Chapter 5 - Code Blue
The hospital hallway became a blur of racing white coats, shouting nurses, and the deafening shriek of overhead paging alerts as I sprinted out of the elevator toward Room 412. My chest burned with a familiar, terrifying panic—the same adrenaline rush I used to feel when an incoming mortar shell whistled overhead—but this time, there was nowhere to hide and no tactical advantage to deploy.
“Clear the way!” a resident shouted, pushing the crash cart past me as they barreled through the double doors of the intensive care unit.
I reached the threshold just as the attending physician slammed his hands onto Violet’s chest, initiating chest compressions while a nurse forced air into her lungs through an ambu bag.
“Charge to two hundred! Clear!”
The electrical thump jolted Violet’s small body against the mattress.
“Still in ventricular fibrillation! Charge again to three hundred! Clear!”
“Daddy...”
The voice wasn't coming from the bed. It was a faint, broken whisper echoing inside my mind, combined with the agonizing memory of her fingers catching my sleeve just before she lost consciousness hours ago.
“She gave them the code.”
Harper hadn't just made a stupid mistake with an online boyfriend. Apex Defense Logistics had targeted my home, using a teenager’s naivety as a crowbar to crack open my front door and steal the one thing that could expose their multi-million-dollar government procurement fraud. They hadn't come for a random robbery; they had come to eliminate anyone who stood between them and that flash drive.
And if Violet didn't make it off this table, there would be nothing left to stop them.
“Come on, baby,” I prayed silently, my fists clenched so tight my fingernails broke the skin of my palms. “Fight. Come back to me.”
The physician pressed down hard on her sternum once more, sweat pouring down his forehead as he stared up at the flatlining cardiac monitor.
“We’re losing her,” the nurse whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “Doctor, her blood pressure is dropping into the floor.”
Stepping backward out of the room to give the medical team space, my cell phone vibrated violently in my tactical jacket pocket. I pulled it out with a shaking hand.
It was an unknown number, routed through an encrypted proxy server.
I swiped and answered, pressing the phone against my ear.
May you like
“Hello, Captain Callahan,” a smooth, chillingly polite voice spoke through the speaker. It was a voice I recognized instantly from the D.C. briefing room—Marcus Vance. “I hear your daughter is having a difficult afternoon at the hospital. It would be a terrible shame if her oxygen supply suffered an unexpected... technical malfunction before you decide to hand over the encryption key to us.”
The hospital lights seemed to dim around me as the line hummed with cold, calculated menace.
