Nine-year-old Eli Mercer was halfway across the MRI room when his red backpack ripped him off his feet.

Inside the pitch-black bio-workshop, the air was thick with the scent of old solder, ozone, and chemical solvents. Harrison scrambled backward across the dusty linoleum floor, pressing himself beneath a sturdy metal workbench as another bullet pierced the wooden door, sending splinters raining down onto his head.

Outside, Marcus Vance’s voice cut through the barrier, cold and furious.

“You can’t hide in there forever, Harrison! That door won't hold up against a tactical breaching charge, and I happen to carry one in my vehicle!”

Harrison didn't answer. He held his breath, his hands trembling as he pulled out his glowing tablet. The screen displayed a weak Wi-Fi signal—barely one bar connecting to the hospital’s internal server. He needed the physical master drive hidden inside the wall safe to unlock the offshore accounts and transfer the evidence directly to Detective Miller’s secure terminal upstairs. If he didn't upload the files within ten minutes, Marcus would blast his way in and finish the job.

Crawling on his hands and knees beneath the workbench, Harrison swept his hand along the base of the brick wall near the old soldering station. His fingers brushed against a cold, flush-mounted metal panel hidden behind a row of empty chemical bottles.

The wall safe.

He remembered the combination from his first year as head of radiologic physics—a sequence based on the hospital’s founding date and his own employee ID. With shaking fingers, he spun the dial: 1-9-4-5-0-3-1-2.

Click.

The small heavy door swung open. Inside sat a single, encrypted silver flash drive resting on a piece of foam padding. Harrison snatched it up, his heart pounding against his ribs.

He scrambled back to his feet, rushing toward the far corner of the workshop where an old wire-reinforced frosted glass window looked out into the hospital’s central maintenance courtyard. The window was painted shut with layers of old industrial paint, but through the glass, Harrison could see the amber glow of the security lights above the loading dock.

He grabbed a heavy steel pipe wrench lying on the workbench and smashed it directly into the center of the glass.

CRASH!

Glass shattered inward, showering the floor. Harrison cleared the jagged edges with the handle of the wrench, ignoring the shallow cut on his forearm. He climbed up onto the sill, peering out into the cool night air. The drop to the courtyard was nearly twelve feet—enough to break an ankle if he landed wrong, but it was his only way out.

Suddenly, the heavy wooden door behind him exploded inward with a deafening roar. Wood splinters and shrapnel flew across the room as Marcus Vance kicked it off its hinges, stepping through the wreckage with his pistol raised, smoke curling from the barrel.