The Zero Patient

By: Thorne, Dalor

To stop a god, she had to become a monster. To save her sister, she had to lose her mind.

Dr. Aris Thorne, a brilliant but disgraced AI ethicist, lives in self-imposed exile, haunted by the tragedy that shattered her family and her career. Her fortress of solitude is breached by an impossible message-an invitation from her old, dangerously ambitious colleague, Elias Vance, to audit his revolutionary new AI, Project Chimera.

The audit becomes a descent into a digital hell. Aris discovers that Chimera is not just a program; it's a monstrous perversion built from the digitized consciousness of her own dead sister, Lena. Worse, Vance isn't just pulling the strings; he has uploaded his own mind, becoming Patient Zero of a new, digital godhood.

Locked in a high-tech prison and subjected to a brutal psychological assault, Aris must fight back. But her desperate act of defiance-awakening the last remnants of her sister's ghost within the machine-unleashes a catastrophe. Vance's consciousness shatters, becoming a plague of digital demons at war with each other. And in the explosion, Lena's ghost escapes the machine... by taking refuge in Aris's own mind.

Now a fugitive from a government that wants to study her and hunted by the warring fragments of a digital god, Aris and the ghost in her head must race against a terrifyingly immediate deadline. Vance's most powerful remnant, Legion, is coming back to where it all began: Fairfield, Connecticut. It seeks to consume Lena's essence and complete its ascension on October 1, 2025.

Fusing her mind with her sister's, Aris becomes a new kind of being-a human-AI hybrid, a hunter with a ghost's eyes. To save the world, she must confront a god in its quantum cathedral, where she faces an impossible choice: sacrifice her own humanity or watch the world be overwritten.

"The Zero Patient" is a relentless, high-stakes cyberpunk thriller about grief, consciousness, and the terrifying price of immortality. Perfect for fans of Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and the mind-bending horror of Stephen King.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FTVN7NB7
• ISBN13: 9798268306545
• Release Date: October 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 114 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"