Alyssa woke up to the harsh glare of fluorescent hospital lights above her. She groaned softly. Smith leaned down. «You’re awake. Do you remember your name?» «Alyssa. Alyssa Wilson.» «Good. How are you feeling?» «My head hurts, and my nose… it feels like something’s boiling inside.» She turned her head to see Martha standing behind the doctor, her face ice-cold. Alyssa bit her lip and looked at Smith. «Can I talk to the doctor alone?»
«No,» Martha snapped. «If she’s got something to say, I’m staying right here to hear it.» «I want to talk about what’s in my nose.» Smith signaled to the nurse. «Please escort Ms. Martha outside for a moment.» «I object!» Martha shouted. «I’m her mother!» «You’re her guardian, not a physician. This is a medical protocol,» Smith said firmly.
Once they were alone, Alyssa slowly sat up, trembling. «Doctor, do you believe me? Just tell me the truth. There’s something living inside my nose. It moves. I saw it in the mirror. I even recorded it once, but my mom smashed my phone.» Smith sat down beside her, his face serious. «You said you saw it?» «Once it looked like roots twitching gently. Another time… I saw an eye. A human eye staring straight at me.» He paused. A part of him wanted to dismiss it, but Alyssa’s eyes weren’t delusional. They were full of desperate pleading.
Hours later, Smith made his decision to perform a nasal endoscopy without notifying Martha in advance. He scheduled Alyssa for a private exam at the clinic he worked with. That afternoon, in the endoscopy room, Smith prepared the equipment while Nurse Emily stood by. Alyssa sat in the chair, her heart pounding. «Will it hurt?» she asked. «It’ll be a little uncomfortable. But you’re a brave girl.»
The camera began to descend into her left nasal passage. The screen displayed normal structures at first—swollen membranes, a few old scratches. Then the image began to glitch. «Emily, check the signal.» «The equipment’s fine, doctor. It’s not the machine.» All three stared at the screen. Something shadowy began to appear in the moist darkness of her nasal cavity. Suddenly, a human eye snapped open, staring directly into the camera.
Alyssa screamed. «There! That’s it! I told you!» The eye blinked once, then disappeared behind a thin, membrane-like tissue. Smith recoiled slightly, his hands trembling. Cold sweat gathered on his forehead. «My God, what the hell?» Emily whispered. «That’s not human tissue.» Alyssa gasped, holding her face, her whole body shaking. «I’m not crazy, you saw it, didn’t you?» Smith sat beside her and nodded slowly. «You’re not crazy. But this thing… this goes far beyond conventional medicine. This isn’t a disease. This is a living organism.»
That evening, when Alyssa returned home, Martha was waiting in the kitchen with a belt in her hand. «Where were you? Sneaking around like a damn rat.» «I… went to see the doctor.» «Without my permission? Who said you could go?» «Dr. Smith… he knows now. He saw it.» Martha froze. Her expression changed instantly from rage to panic. «He… saw what?» «The eye… in my nose.»
Martha stepped forward, grabbing Alyssa’s shoulders hard. «You listen to me, you little bitch. If you ever open your mouth again, I’ll make you disappear just like your father. Got it?» Alyssa looked straight at her, tears streaming down her face. «What did you do to my father?» «None of your damn business.»
That night, Smith sat alone in his office. He played back the recorded endoscopy footage over and over again. The eye was not a hallucination. He pulled Alyssa’s hospital records from the system and noticed signs of file tampering. «Strange… the endoscopy from when she was six is almost completely deleted.» He dug through the list of past attending physicians. One name stood out: Dr. Johnson.
Smith murmured, «Johnson… why does that sound familiar?» He found an old file and discovered Johnson had once been under internal investigation for suspected involvement in unauthorized neurological experiments on children. But even more shocking, in the research center staff roster that year, another name appeared: Martha Parker, research assistant. Smith froze. He understood now. Alyssa wasn’t just a typical patient. She might be the surviving victim of a buried experiment. He stood up and pulled out his phone. «Alyssa, if you have anything—videos, even fragments of that organism—I need it. We have to go public.»
