The stench of antiseptic couldn't mask the underlying scent of decay. For Liam, a final-year medical student at the prestigious Aethelgard Hospital, it was the smell of ambition. He was chosen for the exclusive internship under Chief of Surgery, Dr. Alistair Vance—a man whose name was synonymous with medical breakthroughs.
Liam’s ambition, however, was tempered by a nagging sense of ethics. It was why he noticed the discrepancies. Patient 734, a homeless man admitted for a minor infection, was scheduled for a "diagnostic lavage" that wasn't in his charts. Later, Liam saw the same man being wheeled back, pale and listless, a fresh, precise incision near his lumbar spine.
Curiosity, that treacherous cousin of ambition, took hold. That night, using a keycard he wasn't supposed to have, Liam descended into the sub-basements, places not on the official maps. Behind an unmarked door marked "Utilities," he found it.
It wasn't a storage room. It was a lab, cold and gleaming. And in the clear-walled bays were people. Patient 734 was there, his head shaved, a complex web of electrodes monitoring his vitals. His eyes were open, but vacant. On a screen beside him, neural activity flickered in unnatural, stimulated patterns.
Liam’s stomach lurched. He scanned the digital logs on a nearby terminal. "Project Chimera: Phase III. Testing neural-pathway optimization via direct cortical stimulation. Subject tolerance: low. Cognitive degradation: significant."
These weren't patients; they were test subjects. The forgotten, the unclaimed, the ones society wouldn't miss. Dr. Vance wasn't just healing people; he was rewriting them, using human guinea pigs to perfect techniques that would win him a Nobel Prize.
A calm voice cut through the hum of machinery. "I had a feeling you'd find your way down here, Liam."
Dr. Vance stood in the doorway, his hands clasped, a look of paternal disappointment on his face. "You see chaos," Vance said, gesturing to the comatose subjects. "I see order. Progress. Every great leap in medicine has a cost. Anesthesia, vaccines… they were all tested, often unethically. History only remembers the result."
Ethics versus ambition warred within Liam. This was monstrous. He had to call the police, expose this.
Vance seemed to read his mind. "And what will you have then? A scandal. Your promising career, over before it starts. Or…" He stepped closer, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "You could join us. Your name on the papers. A front-row seat to the future of medicine. All it costs is your silence."
Liam looked at Patient 734, a man stripped of his identity for a footnote in a medical journal. He thought of the fame, the prestige Vance offered. It was a heavy price, but the reward was immortality.
He looked back at Vance, his heart a drum of conflict. He gave a slow, single nod.
"Excellent," Vance smiled, handing him a tablet. "Let's begin. Subject 735 is prepped. It's a simple injection. Consider it your first lesson in weighing the greater good."
Liam took the tablet, his hand steady, his soul forfeit. The path to greatness, he saw now, was paved in shadows.
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