"The rotting smell in Trauma Room 2 was unbearable, but when I finally cut off the 8-year-old boy's filthy, neglected cast, what fell out onto the sterile floor made every seasoned ER nurse scream and step back in pure horror.

The silence of the old wing was heavy, broken only by the distant, muffled sound of a thunderclap outside and the rapid, shallow breathing of the eight-year-old child on the bed.

"Dr. Jenkins," Vance muttered, his back pressed against the wall beside the heavy door. "The backup generators should have kicked in by now. This isn't a city-wide outage. Someone cut the main power lines to the west wing."

I didn't answer. I had already lowered myself to the floor, my hands working in the dark to disconnect Leo's IV lines from the wall pump, leaving only the manual port active so I could flush it if we had to move. I kept my body positioned over the boy, a human shield against whatever was coming through that door.

A sudden, sharp pop-pop of a silenced weapon echoed from the end of the hallway.

It was followed by the heavy, dull thud of a body hitting the linoleum floor. The guard stationed outside our door didn't even have time to cry out.

"They're here," Vance whispered, his eyes scanning the dark room. He pointed to a small, wooden service hatch in the back of the closet—an old laundry chute that had been sealed off during the building’s 1980s renovation but still held a small, manual lock. "Sarah. Take the boy. Get into the chute. It leads to the basement laundry facility. It’s abandoned, but it’s off the main grid."

"What about you?" I asked, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped wild animal.

"I’m going to buy you some time," Vance said, his face illuminated by a sudden flash of lightning through the high transom window. "Go. Now."

I didn't hesitate. I scooped Leo’s frail, sleeping body into my arms. He was light—far too light for an eight-year-old—his bandaged arm resting against my chest, the wound-vac tube dangling loose. I carried him into the closet, my fingers searching the dark until I found the rusted metal latch of the laundry chute.

I slid the latch back with a loud, metallic clack.

Behind me, the steel door of the isolation room was blown open with a violent, concussive blast.

The sound of gunfire erupted instantly—the loud, deafening roar of Vance’s Glock answering the fast, metallic chatter of an automatic weapon. Glass shattered. Wood splintered. A man screamed in agony.

"Go, Sarah!" Vance shouted through the darkness.

I squeezed my body into the narrow, metal-lined chute, holding Leo tightly against my chest. The metal was freezing, smelling of dust and fifty years of detergent. I slid down, my shoes scraping against the sides, gravity pulling us down into the black abyss of the hospital's basement.

We hit the bottom with a heavy, echoing thud, landing on a pile of moldering, damp linens that had been left behind decades ago.

I lay there for a second, my breath knocked out of me, my arms still wrapped securely around Leo. The boy let out a soft groan, his eyelids fluttering open in the dim, grey light filtering through a high basement grate.

"D-Doctor..." he whispered, his voice dry, his eyes wide with a confused, childlike terror. "Where are we? Where is my mom?"