Chapter 4 - The Ascent of the Stairs
The distraction was all Daniel needed. He tackled Vance, throwing his entire weight into the man’s midsection. They crashed to the floor, rolling into the metal privacy screen, which collapsed over them in a tangle of fabric and aluminum.
Vance fought with a desperate, wiry strength, his fingers clawing at Daniel's face. He managed to plant a boot in Daniel's chest, kicking him off. Daniel scrambled backward, gasping for air, as Vance scrambled to his feet.
Instead of attacking again, Vance looked at Ethan. A strange, twisted smile crossed his face.
"The boy has the spark," Vance muttered. "But the ledger cannot be rewritten."
With a sudden, fluid movement, Vance turned and bolted toward the back of the isolation bay, where a heavy fire exit door led to the service stairwell. He pushed the bar, and the door swung open, triggering a local, battery-operated horn that wailed into the dark corridor. Vance vanished into the stairwell, the door slamming shut behind him.
"Daniel!" Megan screamed, rushing to the incubator. "Sophie's backup battery is dead! The disruptor he placed must have drained the internal cell before it was unplugged. She’s losing heat, and her respirator is off!"
Daniel scrambled to his feet, his chest heaving, his body aching from the fall. He ran to the incubator. Sophie’s tiny chest was barely moving.
"We need a manual bag!" Megan said, her hands flying over the emergency cart. She pulled out a tiny, silicone resuscitator bag. "I can breathe for her, but we need to get her to the emergency ward on the ground floor. They have independent solar-backup generators that can't be cut from the main grid. We have to carry her."
"The elevators are down," Daniel said, his mind racing. "We have to take the stairs."
"The stairs where Vance just went?" Megan asked, her voice trembling.
"We have no choice," Daniel said. He looked at Ethan, who had walked over to the side of the incubator, looking down at his tiny sister.
"Ethan," Daniel said, grabbing his son by the shoulders. "I need you to be the strongest you've ever been. We are going to carry Sophie down the stairs. You need to stay right behind me. Keep your hand on my belt. Do not look back. Do you understand?"
Ethan looked up, his dark eyes reflecting the dim emergency light. "I can do it, Dad."
Megan carefully lifted Sophie from the incubator, wrapping her in three layers of heated blankets. She held the tiny baby against her chest with one arm, using her other hand to squeeze the small blue bag, forcing air into Sophie’s lungs in a steady, rhythmic pattern.
Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release.
"Let's go," Daniel said, picking up a heavy, metal flashlight from the nurse’s desk.
He pushed open the heavy fire door to the stairwell. The air inside was cold and smelled of damp concrete. The emergency lighting in the stairwell was even sparser than in the hallway, casting long, geometric shadows down the concrete steps.
They began their descent. Fourth floor. Third floor.
The only sound was the rhythmic hiss-sigh of the manual breathing bag and the echo of their footsteps on the concrete.
As they reached the landing of the second floor, the heavy steel door above them clicked open.
Daniel stopped, holding his breath. He shone the flashlight up the stairwell spiral.
The light illuminated the rusted metal railings, stretching up into the darkness.
Then, a sound began.
It was a slow, deliberate tapping.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound of an iron pipe striking the metal railing.
"He's behind us," Ethan whispered, his hand tightening its grip on Daniel’s belt.
"Keep moving," Daniel hissed, pushing Megan ahead of him. "Fast. But watch your step."
They hurried down the next flight of stairs. The tapping grew faster, louder, echoing through the concrete chamber until it sounded like it was coming from all directions.
Suddenly, the flashlight beam caught a movement in the shadows on the landing below them.
It wasn't Vance.
It was a barrier.
The heavy security gate that separated the pediatric ward from the general public areas had been pulled shut and locked with a thick, heavy chain. Vance had locked them in. They were trapped in the stairwell, suspended between the darkness above and the locked gate below.
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And from above, the tapping stopped.
"I can hear you breathing," Vance’s voice drifted down from the darkness, calm, conversational, and entirely terrifying. "The baby’s air is running out. You can hear it, can't you? The little sigh she makes. It's the sound of the ledger closing."
