Chapter 29 #2
He tried to catch his breath. “Fuse, shut it all down. I want HQ blacked out. No external. No inbound. No radio. No drone. Nothing but line-of-sight. Hush, Ghostwire, sweep the building. Anything wired, rip it out. From now on: face-to-face only.”
They were almost at a full run. Apex held his weapon, ready to shoot, continuing his orders, “Static, find Tuck and Ian. Priority one. Eyes-on, voice-on. I don’t want them walking into this blind. Advise them now.”
Relay was already ahead of the stretcher as Foley and his team moved, fast but careful, toward the medical wing. The walls were smeared in Reid’s blood. No one even glanced at it.
Foley muttered, more to himself than anyone else, “He’s circling the drain. We need a trauma bay, and I need my kit prepped. Call the center—we’re coming in hot.”
Apex turned, jaw locked, already moving. His hands were still shaking, blood crusted to his tactical gloves. “Vos didn’t want him dead,” he muttered under his breath. “He wanted him broken and then dead.”
His voice hit the comm. “Fuse, get me everything we have on Vos. I want it pulled, printed, cross-checked. He made it personal. And then shut down all wireless communication.”
ELEVATOR SHAFT TO LEVEL ONE – 1358 HOURS
The elevator creaked as it climbed, cables straining with a sound like metal screaming. Inside, the space was tight, tense, and soaked in blood.
Reid lay motionless on the stretcher. Pale. Barely breathing. Foley leaned over him, one hand pressed over the wound in his chest, the other using a tool to hold the skin open as more blood spilled. Too much. Too fast.
“He’s fading fast!” Foley snapped. “Esteban, more pressure! Diaz, don’t let the airway close—if he chokes, we lose him!”
The two medics’ hands were red and shaking from adrenaline. The air in the elevator was too warm, heavy with panic. Reid’s chest jerked once under the bag-valve-mask. A shallow rasp. Diaz manually breathed for him. Reid had nothing left.
Apex stood in the corner, hand hovering near his holstered weapon, not from fear but instinct. This wasn’t random. The attack was timed perfectly. The lights failing. The doors locking. Reid walking alone, just long enough for it to happen. Someone knew the exact moment to strike.
His earpiece clicked, and a voice broke in, tight and quiet. Fuse. “You said shut down all wireless, then why am I still getting signal interference in the lower hallways?”
Apex’s voice stayed cold. “Try to trace it. Keep voice communication only. No signals, no data transfers, no outside links. Face-to-face only unless it’s me.”
“Got it.”
Another quiet voice came through. Scope. “I’m in position above Claire’s room. She hasn’t noticed. She’s sitting on the couch, calm. Bluebird, Flint, and Torch are with her.”
“Stay there,” Apex ordered. “Do not move unless she’s in real danger. Don’t let her see you.”
The elevator dinged. Level One.
“Move!” Apex shouted. “Clear the hallway!”
The doors slid open. Bright white floors, clean walls, polished lights that made the blood on the stretcher look even darker. Too clean for what was happening.
Foley shouted behind him, already pushing the gurney fast, “Room 4! Get suction ready! Pads on his chest—cut clothes!”
Reid let out one short breath, barely a whisper of air. His body jerked, limp. Mouth opened. No sound.
Down the next hallway, where the light curved, was a figure standing still. Then it slowly stepped backward into the elevator they had just come up on. The doors didn’t open again. No call was made, and the person never looked back.
Apex tapped his earpiece again, voice sharp and low. “Someone just stepped into the elevator shaft we used. It wasn’t called again. They were already inside. Watching. They saw Reid go down. Find him.”
“Looking now. That camera feed glitched for fifteen seconds. Might’ve been tampered with.”
Relay: “No access record from that elevator. Except you. It was used without a trace. Could be our ghost.”
Fuse: “I’m locking down everything on the lower levels. Doors, tunnels, crawlspaces. No more wireless. No more mistakes. Just voices. Just people.”
Apex: “Then stop talking. Find them.”
A new voice cut in—Ian, calm but tight with emotion. “How bad is it?”
Apex didn’t soften it. “It’s bad. Foley’s working on him now. If you want to say goodbye…”
“Don’t,” Ian said quickly. “He’s not going anywhere. Focus on Claire. Protect her the way Reid would.”
Apex looked back down the hallway. The elevator was still closed. Whoever had watched from the shadows wasn’t gone. They weren’t done.
LEVEL ONE TRAUMA BAY – 1403 HOURS
Cold. Then heat. Then… nothing. Reid felt it before thought could name it. A crushing hollowness in his chest, like the air had been vacuumed out from the inside. His blood, once rushing, had slowed to a crawl—thick, syrupy, spilling somewhere it shouldn’t. Time folded.
A sound. Warped. Muffled. A voice—Foley maybe. Another, urgent—Diaz?
