Chapter 189 Upgrade

Boss sat in silence, his only eye tracking the doctor’s every move, though the expression on his face remained clueless. It was like his brain was lagging, the words being spoken not fully connecting. He blinked, once, then again, as if trying to make sense of what he’d just heard. His face was a mix of confusion and dull awareness, like someone woken from a long dream but still stuck between worlds.

The doctor took a step closer, speaking slowly. "You were shot. In the eyes. That’s how we found you."

Still, Boss didn’t respond. Not a twitch. Not a word.

The doctor let out a quiet sigh and turned to one of the men standing by the wall. Without warning, he reached for the man’s waist and yanked out a pistol. It was fast and clean, no hesitation. Boss instinctively took a step back, but the doctor was already pointing the barrel directly at his right eye—his only eye.

The reaction was instant.

Boss’s body jolted like someone yanked an electric cord from his spine. His breath caught in his throat as his muscles tensed, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. He didn’t even know why his body was reacting that way—why the very sight of the gun near his eye caused such intense fear—but it was real. It was visceral. His hands clenched at his sides, sweat forming on his temples.

And then it happened.

Images. Flashes. Sounds. Pain.

His mind cracked open.

A woman. A cold voice. A flash of light. The echo of a gunshot. Lilith. Her cruel smirk as she pulled the trigger. His scream. Then Liam. The smug bastard with the sharp eyes, standing over his dying assistant. Blood everywhere. Death. Chaos.

His breath came fast now, heart thundering in his chest.

Lilith shot me.

Liam killed my second-in-command.

Memories came pouring back like a dam had broken. The pain, the humiliation. It was all there.

The doctor calmly lowered the pistol and returned it to the guard.

"Worked better than I expected," he said with a slight smirk.

The guards in the room glanced at one another, visibly tense after what they’d just seen. But the doctor waved them off.

"Leave us," he ordered. "Now."

The men didn’t argue. They filed out in silence, boots thudding softly on the floor until the door clicked shut behind them. The room was quiet again, save for the slow beeping of machines monitoring Boss’s vitals.

Boss slowly raised his hand and touched his left eye—or where it used to be. He winced. There was no pain, just emptiness. He looked around, spotted a small mirror on the cabinet near the bed, and took it. The reflection staring back at him was strange. Familiar yet foreign.

His left eye socket was clean. Too clean. There was no blood, no fresh scarring, no stitches. The skin had already healed over, a pale, smooth cavity where his eye used to be. The sight froze him in place.

"This... this doesn’t make sense," he muttered, jaw tightening.

He turned slightly, examining the angle, the skin, the socket. "She shot me last night. This... this looks like it happened years ago."

He spun toward the doctor with a harsh glare. "What the fuck happened to me?"

The doctor stepped forward, hands tucked casually into his white coat.

"You were dying when they brought you in," he said simply. "Not breathing. Half your head blown out. But... someone didn’t want you dead."

Boss narrowed his eye. "What the hell does that mean?"

The doctor smiled, not kindly, not warmly—just with calm confidence. "I’m gonna blow your mind."

Boss’s face twisted. "You already put a fucking gun in my face. You got more?"

The doctor didn’t answer right away. Instead, he walked to a console on the far wall and tapped a few buttons. Screens lit up across the wall—medical scans, neurological maps, charts, data feeds, even nanotech integration reports. Boss could barely understand any of it, but one thing was clear: this wasn’t just medicine. This was something else entirely.

"Someone’s been paying for your upgrade," the doctor said at last.

Boss stared at him. "Upgrade?"

"That’s right." The doctor turned back to him. "You didn’t survive because of luck. You survived because someone paid a lot of money to rebuild you."

Boss’s brows furrowed. "Who?"

"We’ll get there."

Boss clenched his fists. "Don’t play games with me."

"No games," the doctor said. "Just facts. You’re not the same man anymore. And we’ve got a lot to talk about."

Boss didn’t know what was going on—but one thing was certain.

Something very dark, very advanced, and very expensive was happening behind the scenes.

---

Boss sat on the edge of the bed, half-naked, listening to thirty solid minutes of what sounded like pure insanity.

Upgrades? Powers? Enhancements?

It was laughable. Absolutely ridiculous.

This so-called doctor had gone on and on, passionately rambling about how Boss wasn’t just a man anymore, about how someone—an unnamed benefactor—had spared no expense to "resurrect and improve" him. Boss didn’t even know how he was alive in the first place, and now they were trying to feed him this superhuman nonsense like he was in some fucking comic book.

