Chapter 36 - The Ghost in the Sub-Basement
The underground fallout tunnel smelled of damp earth, rust, and decades of stagnant water. They moved fast, illuminated only by the tactical flashlight mounted on Thomas’s shotgun. Vance led the way with his hands raised, limping from a glass shard embedded in his ankle.
Noah’s skin was turning grayish-blue. The incision on his neck was seeping dark blood through the makeshift bandages, and every few minutes, the child’s limbs twitched with localized seizures.
“His bio-signs are destabilizing,” Vance warned, checking the child’s radial pulse with trembling fingers. “The neural mesh is trying to transmit, but because we severed the auxiliary ground wire, the signal is feeding back into his motor cortex. If we don’t connect him to a grounding terminal within an hour, the bio-core will fry his central nervous system.”
“Where is the terminal?” Ethan demanded, his face streaked with tears and soot.
“St. Jude’s Sub-Level 3,” Vance replied, breathless. “The pediatric research wing. It’s the only facility on the Eastern Seaboard equipped with the neuro-quantum dampener.”
“That hospital will be surrounded by Clara’s private army,” Thomas said grimly. “It’s suicide.”
“No,” Margaret said, stepping out from the tunnel exit into the muddy riverbank of the canal. The freezing night wind hit them like a wall of ice. “Clara thinks she controls the hospital because she paid for the wing. But she forgot who built St. Jude’s forty years ago.”
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Ethan stared at his mother. “What are you talking about?”
“Your grandfather was the head of maintenance and chief structural engineer for that entire medical campus,” Margaret said, her voice dropping into a steely, unyielding register. “Before he died, he gave me the master architectural blueprints. There are steam tunnels beneath that hospital that don't appear on any municipal map or digital schematic. If Clara wants a war in that building, we’re going to fight it on our ground.”
