Chapter 4 - The Hunt in the White HallsThe footsteps grew closer, dragging sluggishly against the linoleum floor.
Creak.
The supply closet door drifted open half an inch further. Through the gap, I watched the lead operative—Scarface—sweep his weapon across the threshold of the room directly opposite mine.
I had to move. If I stayed trapped in a dead-end supply closet, I was dead.
Quietly as a ghost, I slipped out of the closet the second his back was turned, hugging the wall toward the emergency exit stairs at the end of the corridor. Every fiber of my being screamed to run, but a panicked intake of breath from room four—Leo’s room—stopped me dead in my tracks.
A muffled thud. A stifled groan.
They found him.
I risked a glance around the doorframe of room four. One of the operatives had a heavy pillow pressed firmly over Leo’s face while the other held his thrashing limbs down. Leo’s monitor was spiking erratically, the green line screaming a jagged warning.
They were suffocating him.
If Leo died, Damian’s only lead vanished. And so did my leverage to stay alive.
My eyes darted around the room. On the metal tray beside the bed sat a full canister of pressurized oxygen, connected via a heavy rubber hose to Leo's mask.
Without giving myself time to overthink it, I grabbed the heavy brass valve handle of the oxygen tank and wrenched it open all the way.
HIIIIIISSSSSSS!
The high-pressure release shrieked like a banshee through the quiet clinic, instantly deafening and disorienting. At the same time, I grabbed a heavy stainless-steel kidney basin off the instrument cart and hurled it straight into a wall-mounted glass fire extinguisher cabinet.
CRASH!
Shattered glass rained everywhere. The deafening screech of the fire alarm instantly wailed to life, flashing blinding strobe lights of violent red across the white walls.
"What the hell—!" the second operative yelled, dropping the pillow and spinning around, momentarily blinded by the flashing red strobes.
Scarface whipped his pistol toward the doorway where I stood half-exposed.
A bullet punched through the doorframe inches from my ear, showering my shoulder in splintered wood.
I didn't wait to be shot at again. I bolted down the hallway toward the stairwell, my sneakers squeaking frantically against the floor.
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"Get her!" Scarface bellowed over the screaming alarm.
Heavy tactical boots thundered behind me, closing the distance fast.
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