Patient Zero

By Shawn SychoSide

"Corners carry weight."

Blackridge Sanitarium runs on rules: bells, trays, straps, songs. On the ledger he is Six-One-Six. In the beds he's the whisper and the warning-Patient Zero-the one the treatments won't take.

When the building's hum slips off-beat, Zero starts following the seams: wrong doors, warm vents, corridors that lead where floor plans say nothing is. The deeper he goes, the more Blackridge behaves like something alive-walls that listen, copper that sings, a Choir that doesn't inhale until it's told. Watching from the Tower is Dr. Syde, a man who prefers order to truth and stories to names.

To escape, Zero has to turn a rumor into a weapon and make the building give up its secrets. But legends cut both ways-and the one about Patient Zero was made to keep people inside.

Patient Zero is a full-length debut novel of psychological dread and creeping body horror-about routines that won't break, rooms without corners, and the cost of refusing to be finished.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 173899693X
• ISBN13: 9781738996933
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Copper Vein Press
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"