Chapter 7 - Smoke and Scalpels
The heavy metal door of the loading dock hung off its hinges, a jagged tear in the reinforced steel showing where a hydraulic cutter had made short work of our security locks.
We slipped inside into total darkness. The emergency backup generator must have been disabled; only the pale, sickly amber glow of the exit signs illuminated the long, narrow corridor leading to the recovery ward.
"Lucia," a frantic whisper hissed from the doorway of the supply closet.
I spun around, my heart in my throat, but it was just Maya. She was crouched behind an industrial linen cart, her hands stained with grease and blood, clutching a heavy fire extinguisher like a bat. Her eyes were wide with terror, but her focus was intact.
"Maya! Are you alright?" I dropped to my knees beside her, checking her arms and face for injuries.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she gasped, her chest heaving. "They came through the roof hatch—the old ventilation shaft we thought was welded shut. Two of them. They bypassed the ground-floor guards entirely."
Adrian knelt beside us, keeping his weapon raised toward the intersection of the hallway. "Where are they now?"
"Room four," Maya whispered, pointing a trembling finger down the dim corridor. "Nathan’s room. They didn't come to shoot up the place, Adrian. They had a medical kit. They were trying to administer an air embolism through his IV line when I hit the emergency circuit breaker and locked the pneumatic door from the nurse's station."
A cold, dead silence settled over the hallway.
An air embolism. A silent, untraceable murder that would look like a sudden post-surgical cardiac arrest on the autopsy table. Clean, professional, and entirely devastating.
"They're still in there?" Adrian asked, his voice dangerously low.
"The door is locked from the outside," Maya nodded rapidly. "Manual override requires a biometric code or a physical keycard from the main desk. They're trapped inside, but... but they have hostages."
I froze. "Hostages? Who?"
Before Maya could answer, the heavy steel door of room four groaned, a loud mechanical click echoing down the corridor as the emergency override mechanism began to grind.
Someone inside was using a high-voltage battery pack to fry the electronic lock from the other side.
Adrian stood up slowly, stepping into the middle of the hallway with his suppressor raised, his posture completely rigid.
"Get behind me," he muttered, not looking back.
May you like
The heavy steel door blew outward with a deafening arc of blue sparks, crashing violently against the hallway wall as the smoke cleared to reveal a figure standing in the doorway of room four.
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