The grip around my wrist felt like a steel vise. Pain shot up my arm, sharp and immediate, as Nicholas’s fingers tightened until my pulse throbbed against his knuckles.

"Burn it to the ground?!" I shrieked, scrambling back onto my feet. "There are innocent patients in this hospital! Children in pediatric oncology! Elderly people in ICU! Are you out of your mind?!"

Nicholas rolled off the bed, his bare feet landing heavily on the floor. He wobbled for a second, his body still recovering from the paralysis and months of muscle atrophy, but he caught himself against the IV pole. His dark eyes flicked to me, sharp and uncompromising.

"I don't mean a literal fire, Clara," he said, stepping over Marco’s unconscious body and crouching down to strip the man of his tactical belt, radio, and jacket. "I mean a digital burn. An evacuation protocol that will force every guard in this building to abandon their posts."

He pulled Marco’s heavy leather jacket over his thin hospital gown and zipped it up. He tossed Marco’s spare magazine to me.

"Put that in your pocket," Nicholas ordered.

"I am not carrying ammunition!"

"You are if you want to survive the next twenty minutes," he snapped, racking the slide of the 9mm with a sharp, lethal CLACK. "Marco was carrying a long-range comms unit. His team checks in every five minutes. The moment they realize he isn't answering, they’ll lock down this floor and shoot anything that moves."

As if on cue, the small radio on Marco’s belt crackled with static.

"Marco, this is Unit 2. We saw the Code Blue alarm light from the hallway. Do you need backup? Over."

Nicholas looked at me, then down at the radio. He raised his foot and brought his heavy heel down directly onto the plastic walkie-talkie, crushing it into a dozen pieces.

"That gives us about ninety seconds," Nicholas said, turning to the room's wall control panel. He grabbed the emergency fire alarm lever and pulled it down hard.

Instantly, blaring red strobe lights began flashing throughout the room, accompanied by the deafening, high-pitched screech of the hospital fire alarm. The automated sprinkler system in the hallway activated, raining cold water over the glass windows.

"ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL. FIRE DETECTED ON FLOOR 4. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY VIA STAIRWELL B."

"The alarm forces the emergency magnetic locks on the stairwell doors to disengage," Nicholas explained, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the rear exit of the room. "And it creates mass confusion among the hospital staff and guards."

"Where are we going?" I yelled over the deafening blare of the alarm, the cold sprinkler water soaking through my scrubs the moment we stepped out into the corridor.

"The basement service tunnel," Nicholas said, his arm wrapped around my shoulder—half to guide me, half to keep himself upright as his legs threatened to give out. "It leads directly to the laundry dock behind the hospital."

The hallway was chaos. Nurses were rushing to evacuate elderly patients, sirens were screaming, and water was pouring from the ceiling. But through the panic, I saw them—three men in dark suits pushing their way through the crowd of terrified staff, holding suppressed pistols beneath their coats.

"There!" one of the guards shouted, pointing straight at us. "Castellano is awake! Kill him!"

"Get down!" Nicholas roared.

He shoved me behind a heavy metal medicine cart just as a volley of silent bullets slammed into the plaster wall above us, sending white dust and debris raining over our heads.

Nicholas ducked out from behind the cart, squeezed the trigger three times with terrifying precision—BANG! BANG! BANG!

Two of the guards dropped instantly, clutching their legs as Nicholas targeted their lower extremities to avoid killing them in front of witnesses. The third guard lunged behind a pillar, returning fire.

"Clara!" Nicholas yelled, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "The cart! Push it into the elevator shaft!"

"What?!"

"PUSH IT!"

I grabbed the heavy stainless-steel medicine cart, dug my sneakers into the slick, wet floor, and shoved it with all my strength. The cart rolled across the hallway, slamming directly into the third guard just as he stepped out to aim. The blow knocked him backward, sending him crashing through the safety glass of the service elevator doors and falling down into the dark shaft below.

I gasped, covering my mouth in shock.

"Move!" Nicholas grabbed my wrist, dragging me past the groaning guards and through the double doors leading to Stairwell B.

We flew down the concrete stairs, the sound of our echoing footsteps drowned out by the roaring fire sirens above. Four flights down. Three. Two. One.

We burst through the heavy steel doors into the sub-basement—a dimly lit, concrete labyrinth filled with steam pipes, industrial washing machines, and the heavy smell of detergent and rust.

Nicholas collapsed against a concrete pillar, his face ghostly white, sweat pouring down his forehead. He slid down to the floor, clutching his chest.

"Nicholas!" I dropped to my knees beside him, grabbing his wrist to check his pulse. It was dangerously fast—over 160 beats per minute. "Your heart can't take this! You've been bedridden for six months! You're going into cardiac shock!"

"I'm... fine," he gritted out, his teeth stained with a trace of blood. "Just... need a minute..."

"You don't have a minute!" I grabbed his jaw, forcing him to look at me. "Listen to me, Nicholas! If your heart stops down here, I don't have a crash cart! I don't have drugs! You die!"

He looked at me, his dark eyes burning through the pain, a slow, dangerous smile touching his lips. "Then kiss me."

I blinked, dumbfounded. "What?!"

"Adrenaline," he rasped, his voice barely a breath. "Shock my system. Or do you want to try CPR again?"

Before I could call him an arrogant lunatic, the steel door at the top of the stairwell banged open. Heavy, rapid footsteps began echoing down the concrete stairs.