Chapter 4 - The Hospital Beneath the Hospital
St. Vincent Hospital had been abandoned for twelve years, but someone had recently restored power beneath it.
From the street, the building looked dead. Broken windows reflected the evening sky. Ivy climbed the brick walls. A rusted ambulance sign hung above an entrance blocked by chained doors.
Underground, generators hummed.
Cashin’s team approached through three routes.
Marcus led a group through the western service tunnel. Two security specialists entered from the roof. Cashin and Celine used the ambulance entrance, exactly as Elias had demanded.
Celine wore protective coveralls beneath a dark coat. A compact medical kit hung across her shoulder. Cashin carried a concealed weapon and an earpiece connected to Marcus.
“You stay behind me,” he said as they crossed the cracked pavement.
“I heard you the first four times.”
“You have ignored me the first four times.”
“The instructions were unreasonable.”
“Bullets are unreasonable.”
The ambulance doors had been left unlocked.
Inside, stale air carried the scent of mold and disinfectant.
Celine’s skin prickled.
Hospitals were never truly silent. Even empty ones held echoes—rolling carts, hurried footsteps, distant alarms. St. Vincent seemed to remember every sound that had once lived there.
A portable lamp illuminated a wheelchair in the center of the corridor.
On its seat lay Angela’s nursing badge.
Cashin examined it without touching.
“He knows she betrayed him.”
“He knows she warned us.”
“He expects me to trade her.”
“We didn’t bring her.”
“No.”
“Will that make him hurt Leah?”
“It may make him improvise.”
Celine swallowed.
They followed arrows painted on the walls. Each pointed toward the old ambulance elevator.
Along the way, they passed rooms filled with medical debris. Torn curtains. Empty beds. Cabinets left open like mouths.
Then Celine heard coughing.
She stopped.
Cashin turned. “What?”
“Someone’s here.”
The sound came again from behind a locked treatment-room door.
Cashin tested the handle.
“No,” he said. “It could be bait.”
“It could be a patient.”
“Marcus is three minutes away.”
“They may not have three minutes.”
Before he could stop her, Celine removed a small tool from her kit and forced the simple lock.
Inside lay a teenage boy strapped to a gurney.
His skin was gray. Sweat soaked his hair. An IV line connected his arm to an unlabeled bag.
Celine rushed to him.
Cashin swept the room for threats.
The boy’s breathing was shallow. His pupils were tiny.
“Opioid toxicity,” Celine said. “Possibly Orpheus.”
She clamped the IV and injected naloxone into his thigh.
The boy gasped.
His eyes opened briefly.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
“Below,” he whispered. “They test us below.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor.
Cashin pulled Celine behind the door as two armed men approached.
He waited until they entered.
The fight lasted seconds.
Cashin struck the first man’s wrist, disarmed him, and slammed him against the wall. The second reached for Celine. She drove a metal oxygen regulator into his knee.
He collapsed with a scream.
Cashin stared at her.
“What?”
“You were told to remain behind me.”
“He was behind you.”
Cashin tied the men’s hands with plastic restraints.
Celine examined the first guard’s neck.
Black crown.
Vertical blade.
Rook’s symbol.
Cashin used the guard’s access card on the elevator.
The doors opened.
Instead of buttons, the panel contained a numeric keypad.
“The day their mother died,” Celine said.
“We do not know it.”
She searched the unconscious guard’s pockets.
Cashin checked the walls.
A faded memorial plaque hung beside the elevator, listing donors after a children’s wing renovation.
One name stood out.
Evelyn Rook Memorial Foundation.
Beneath it was a date.
October 14.
Celine entered 1014.
The elevator descended.
The hidden level beneath St. Vincent was not abandoned.
White corridors stretched beneath bright fluorescent lights. Cameras tracked their arrival. Steel doors divided laboratories from patient wards. Through observation windows, Celine saw medical equipment more advanced than anything at Harbor Mercy.
She also saw people.
Men and women lay restrained in beds.
Some were unconscious.
Others stared blankly at the ceiling.
Cashin’s face hardened.
“How many?” he asked through the radio.
Marcus’s voice crackled. “Thermal imaging suggests at least twenty-two people across the lower level.”
“Find the control room. Lock the exits.”
“Working on it.”
An alarm began to pulse.
Red lights flashed.
A speaker activated overhead.
“Welcome home, Celine.”
Adrian Vale’s voice was smooth, educated, and almost warm.
She looked toward the nearest camera.
“You murdered Emma Ruiz.”
“A tragic patient with a history of substance misuse.”
“You used her as a test subject.”
“She volunteered for treatment.”
“She was seventeen.”
“She signed forms.”
“Forms your clinic falsified.”
Vale sighed through the speaker. “You always were inconveniently emotional.”
Cashin fired once.
The camera shattered.
Vale’s voice continued from another speaker.
“And you, Mr. Voss. The city’s great criminal moralist. How noble of you to rescue her.”
“Show us the hostages,” Cashin said.
A monitor lit at the end of the corridor.
Leah and Noah appeared inside a glass laboratory room.
Elias stood beside them.
“Bring Angela to the central chamber,” Vale instructed.
