My Infinite Investment System

Chapter 27: Independent Practice

The last licensed option began above a laundromat, where hunter-grade instrument posters covered the wall outside a treatment room built for difficult patients.

The doctor opened the door before Ryan finished knocking on the upstairs landing.

"Who owns the data?" she asked, looking past him to Mika, "I would like the answer before I touch your expensive equipment."

Ryan placed the phase-two file on her desk and kept his hand away from the rig case.

"Who owns the data, who profits if this works, who can stop the procedure, and who decides what happens if you cannot answer?" the doctor asked Mika.

"I own my medical data," Mika replied, sitting beside the rig case, "the club profits if I survive, I can stop at any time, and if I cannot answer, you hold treatment authority."

The doctor turned toward Ryan after Mika finished answering and waited for his version.

"Not him?" she asked.

"Not when fear makes him confuse protection with authority," Mika said, keeping one hand flat on the table.

Ryan stayed silent, ’She had just refused a man who paid the bill, which was either courage or excellent screening,’ he thought, watching the doctor mark the first page.

The doctor interrogated the proposal for two hours, then took apart the rig and found its original control board beneath a civilian casing.

The auction replacement seal hung loose beneath the lower frame of the rig.

"You cleaned this correctly," she said, sounding disappointed by the lost criticism, "your calibration model is still wrong."

Ryan pulled the projection onto a wall screen beside the disassembled control board.

Her second pathway sat three millimetres above the scarred channel, treating old damage as inactive tissue.

The doctor lowered the entry angle and showed how each discharge contracted the scar, dragging the active channel toward it.

"The model predicts where her current travels at rest," she continued, tapping the scarred junction, "I need where it tries to escape when she is screaming."

Ryan rebuilt the projection around dynamic contraction until it aligned with her mark.

The doctor rejected his emergency cutoff and moved it from thirty-eight percent variance to twenty-nine.

Sudden regulator failure remained possible, so her second override survived every simulation.

"You were right twice," Ryan said, circling the new threshold.

"Write the date down," the doctor replied, "patients deserve historical evidence when their physicians are correct."

Her price covered the studio, an emergency team, two nights of monitoring, clinical labour, and first-week follow-ups.

{Clinical, Facility, and Emergency Cost: $71,500}

{Phase-Two Funds Remaining: $97,760 -> $26,260}

{Recovery Reserve Preserved: $26,260}

Payment would be due in full before treatment, with the doctor holding medical authority while Mika decided whether it continued.

Ryan’s raw-telemetry clause received a handwritten clipboard threat for concealed complications.

"Is that enforceable?" Ryan asked, reading the margin twice.

"It is napkin law," the doctor replied, placing the clipboard beneath her elbow, "extremely powerful in this building."

"The agreement is six pages?" Ryan asked.

"Then imagine a very large napkin," she said.

Mika watched him pay the $71,500 from cash already factored, accelerated, and nearly spent before anyone agreed to touch her.

’If the doctor owned the room, Mika still owned the decision,’ Ryan thought, confirming the transfer with the bank clerk.

Treatment began before sunrise with Mika awake inside the frame.

Her natural current filled one pathway while the unfinished route appeared as broken light across her ribs.

The doctor controlled pressure and medication, Ryan managed calibration, while the emergency team watched for cascade failure.

At twelve percent load, both pathways held.

At twenty-one percent, the second opened and lightning crossed beneath Mika’s skin before rebounding across every monitor.

[Pathway Load Transfer: Unstable]

[Projected Regulator Failure: 43 Seconds]

"Reduce the current now," the doctor ordered, keeping one hand above the emergency cutoff.

"If we reduce now, the pathway seals around the wrong route," Mika answered through clenched teeth, "give me ten seconds."

"You have six," the doctor warned.

Ryan changed the calibration pulse, but the two currents continued arriving half a beat apart.

Each impact widened the damage the second pathway had been created to relieve.

The overlay showed dozens of values without offering shared timing between different patterns.

Mika reached through the frame and closed his wrist, passing familiar current between them while Ryan felt the delay instead of calculating it.

