Chapter 7 - The Steel Trap
The cold, mechanical sound of heavy steel blast doors slamming shut echoed throughout the empty surgical ward.
I spun around and ran back toward the entrance, but the thick metal barricade had already sealed me inside.
I slammed my fists against the reinforced steel, cursing Evelyn for her ruthless, calculated betrayal.
She had successfully used my desperation to deliver me directly into Arthur's lethal trap.
A series of hidden speakers mounted in the ceiling crackled to life with a burst of harsh static.
Arthur Sterling's arrogant, mocking voice echoed through the sterile, empty hallway.
"You really are a naive, pathetic fool to trust a woman who sold her soul for corporate stock," Arthur laughed.
He explained that the surgical ward I was standing in was an obsolete testing facility slated for demolition.
The real bone marrow extraction was happening in a state-of-the-art medical penthouse located twenty floors above me.
Arthur cheerfully announced that he was going to pump highly toxic sterilization gas into my sealed corridor.
He told me to take a deep breath and accept my fate while he secured his new lease on life.
Thick, yellow chemical gas began hissing aggressively from the ventilation shafts above my head.
The toxic fumes immediately burned my eyes and caused a violent, agonizing cough to tear through my throat.
I knew that I had less than three minutes before the chemical agent completely paralyzed my respiratory system.
I desperately scanned the walls for any sign of a structural weakness or a manual ventilation override.
I spotted a heavy, pressurized oxygen tank strapped to a medical cart at the far end of the hallway.
I grabbed the heavy metal cylinder and dragged it toward the reinforced glass window of the observation room.
I backed up, took a deep breath of the burning air, and hurled the tank as hard as I could against the thick glass.
The window shattered into a million pieces, creating a massive, jagged opening for me to crawl through.
I scrambled into the observation room, bleeding from multiple glass cuts, and found an emergency maintenance hatch in the floor.
I pried the rusty grate open and dropped down into the dark, narrow ventilation shaft running vertically up the building.
I climbed the metal rungs in total darkness, my muscles screaming in agony as I ascended twenty exhaustive stories.
I finally reached a metal grate that offered a clear view into a brilliantly lit, ultra-modern operating theater.
I kicked the grate completely off its hinges and tumbled out onto the pristine, polished floor.
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I looked up and saw Arthur standing over the operating table, holding a sharp surgical scalpel in his gloved hand.
But the person strapped to the table was not one of the children at all.
