Heartbeat 81 Novels & Stories

A smile oozing with derision and venom. As I picked up the papers, all covered in Christopher's shoe marks, my mechanical heart was trembling faster than ever. It should not be trembling like this. My pupils were starting to dilate, and the couple that was leaving me behind became nothing but blurry circles. … A long, long time later, I wiped the blood off the corner of my mouth. As I stared at the papers that read 'artificial heart transplant,' my fingers brushed across the scar on my chest. The one that'd been there for seven years.

Stella was rushing toward me, a half-eaten sandwich in her hand, confusion and panic etched all over her face. “What happened?” she asked, eyes darting between me and the chaos inside. “He’s…he’s having another heart attack,” I managed, my voice barely a whisper. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed. She wrapped her arms around me, grounding me just enough to stop the shaking. I leaned into her, needing that hug more than I realized Minutes felt like hours. I could barely keep my cool, watching how hard the nurses and doctors were trying to keep him alive. Finally, the beeping slowed, Nate's heartbeat returned to normal. The flurry of movement also calmed down. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing from

My heart skipped a beat, my tears moist right then. I dropped to a crouch and held him, pressing my ear against his chest again. I could hear his heartbeat, thumping powerfully through his thin shirt. It was such a familiar sensation. It was Stan's heartbeat. As I closed my eyes, my tears flowed ever so quietly. We stayed like that for a while, and as I wiped my tears, I held Nathan firmly in my arms once more. "Please live a good life with Stan's heart." - Nathan walked with me to the gates of the orphanage, but I never once turned to look at him again.

For a moment, I had forgotten he didn't know I wasn't deaf anymore. I looked at him with a blank expression, my voice freezing. "Are you sure your heart belongs only to me?" His face flickered with a trace of panic before he forced a smile. "And to our daughter, of course. My heart belongs to you two." Bonnie piped up from the side, "Mommy, you're not jealous of me, are you?" Before she could say more, a ringtone cut her off. Jackson stepped aside. When he returned a moment later, he seemed apologetic. "Sorry, Quinn. Something urgent came up at work. I need to handle it."

then it came. A heartbeat. Tiny, regular, rapid rhythm. Clear, like drumsticks struck too fast—but steady. As if a tiny motor beat inside. A sign of life. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Sloane's eyes flew open. "What... is that? Is that the...?" The doctor's voice was no longer clinical. It was human. Warm and soft, like a father showing his child for the first time. "That's the heartbeat. The baby's heart. You're in the eighth week. It's stable, strong. And it's there. Inside you."

But as he stepped closer to hug me, his kinetic energy abruptly flatlined. His hyper-accelerated nervous system registered the sluggish, agonizingly slow capillary refill in my skin and the heavy, calcified rhythm in my chest. Toby stumbled backward, his hands raising defensively as if the air itself had just burned him. "No," Toby stammered, his eyes darting frantically between me and Killian. "No, your heart rate is twenty-eight. The valves are stiff. The... the quartz." "Toby" I started, reaching out for him.

When Ava said her job was boring, he bought her a custom silver-gray sports car, the license plate ending in her birthday. And me? I got a few lines of AI code to keep me placated.

All that was there were his serious eyes and perfect face. He leaned in closer and | could smell his breath. It smelled like rain and mint gum. | was breathing heavily now, my heart pounding harder and harder. His eyes were trained solely on my lips, then wandered back to my eyes. His lips brushed lightly against mine and | sucked in a breath, my lips tingling. | suddenly tilted my head sideways and looked away from him. Pushing his body away, | got up hurriedly and stepped out of the ring. "Where are you going?" he asked, climbing down after me.

One hundred and sixty. The pacemaker is throwing glaring red error messages across my screen. It’s trying to fire, trying to shock the heart back into a normal rhythm. It doesn't work. Tariq’s compound is basically liquid chaos. It’s tearing Vane’s nervous system apart from the inside. "Security is on him," Max says. "They’re pushing the crowd back. Someone is yelling for a doctor." One hundred and ninety. Fibrillation. The heart isn't beating anymore. It’s just vibrating, totally unable to push blood through his body.

He was looking for a "Ghost." "I know you're there, Elara," Silas whispered, his fingers flying over a keyboard that used the same symbols as my Interface. "I can feel the 'Pulse' in the network. You aren't the System. You’re the **Heart**." I felt a surge of warmth in my violet chest. My BPM spiked, causing a brief, beautiful aurora to appear over the North Pole. "Silas..." I whispered, my voice vibrating through his speakers. He froze. He looked at the monitor, his eyes—still that deep, human brown—filling with tears.