“She is receiving surgery,” Celine said.
Elias’s face twisted.
“You shot her?”
“One of Cashin’s guards did. She warned us about the bomb.”
Elias looked toward someone outside the camera’s view.
“You said she was safe.”
Vale answered through the speaker. “Your sister chose betrayal.”
“You promised—”
“I promised protection while she remained useful.”
Elias raised his gun toward the camera.
The screen went black.
Cashin looked at Celine. “We just gained an ally.”
“Or created a desperate man.”
A heavy door opened behind them.
Gas hissed from vents along the walls.
Celine smelled something sweet and chemical.
“Masks!”
She pulled a respirator over her face and handed one to Cashin.
They ran through the nearest door before the corridor filled.
Inside was a records laboratory.
Shelves contained tissue samples, patient numbers, and storage drives. Celine connected a small device from Marcus to the central computer.
“How long?” Cashin asked.
“Two minutes to copy.”
“We do not have two minutes.”
“This may be the only complete evidence.”
Gunfire erupted outside.
Cashin positioned himself at the doorway and returned fire.
Celine watched files transfer.
Twelve percent.
Twenty-seven.
A bullet struck the glass above her.
Cashin pulled her beneath the desk.
“Leave it.”
“No.”
“Celine.”
“Emma died for this.”
“She did not die so you could join her.”
The transfer reached sixty-four percent.
Smoke entered beneath the door.
Cashin fired his last round, then pulled a second weapon from his ankle.
The computer displayed eighty-one percent.
Footsteps approached.
Celine looked around and spotted a compressed oxygen cylinder beside a testing station.
She rolled it toward the doorway.
Cashin understood instantly.
He shot the valve.
The cylinder launched down the corridor like a missile, striking two attackers and filling the hall with white vapor.
Ninety-six percent.
Transfer complete.
Celine ripped the device free.
Cashin grabbed her hand, and they ran.
Marcus’s voice came through the radio. “Control room secured. We found Vale’s evacuation route. East tunnel.”
“Stop him,” Cashin ordered.
“Trying. Rook locked down the central chamber.”
They reached the patient ward.
Celine moved from bed to bed, checking pulses and disconnecting dangerous infusions. Cashin broke restraints.
“You cannot treat all of them now,” he said.
“I can stop the drugs.”
“Emergency teams are coming.”
“Police?”
“People I trust more.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No,” he admitted. “But tonight it will have to be.”
A woman on one bed grabbed Celine’s sleeve.
“My daughter,” she whispered. “They took my daughter upstairs.”
“What is her name?”
“Lily.”
Celine promised they would find her, though she had no idea whether it was true.
They reached the central chamber.
A thick glass wall separated them from Leah, Noah, and Elias.
Elias held his gun, but it was no longer pointed at the hostages.
It was aimed at Adrian Vale.
Vale stood near an open tunnel entrance with two armed guards.
“You used Angela,” Elias said.
Vale smiled. “Your sister was paid generously.”
“She believed you would protect us.”
“Belief is not a contract.”
Elias’s hand shook.
Leah held Noah against her.
Celine struck the glass. “Elias!”
He looked toward her.
“Angela is alive,” Celine shouted. “She asked us to protect you.”
Cashin glanced at her but did not correct the lie. Angela had asked for no such thing.
Elias’s face broke.
Vale moved toward the tunnel.
“Shoot him,” Cashin said.
Elias looked between Vale and the hostages.
Then he lowered his weapon.
“No more.”
Vale’s guard fired.
The bullet hit Elias in the abdomen.
Leah screamed.
Cashin shot the glass lock. Celine pulled the door open and ran inside.
Gunfire thundered through the chamber.
Cashin engaged the guards while Vale disappeared into the tunnel.
Celine crawled toward Elias.
Blood spread beneath him.
“Stay with me,” she ordered.
He laughed weakly. “You nurses all say that.”
“Because people listen.”
She pressed gauze against the wound.
“Code to the hostages’ restraints?”
“Angela’s birthday,” he whispered.
“Date?”
“March eighth.”
Celine entered 0308 into the restraint panel.
Leah and Noah were released.
Noah ran into Celine’s arms.
She held him for one second, then directed Leah toward the exit.
“Follow the green lights. Marcus’s people are coming.”
Leah stared at Elias.
“He protected Noah.”
“I know.”
“Can you save him?”
Celine looked at the blood.
“I’m going to try.”
Cashin returned from the tunnel entrance.
“Vale escaped.”
“Then go.”
“I am not leaving you.”
“You can end this.”
“I can end him later.”
His choice was immediate.
Vale, his enemy of years, had escaped within reach.
Cashin stayed beside Celine.
Together, they lifted Elias onto a rolling gurney.
The alarm changed pitch.
A computerized voice announced:
FACILITY PURGE INITIATED. STRUCTURAL CHARGES ARMED. FIVE MINUTES TO DETONATION.
Celine stared at Cashin.
“Vale is destroying the hospital.”
Cashin pushed the gurney toward the elevator.
“No,” he said. “He is destroying the evidence.”
May you like
Celine held up the copied drive.
“Not all of it.”
