Chapter 23 - The Ambush in the Lab"Get behind the bio-hazard partition!" Lupita hissed, grabbing my shoulder and shoving me toward the heavy glass-walled isolation booth at the back of the laboratory.
Before I could protest, the heavy steel doors of the pathology lab burst open with a deafening crash.
Three men in matte-black tactical gear, their faces obscured by reinforced Kevlar helmets and dark visors, poured into the room. They carried suppressed submachine guns, moving with the cold, brutal efficiency of professional black-ops mercenaries.
"Clear!" the lead mercenary barked, his voice muffled through his comms unit.
I crouched behind the stainless-steel examination table inside the isolation booth, holding my breath, my hand instinctively searching for a heavy metal scalpel tray. How had they found us so fast? The hospital’s security grid must have been compromised from the inside, exactly as it had been a decade ago.
"Terminal 04 is hot," the second mercenary reported, walking straight up to the workstation where I had just been sitting. "The target accessed the Chimera files. Local download completed three seconds before lockdown."
"Secure the drive," the leader ordered. "And find the doctor. The chairman wants him alive if possible, but the primary directive is containment."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Sofia, Mateo, and Lucía were at home—or worse, Sofia was already on her way to the hospital for her morning volunteer shift. If these men knew where I was, they knew where my children were.
I had to get out of the lab, and I had to warn them.
Silently, I reached for the emergency fire-suppression manual release valve located beside the isolation booth door. It was a high-pressure chemical foam system designed to smother electrical and biological fires instantly.
I wrapped my fingers around the red iron handle.
On three.
One... Two...
I wrenched the handle down with all my might.
WHOOSH!
A deafening roar filled the laboratory as thousands of gallons of thick, blinding white chemical foam erupted from the ceiling nozzles, filling the room in a fraction of a second.
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"Contact! Chemical breach!" the mercenaries shouted, their voices suddenly choked and disoriented by the blinding blizzard of foam.
I kicked the glass door of the isolation booth open, scrambled past the blinded guards, and bolted through the lab's emergency exit into the dark, labyrinthine service tunnels beneath the hospital.