Hands pressed on his body, and light burned through closed eyes like someone had struck matches behind them.
And then… “Pads ready!”
Everything cracked. Not just darkness. Everything. He was not on the stretcher anymore.
He was above it. Floating. No wings. No pull. Just suspended, weightless in the heat-haze of the trauma bay lights. Below, his own body looked ruined, too pale, drenched red, mouth open behind the mask.
Foley straddled the table, shouting, elbows deep in pressure dressings. Wires and tubes tangled from every limb. Apex was outside the room, back turned, stiff, watching the hallway with a hand half-drawn toward his holster.
None of it mattered. Not up here.
Because when he turned—when the space around him softened into something impossible—they were there.
His mother stood in the doorway. Not the way she’d died. Not weak, not sunken, not gray-skinned and shaking in that hospital bed he never forgave himself for leaving.
She was young. The way he wanted to remember her. Bright-eyed. Barefoot in a field of wildflowers, denim rolled to her calves. Wind in her hair. A soft white sweater. That laugh she’d had before alcohol stole it. Before she lived in a bottle.
Her eyes locked on him. Knew him. Saw right through him like she always did.
Beside her, his father. Tall. Weathered. His Texas Ranger hat. That navy windbreaker, arms crossed like always, half a smirk hiding in the corner of his mouth. “You’re early.”
His mother didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
Her face said it all. The look that held his whole childhood in it.
The way she smiled when she thought no one was watching.
The way she used to rest her hand on the back of his neck when he cried as a boy, never saying a word, just letting him know she was there.
Reid took a step forward, but something pulled. Not on his body—on him. Not a hand. Gravity. A thread stretching from his chest back down to the gurney, taut and humming.
Below, Foley shouted again, something about compressions, about shocking again. His mother looked at him. Really looked. And slowly, gently… shook her head.
Not yet. Not this time.
Her eyes held him. That same soft warmth he’d chased in dreams. That wordless comfort that said home without sound. And still, she shook her head. Not yet.
Behind her, his father gave a quiet sigh, glancing toward the pull Reid felt, that humming thread stretched down and trembling.
A sound.
Sharp. Real. Cracking across the stillness like a whip through glass.
“Clear!”
Below, the room lit white as the defibrillator fired. Reid’s body arched. His back came off the table, ribs seizing tight, a jolt snapping through flesh and bone. The hum in the thread went taut, and then it snapped, pulling him down like a hook caught deep inside his chest.
He fell. Fell hard. Into pain. Into fire. Into cold and choking blood. His body. His real, broken body. He crashed into it with a scream caught in his throat and breathed.
A raw, jagged breath that scraped the inside of his lungs like broken glass. His fingers twitched. Eyes fluttered.
Above him, Foley shouted again, “We got something! Diaz, give me another bolus! Get that pressure up!”
Reid gasped. His ribs were screaming. His side felt hollowed out, his shoulder wet and numb. But he was there. Not dead. Not yet.
Somewhere behind his eyes, the image of his mother lingered. Fading now. Distant. Like a photograph left in sunlight. But her eyes stayed. She had let him go. For now.
CHASE MEDICAL – OUTSIDE TRAUMA BAY
The moment the elevator doors clanged open, Tuck was already running. As he sprinted down the hall, a nurse was trailing him, trying to hand him gloves he didn’t stop to take. One of the bay doors slammed shut behind Foley. The red light over the trauma seal was blinking.
"Outta my way!" he barked, boots pounding the tile. "Move, dammit!"
Esteban opened the side access, and Tuck shoved through.
Reid was on the table. Pale. Soaked in blood, his chest rising in shallow jerks.
Foley looked up, relief and strain in equal measure. “Hanlon—thank God. We’re losing perfusion.”
Tuck snapped on gloves mid-stride. “Damn it. We need to crack his chest right now, or we lose him.”
“Already started.” Foley gritted his teeth, sweat pouring.
Tuck rounded the gurney. “What hit him?”
“Knife—close. Shoulder, flank and lower ribs. Haven’t checked his back yet.” He grabbed another trauma dressing from the tray. “I’m worried about possible poison. His pupils are wrong.”
Tuck didn’t flinch. “Run the tox panel onsite. Get the C-Med scanner in here. I’ll work the cardiac bleed.” He leaned in, eyes steady. “Reid, you with me?”
No answer. He reached out his fingers, pressing against Reid’s neck. Weak, stuttering pulse. Still there.
He looked back at the nurse. “Bag him. Diaz, draw two cultures. If this is a toxin, we won’t get a second chance.”
Foley sliced deeper between the ribs, clearing the path for a chest tube. Blood arced.
Tuck didn’t blink as he reached into the cavity, fingers seeking the edge of the bleeder, pressure steady. “This boy better not die on me,” he muttered. “I will not tell Claire she lost him in our own damn house.”
Foley met his gaze, nodded and fired up the saw. “Rib spreader.”