2On Christmas morning, my 9-year-old daughter opened a present from her grandfather, my father-in-law. Just seconds later, she let out a terrifying scream, clutching her face and crying that it was burning.

The roads between our house and Mercy Memorial were slick with black ice, but I drove like a madwoman, the SUV’s anti-lock brakes pulsing against my boot as I took the corners at forty miles an hour.

I hit the steering wheel with the heel of my hand, screaming into the empty cabin of the car.

*Pick up, Sarah! Pick up the damn phone!*

The call went straight to voicemail. The hospital’s thick concrete walls and lead-lined radiology suites turned cell reception into a crapshoot on a good day, but on Christmas night, during an active winter squall, half the towers along the river corridor were running on backup generators.

I dialed Deputy Vance’s direct extension.

The line rang twice before his gruff voice barked through the car’s Bluetooth speakers. “Vance.”

“He’s at the hospital!” I yelled, swerving around a snowplow that threw a massive wave of gray slush against my windshield. “Harold just called the house! He’s in the hospital, Vance! He worked delivery routes there for six years—he knows the service tunnels!”

“Mrs. Cole, calm down,” Vance ordered, though I could hear the immediate shift in his background noise—the sudden clatter of heavy equipment and shouting voices. “Where are you?”

“I’m three blocks away on Division Street! Did you check the basement? Did you check the laundry docks?”

“We have the third-floor pediatric wing locked down,” Vance said, his voice tense. “Nobody goes in or out through the central stairwell without showing ID to my deputies.”

“He’s not using the central stairwell!” I shrieked. “He’s using the service elevators! He delivered medical gases there! He knows where the maintenance access points are!”

A loud crash exploded through Vance’s end of the line—the sound of an alarm klaxon blaring, followed by a female voice over an automated PA system: *CODE YELLOW. CODE YELLOW. FACILITY POWER ANOMALY IN SECTOR THREE. SWITCHING TO AUXILIARY POWER.*

“Vance!” I screamed.

“Ray, get up there!” Vance shouted to someone near him, his voice distorted by static. “Get the elevators grounded now! Don't let anything move between floors!”

The call broke up into digital garbage and dropped.

I threw the phone onto the passenger seat, blew through a red light at the intersection of Fourth and Spokane, and slammed the SUV into the snowbank bordering the hospital’s emergency entrance. I didn't bother turning off the ignition. I didn't bother grabbing my coat.

I hit the automatic sliding glass doors at a dead run.

The hospital lobby was bathed in the eerie, yellowish-orange glow of emergency backup lighting. The massive Christmas tree in the corner was completely dark, its lights killed by the sudden drop in main grid voltage. Security guards were running across the marble floor, radios squawking with panicked, overlapping transmissions.

“Pediatric ward!” I yelled at the triage nurse behind the bulletproof glass. “What happened to the third floor?”

“Ma’am, you can't go back there!” she shouted back, standing up from her station. “The elevators are locked down due to a transformer surge in the sub-basement!”

I didn't listen. I bolted past the intake desk toward the fire stairs.

The heavy steel fire door was propped open with an empty fire extinguisher.

I took the stairs three at a time, my boots slipping on the concrete treads, my lungs burning with cold, sterile air that tasted of burning insulation. From somewhere above me, on the third-floor landing, came the sound of a muffled shout, followed by the dull, sickening *crack* of metal striking bone.

I reached the third-floor landing and slammed through the crash bar.

The pediatric corridor was practically pitch-black, lit only by the low-mounted emergency floor strips that cast long, grotesque shadows across the linoleum.

Ten feet down the hall, Deputy Vance’s partner, Officer Ray, was lying on his side against the baseboards, his hands clutching his forehead, blood pooling black against the floor under the emergency lights.

His duty belt was empty. His sidearm was gone.

“Ray!” I gasped, dropping to my knees beside him.

“Maintenance... coveralls...” the young officer choked out, his eyes rolling back in his head, his skin clammy. “Service hatch behind the linen closet... he took the master key...”

I didn't stop to help him. God forgive me, I left that twenty-four-year-old officer bleeding on the floor and ran straight toward Room 314.

The door was standing wide open.

Inside, Sarah was slumped over the small visitor’s table near the window, completely motionless. A heavy brass oxygen tank regulator sat on the floor beside her head, slick with dark red blood.

And the bed was empty.

The thermal blankets were torn back, trailing onto the floor. The cardiac monitor was beeping with a flat, shrill tone, its lead wires dangling uselessly over the metal railing like dead vines.