Chapter 14 - Lock Down the Unit
Security around Sophia and Mercer was doubled.
Every staff member entering their floors had to show identification.
Food and medication were inspected.
Police controlled the elevators and stairwells.
Ethan still found a way inside.
He entered wearing the uniform of a hospital maintenance technician.
The stolen identification belonged to a man found unconscious in a parking garage.
Security footage captured Ethan pushing a tool cart through the loading entrance.
By the time officers recognized him, he had disappeared into the service corridors.
The hospital initiated a lockdown.
Liam was in Sophia’s room when the alarm sounded.
Vance called him.
“Ethan is inside the building.”
Sophia sat upright despite the pain.
“He’s coming for Mercer first.”
“Why?”
“He can’t access the accounts without him.”
Vance sent officers to Mercer’s guarded room.
They arrived seconds too late.
One guard lay unconscious.
The other had been stabbed.
Mercer was gone.
A service elevator was moving toward the basement.
Police stopped it remotely between floors.
When they forced the doors open, the car was empty.
A ceiling panel hung loose.
Ethan and Mercer had climbed into the shaft.
Liam ordered Sophia’s room moved to a secure trauma unit near the emergency department.
The nurses transferred her quickly.
She wore a blue hospital gown. Bruises remained visible along her neck and arms.
Liam walked beside the bed.
“You should leave the hospital.”
“He’ll follow.”
“Police can move you.”
“He has people everywhere.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“We stop running.”
Inside the trauma room, Sophia asked Vance to bring the master drive.
She opened the encrypted files and initiated a timed release.
“What are you doing?” Vance asked.
“If I fail to enter a cancellation code within one hour, the Northstar evidence goes to federal investigators, international journalists, and every victim attorney in the ledger.”
“You said releasing it could expose victims.”
“I removed their locations.”
“When?”
“Before Ethan took me.”
Sophia looked at the countdown.
“He has sixty minutes to choose. Escape with the money, or come here and try to stop me.”
Liam stared at her.
“You’re using yourself as bait.”
“I’m ending this.”
“No.”
“He will never stop while I’m alive.”
“That doesn’t mean you offer him a target.”
Sophia’s expression softened.
“I spent three years waiting for someone to rescue me. I’m done waiting.”
The lights flickered.
Vance spoke into her radio.
“Report.”
No response came from the basement team.
A hospital-wide message announced a power interruption.
Backup generators activated.
The trauma-room doors locked automatically.
Sophia watched the countdown.
Forty-two minutes remained.
A nurse entered with emergency medication.
Liam checked her identification.
Her name was Elena Cruz.
He knew her.
She had worked in the emergency department for five years.
Elena approached Sophia’s intravenous line.
Sophia suddenly grabbed Liam’s wrist.
“That isn’t Elena.”
The nurse looked up.
Liam saw the edge of a mask near her jaw.
The disguised woman pushed the medication syringe toward Sophia’s intravenous port.
Liam knocked it away.
Vance tackled her.
The mask came loose.
Nora Price stared up from the floor.
“I’m trying to help,” she gasped.
“You brought poison into the room,” Liam said.
“It isn’t poison. It blocks the biometric signal.”
Sophia looked at the syringe.
“You want Ethan to believe I’m dead.”
Nora nodded.
“It’s the only way to force him toward Olivia.”
Vance handcuffed her.
“Where is Olivia?”
“On a medical transport ship called the Aurelia. It leaves the northern harbor at dawn.”
“Why should we believe you?”
“Because I helped put her there.”
Nora began crying.
“I thought keeping her alive was enough. I was wrong.”
Sophia looked at the countdown.
Thirty-seven minutes.
A hospital phone rang.
Liam answered.
Ethan’s voice came through.
“You’ve made this unnecessarily dramatic.”
“Where is Mercer?”
“Close.”
“Where are you?”
“Look behind you.”
The observation window darkened as the blinds closed.
A hidden panel opened inside the medication wall.
Mercer stepped through first, holding a gun.
Ethan followed.
The secret passage connected to the old service floor.
Police had searched it, but Northstar’s construction plans showed spaces absent from hospital records.
Ethan locked the panel behind him.
Vance raised her weapon.
Mercer pointed his gun at Sophia.
“Lower it,” he ordered.
Vance obeyed.
Ethan looked at the laptop.
Twenty-nine minutes remained.
“Cancel the release,” he told Sophia.
“No.”
He walked closer.
“You think releasing those files will save anyone?”
“It will destroy you.”
“It will destroy hospitals, judges, charities, police departments, and every institution people still believe protects them.”
“Then they deserve to fall.”
Ethan’s face tightened.
“This is why you needed me. You mistake destruction for freedom.”
“And you mistake possession for love.”
Mercer pressed his gun against Liam’s back.
“Cancel it.”
Sophia looked at her brother.
Liam shook his head.
Ethan struck him across the face.
Sophia flinched.
“Stop.”
“Cancel the release.”
The countdown reached twenty minutes.
A heart monitor sounded in the adjoining bay.
Then another.
Ethan glanced toward the doors.
Vance moved suddenly.
She knocked Mercer’s arm aside.
The gun fired into the ceiling.
Liam tackled Ethan.
Sophia pulled the laptop toward her.
Mercer aimed at Sophia.
Nora threw herself between them.
The gunshot struck Nora in the shoulder.
Police officers forced the trauma-room doors open.
Mercer dropped his weapon.
Ethan shoved Liam away and reached for the hidden passage.
Liam grabbed his collar.
For a moment, they stood exactly as they would later stand beside Sophia’s unconscious body.
Face to face.
Rage against calculation.
Then Ethan smiled.
“You still don’t know who authorized her first admission.”
He pressed a control beside the wall.
A smoke device exploded.
The room disappeared behind a white cloud.
When visibility returned, Mercer was in custody.
Nora was bleeding on the floor.
Sophia remained beside the laptop.
Ethan was gone.
The countdown showed nine minutes.
Sophia entered the cancellation code.
Liam stared at her.
“Why did you stop it?”
“Because he told me something I need to verify.”
“What?”
“My first admission.”
Sophia looked toward the patient files.
“I was hospitalized after our parents died.”
Liam remembered.
She had spent one night under observation following a panic attack.
“You think Northstar existed then?”
“I think someone used my record to choose me.”
The original admission file was retrieved from the archive.
Most pages appeared ordinary.
At the back was an evaluation recommending long-term psychological monitoring.
The evaluating physician’s name had been removed.
Beneath the damaged ink, Liam saw the beginning of a signature.
The first letter was L.
May you like
The second looked like a B.
His own initials.
