All Chapters of PATIENT ZERO -The lone survivor: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The facility did not exist. Not on any map, not on any tax registry, and certainly not in the minds of the people living in the surrounding Njiro suburbs.To the outside world, the sprawling compound was the "Meru Highland Coffee Processing Plant." It smelled of roasted Arabica beans, a rich, earthy aroma that masked the chemical scent of ozone and sterilized air pumped from the subterranean levels. High walls topped with electrified razor wire and cameras with motion-tracking sensors ensured that no one looked too closely at what was happening behind the gates.Three floors underground, the air was a constant, bone-chilling eighteen degrees.Professor Manji stood before a wall of high-definition monitors, his hands clasped behind his back. He was a small man, impeccably dressed in a bespoke grey suit that cost more than most Tanzanians earned in a decade. His face was sharp, bird-like, dominated by rimless spectacles that reflected the blue glow of the screens.Behind him, seated aro

Time lost its meaning in the white room.There were no windows to show the sun rising or setting over Mount Meru. There were no clocks on the padded walls. There was only the hum of the air cycler and the rhythmic blinking of the red light on the security camera above the mirror.I sat in the metal chair, my limbs heavy, my head swimming with a dizziness that felt like intoxication.It wasn't fear anymore. It was hunger.A ravenous, clawing emptiness had opened up in the center of my being. It felt as if a black hole had formed in my stomach and was slowly sucking my organs into it. My hands shook uncontrollably, not from nerves, but from a sudden, violent hypoglycemia.The Auditor had said it: Do you know how much energy it takes to grow a human bone?I looked down at my left hand—the hand he had impaled with the combat knife less than an hour ago. The skin was smooth, unblemished, perfect. But looking at it made me feel sick. My body had stolen the energy to fix that wound from some

The descent was a nightmare of friction and filth.The waste chute was a steep, rusted throat swallowing us whole. We slid uncontrollably in the pitch black, tumbling over each other, banging against the corroded metal sides. The air rushed past my ears, filled with the stench of chemical runoff and raw sewage."Head down!" I screamed, grabbing Eliana’s collar to keep her from smashing her skull against a rivet.We hit the bottom with a wet, bone-jarring impact.I plunged into a pool of freezing, viscous liquid. It tasted of copper, sulfur, and rot. I thrashed blindly, my feet finding purchase on the slick concrete floor. I stood up, spitting the foul water from my mouth, wiping slime from my burning eyes.We were in a massive, cylindrical tunnel—part of the old colonial storm drain system beneath Njiro. The only light came from the faint, sickly green glow of bio-luminescent moss clinging to the damp walls and the distant, rhythmic strobe of a red emergency light further down the pip

Stepping off the matte-black speedboat and onto the weathered wooden dock of the Sanctuary felt less like entering a hiding spot and more like stepping onto the surface of an alien planet. Behind us, the waterfall roared—a relentless, thundering curtain of white noise that separated us from the world of drones, assassins, and government black sites. Ahead of us lay a civilization that defied every law of civil engineering I had ever learned in physics class. The cavern was colossal. It was a hollowed-out volcanic chamber beneath the roots of Mount Meru, vast enough to fit a football stadium, yet it didn't feel oppressive or dark. The ceiling, hundreds of feet above, was studded with thousands of the violet crystals Malik had described—fragments of the Starfall that had embedded themselves in the rock. They pulsed with a soft, rhythmic bioluminescence, breathing light into the cavern. It cast the entire city in a permanent, ethereal twilight, bright enough to read by but gentle on th