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Semua Bab His Final Ascension: Bab 1 - Bab 10

10 Bab

Chapter 1

I opened my eyes with a violent gasp, my shirt soaked through with cold sweat.Above me was the familiar ceiling of my medical-school dorm. Sunlight slipped through the curtains onto my desk, where my anatomy textbook still lay open to the page I'd studied the night before.I wasn't dead. I'd come back.With shaking hands I grabbed the phone vibrating across my desk. Dad flashed on the screen.The instant I answered, my father's panicked voice crashed through the speaker."Nate, your uncle has kidney stones, but he's not making any sense anymore."Can you get emergency leave from Dr. Parker and come home? The doctors want to do lithotripsy or put him on medication to pass the stone, but he won't agree to anything. He's smashing things in the emergency department and the nurses can't hold him down."My father's voice trembled with helplessness.Then my uncle's shrill, hysterical scream tore through the background."Let go of me! What would the uninitiated know? This isn't a kid

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Chapter 2

After ending the call I rushed into the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face.The face in the mirror was pale but alert, and my eyes slowly turned cold.Somewhere in the past few years Raymond had found his way into the online immortality forums, and they'd swallowed him whole.Every day he burned cheap incense in his apartment and sat cross-legged, claiming he was drawing in the life force of the universe.Then came the fasting. One cup of water and a few leaves of lettuce a day.From a medical standpoint, he was killing himself.Prolonged extreme calorie restriction had wrecked his metabolism, and severe malnutrition and hypoglycemia were the inevitable result.As for the Stone he treasured, it was a kidney stone. Calcium oxalate deposited in his kidneys because he never drank enough water and ate like a lunatic.In my previous life I used every scrap of medical knowledge I had to save him, and he repaid me by breaking my body on the pavement.I wasn't making that m

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Chapter 3

"Dad, listen to me carefully." I lowered my voice and made every word count."From this moment on, you do not go back to Raymond's apartment. Go home, throw the deadbolt, and don't open that door for him no matter what. It doesn't matter what he says or how loud he screams. Even if he says he's dying. Do you understand me?"My father was stunned by my tone and stammered. "Nate, don't scare me like that. He's still your uncle.""Do what I'm telling you, Dad. What's happening to him can cause psychosis. That won't be your brother out there anymore. That'll be a sick man who isn't in control of himself. Do you understand?"Dad sounded frightened. He started to say something else, then finally just agreed.The second I hung up, I didn't waste another breath.If Raymond's mind was going, it would happen within days. I had to get home and protect my father.I ran out of the dorm toward my adviser's office, buying the next intercity ticket from Merriton to Kingswell on my phone as I we

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Chapter 4

The recording went off in my head like a bomb.[Dad, do NOT open that door. When something's this out of character, something is wrong. Pretend nobody's home.][Dad, did you hear me?]I sent message after message.Only my own bubbles came up on the screen. From Dad, nothing. Not another word.I called. No answer.I tried video. Declined.The train had barely stopped and the doors weren't fully open before I was through them.I ran for the exit and called Mom."Mom, the plan's changed. Don't come to the station. Dad's about to open the door for Raymond. Go straight home. Straight home."I screamed it until my voice tore."I'm ten minutes from the Kingswell exit. Nathan, be careful. Don't take him head-on. Wait for me."Mom still sounded steady, but the engine howling behind her voice told me the pedal was on the floor.Outside Kingswell Union Terminal I flagged the first cab I saw and dropped into the passenger seat."Elmwood Court. Please, go fast. I'll pay double. No, te

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Chapter 5

"Raymond! What are you doing? What's that in your hand? Let go of me!"My mind went blank, and every drop of blood in me turned to ice.I wrenched the key around and shoved the door open.The heavy security door slammed against the wall.What I saw stopped my breathing, and something invisible closed around my heart.The cramped living room was wrecked. The coffee table lay on its side among broken glass and cheap apples that had rolled out of the fruit bowl.Dad had slid down against the corner of the couch, his clothes disheveled, his face white as paper, both hands flailing in front of him while he shook like a leaf.Less than two feet in front of him stood something that looked like it had crawled out of a grave. My uncle, Raymond Bennett.He'd wasted away past recognition. His cheekbones had always been sharp. Now his face was a skull wrapped in waxy yellow skin.His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, but the eyeballs bulged with mania, shot through with red.Worst of

