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Chapter 3

Author: Red Nuts
The legal aid office assigned me an attorney named Nathan Parker.

When he came to see me for the first time, he did not even open the case file.

"The evidence is conclusive. You killed him on a livestream, confessed voluntarily, and had a clear motive."

He sat on the other side of the glass, his voice completely flat. "Your mother refuses to forgive you, and the public outrage is enormous. Mercy, the most I can do is try to help you avoid immediate execution."

"I want an acquittal."

Nathan finally looked up.

"What did you say?"

"Do three things for me, and I’ll make you the most famous lawyer in the country."

"Are you under some kind of delusion about your situation?"

"First, go to the hospital and ask Daniel Shaw what my father said after he woke up.

"The livestream showed everything. I want the complete record, word for word."

Nathan stared at me. "And then?"

"Second, visit the families of the people my father saved and ask them what he feared most.

“And the third thing?"

"I’ll tell you after you finish the first two."

He stood up at once. "I’m not here to play games with you."

When he reached the door, I called after him.

"Mr. Parker, your mother suffered a brain hemorrhage three years ago and has been lying in a rehabilitation hospital ever since, hasn’t she?"

He stopped walking.

"Her name is on Daniel’s list of patients awaiting treatment."

"How do you know that?"

"Go ask him."

Three days later, Nathan appeared again.

He tossed a thick stack of notes in front of me.

"Your father said nineteen sentences in total during the three minutes after he woke up.

"His first sentence was calling you Marshy. His second was asking where your mother was. After that, he said the smoke inside the burning building had been thick.

“He felt his way along the wall until he found you, shielded you beneath him, and later heard the firefighters arrive.

"Everything matched the findings from the scene investigation.

"Dr. Shaw said your father’s memory was clear and his consciousness was normal. If you hadn’t pulled out the tube, he would have lived for at least another ten years."

I lowered my head and read the notes.

Nineteen sentences, and not one of them was wrong.

Nathan continued, "I also questioned the twenty-seven people your father saved. One said your father was afraid of his wife. Another said he was afraid something would happen to his daughter. Someone else said he was afraid of nothing.

"What are you trying to prove?"

I asked, "No one said he was afraid of water?"

"No."

I let out a laugh.

Nathan frowned. "What’s so funny?"

"When my father was seven, he watched his younger brother drown in a reservoir. After that, he was afraid to ride in boats, afraid to swim, and even afraid to cross bridges without railings.”

"Yet he saved three people from drowning."

"Exactly."

I looked at him. "A man who was so afraid of water that he couldn’t even close his eyes while taking a bath jumped into floodwaters to save three complete strangers."

Nathan fell silent for a moment.

"That only proves he was brave."

"Yes. It only proves he was brave."

I pushed the records back toward him. "Now go and do the third thing."

"Go to the morgue and play the sound of rushing water in front of my father’s body."

Nathan’s expression darkened instantly.

“Mercy, you won’t even let your father rest in peace?”

"If you’re afraid, then don’t go."

He glared at me fiercely, but he still took the address.

At one o’clock that morning, Nathan entered the hospital morgue in the basement.

My father lay in the innermost refrigerated drawer, a white sheet covering his face.

Nathan took out his phone and played the sound of a reservoir releasing floodwater.

On the third second, the white sheet covering my father’s face moved slightly.

Nathan turned off the sound.

The sheet stopped moving.

He assumed it was caused by the cold air and played the recording again.

The rushing water filled the morgue.

My father’s right hand, despite having been dead for five days, suddenly reached out from beneath the sheet and grabbed Nathan by the wrist.

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  • After My Father Woke Up, I Pulled the Plug   Chapter 10

    The fire killed twenty-three people.Among them were Daniel, the seventeen experimental subjects who had already been dead, and my mother.Chloe and thirty-one other people who had been controlled by the neuro parasites survived. Once the parasites were killed by the intense heat, they regained their own memories.Chloe cried nonstop after she woke up.She remembered my father borrowing her body to hold my mother. She remembered the parasite searching through someone else’s memories inside her mind, but she could not remember why she had left home before the car crash.The doctors said that part of her memory would never return.I did not become a hero either.Some people online said I had endured humiliation and sacrificed my reputation to save everyone.Others said I could have gone to the police but had allowed my mother and innocent people into the courtroom just to stage a sensational reversal.They were all right.I could have revealed everything sooner.Perhaps no one would have