He stood up.

His body still felt stiff from lying in the hospital bed for so long, but strength was steadily returning. He cracked his neck to the side, irritated.

"I can’t listen to any more of this bullshit," Boss muttered darkly as he walked toward the door, done with this fantasy.

But something stopped him.

A faint rustle behind him.

The sound of shifting fabric.

He turned.

The doctor was calmly removing his white coat.

Boss froze mid-step, his eyes narrowing as he took in what lay beneath the coat. The doctor’s entire upper body was covered in tattoos—shoulder to shoulder, neck to waist. But these weren’t just any tattoos.

Animals. Dozens of them. None of them normal.

He had seen wolves, snakes, lions before—but this? These were twisted, warped creatures—beasts with extra eyes, wings growing out of places they shouldn’t, limbs contorted in unnatural shapes. They looked like nightmares carved into flesh.

"What the hell...?" Boss breathed.

The doctor didn’t speak. Instead, he closed his eyes slowly, as if entering a trance.

Boss’s gut clenched instantly. Something was wrong.

The air in the room felt heavier. Thicker. Unnatural.

Then the doctor opened his eyes.

And Boss stepped back involuntarily.

Pitch black.

Not dark brown. Not gray. Full pitch black. Like the void itself stared back through his eyes. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t right. Boss had seen death. He had faced killers. But this? This felt like standing on the edge of some abyss that wanted to devour him whole.

But what happened next shattered whatever remained of his sense of reality.

One of the tattoos—a massive, coiled serpent etched across the doctor’s chest—began to move.

Boss blinked.

But it kept moving.

Slithering.

Alive.

The snake’s head twisted toward Boss. Its forked tongue flickered. The sound of scales against skin echoed like a whisper through the silent room.

Then—with a horrifying ripple—it detached from the doctor’s body.

The thing peeled away from his skin, becoming solid as it dropped to the floor like a real creature. It stood tall, impossibly tall, its scales gleaming like polished obsidian, its eyes glowing red.

Boss stumbled back, nearly tripping over the chair. "What the actual fuck..."

He was no longer in a hospital room. No, this was something else. This was madness. Witchcraft. The kind of shit people got burned alive for in older times.

The doctor’s lips barely moved as he whispered a single word:

"Strike."

And the serpent moved.

Fast.

Blinding fast.

Its jaw unhinged, fangs glinting, a hiss like a hundred voices screaming filled the air.

Boss didn’t even think. His body moved on instinct. But the fear—the sheer terror—froze him in place for a split second.

That split second could’ve cost him his life.

The serpent struck—

But Boss’s hand moved.

And the moment it did... everything changed.

His skin rippled. Hardened. It was like watching his flesh morph into granite before his eyes. His right hand turned gray, rigid, dense. Stone. It wasn’t just tougher—it was unbreakable.

He swung.

His hand smashed into the serpent mid-lunge, and the impact thundered through the room. The creature recoiled violently, screeching as its body shattered into smoke—thick, curling plumes that rushed back toward the doctor and reformed on his skin like nothing ever happened.

Silence.

Not a single trace of the beast remained.

The doctor stood still, his arms now lowered.

Boss stood frozen, panting, staring at his own hand.

Still stone. Still powerful.

He turned it slowly, flexing the fingers. It moved like it belonged to him, even though it didn’t feel like flesh anymore. His veins glowed faintly under the stone skin, almost like molten lava flowed beneath it.

"What... what the fuck did you do to me?" Boss asked, breathless, his voice sharp with a mix of anger and awe.

The doctor smiled for the first time.

A knowing, eerie smile.

"I told you," he said calmly, "you’ve been upgraded."

Boss’s mind raced.

He remembered how fast he reacted. How the snake hadn’t even scratched him. And now this—this hand—it didn’t just block the strike, it obliterated it.

He looked up at the doctor again, still wide-eyed. "That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t... human."

"No, it wasn’t," the doctor agreed.

"And this..." Boss lifted his hand again. "This power... it’s mine?"

"It’s just the beginning," the doctor said cryptically. "There’s more. Much more. We only activated the first phase."

Boss stepped back again, hand still curled into a fist. He should’ve been panicking. He should’ve been breaking down.

But instead?

He felt something else rise in his chest.

Power.

For the first time in his life—true, terrifying power.

And the strange part? It felt good.

The doctor turned his back and walked toward the table, picking up a tablet. "Likw I said, we have many things to talk about," he said without turning around.

Boss didn’t respond.

He was still staring at his stone hand.