Chapter 1 The Defibrillator's Lie

"Get your filthy bucket out of my way before I have security throw you into the streets, you idiot!."

The harsh words were accompanied by a sharp kick to the side of Alex’s plastic mop bucket. Gray, chemical-thick water sloshed over the rim, splashing directly onto Alex’s worn rubber boots.

Alex didn't flinch. He slowly raised his head, his knuckles turning white as he clamped his hands around the wooden mop handle. Standing directly in front of him was Dr. Julian Vance, the Chief of Surgery at St. Jude’s Tertiary Hospital. Vance looked immaculate, his designer suit peeking out from beneath a crisp, snow-white lab coat. Behind him stood a dozen medical residents, all of them smirking at Alex like he was a stray dog blocking the corridor.

"My apologies, Director Vance,"

Marcus, a wealthy senior resident, sneered openly.

"The hospital board really needs to hire janitors who actually understand human speech. But then again, what do you expect from a disgraced fraud?"

The insults burned like acid in Alex's chest. Six months ago, Marcus would have been begging to shadow Alex in the operating room. At twenty-three, Alex had possessed a high-resolution brain capable of mapping intricate vascular networks at impossible speeds. He was the youngest prodigy the academy had ever seen. But Julian Vance had grown jealous of his talent. During a high-profile surgery, Vance had intentionally severed a patient's artery, panicked, and used his immense corporate power to frame Alex for the fatal blunder. Alex’s license was stripped, and to pay off the fraudulent malpractice damages, he was forced to endure the ultimate humiliation: cleaning the floors of the very ward he used to command.

Before Alex could even reply, the heavy double doors of the Emergency Trauma Bay burst open.

"Director Vance! Emergency!"

a nurse screamed, her face completely pale.

"A high-speed highway collision just brought in the daughter of the City Magistrate! Severe chest trauma. Her vitals are completely crashing and we can't stabilize her!"

Vance’s eyes lit up with instant political ambition. Saving the Magistrate’s daughter meant a guaranteed seat on the National Medical Board. "Move!" Vance barked, shoving past Alex so hard that Alex’s shoulder slammed against the concrete wall. "Clear the hallway! Team, follow me. I will handle this thoracotomy myself!"

The medical team scrambled into the trauma bay, leaving Alex alone. But Alex didn't return to his mop. His mind, processing the nurse's frantic words at lightning speed, immediately calculated the trajectory of the injury. Crashing vitals after high-speed chest trauma wasn't a standard hemorrhage, it was an escalating tension pneumothorax. Driven by raw instinct, Alex abandoned his bucket and approached the trauma bay’s thick observation glass. Inside, the chaos was unfolding perfectly in accordance with his mental calculations.

The monitor was screaming. Beep-beep-beep-beep!

"She’s suffocating! Her windpipe is shifting to the right!" the lead nurse yelled.

Julian Vance, sweat dripping down his forehead, was panicking. "Prepare the scalpel for a full chest incision! We need to stop the internal bleeding!"

"Stop! You’re going to kill her!" Alex’s voice shattered the frantic energy of the room as he threw the doors open, stepping directly into the sterile bay. "It’s a tension pneumothorax! If you cut her open without decompressing the air cavity first, the pressure change will cause immediate cardiac arrest!"

The entire room froze. Marcus gasped in disbelief. "Alex? How dare you step into a sterile zone? You're a janitor! Get the hell out of here!"

Julian Vance’s face turned purple with rage. "You arrogant piece of trash! You ruined your own career, and now you want to sabotage mine? Security! Security!! Drag this lunatic out!"

"Look at the monitor, Vance!" Alex shouted, the deep sense of grievance and frustration bubbling over. "Her heart is being crushed by trapped air! Look at the ECG!"

"I am the Chief of Surgery! You are not gonna tell me what to do!" Vance roared, completely ignoring Alex. He grabbed the scalpel and sliced straight into the patient’s chest.

Beep-------------------

The high-pitched, flatline drone echoed through the room. The patient’s heart had stopped.

"Defibrillator! Charge to 200 joules!" Vance screamed, his hands shaking violently as he pressed the paddles to the girl's chest. "Clear! Shock!"

The girl’s body jolted, but the flatline remained unbroken. Vance shocked her again, then a third time, his movements becoming frantic and disorganized. The flatline continued.

Vance dropped the paddles, his face losing all color. He stepped back, his hands trembling as he looked at the overhead recording camera. "It’s... it’s no use. The trauma was too severe. Even a divine physician couldn't save her now. Time of death…"

"I can," Alex interrupted, his voice cutting through the flatline drone like a blade.

The entire trauma bay dropped into a suffocating silence, broken only by the continuous, mocking drone of the flatlined ECG monitor.

Julian Vance snapped his head toward Alex, his eyes widening in a mixture of raw panic and absolute fury. "What did you just say? Wait, I want to ask you this, who do you even think you are? You arrogant piece of trash! The patient is dead. Her cardiac tissue has completely collapsed under massive trauma. How dare you insult my medical authority in front of my staff?"

"Get him out of here!" Marcus barked, stepping forward to block Alex. "He's just a janitor trying to cause a scene to get back at us! Look at him, he doesn't even have a valid medical ID!"

Alex didn't look at Marcus. He didn't even look at the security guards who were rushing through the double doors. His high-resolution brain was completely locked onto the City Magistrate's daughter. To anyone else, she was a corpse. To Alex, his internal analytical mapping could still see the faint, residual neural electrical impulses clinging to her brainstem. The body was shutting down, but the cellular architecture hadn't entirely decayed.

