Chapter 13 - THE ZERO HOUR
Z
The flatline tone was a physical force, a spear of pure ice driven straight into my chest. The world around me—the dust, the collapsed ceiling, the smell of cordite and blood—simply ceased to exist. All that remained was the agonizing, unbroken tone echoing from the monitor above Blythe’s cot.
I scrambled over the debris, throwing my rifle aside, and fell to my knees beside her bed.
"Move!" Dr. Sethi roared, shoving me aside with unexpected violence. She grabbed the heavy defibrillator paddles, tearing Blythe’s thin hospital gown open. "Clara, push one milligram of epinephrine! Now!"
Clara’s hands were shaking so violently she dropped the first syringe, but she immediately grabbed another, uncapped it with her teeth, and jammed it into Blythe’s central line.
"Charging to 100 joules," Sethi announced, her eyes locked on the flatline. "Clear!"
She slammed the paddles onto Blythe’s small chest. The child’s body jerked violently upward, a horrific, lifeless spasm, before slamming back onto the steel mattress.
We stared at the monitor.
Nothing. The green line remained stubbornly, devastatingly flat.
"She's too weak," Clara sobbed, tears cutting tracks through the thick dust on her face. "The fever burned out her reserves. She can't take the shock."
"Charging to 150," Sethi commanded, her voice devoid of emotion, entirely clinical. "Clear!"
Another violent jolt. Another agonizing silence. The flatline continued, a sound that would haunt me until the day I died.
"She's gone," I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. I reached out and took Blythe’s small, cold hand. It felt entirely lifeless. The daughter I had fought so hard to save, the daughter I had brought into a warzone, was dead.
"She is not gone!" Sethi snarled, throwing the paddles aside. She climbed directly onto the cot, straddling Blythe, and interlaced her hands over the child’s sternum. She began violent, rhythmic chest compressions. "Push another epi! I am not letting Vanguard win. I am not letting this disease win. Genevieve gave her life to find this cure, and I will be damned if I let it fail now!"
"Seventy-two hours," Clara whispered, looking at the digital clock on the wall. The red numbers flickered.
It had been exactly seventy-two hours since the infusion.
"Come on, Blythe!" Sethi grunted, throwing her weight into the compressions. "Breathe!"
Suddenly, a loud, metallic banging echoed from the rubble wall. It wasn't the excavator. It was a rhythmic, frantic pounding against the steel door of the decontamination airlock, which had been buried during the first explosion.
Someone was digging through the collapsed hallway by hand.
"Vanguard is coming through the airlock," I said, my voice dead. I stood up, moving slowly back toward the rifle on the floor. I didn't care anymore. Let them come. If Blythe was dead, I was going to kill every single person who walked through that door until they put me down.
"Lawson, wait," Clara shouted, holding up a hand.
The pounding stopped. A muffled, static-filled voice came through the broken intercom speaker near the airlock.
"...Mercer... Lawson, are you alive in there?"
I froze. The rifle slipped from my fingers, clattering against the concrete.
It was Prescott.
"Prescott?" I yelled back, running to the shattered plexiglass.
"I've got a federal strike team with me," Prescott’s voice crackled, weak but clear. "Real FBI. Not Vanguard. I managed to crawl out of the loading dock and flag down the secondary response units before I passed out. Vanguard's fixers are dead or in custody. The perimeter is secure."
A wave of dizzying, disorienting relief hit me. We were saved. The siege was over.
But behind me, the flatline still screamed.
"It doesn't matter," I whispered, pressing my forehead against the glass. "It's too late."
"Clear!" Sethi yelled one final time, having grabbed the paddles again. She hit Blythe’s chest with 200 joules.
The body arched.
The monitor beeped. Once.
Then again.
The flatline broke into a jagged, chaotic rhythm, before slowly, miraculously, settling into a steady, rapid pulse.
"We have a rhythm!" Clara screamed, falling to her knees, burying her face in her hands. "Her heart is beating! She's back!"
I spun around. Blythe’s small chest was rising and falling on its own. The violent, flushed red of her skin was fading, replaced by a pale, exhausted pallor.
"Temperature is dropping," Sethi gasped, sliding off the cot, utterly spent. She collapsed into a rolling stool, wiping sweat from her brow. "103... 101... 99. The fever broke. The anomaly is eradicated."
I walked slowly back to the cot. I looked at Jonah, who was sleeping peacefully, his breathing deep and even. I looked at Blythe, whose monitor beeped with the sweetest, most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
They were alive. They were cured.
The heavy steel door of the airlock finally groaned and gave way, forced open by hydraulic jaws. Flashlights cut through the dust, and FBI tactical agents poured into the room, their weapons lowered, their eyes wide as they took in the carnage of the ruined bunker.
Behind them, supported by two medics, walked Prescott. His suit was ruined, his arm heavily bandaged and in a sling, his face pale from blood loss. He looked at me, then looked past me to the monitors.
He saw the steady, green lines.
Prescott slumped against the doorframe, a weak, exhausted smile breaking across his stern face.
"You crazy son of a bitch," Prescott whispered. "You actually did it."
May you like
I looked at Clara, who was holding Blythe’s hand, crying silently. I looked at Sethi, the disgraced doctor who had just changed the world.
"No," I said, my voice thick with tears. "We did it."
