Chapter 2 - Fire in the Basement
The current never reached me.
Instead, every screen behind Dr. Hale flashed white, then black, one after another, like a row of eyes going blind.
“What did you do?” my mother snapped.
I kept smiling.
Hale yanked the electrodes away and stepped toward the machine, punching buttons with the agitation of a man realizing he no longer understood his own tools. From somewhere below us came a muffled pop, followed by the faint chemical smell of burning insulation.
“Victor,” my mother said sharply, “fix this.”
He looked at her with something close to panic. “This isn’t a breaker trip.”
The overhead fluorescents flickered again, plunging the room into alternating stripes of dimness and hard white glare. In that unstable light, the cracks in their composure became visible. My mother straightened her pearls with shaking fingers. Hale checked the door security panel. Red light. Locked from the outside now, not the inside.
Perfect.
I pulled subtly against the wrist restraint I had been loosening for two nights. It shifted just enough to tell me I’d have it free soon.
Then the intercom above the sink crackled.
Static.
A voice burst through—distorted, male, breathless.
“Basement fire. Server room. We’ve got smoke in B-wing. Repeat, smoke in B-wing.”
Hale went pale.
My mother turned to him slowly. “Server room?”
For the first time, he had no lie ready.
The look that passed between them told me everything I needed to know: she had known about the money, but not the full extent of what he stored below. Offshore ledgers, patient files, blackmail archives—Hale had been running more than a hospital. He had built a vault of leverage.
And now it was burning.
The door buzzed again.
A second later, it slid open three inches before sticking. Smoke-threaded hallway light leaked through.
Tomas appeared in the gap.
His maintenance uniform was smeared with soot, and one side of his face glistened with sweat. But his eyes went first to me, sharp and alert.
“You have maybe four minutes before they shut the whole wing,” he said.
Hale lunged toward him. “Security!”
Tomas swung the metal flashlight in his hand—not at Hale’s head, but at the wall panel. Sparks flew. The locks died completely.
My mother stepped back in stunned disbelief as Tomas crossed to the table and cut my ankle straps with a small utility blade. I freed my wrist at the same time.
“You lied to me,” she said, staring at me.
“No,” I answered, sitting up slowly. “I let you misunderstand.”
Hale backed toward the far cabinet where he kept emergency sedatives and, more importantly, his sidearm. He never trusted the world enough to go unarmed.
I saw his hand move.
So did Tomas.
“Evelyn—down!”
The cabinet door flew open.
Hale grabbed for the gun.
And from somewhere in the hall, a woman screamed.
Not staff.
Not fear.
Pain.
There were still patients in this wing.
I swung my legs off the table, dizzy but standing, while smoke alarms finally began to blare throughout Blackridge.
Tomas pressed something into my hand: a brass keycard.
“South stairwell. Sublevel archive. Your father’s box is still there.”
I stared at him. “You found it?”
He nodded once.
May you like
Before I could speak again, the lights went out entirely.
And in the darkness, Dr. Hale fired.