[Bond Synergy Detected]

[Spark Sync: Available]

[Shared Timing Window: 1.7 Seconds]

"Match your current to mine," Ryan said, turning his pulse into the missing bridge, "three, two."

"Now!" Mika shouted.

They discharged together as blue-white current filled both pathways, struck the scarred junction, then folded into one synchronized circuit.

Ryan matched Mika’s timing while the rig screamed beneath them.

Thirty-one percent became forty, then fifty-eight, while the doctor held the dangerous line instead of protecting the machine from its patient.

One coil ruptured at seventy-two percent and threw sparks across the wall.

The remaining array held until Mika’s regulator recognised the new pathway as part of her body.

[Second Pathway Integration: Complete]

[Active Stabilized Pathways: 1 -> 2]

[Degradation Trend: 3.8% -> 0.0%]

[Stable Combat Output: D -> High-D]

[Lightning Steps per Day: 1 -> 2]

[Permanent Pathway Scarring: Present]

Mika laughed before medication pulled her under.

The doctor checked every result twice, ordered Ryan away from three monitors he could not improve by staring, then handed him the invoice.

He paid while Nia logged the transaction against the recovery reserve.

[Major Medical Investment Verified]

[Permanent Capability Increase Confirmed]

[Return Credits Awarded: 160]

[Return Credit Balance: 320 -> 480]

"Two Steps do not mean two acts of stupidity," the doctor said when Mika woke that evening, "your degradation has stopped, the scars remain, and exceeding High-D output could reopen everything we just stabilised."

"So I am stronger, not invincible?" Mika asked, touching the brace beside her ribs.

"How do you think I keep my patients?" the doctor replied.

After two nights of observation, they returned with medication, follow-up orders, and the clipboard clause taped to Mika’s discharge file.

For the first time since Ryan had met her, Mika sat in silence without measuring the next failure inside her body.

She opened the full scan archive on the bedroom wall, revealing every damaged route, regulator fracture, and ceiling that might never move again.

"I kept the worst images out of the reports you saw," she said, standing before the projection without armour or practiced calm, "if you knew how close it was, I thought you would stop investing, or start deciding for me."

"Fear caused the second one," Ryan admitted, keeping his eyes on the scarred channel.

"I know," Mika replied, touching the image beside her ribs, "which is why I kept authority."

He touched the long scar only after she guided his hand there.

New current moved evenly beneath damage neither money nor victory had erased.

’The ceiling was hers to name, even if he had paid to reach it,’ Ryan thought, letting his hand remain where she placed it.

"This is the ceiling," Mika whispered, bringing up the final scan, "not the one I tell recruits, the real one."

"Then I know where it is," Ryan replied.

No promise followed about breaking it tomorrow.

That absence loosened something Mika had held tighter than pain.

Her kiss began with visible relief, then deepened when Ryan drew her closer without avoiding the scar she had finally allowed him to see.

Clothes reached the floor between laughter and careful hands while Mika’s new pathway lit whenever pleasure disrupted her control.

When caution made Ryan pause, she took his face between both hands and told him what she wanted without hiding behind teasing.

Tenderness became its own kind of exposure.

Later, Mika rested against him with the scan archive lit across the wall, her bare leg tangled with his while two clean pathways pulsed through the image above them.

"You have all of it now," she whispered, tracing his wrist where the brace had been, "every scar, my true limit, and even what I hid by omission."

"Can you see I am still here?" Ryan asked.

"That was the answer I wanted," Mika admitted, "I just did not trust myself to ask."

At 6:14 the next morning, the doctor called before either of them finished waking.

"Someone opened the historical archive attached to Mika’s regulator file," she said, "not after last night, before it, every fourth day of the month for two years."

Ryan brought the access log onto the wall, replacing the private scans with identical authorisation events.

[Historical File Access Instances: 24]

[Access Interval: Every Fourth Day]

[Latest Access: Yesterday / +40 Minutes After Record Request]

[Authorised Identity: Obscured]

’Treatment stopped Mika’s degradation, while someone had spent two years waiting to see whether it would,’ Ryan thought, reading the latest timestamp again.