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Chapter 6

The bedroom door slammed, and I heard the lock turn."You little animal! You've ruined it again!"With Dad out of reach, Raymond went into a rage.He whipped his head around, and those red eyes fixed on me with a hatred thick enough to touch."Nathan! You again! In the last life you played the concerned nephew, talked me into surgery, and smashed my Stone to powder! I begged Providence for another chance and I got one, and here you are in my way again! Two lifetimes you've blocked me! I'm going to take you apart piece by piece and burn the soul out of you!"He wrenched himself loose with that inhuman strength and flung me across the room.My back hit the television cabinet. The pain went through me like a spike, my vision blacked out, and I nearly went under.Before I could get a breath he'd pulled the knife out of the couch and came at me like something reanimated."Die! Die!" He swung wildly.I forced myself through the pain, rolled sideways, and the killing stroke missed.

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Chapter 7

"Blood guilt... corruption... the Ordeal..."The hand holding the knife started shaking hard. Mania, confusion, and raw fear chased one another across his face."That's right! I'm helping you through it! Put the knife down, take on no blood guilt, and you pass the Ordeal and ascend on the spot! If you strike, two lifetimes of work burn with you! All of it!"Cold sweat had soaked through everything I had on and my heart was slamming hard enough to crack my ribs, but I had to look like a man reading out the will of Providence."No... I can't take on blood guilt... my Stone... I can't destroy the Stone..."He stared at the knife like a man hypnotized, muttering to himself, and his fingers began, actually began, to open.Metal rang against the floor. The knife was down.Everything holding me upright nearly gave out, and my knees buckled under me.And then, a bang.Our half-open security door took a boot and flew back against the wall."Police! Don't move! Hands up!""Get down!"

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Chapter 8

The next few hours were chaos.The police photographed the scene and collected evidence, and the boning knife went into a clear bag.It was attempted murder with a weapon. Nobody had been stabbed, but the nature of it was as bad as it gets.The three of us followed the cruisers to the Kingswell Police Department to give our statements.Under the bright lights of the interview room I finally saw the shape my father was in.His shirt was torn, there was a raw red line across his throat where Raymond had gotten hold of him, and he'd aged ten years in a night. His eyes were empty.It was deep into the night by the time we finished.The early-fall air had a bite in it that went straight through us.Mom took off her uniform jacket, put it over Dad's shoulders, and kept an arm around him.Back in the wrecked apartment Dad looked at the mess on the floor and his eyes went red again. His voice shook."What did we do? What did this family ever do to deserve this?"He kept talking and

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Chapter 9

After that nightmare in our living room, Raymond's fate got settled fast.He was still completely deranged at the station, going on about the Stone and ascension and blood guilt, and at one point he sat down cross-legged in the interview room to meditate.The police saw what they were dealing with and sent him to Kingswell Behavioral Health Center for a forensic psychiatric evaluation.The results came back quickly. Severe paranoid schizophrenia, compounded by an organic mental disorder brought on by prolonged malnutrition and ketoacidosis.In plain terms, he wasn't only psychotic. His brain had taken damage from starvation that wasn't coming back.Because he'd been in an active episode during the attack and had lost any real ability to understand or control what he was doing, he wasn't criminally liable. He was committed to secure treatment instead.The day the report came, Dad said nothing for a long time.He was the older brother, and the old belief that blood is thicker than

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Chapter 10

Marcus was almost shouting over the phone that day, and behind him I could hear screaming that raised the hair on my arms."They took him in for an emergency ultrasound. Huge stones in both kidneys, and one of them has dropped into the ureter and jammed solid. He's got severe hydronephrosis and acute kidney failure. The doctor says he needs a minimally invasive procedure to break it up right now or he's going to die.""And he won't have it." Marcus was beside himself. "He's bitten through his own lip, there's blood all down his chin, and when three of the male nurses tried to get him onto the gurney he came up with that strength again and flipped the whole thing over."He's spitting blood and yelling that this is the last Ordeal before he ascends. He calls it breaking the Stone to release the incorruptible body. He says if he can just get through the pain, the Stone opens and he takes his place among the Immortals. He won't let a doctor near him. He says anyone who operates on him i

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