  • After My Father Woke Up, I Pulled the Plug   Chapter 9

    The courthouse doors locked automatically.Every light went out.When the emergency lights came on, more than forty people were already standing in front of Daniel. Silver-white strands trailed from behind their ears, making them look like puppets lifted by the same hand.Nathan stepped in front of me."What do we do now?""Burn this place down."He whipped around. "What?""Neuro parasites can’t survive extreme heat. Raise the temperature to 1,472°F, and not one of them will survive.""There are hundreds of healthy people in here!""That’s why I was sentenced to death."I pulled a red cord from the lining of my prison uniform.It was connected to an old-fashioned ignition device beneath the defendant’s table.Before the first trial ended, I pretended to trip and stuck it beneath the table.An abandoned gas line ran beside the courthouse’s underground archives. At my request, Nathan opened the main valve under the pretense of investigating a fire hazard.He thought I had done it to for

  • After My Father Woke Up, I Pulled the Plug   Chapter 8

    Three years ago, Daniel’s wife was declared brain-dead.He refused to authorize the withdrawal of life support and secretly moved her to a private research facility, where he used a silver-white neuro parasite to stimulate her brain.His wife woke up.She could speak, walk, and remember everything about the time they fell in love.Daniel thought he had defeated death.Then one night, his wife stood beside the bed and asked him, "Daniel, why did you save only me?"The next day, she killed every animal in the laboratory and implanted a neuro parasite into three other brain-dead patients.All three woke up.They retained the memories of their own bodies, yet they obeyed the same voice.Then there were seventeen.After that, there was my father."How did you know?" Daniel demanded. The bailiffs had him pinned to the floor, but he continued staring fiercely at me. "You’re only a relative!""Because my father woke up once after the first treatment."The entire courtroom fell silent.The fir

  • After My Father Woke Up, I Pulled the Plug   Chapter 7

    On the day of the appeal hearing, Daniel did not bring the seventeen people.He brought seventeen corpses.The bodies were sealed inside transparent refrigerated pods and wheeled into the courtroom in a single row. There were men, women, elderly people, and even a nine-year-old child.The public gallery erupted.Daniel stood among the bodies, his eyes bloodshot."They were all brain-dead patients who underwent experimental treatment over the past three years."When the treatments failed, they died one after another. Mercy Ryan accused me of murder."I brought them here today so they could undergo the most thorough autopsies possible and clear the medical profession of any wrongdoing."The medical examiner conducted the autopsies in court.The seventeen patients had died at different times from different causes. None had external injuries or traces of poison, and everything matched the medical records Daniel had submitted.Daniel looked toward me. "Mercy, do you have anything else to sa

  • After My Father Woke Up, I Pulled the Plug   Chapter 6

    The sentence shot to the top of the trending charts on every platform within ten minutes.No one knew who "Marshy" was.But my mother did.She sat at the press conference, and the cup in her hand slipped to the floor and shattered."Marshy is Mercy’s childhood nickname."She stood up, her face deathly pale. "How do you know that? Why are you speaking in Gordon’s voice?"Chloe slowly turned her head from the hospital bed.A familiar smile, one that belonged only to my father, appeared on the nineteen-year-old girl’s face."Mara."She called my mother by name.“During our second year of marriage, you hid your paycheck in a cookie tin because you thought I wouldn’t notice.”My mother staggered backward.“When Mercy was eight, she stole my medal and hid it in the kitchen. She thought I never found it, but I knew exactly where it was and pretended otherwise so she would think she had gotten away with it."And that mole on your left shoulder...""Stop!"My mother screamed and cut her off.On

  • After My Father Woke Up, I Pulled the Plug   Chapter 5

    My mother suddenly lifted her head."Before?""Gordon had been lying in the intensive care unit ever since the accident. When did he ever wake up?"Daniel stood up. "The patient was confused after regaining consciousness. A vague, delirious murmur does not prove anything.""Then why was it deleted?" Nathan asked."It wasn’t deleted. The livestream equipment experienced a brief malfunction.""Why did the hospital surveillance system, the voice recorder, and the nurse’s body camera all malfunction at the same time?"Daniel did not answer.Whispers spread through the public gallery.But I laughed."Mr. Parker, you don’t honestly think one incoherent sentence can save me, do you?"Nathan turned to look at me."Whether my father woke up before or not has nothing to do with whether I killed him."I simply resented having to care for a disabled man and wanted the insurance payout. Don’t make up some ridiculous story just to become famous."The shock in his eyes slowly turned to anger."You we

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