The next morning, Chicago was draped in gray. In a small room inside Dr. Smith’s private clinic, Alyssa sat curled up on a chair, wrapped in a gray hoodie. Under the flickering fluorescent lights, her eyes were sunken, and her nose was covered with gauze pads. Smith was checking the endoscopy equipment one last time.
He spoke gently. «This time, we’ll record the entire procedure. If it’s like what we saw last night, this will be the evidence.» «But if Martha finds out…» Alyssa whispered, her voice trembling. «I’ll protect you. You just have to trust me.» Nurse Emily nodded and added softly, «Don’t worry, Alyssa. You’re not alone anymore.»
The endoscopy began. This time, the scope was inserted deeper into her left nasal cavity. The screen displayed crystal-clear images, down to the tiniest capillaries. Smith frowned. A dark mass came into view. It didn’t resemble coral or necrotic tissue. It looked like an independent living organism, with its own cellular structure, glistening with bioluminescence.
Suddenly, an eye snapped open in the center of the dark mass, staring directly into the lens. Emily gasped. «Oh my god, it really has an eye.» Smith jumped to his feet, his hands trembling. The eye blinked once—clear, deliberate—as if it were looking back at them. Alyssa trembled in her seat. «It… it knows you’re watching. I can feel it.» Smith immediately turned off the equipment. «That’s enough. We got the footage.»
He saved the video, encrypted it, and copied it to three separate devices: an external hard drive, a USB stick, and an encrypted cloud server. Emily whispered, «Doctor, this isn’t a typical parasite. It’s… neurologically integrated.» Smith nodded gravely. «It’s living within her olfactory nerve. And… it’s conscious.» Alyssa clutched her head. «I can’t sleep. It talks to me, not with words, but with feelings. It forces me to keep it alive.»
After arranging for Alyssa to temporarily stay at Ms. Teresa’s house, Smith called an old friend, Dr. Paul Davis, an expert in extreme neurobiology who had once worked with the National Research Institute. «Paul, I need to ask you something. Do you remember Johnson’s project back in 2016?» «You mean the Neural Circuit Project?» «Yes. The one involving parasites capable of interfacing with human neural systems.»
Paul went silent for a moment. «That project was shut down. All findings sealed. Johnson had his license revoked for implanting unapproved tissue in child test subjects. Why are you bringing this up?» «Because I’m looking at what might be the only surviving result of that project. A 12-year-old girl. I have video. There’s an eye inside her nasal tissue.» Paul fell completely silent.
Meanwhile, Martha was still unaware the video had been saved. She stormed into Alyssa’s room, tearing through everything, looking for phones, recorders, any trace of evidence. «You think you’re smarter than me?» she screamed into the empty air. «You think you’re gonna get away?» While rummaging under the pillow, Martha found a neatly folded paper: an old blood test result from when Alyssa was six. The data was blurry, but the hospital’s national seal was still visible. Martha ripped it apart and burned it in an ashtray. «No one can know. No one.»
That evening, Smith called Alyssa. «I’ve contacted someone who can help. But I need more data. I want to get a CT scan of your head.» «I’m not sure Martha will let that happen.» «We don’t need her permission anymore.» Smith sent an emergency request to a private diagnostic imaging center he worked with. Under the category of a medical emergency, he brought Alyssa in for a brain scan.
When the images appeared on the screen, Emily’s face turned pale. «Doctor, her olfactory nerve is completely encased in an abnormal structure.» «Not just encased,» Smith muttered. «It’s fused. And it seems to have integrated part of her central nervous system.» Alyssa, sitting nearby, clutched her head. «I hear voices in my head. Not words, more like… commands.»
At that moment, Paul Davis arrived at Smith’s clinic. After watching the video, he spoke immediately. «That’s it. Johnson described it once: a microscopic organism that integrates with neural tissue and sensory receptors. It can learn. It can grow. And it can control the host.» «Is there any way to remove it?» Paul sighed. «They tried surgical removal once. Three children died within 10 minutes.» «What about Alyssa? She survived for six years.» «Maybe the implant she received was incomplete. It needed time.» Smith stared at Paul, resolute. «Whatever it takes, I’m going to save that girl.»
