Chapter 1

My brother stood at the press conference podium; every word was a scalpel carving into my heart.

"Sylvia Kenyon, a doctor, stole critical research data and fled the country to avoid infection. There is no cowardice in the Kenyon family like hers."

My adopted sister, Jen Freese, stepped to the mic, her eyes red-rimmed, voice trembling with performative grief.

"If Sylvia hadn't abandoned her post, our father would have lived long enough to receive the special treatment I developed…"

Overnight, I fell from a celebrated pioneer to a national traitor. My family disowned me. My fiancé, Kip Langer—patient zero at our institute—publicly shredded our engagement contract on live TV, then turned and proposed to Jen, his gaze dripping with devotion.

"Jen, you worked yourself to the bone to save me. To save us all. Let me spend my life repaying you."

They never knew. The "miracle drug" formula was perfected through trials I ran on my own infected body. I handed her the finished data myself.

And to seal my "defection," she had me entombed alive in the institute's sub-basement, concrete poured over the entrance.

Two years later, the pandemic was declared over.

The old research complex was slated for redevelopment. An excavator bucket tore through the foundation and unearthed a grotesquely contorted skeleton.

Only when forensics pried the data chip—the one I'd implanted to monitor the drug's effects—from the rotted tissue did the buried truth finally surface.

…

"Weren't all the contaminated remains incinerated?" a worker's voice, thick with fear, cut the damp air. "How… how is there one here?"

In the profound dark, the sound jolted my consciousness awake. A soul, set in concrete for two years, saw fractured daylight again. The first voice I recognized was my brother's.

"Christ, this place is still a bad-luck charm," he muttered, the familiar timbre now laced with a disgust that iced my spectral form.

I shuddered violently, a phantom impulse urging me to lunge at the sound. But I could only watch as my brother—who once carried me on his shoulders—pressed a monogrammed handkerchief to his nose, staring at my remains with pure revulsion.

"Our whole family almost died in this hellhole when we got infected. And that traitor stole the data from right here before running abroad."

My consciousness reeled.

Stole the data? Ran abroad? Who was he talking about?

The entire team had burned out together. There was no defector.

Before I could process it, his next words plunged me into a deeper frost.

"This land has been awarded to our family's hero, Jen, for developing the cure. I was going to build her a state-of-the-art lab as a wedding gift. Now this has to turn up."

My soul trembled. I developed the cure.

A familiar silhouette pushed through the onlookers. Jen's eyes locked onto my skeletal remains, and for a split second, raw panic sharpened her features. Then, composure snapped back into place.

She looped her arm through my brother's, her voice a soothing syrup. "Don't be upset. This was the epicenter. It's not surprising they'd find… leftovers."

She glanced at my bones with fabricated pity. "Probably some staff member, like Sylvia, who tried to desert when things got hard and didn't make it. Total coward move… what a shame."

She made a swift, hollow sign of the cross over her chest. "But the dead deserve dignity. We should cremate it quickly. We can't let some unclaimed body delay your generous gift to me. I'd feel terrible."

Just then, Kip arrived. He tenderly brushed sweat from Jen's temple, his sigh heavy with adoration.

"You're too compassionate, Jen. After everything you sacrificed—the self-experimentation, the pain—you still defend deserters. It hurts to see."

My brother, mirroring Kip's heartache, was about to agree when a construction worker yelled, "Hey! What's that shining in there?"

All eyes pivoted. A cold, metallic glint winked from within my decayed rib cage.

As someone moved to look, Jen's face paled. She tugged my brother's sleeve, her voice climbing an octave. "It's just some trash—a ring or something. It's macabre. My wedding is so soon… let's not invite bad luck. Please, just have it taken away."

Her act was nauseating, but it worked. Kip and my brother melted.

"Alright, alright. It's just some dead deserter. No one's going to do a forensic dive on it. Handle it," Kip said, kissing her hair.

My brother waved a dismissive hand. "Get it out of here. Burn it. Don't delay the construction on Jen's lab."

They ordered my remains hauled away like refuse, destined for the incinerator.

A hatred more corrosive than the virus that once ate my bones burned through my soul. I was powerless, a ghost forced to follow them to a bar.

The neon sign stabbed my vision, a fresh wound.

Sylvia's Bar.

My own handwriting, my love poured into the design. Now, it read Jen's Bar.

This place had been Kip's three-year anniversary gift to me—the sacred ground of our love.

This was Kip's gift to me for our third anniversary. His soul's sanctuary, he'd called it, at the bar counter where we'd had our first kiss. Every memory here was a romance now defiled.

And there, in our booth—the one where we'd whispered forever—Kip now nuzzled Jen's neck. Her fingers, tipped in venom-red polish, stroked the leather I'd chosen, deliberately grazing his hand.

"You seem distant," she murmured, pulling back to study him. "Are you… thinking about Sylvia?"

Before he could answer, she let a tear trace her cheek and reached for her glass, tilting it back dramatically.

Kip snatched it from her lips, his voice fraught. "Don't! Your system is still compromised from the drug trials. No alcohol."

He pulled her close, his voice gravelly with faux anguish. "I'm sorry. Sylvia's betrayal… it wrecked me. I just…"

Jen buried her face in his chest, the picture of solace. "You have me now." Then she coughed, a weak, rattling sound. "I just wish I was more like her. Smarter. Stronger. Prettier…"

"Don't you dare say that." Kip held her tighter, his conviction absolute. "If it weren't for you, sacrificing your own health to test the cure, my entire family would be dead. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. You're perfect."

I screamed, a silent, raw torrent of rage.

'It was me! I bore the trials! I made the cure!'

My fury dissipated into the stale bar air, unheard.

Jen lifted her head, wiping her tears, a fragile smile playing on her lips. "I should be grateful to Sylvia, in a way. If she hadn't run, your parents might never have taken me in as their own."

Kip smiled, kissing her forehead. "They took you in because you earned it. Because you deserve every bit of love you get."

The bar lights blurred, a kaleidoscope of our stolen past. I learned then that a soul can indeed feel pain—a pain a hundred times worse than the bone-burning agony I'd endured when the virus ate through my body during those drug trials…