. A click. The screw loosened enough for her to slide the latch off its rail.

"We’ll do the other one inside the vent. Come on."

I didn’t hesitate. I crawled in after her.

The shaft was narrow, barely high enough to lift my elbows.

The metal was cold. Each movement echoed.

Alexis moved ahead, light on her palms, quiet as breath.

I followed, the pain in my body settling deeper with every shift.

But it wasn’t the bruises that weighed most.

It was what I’d seen.

What had been done to her.

The job title. The skill set. The fact that her system now processed requests like mine. That they installed merger compatibility in someone like Alexis—someone so kind, so soft-spoken, and turned her into... what? A field-grade bio-medical powerhouse?

All in less than a day.

My jaw clenched.

She kept moving. Didn’t complain. Didn’t slow down.

I could see the bruises on her back. The tremble in her knees.

And still, she crawled ahead.

"Rey?" she whispered, her voice echoing back softly.

"Yeah."

"When we find the others... promise me you’ll let me look at your head. You’ve got a fever. And your balance is off. And—"

"I promise."

She nodded, satisfied.

And I said nothing else.

Because inside me, behind the pain and the static and the flickering skills, something was boiling.

Rage.

Rage at what they did to her.

Rage at how she still smiled through it.

Rage at how I hadn’t been fast enough.

I didn’t know how she stayed composed.

But as I crawled behind her through the dark, the only sound our breaths and the cold hiss of metal, I promised myself one thing:

Whoever did this to her wouldn’t be able to do it again.

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