Chapter 2 - THE DOCTOR WHO WASN’T ON THE RECORD
Dr. Sofia Reyes arrived at the mansion shortly before midnight. She was
a neurosurgeon in her early forties, with a direct manner and a habit of
asking questions before she offered opinions. Dante had met her once,
years earlier, when she consulted on a security contractor’s spinal
injury. She had never treated him.
She refused to examine him in the library.
“I need a proper room, imaging equipment, and a full medical history,”
she said. “If there’s an implanted object near your cervical spine,
touching it repeatedly could be dangerous.”
Dante disliked being told what he could not do. He disliked even more
the fact that she sounded certain.
In the medical suite, Reyes examined the raised area without pressing
hard. She used a handheld ultrasound first, then requested a scan at a
private imaging center that had no connection to the Moretti family.
Daniel arranged transport through the service entrance.
Anna sat with Sophie in the nursery while the house shifted into
emergency mode. The little girl colored quietly for almost twenty
minutes before she looked up.
“Is the bug sick?”
Anna put down the book she had been pretending to read. “We don’t know,
sweetheart.”
“Will the man be okay?”
“I hope so.”
Sophie drew a small oval with six short lines around it. “It was shiny.
Like the back of a beetle.”
Anna felt a chill. “Did it move?”
“Not like a real bug. It blinked.”
At the imaging center, Reyes studied the first scan in silence. Dante
watched her face.
“Tell me.”
“There is a foreign object beneath the skin,” she said. “It is not
ordinary shrapnel.”
“Can you remove it?”
“I need a higher-resolution scan. From what I can see, it has a small
housing and two narrow extensions. It appears to be attached near the
muscles and sensory nerves at the base of your skull. I cannot tell you
what it does yet.”
“Could it cause headaches?”
“It could irritate nearby tissue. Depending on what it is, it might also
interfere with nerve signals. Your memory problems need a broader
evaluation. I won’t pretend one object explains everything.”
Dante appreciated that she did not promise miracles.
Reyes enlarged the image. A thin wire-like line extended from the
housing toward the right side of his neck. It did not look like a
fragment from an explosion.
“Was this documented in your surgical records?”
“According to my mother, a specialist inserted it while I was
unconscious.”
“Then there should be an operative report, device model, serial number,
and consent record.”
“There isn’t one.”
Reyes looked at him. “That is a serious problem.”
Daniel entered with a tablet. “We found the hospital file. The official
report lists removal of metal fragments and repair of a shoulder wound.
No implant. No specialist. No device.”
“Who signed the discharge summary?” Reyes asked.
“Dr. Paul Voss.”
She shook her head. “He retired before the bombing.”
Dante looked up. “What?”
“The hospital’s public records say Dr. Voss left clinical practice two
years before your accident. Someone used his credentials.”
A silence settled over the room.
Back at the mansion, Lucia was waiting. She had brought a small envelope
from a locked drawer in her bedroom. Inside was a copy of a consent
form, yellowed at the edges.
“This is what Victor gave me to sign,” she said. “He told me it
authorized an emergency monitor.”
Reyes read it. The form named no device, no surgeon, and no hospital
department. It authorized “temporary neurological observation equipment”
but contained no description of implantation.
“This is not informed consent,” Reyes said.
Lucia sat down heavily. “I asked him what it meant. He said it was
standard.”
Dante’s jaw tightened. “Where is Victor?”
“He called earlier,” Daniel answered. “He was told you were resting. He
asked whether the headaches had returned.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I said nothing.”
Dante’s phone rang. Victor Hale’s name appeared on the screen.
Dante answered and put it on speaker.
“Dante, I heard you had another episode,” Victor said. His voice carried
the familiar warmth of a man who had advised the family for twenty
years. “You should not be exhausting yourself.”
“I’ve had a scan.”
A pause. Brief, but unmistakable.
“Why?”
“Because a five-year-old noticed something in my neck.”
Victor gave a low chuckle. “Children imagine things.”
“Do they imagine implants?”
The silence lasted longer this time.
“Dante, listen to me. The fragment is old scar tissue. You have been
told this.”
“By you.”
