Chapter 10 - Maxine Awakens
The lights in the fourth-floor corridor of St. Joseph Medical Center did not flicker; they simply died all at once.
The emergency red backup illumination hummed to life two seconds later, casting long, bloody shadows across the linoleum floors. Outside the double doors of Room 408, Deputy Miller adjusted his duty belt, his hand instinctively dropping to the snap of his holster as the air conditioning system shut down with a heavy, metallic clunk.
"Dispatch, this is Unit 44 at St. Joseph’s," the deputy said into his shoulder radio, his voice tight. "We just lost primary grid power on four trauma. Anyone else reporting an outage?"
His radio returned only a blast of harsh, modulated white noise—the distinct signature of an active RF frequency jammer operating within fifty feet.
Inside Room 408, Maxine Granger’s eyes opened instantly.
Her body was screaming in agony; every breath against the bio-absorbable chest plates felt like a hot blade twisting between her ribs. But her mind—honed by years of surviving Dustin’s psychological terror—was violently awake.
She heard the soft, wet thud against the corridor door before she saw anything.
It was the sound of a human body sliding down wood onto the floor.
Maxine reached with her trembling right hand, ripping the IV line from the back of her wrist, ignoring the sharp tear of plastic through her skin and the sudden warm drip of blood onto the sheets. She reached for the call button hanging from the side rail, but the cord had been severed cleanly; the white plastic head lay loose on the floorboards.
The door handle turned slowly, silently.
A man stepped into the room. He did not wear scrubs or a doctor’s coat. He wore dark gray tactical utility trousers, a black windbreaker, and soft-soled running shoes. His face was obscured by a dark medical mask, but his eyes were wide, calm, and professional. In his gloved right hand, he carried a pressurized pneumatic syringe—the kind used in clinical settings for rapid-delivery intramuscular sedatives, but filled with a clear, oily liquid that caught the red emergency light.
Potassium chloride.
A lethal dose that would stop an already damaged heart within forty seconds, leaving an autopsy report that pointed directly to acute cardiac arrest caused by surgical trauma.
The man didn't speak. He stepped toward the bed with the fluid, unhurried grace of an experienced cleaner.
Maxine didn't scream. She knew that screaming was useless; the hallway was empty, the deputy was on the floor, and the air was dead.
Instead, she waited until his hip was within six inches of the bedside monitor console.
With every ounce of strength remaining in her shattered frame, Maxine lunged sideways, her left arm screaming in agony as she kicked her heels into the mattress and rammed the heavy steel IV infusion pole directly between his legs.
The man gasped, doubling over involuntarily as the steel base struck home.
Before he could recover, Maxine seized the heavy glass water pitcher from the bedside table with both hands and brought it down across the side of his skull with a desperate, bone-shattering crash.
The glass exploded in a shower of water and sharp shards. The man stumbled backward, blood instantly spraying from a deep laceration along his temple, the pneumatic syringe flying from his grip to shatter against the ceramic base of the wall.
"You miserable bitch," the man hissed through his teeth, his hand going to his hip where a suppressed nine-millimeter pistol was holstered beneath his windbreaker.
He cleared the holster, raising the weapon toward Maxine’s chest.
Maxine looked him straight in the eyes, her split lip curling into a bloody, defiant sneer that was identical to her mother’s.
"Do it," Maxine whispered through her broken teeth. "My mother is going to peel the skin off your bones."
The double doors of the room didn't open.
They were blown off their hinges.
The concussive crack of a twelve-gauge breaching round tore through the quiet room, followed by the immediate, devastating roar of three high-velocity rifle rounds.
The hitman’s chest exploded in a spray of shredded nylon and red mist before he could even register the sound. He was hurled backward across the room, smashing into the bathroom doorframe before collapsing onto the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
Through the smoke and the ruined threshold stepped Helen Granger, her service weapon held in a two-handed combat grip, the barrel smoking, her eyes wide with a terrifying, ancient fury.
Behind her, Commander Varner and three tactical marshals poured into the room, their weapons sweeping the corners, clearing the bathroom and the window alcove within four seconds.
"Clear!" Varner roared.
Helen dropped her weapon back into its holster, sprinted across the ruined glass, and caught Maxine as her daughter collapsed forward off the edge of the mattress.
"I’ve got you," Helen sobbed, holding Maxine against her chest, not caring about the blood, the shattered glass, or the smell of gunpowder that filled the air. "I’ve got you, baby. You’re safe. You’re safe."
Maxine leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder, her tears washing through the dried blood on Helen’s coat.
"He... he had a syringe, Mom," Maxine whispered, her frame trembling violently. "He was going to stop my heart."
Helen looked over her daughter’s shoulder at the dead man on the floor.
Varner had already knelt beside the body, using his boot to kick the suppressed weapon away before turning the man’s head to face the emergency light. He pulled down the medical mask.
"Do you know him?" Helen asked, her voice dropping back into that icy, lethal prosecutorial tone that made the tactical officers in the room look at her with sudden, deep reverence.
"Thomas Vance," Varner said, his voice flat with disbelief. "Arthur Vance’s younger brother. Marcus Kane’s personal enforcer for eighteen years."
Helen gently laid Maxine back onto the bed, smoothing the hair back from her daughter’s bruised forehead.
"Samuel," Helen said, standing up and straightening her coat.
"Yeah, Helen?"
"Call Judge Callahan," Helen said, her eyes fixed on the dead man’s face. "Tell him the preliminary phase of the investigation is concluded."
"And what phase are we in now?" Varner asked, signaling the paramedics waiting in the hallway to enter with emergency trauma kits.
May you like
"The execution phase," Helen said. "We are going to Marcus Kane’s house. And this time, Samuel, we are not bringing handcuffs."
***
