Chapter 12 - The Whispering Halls
By noon, Jo knew she had to return to St. Jude’s Memorial. Despite Daniel’s fierce objections about her safety, they both understood that the smoking gun—the physical, handwritten batch logs that cross-referenced the pharmaceutical trial lots with the nursery’s shift logs—were locked in the basement archive behind Dr. Henderson’s administrative seal.
"I’m coming with you," Daniel said, grabbing his keys.
"No," Jo signed emphatically, her face resolute. "If Captain Vance marches into the hospital in full tactical alertness, they’ll trigger an administrative lockdown and purge the physical servers. I still have an active staff badge until midnight. They expect me to creep in like a humiliated pariah to clear out my locker. That is our window."
Daniel stared at her for several agonizing seconds. He hated letting her go into the snake pit, but he recognized tactical genius when he saw it. "Twenty minutes. If you aren't out the west staff exit in twenty minutes, I’m breaching the building with Ramirez."
"Deal," she signed with a rare, defiant smirk.
Thirty minutes later, the automatic glass doors of St. Jude’s Memorial parted. The sterile odor of iodine and industrial floor wax washed over Jo like a cold wave. As she walked through the central lobby, the whispering began immediately.
"That's her," a pediatric triage nurse murmured behind the reception counter. "The one who assaulted Dr. Henderson."
"I heard she’s being stripped of her license by tomorrow morning."
Jo kept her chin raised, looking neither left nor right. She walked past the elevators and slipped into the stairwell leading to Sub-Basement B.
The air grew damp and cooler as she descended. At the end of the long concrete hallway stood the Records Management Unit. Her keycard beeped against the scanner. To her shock, the green light flickered on.
Inside, the room was dimly lit, rows of heavy rolling metal shelving stretching into the shadows. Jo navigated quickly to the pediatric archives for the current calendar year. Her hands moved swiftly, pulling box after box labeled *Protocol 44B - Phase II*.
"Looking for your salvation, Nurse Evans?" a voice sneered from the darkness.
May you like
Jo whirled around. Standing near the aisle exit was Arthur Vance—Daniel’s estranged uncle and the vice-chairman of the hospital’s executive board. Behind him stood two private hospital security guards with crossed arms.
Arthur smiled thinly, stepping under the fluorescent tube. "Did you really think we wouldn't notice an IP request from Captain Vance’s personal terminal tracing our clinical trials? You’ve made a fatal error, young lady. Those boxes aren't records. They’re scheduled for the medical incinerator at two o'clock."