Suddenly, a searing, white-hot flash ignited behind Alex's eyes, violently forcing his consciousness into a state of hyper-awareness. The sterile room blurred, and a cold, heavy mechanical cadence vibrated directly into his skull.

[Host DNA Synchronization: 100% Complete.]

[Target: Alex. Status: Suppressed Genius / Outcast.]

[The God-Handed System has fully awakened to correct the medical order.]

[Warning: Patient cellular death imminent in 90 seconds.]

[Emergency Quest Triggered: The First Reversal.]

[Objective: Displace the fraudulent authority. Execute a manual thoracic decompression and bimanual cardiac massage.]

[Reward for Success: 500 XP & Level 1 System Store Access.]

[Penalty for Failure: Permanent neural shutdown.]

Alex gasped as the holographic display locked into his peripheral vision. Suddenly, the patient's entire anatomy became translucent to his eyes. He could see the trapped air pocket in her left pleural cavity expanding like a balloon, compressing her heart into a completely unnatural, flattened shape. The problem wasn't a lack of electrical charge from Vance's stupid defibrillator paddles; the problem was that the heart physically had no space to expand and pump blood.

"Get your hands off me," Alex growled, his voice shifting into a terrifyingly calm pitch that made the approaching security guards hesitate.

With an unnatural, lightning-fast burst of speed, Alex bypassed Marcus and shoved Julian Vance backward. Vance, completely caught off guard, stumbled against an instrument tray, sending surgical clamps and stainless steel bowls clattering loudly across the floor.

"Alex! Are you insane? That is assault!" Vance screamed, his voice cracking with humiliation as he tried to regain his balance.

Alex ignored the shouting. His hands moved with a fluid precision that completely defied his six months of manual labor. He didn't have time to wait for a sterile 14-gauge needle. He grabbed a standard wide-bore trocar from the tray, his fingers guided by the bright holographic green "X" blinking on the patient's chest.

" what is he doing? He's mutilating the body!" Marcus yelled, turning to the guards. "Apprehend him right now!"

"If you Touch me, and you will be accomplices to her murder," Alex barked without looking back.

He drove the trocar straight into the second intercostal space, right over the glowing target mapped out by his System.

Pshhhhhhh!

A violent, high-pressure hiss of trapped air erupted from the plastic tube, spraying a fine mist of blood into the air. The relief of pressure was instantaneous. On the translucent scan in Alex's mind, the compressed heart suddenly shifted back into its proper anatomical position.

But the monitor was still flatlined. The heart had been crushed for too long; it couldn't restart on its own.

"See? You've done nothing but desecrate a corpse!" Vance shouted, adjusting his rumpled lab coat while trying to mask the sheer terror in his eyes. "You will go to prison for life for this, Alex! I will personally ensure you never see the light of day!"

"Shut up and watch," Alex muttered coldly.

Without hesitation, Alex split the incision Vance had clumsily made earlier, bypassing the ribs entirely. He shoved his bare, un-gloved hand directly into the open thoracic cavity. The medical residents gasped in sheer horror, some covering their mouths. Manual internal cardiac massage was an ancient, high-risk technique that modern surgeons rarely attempted because it required an impossibly delicate touch. One ounce of excess pressure would rupture the myocardium.

But Alex had the God-Handed System.

His fingers clamped around the cold, unmoving muscle of the girl's heart. A soft, golden luminescence pulsed beneath his skin, stabilizing his tremors and feeding precise kinetic feedback directly into his brain. He began to squeeze. Compress. Release. Compress. Release.

"He's completely mad, how did we even allow him to get in here in the first place?" Marcus whispered, stepping back. "He's literally playing with a dead body."

"Time of death was already established!" Vance claimed loudly, pointing at the overhead recording camera to save his own reputation. "Whatever this fraud does now is a criminal offense. The patient was already gone!"

Alex tuned out the background noise. He counted the beats in his head, matching his movements to the biological synchronization counter ticking down on his visual interface.

Five seconds... ten seconds... fifteen seconds...

"Come on Come on Come on," Alex whispered, his teeth grinding together as the deep, burning grievance of the last six months fueled the rhythmic pump of his hand. He wasn't going to let Julian Vance win again. He wasn't going to let these corrupt elite frauds decide who lived and died.

Twenty seconds.

Beep.

The continuous flatline drone abruptly broke. A solitary, sharp spike jumped onto the ECG screen.

Vance's words choked in his throat. Marcus's jaw dropped.

Beep... Beep... Beep...

The sinus rhythm returned, stabilizing into a steady, beautiful seventy-two beats per minute. The patient's pale gray cheeks immediately began to flush with a faint, healthy pink color as oxygenated blood rushed back into her system.

[Emergency Quest: The First Reversal, Successful.]

[Target Stabilized. Malpractice Neutralized.]

[Calculating Rewards: 500 XP awarded. Level up achieved: Current Level 2.]

[System Store unlocked. Initial Skill 'Vascular Blueprinting' acquired.]

Alex slowly withdrew his hand from the patient's chest, his fingers dripping with blood. He grabbed a sterile drape, calmly wiping his hands while turning his cold, high-resolution gaze toward Julian Vance.

Vance was trembling, he never excepted such act from an “ordinary” janitor. his face completely drained of color as he looked from the perfectly stable monitor back to the 23-year-old janitor.

"You said even a divine physician couldn't save her,"

Alex said, his voice echoing with absolute authority in the stunned room. He tossed the bloody drape right onto Vance's spotless shoes. "Turns out, you just didn't have the hands for it."