Chapter 5 - The Basement
The heavy metal doors groaned in protest as the gap widened just enough for a grown man to slip through.
Wyatt immediately shoved me safely behind his massive frame, raising a heavy red fire extinguisher he had ripped from the elevator wall.
A dark figure stepped quickly into the cabin, illuminated only by the faint red emergency lights flickering sporadically above our heads.
I let out a breathless sigh of relief when I realized it was not a cartel hitman.
It was a young, uniformed hospital security guard, terrified and physically shaking, holding a master emergency key for the elevator shaft.
“Come with me quickly, they have completely taken over the main lobby,” the young man whispered, guiding us out into the corridor.
We moved swiftly through the dark, damp maintenance tunnels that ran like a maze beneath the sprawling hospital complex.
My painful contractions were coming every twenty minutes now, serving as a terrible, ticking clock counting down to my baby's arrival.
Wyatt expertly led us to an old, rusted utility exit that opened outward into a dark, overgrown back alleyway.
His heavily dented, rusted pickup truck was waiting patiently under the long shadow of a completely broken streetlamp.
I climbed awkwardly into the passenger seat, biting my lower lip hard enough to draw blood just to keep from screaming as another contraction hit.
Wyatt threw the old truck into gear, and we sped out of the dangerous city limits, heading aggressively toward the safety of the mountains.
I nervously pulled out the cheap burner phone Wyatt had given me earlier to check the current time.
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There was already a new, unread text message waiting on the glowing screen, sent exactly two minutes ago.
It was a crystal-clear photograph of Wyatt’s rusted pickup truck, taken from the perspective of a vehicle driving directly behind us.
