Episode - 1 Ghost in a lab coat

It was 3:14 a.m. in the heart of Delhi’s Biotech Research Center. While the city slept under a sky drowned in smog and silence, the west wing of the lab buzzed faintly with low-frequency humming—the sound of genius at work.

Aira Verma didn’t notice the time. Or the emptiness of the corridors. Or the growl in her stomach that hadn’t been fed in twenty-one hours.

Her hands moved with mechanical precision under the cold white lights, tightening the final screw on a tiny, spider-like device the size of a coin. The X7-Nanorover, as she’d labeled it, blinked to life in her palm, its black titanium legs shifting with eerie lifelike grace.

She allowed herself a rare smile.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, brushing a strand of black hair from her face with her sleeve, smudged with oil and dried blood from an earlier test on synthetic flesh.

The lab was cluttered—papers stacked like towers, half-empty mugs of tea scattered like landmines, and a hologram board covered in coded equations, which only she could understand. She hadn’t been home in three days. Hadn’t replied to a single message from her parents. Again.

Her tablet vibrated.

> [MOM]: Aira. Please eat. Please come home. Even once a week. Just once.

She sighed and dismissed the message.

Her world wasn't made for ordinary things like “home” or “food” or “friends.” She was twenty, with two doctorates and her name whispered in medical communities like a myth. Dr. Aira Verma — the ghost genius who revolutionized micro-invasive surgery before she was old enough to legally rent a car.

And yet, no one outside the research and hospital circle even knew what she looked like.

She liked it that way.

Meanwhile...

In a penthouse three miles away, Aceon Rael sliced a throwing knife through the air, watching it embed itself into the wall exactly where he’d imagined her face to be.

“Blind date?” he scoffed.

He was shirtless, a glass of whiskey dangling from tattooed fingers, his phone vibrating with notifications that he ignored. Thousands of fans adored him. Millions. The face of a god, the charm of a devil, and the secrets of something far, far worse.

He hadn’t slept in 48 hours. Too many enemies, too many problems. His most recent hit had left a trail that needed cleaning.

And now his mother was dragging him to another useless “marriage meeting.”

He grabbed the file his brother Damian had thrown at him earlier.

> Dr. Aira Verma, age 20. Researcher. Neurosurgeon. Reclusive. Family friends. Blah blah blah.

Aceon snorted and tossed it aside.

“Next,” he muttered, stepping onto his balcony.

But something tugged at him. The name... the face in the file... the photo was grainy, but—

“No way,” he whispered.

It was her.

The brat who once built a tiny flamethrower to light his hair on fire when he teased her in science camp.

The only girl who ever hit him in the face with a wrench and didn’t flinch.

He grinned slowly.

“Now this... might be fun.”

Back in the lab,

Aira had just finished uploading the AI interface when the doors to her lab burst open.

“Aira Verma!” her brother Dev’s voice thundered. “You’re coming with us. Now.”

She blinked. “Dev? What—”

“Change your shirt. Brush your hair. You have a dinner to attend.”

“I have surgery in the morning!”

“You have a life you're forgetting.”

Before she could protest, her mother and father entered with determined expressions. Her mom was holding... makeup?

Aira stood frozen, horrified.

“No.”

“Yes,” they all said in unison.

One hour later,

Aira sat in a high-end restaurant, still in black jeans and a clean lab coat—because she refused to wear anything else—scowling at a bouquet of roses on the table.

This was ridiculous. A blind date? She’d rather dissect a cadaver.

And then she heard it.

The velvet voice.

“Wow. You haven’t changed.”

She looked up—and froze.

The man standing before her was tall, too perfect, too symmetrical to be real. Tousled dark hair, lean muscles under a silk shirt, mischief glowing behind unnaturally striking grey eyes.

He slid into the seat across from her, legs stretched, posture lazy. Like he owned the place. Like he owned her time.

She frowned. “Do I know you?”

He grinned, that devilish curve of his lips unmistakable.

“You used to call me Rael the Rodent.”

Her mouth dropped slightly.

“No…”

He winked. “Hello again, Doctor Wrench.”

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