Chapter 2: Code Black
Marcus didn’t hesitate. He lunged, but not at Richard. He lunged for the wall panel.
With a brutal smash of his elbow, he shattered the emergency override casing and yanked a heavy red lever downward. Instantly, the entire ICU plunged into suffocating darkness. The hum of the machines died. The emergency backup generators, supposedly foolproof, remained terrifyingly silent. Richard had sabotaged them.
“Are you insane, Reed?!” Richard’s voice echoed in the blackness.
I felt strong hands grab my shoulders. “Don’t make a sound,” Marcus breathed into my ear.
He ripped the IV from my arm. I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted copper to keep from screaming as the fresh surgical staples in my abdomen stretched. Marcus hooked one arm under my knees and the other behind my back, lifting me entirely.
We moved. The hospital was a labyrinth of shadows. Distant shouts of panicked nurses echoed down the corridors, but on our isolated VIP floor, it was just us and a killer.
Squeak. Squeak.
Richard’s rubber-soled shoes paced down the hallway behind us. “Mabel… Marcus… you can’t run in the dark. You’re bleeding out, Mabel. Make it easy.”
A cold dread coiled in my gut. My blood was seeping through my hospital gown, dripping onto the linoleum. A breadcrumb trail of my own life.
Marcus ducked through a heavy set of double doors. The air temperature plummeted instantly. The smell of formaldehyde and ozone hit me like a physical blow. The morgue.
He gently set me down behind a row of stainless steel autopsy tables. I curled into a fetal position on the freezing tiles, clutching my torn stomach.
The double doors swung open. A sliver of moonlight from the high windows caught the glint of the needle in Richard’s hand. He was whistling a low, tuneless melody.
He walked slowly down the aisle. Step. Pause. Step. Pause. He was checking behind the tables. He was three rows away. Then two.
My vision began to swim. The blood loss, the adrenaline, the sheer terror—it was too much. My chest tightened. I couldn’t breathe. I was slipping into cardiac arrest.
Marcus saw my eyes rolling back. He placed his warm hands over my mouth and nose, silently begging me to hold on, but my body was shutting down. The world faded to a silent, freezing white.
Beep.
My phone, tucked into the pocket of the bloody coat Marcus had thrown over me, chimed loudly in the silence of the morgue.
Richard’s head snapped toward our row. “Found you.”
But as the darkness took me, I saw the glowing screen of my phone. The notification wasn’t a text from Flynn. It was an automated email.
Sender: Robert Sterling (Deceased).
Subject: Dead Man’s Switch – Triggered by flatline biometric.