“I arranged your care when you couldn’t make decisions for yourself.”
“Then you’ll have no trouble giving me the name of the surgeon.”
Victor sighed. “We can discuss this tomorrow.”
“No. We can discuss it now.”
“I don’t have the records in front of me.”
“Then find them.”
Victor’s voice cooled. “Be careful about letting fear turn a minor
medical issue into a family crisis.”
Dante ended the call.
Reyes looked at him. “He knew what you were going to ask.”
Lucia pressed both hands together.
From the doorway came a small voice. “The bug blinked again.”
Sophie stood beside Anna, holding her drawing. She had been told to stay
in the nursery, but she had followed the adults when she heard Dante’s
name.
Reyes crouched to her height. “Can you show me where you saw it blink?”
Sophie pointed to the drawing. “Here. It had a little red light. Just
one. Then it went away.”
The doctor looked at the scan again.
A tiny bright point appeared on the edge of the device housing.
It was not a reflection.
Something inside Dante’s neck was still powered.
Reyes ordered a second scan from a different angle and asked Dante to describe the headaches in detail. He told her they began as pressure behind his right eye, then spread toward the base of his skull. Sometimes he lost the thread of a conversation. Sometimes a familiar face seemed to belong to someone he had never met. He had blamed exhaustion, but the episodes were too regular to ignore.
“Do you ever lose consciousness?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you experience unusual sensations before the pain?”
“A buzzing. Occasionally a metallic taste. And sometimes I hear a click.”
“Do you hear it from outside your body?”
Dante considered the question. “I can't tell.”
Reyes wrote it down without making a judgment. “We need to separate the effects of the injury, the medication, and the implant. It may be more than one thing.”
Patel explained that a device could contain a power source, a transmitter, or a sensor, but the scan could not reveal its full function. He wanted to compare the dimensions with research prototypes and contact a specialist in implant forensics. Dante agreed, provided the specialist had no connection to Victor or the old clinic.
Daniel spent the afternoon contacting former hospital employees. Most remembered nothing. One nurse, now retired in Arizona, recalled a private team arriving after visiting hours. She remembered that the lead surgeon wore no hospital badge and that Victor personally escorted him through a restricted corridor.
The nurse also remembered an unusual instruction: no family photographs were to be taken during the procedure.
Lucia listened to the call from the study. “I was told it was because Dante was too fragile.”
“Did you see the surgeon's face?” Daniel asked through the speaker.
“No. Victor said I had to wait downstairs.”
The nurse paused. “There was another thing. The next morning, a technician came to the ward and asked whether the patient had experienced a brief signal interruption. I didn't understand what he meant. The chart was removed before my shift ended.”
Dante closed his eyes. A memory flickered: the sound of a monitor, a hand holding his wrist, and someone saying, “The receiver is responding.”
He opened his eyes.
“What receiver?”
The nurse could not answer. She had never heard the phrase again.
After the call, Reyes explained that the memory might be a genuine recollection, but it needed corroboration. Trauma could make fragments vivid while leaving their sequence uncertain. Dante accepted the caution. He had spent years being told what he remembered. He was not going to replace one certainty with another.
That evening, he asked Anna whether Sophie had always noticed small details.
“Since she could talk,” Anna said. “She notices when a clock stops, when a light flickers, when someone changes a familiar routine. She once told me the refrigerator was making a different sound before it broke.”
Dante glanced at the drawing on his desk. “She may have saved me from something serious.”
“She only said what she saw.”
“Sometimes that's enough.”
Anna looked at him for a long moment. “You should know she is not used to people listening to her. At school, they tell her she has too much imagination.”
Dante looked back at the scan. “Then the adults should learn to listen better.”
Before leaving, Anna asked whether she could take Sophie home for the night. Dante agreed and arranged a driver only after Anna accepted. He did not want the child to feel that the mansion had become a place she could not leave.
When the door closed, Reyes placed the preliminary report on the table. The device was likely custom-built and contained a component capable of receiving external signals. Its purpose remained unknown.
“Whatever this is,” she said, “it was not documented as part of your treatment.”
May you like
Dante signed the request for independent forensic analysis.
“Then we find out who put it there.”