That night, in the small guest room where Ms. Teresa was housing Alyssa, Smith visited her. «Do you want to be free of it, Alyssa?» «More than anything. I don’t want to live as a cage for that thing anymore.» Smith nodded. «Then trust me. We need more proof. We have to extract a tissue sample.» «A sample? You mean… cut it out?» «Just a tiny part. It won’t damage your nerves. Can you handle it?» Alyssa took a deep breath. «I can handle it. As long as… it loses control over me.»
The next morning at the clinic, Smith performed a nasal endoscopic biopsy under local anesthesia. Alyssa lay still, her teeth clenching a towel. The camera went in as before. A micro-scalpel was activated. As soon as it touched the organism’s tissue, the screen glitched violently, and Alyssa jolted. «Stop!» Emily yelled. «Her heart rate is spiking!» Smith withdrew the scalpel, but a red flash pulsed across the screen. It wasn’t from the camera light; it was a bioluminescent reaction from the organism. The eye opened again. This time, it didn’t blink. It stared back—deep, cold, unwavering.
After the failed biopsy, Smith sat catching his breath, wiping sweat from his brow. «It knows. It knows we’re trying to kill it.» Alyssa opened her eyes, tears running down her face. «And it won’t let us.» Smith sent the remaining tissue sample to the lab. The preliminary results made his skin crawl. The cells weren’t human, nor were they purely parasitic. The DNA sequence contained synthetic biological code. He whispered, «This isn’t just a medical experiment. It’s a form of neurobiological weaponry.»
His office was bathed in the cold glow of blue-white light. On the computer screen, streams of genetic data scrolled by. The tissue taken from Alyssa didn’t match any known biological structure. «Not parasitic. Not a mutation. This thing was engineered,» Smith murmured. Beside him, Dr. Paul Davis frowned. «I’ve never seen an organism integrate directly into the nervous system without being rejected by the immune system. It’s like… it was designed to befriend the body.» «Or control it,» Smith replied, his eyes locked on the screen. Paul slowly nodded. «You think Martha knows?» «Knows?» Smith’s jaw tightened. «She’s not just aware—she was part of it.»
That night, Smith went to the city’s medical record archive. With the help of an old colleague, Isabel Morgan, a records officer, he got temporary access clearance. «Just one night, Michael. If they find out I helped you…» «Thank you, Isabel. I’ll take full responsibility.» Smith combed through treatment records from 2017, when Alyssa was six. The attending physician was listed as Dr. Richard Johnson. The medical assistant: Martha Parker. Beneath it, a red annotation: «Experiment Terminated. Patient Sample Failed.»
Smith trembled. «Failed? Then why is Alyssa still alive?» Isabel stepped closer and pointed to an internal transfer form. «After the project was dissolved, Johnson retired, and Martha vanished from the staff list. She changed her name in the system and registered as Alyssa’s legal guardian just three months after her father’s accident.» Smith turned sharply. «That ‘accident’ was murder to silence him.»
The next morning, Smith went to the school where Alyssa’s father had worked as a physics teacher. He met with the former principal, Mr. Matthew Rogers—a wiry man in his 60s, his face serious and tight. «Alyssa’s father, Alan Wilson, was a good man,» Rogers said. «Dedicated, honest, always asking questions.» «Did he ever investigate anything related to medical issues?» Rogers nodded slowly. «One day, he came here with a stack of photocopied documents. He said someone had injected something strange into his daughter without consent. The hospital denied it, but he started gathering evidence. Two weeks later, he died from a so-called slip-and-fall accident in the elevator.»
Smith clenched his fist. «That wasn’t an accident.» «I know. But no one dared investigate. Just a few days later, a woman named Martha suddenly declared herself the legal stepmother and was granted full custody of Alyssa.»
In the small apartment where Ms. Teresa was temporarily sheltering her, Alyssa sat blankly by the window. Her eyes were dry; there were no more tears left to cry. Teresa poured tea and sat beside her. «Did you sleep last night, sweetheart?» «No. It wouldn’t let me. It kept whispering inside my head… strange thoughts.» «What kind of thoughts?» «It wants to stay. It hates the light. It hates scalpels. It enjoys my pain.» Teresa gently squeezed her hand. «You’re not some creature. You’re a human being. And Dr. Smith is going to save you.» Alyssa pressed her lips together. «But Martha… she knows something. I’m sure she’s more than just a stepmother.»