Chapter 5 - Out of the Ashes
"Ethan!" I screamed, lunging to the side of the bed.
The digital readout for his systolic blood pressure was dropping through the floor—sixty, fifty-two, forty-five.
The boy's skin had turned the color of damp paper, and his lips were tinged with a faint, terrifying shade of blue.
"The line tore the pediatric port," the hematologist cried, pressing sterile gauze against Ethan's neck.
"His veins have collapsed from the toxin."
"We can't restart the peripheral IV here."
"He needs to go to the lower surgical theater immediately."
"We can't take the main elevators," Victor said, surveying the hall where distant gunfire echoed from the first-floor lobby.
"Moretti's mercenaries have breached the emergency entrance."
"They're sweeping floor by floor."
Adrian tore the torn needle from his own flesh, wrapping a strip of clean linen around his arm without bothering to sterilize the wound.
He looked down at our dying son, then at me.
"We take the freight lift to the sub-basement," Adrian decided, scooping Ethan’s small body into his arms.
He held our boy against his chest with an instinctive, protective tenderness that looked foreign on a man who ordered executions.
Cables and monitoring wires trailed behind them like severed lifelines.
"Victor, take four men and hold the central stairwell," Adrian commanded.
"Buy us seven minutes."
"Understood, boss," Victor said, chambering a fresh round into his rifle.
"Go save the kid."
We sprinted down the dimly lit rear corridor toward the industrial freight elevator.
The building trembled as an explosion rocked the street-level parking structure.
Alarms wailed in competing dissonant frequencies throughout the concrete walls.
We piled into the massive metal cage of the freight lift, and Adrian hit the button for the sub-basement bunker.
The elevator dropped with a heavy, metallic groan.
In the enclosed space, I could hear Ethan’s shallow, rattling breaths.
I reached out, resting my trembling hand over Ethan’s tiny chest.
"He looks so much like you, Adrian," I whispered, tears blurring my vision.
"Every time he smiles, every time he refuses to eat his vegetables... he has your stubbornness."
Adrian looked down at the boy's pale face, his eyes glistening in the dim utility light.
"Why didn't you tell me, Clara?" Adrian asked, his voice cracking slightly.
"You knew I would have moved heaven and earth to keep you safe."
"Because you wouldn't have kept him safe from your world," I answered honestly, looking into the eyes of the only man I had ever loved.
"You would have made him an heir to a graveyard."
Adrian fell silent as the elevator hit the basement floor with a shuddering bounce.
The heavy steel doors rolled open, revealing the dark, cavernous expanse of the hospital's underground maintenance facility.
The air smelled of motor oil, damp concrete, and ozone.
Across the room, fifty yards away, sat the reinforced titanium doors of the advanced pharmaceutical vault.
Standing directly in front of the vault doors was an armored figure holding a tactical shotgun.
The man stepped into the light of a hanging halogen bulb.
May you like
It wasn't a Moretti soldier.
It was Adrian's younger brother, Julian Blackwood, holding the second biometric keycard in his gloved fingers.
