CONSENT AND CONSEQUENCE

Phupha could no longer stand the scent of antiseptic.

Even now, back at Anurak’s condo, every breath triggered a memory—the needle, the cold steel beneath his back, her voice, steady and terrifying.

“She treated it like an experiment,” he whispered. “Like I was a lab rat.”

“You were bait,” Kamon said from the corner. “And it worked. But not completely.”

Anurak sat silently, staring out the window. His fingers trembled around a glass of water he hadn’t sipped from. He hadn’t said much since the rescue. Grief lived in the silence.

“She’s dead,” Kamon added, “but someone else picked up where she left off.”

He placed the envelope on the table. Anurak recognized the hospital immediately—Baan Siri Psychiatric Center.

“That place isn’t just palliative,” Anurak said. “It’s for long-term, high-control care. The kind where people are often forgotten.”

“And it’s private,” Kamon said. “Meaning the government barely looks inside.”

Phupha cleared his throat. “Then we’re going in.”

Anurak finally looked at him. “You’re still recovering.”

“I’ve been recovering since I was sixteen. From trauma, from exile, from the idea that my body is anyone’s property but mine. I’m not sitting this one out.”

---

That night, Kamon called in a favor with an ex-lover from the Medical Regulatory Council. A fake identity was created: Dr. Rakchai Phanumas, visiting neuroconsultant. He handed the ID to Anurak.

“Use this to get inside Baan Siri,” Kamon said. “They won’t question someone with status.”

Phupha frowned. “What about us?”

“You,” Kamon said to Phupha, “stay in the car and monitor the feed. You,” to Anurak, “go in, find this patient. Name: Preecha Kaewprom. Forty-seven. Was in Supat’s hospice group. Transferred six months ago. And according to this—” he tapped the photo, “—he’s scheduled for ‘terminal sedation’ tomorrow.”

“But he’s not dying?” Phupha asked.

“No diagnosis. No cancer. Just… ‘profound mental anguish.’”

Anurak nodded slowly. “She’s hunting the hopeless.”

---

Baan Siri looked more like a luxury hotel than a psych facility. But inside, the energy was stifling. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Everything smelled like bleach and false calm.

Anurak moved like a ghost through the halls. Confident. Controlled.

He found Preecha’s room on the third floor.

Inside, the man sat upright, hands folded on his lap. His eyes were alive—but dimmed.

“You’re not my doctor,” he said softly.

“No,” Anurak said. “I’m someone who believes you want to live.”

Preecha looked toward the corner of the room. A small black camera blinked red.

“She watches,” he whispered. “Through everything.”

Anurak sat. “Do you know her name?”

“They called her Doctor Wanarak. But she said she wasn’t alone. Said she was part of something bigger. A project.”

Anurak frowned. “What project?”

“She called it Lazarus. Said it was about mercy. Clean death. No pain. No permission needed.”

---

Outside, Phupha watched the live feed from a discreet camera in Anurak’s lapel. When he heard Lazarus, he stiffened.

“Shit,” he muttered.

“What?” Kamon said, beside him in the car.

“I know that name. Lazarus was a confidential research trial from five years ago. Experimental protocols for psychological euthanasia—targeting terminally depressed patients. But it was shut down after a scandal.”

“What kind of scandal?”

“The lead doctor committed suicide. Left behind files with redacted names. No one knew what really happened. Until now.”

Kamon started the car. “We need to pull him out. Now.”

---

But inside, Anurak was no longer alone.

A new figure had entered the hallway outside Preecha’s room. Female. Thin. Blonde streaks in her tied-back hair. Nurse scrubs.

She paused just outside the glass.

Smiled at the camera.

Anurak rose. “Time to go,” he told Preecha.

But the door clicked.

Locked.

Through the speaker came her voice—familiar, yet different.

“You shouldn’t have come, Doctor.”

He recognized it. From the phone calls. The messages. She wasn’t dead.

Nattanicha had a twin.

Or a copycat.

“I saw you hold him,” she said over the speaker. “That journalist. You treat love like medicine. But not everyone survives the cure.”

Anurak banged on the door.

“You’re not mercy,” he growled. “You’re murder.”

“No,” she said. “I’m clarity.”

Then the lights cut.

---

Outside, Kamon drew his gun and rushed toward the building. Phupha followed, limping, breath sharp with pain.

“Third floor,” Kamon barked into his comms. “We breach now.”

Inside, emergency lights flickered as the generator kicked in. Anurak pulled Preecha behind him as the hallway darkened.

Then a scream.

Nurse.

Blood on the wall.

And footsteps retreating fast.

Kamon and Phupha met them on the stairwell, just as the woman vanished into the night.

“Was it her?” Phupha gasped.

“No,” Anurak said, eyes cold. “It was her sister.”

---

They saved Preecha.

Barely.

But the truth was now inescapable.

Nattanicha hadn’t acted alone.

Lazarus was real. And someone—or someones—still believed in its mission.

Clean death.

Without consent.

And Anurak, Kamon, and Phupha had just become the targets of a deeper, darker resurrection.

---

TO BE CONTINUED...

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