Part 4: The Patient Zero (Nanotech, mind control, and a man who’s seen the shadows)
Part 4: The Patient Zero
Three names. Three lives hanging by a thread.
She checked hospital records. All were being treated for mild to moderate hypertension. All were now unknowingly taking Cardiotine.
Anjali and Ahuja sprang into action. Quietly, without triggering panic or suspicion, they reached out to the patients—posing as part of a government medication audit. Leela Kapoor had already suffered a mild stroke three days earlier. Mahesh Desai had reported dizziness and blackouts. Only Kumar Patel was lucid and responsive.
Kumar lived in a rundown nursing home on the outskirts of the city. When they arrived, the staff directed them to a small, dimly lit room where he sat near a window, murmuring softly to himself.
The moment Anjali introduced herself, he turned his head slowly. His eyes, though sunken, flickered with recognition.
“You’ve seen them too,” he said, his voice raspy.
“Seen who, Mr. Patel?”
“The… shadows. In the corners. The voices. The dreams that aren’t mine.”
Anjali knelt beside him, gently taking his hand. “How long have you been hearing the voices?”
He leaned closer. “They started a week after I began the new pills. Blue devils. Every time I took them, I’d lose time. Wake up standing in places I didn’t remember walking to. I threw them away. Buried them in the garden.”
Ahuja shot her a glance. “Could he be hallucinating?”
Anjali wasn’t sure. Until she noticed a small scab near his jugular vein—barely visible. She asked the nursing home for Kumar’s latest scans. The facility had recently conducted a full body MRI, suspecting early dementia.
What they found instead made Anjali’s breath catch in her throat.
Tiny filament-like objects laced through Kumar’s bloodstream. Microelectrodes, possibly carbon-based. Not visible to the naked eye, but clearly present under advanced imaging.
“This is biomedical nanotech,” Ahuja whispered, staring at the scan. “Injected or absorbed... but controlled.”
Anjali’s voice trembled. “These weren’t just pills. They were delivery systems.”
They took the scans to Dr. Tara Mishra, a neurotech researcher working with AI-enhanced prosthetics.
Her face turned pale as she examined the data.
“This... shouldn’t be possible,” she said. “These microstructures are designed to interface with neural tissue. They can send and receive signals. In theory, they could influence motor control, perception—maybe even behavior.”
Kumar Patel wasn’t sick. He was Patient Zero—the first semi-successful test subject of something far beyond drug therapy.
“This is synthetic neuro-programming,” Tara said grimly. “Someone is using the elderly to test mind control tech.”
Anjali’s hands shook. “And the ones who died?”
Tara nodded slowly. “Likely incompatible biology. The system couldn’t stabilize. They were failures.”
Back at the clinic, Anjali reviewed the anonymous email again. It hadn’t just sent her a list—it had uploaded a file to her network.
She opened it cautiously. A terminal window flickered on her screen.
Lines of code scrolled by. Sophisticated. Alive.
The program responded with a prompt.
Hello, Nurse Anjali. Shall we begin your trial?
Her laptop shut down. Power gone.
Moments later, a text message buzzed on her phone.
She felt her knees weaken.
It wasn’t just about pills. It wasn’t just about patients.
It was about control. Influence. Power.
And she had just walked into the heart of it.
Comments
Post a Comment