My daughter-in-law di:ed while giving birth, but when eight men tried to lift her coffin, they couldn’t move it even an inch. So I dropped to my knees in the Rocamadour cemetery and screamed for them to open it. Because I had just heard a knock.

Julian’s bitter laugh died in his throat. His eyes darted to the heavy military datapad resting on the console.

Attached to the side of the pad was a small, blinking green light.

A high-gain cellular broadcaster.

“Hospital Wi-Fi is terrible anyway,” I explained casually, tapping a key on my wrist-mounted terminal. “So I brought my own satellite uplink. I’ve been broadcasting the audio and video from this room for the last fifteen minutes.”

Eleanor swayed on her feet, grabbing the windowsill for support. “Broadcasting… to whom?”

“To the **Aetheris Industries** Board of Directors,” I replied. “To the local District Attorney. To the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s corporate fraud division. And, just for good measure, to every major news outlet in the financial district.”

Julian’s face turned the color of ash. The blood literally drained from his head. He looked like a man who had just stepped off a cliff and realized there was no net.

“You didn’t,” he whispered.

“I did,” I confirmed. “They heard the confession, Julian. They heard Dr. Aris admit to the poisoning. They heard you admit to the forgery. They heard everything.”

Right on cue, heavy, synchronized footsteps echoed from the hallway outside.

It wasn’t the slow, shuffling walk of hospital security. It was the heavy, deliberate march of law enforcement. Muffled shouts rang out through the thick oak door.

*“Police! Open the door! Step away from the door!”*

Julian looked wildly at the window, as if contemplating a four-story drop. Eleanor slumped into her chair, covering her face with her trembling hands, her pristine image utterly destroyed.

I didn’t look at them anymore. They were ghosts to me now.

I turned my back on them, holstered my weapon, and walked over to Dr. Aris. I grabbed him by the collar of his expensive lab coat and hauled him violently to his feet. He whimpered like a beaten dog.

“The reversal agent,” I demanded, my voice harder than steel.

Dr. Aris shook his head violently, tears and snot streaming down his face. “There… there isn’t one. The toxin has to bind to the receptors, it has to wear off naturally—”

I slammed him back against the wall. “Do not lie to me. Neostigmine. Edrophonium. You wouldn’t use a synthetic paralytic without keeping the anticholinesterase antagonist on hand in case you accidentally exposed yourself. Where is it?”

He sobbed, reaching with a shaking hand into the deep pocket of his medical bag resting on the counter. He pulled out a small, unlabelled vial of clear liquid and a syringe.

I snatched it from his hands.

“If this is a trick, Aris,” I whispered, “I will let Julian kill you before the police get through that door.”

I turned to the IV line running into Elias’s arm. My hands, which had been perfectly steady while holding a weapon on a violent man, suddenly began to shake. I swabbed the injection port, drew the clear liquid into the syringe, and depressed the plunger.

The heavy oak door began to splinter inward.

The police were hitting it with a tactical ram.

*THUD.*
Wood cracked. Dust drifted from the ceiling.

I leaned over Elias, pressing my forehead against his cold, waxy cheek. I gripped his limp hand in mine, squeezing it as hard as I could.

*THUD.*
The hinges shrieked, tearing out of the doorframe.

“Come back to me,” I whispered into his ear. “Please, El. Come back to me.”

The monitor above the bed flared. The wild, chaotic brainwaves suddenly smoothed out, shifting from erratic spikes into a steady, powerful, rhythmic wave. The heart monitor, which had been chiming at a sluggish thirty beats per minute, began to accelerate.

Forty.
Fifty.
Seventy.

The door finally gave way. It exploded inward in a shower of splinters and broken hinges. Tactical officers flooded the room, assault rifles raised, sweeping the area with blinding flashlights.

“Hands in the air! Nobody move!”

Julian threw his hands up immediately, dropping to his knees. Eleanor simply sat there, staring blankly at the wall, completely broken. Dr. Aris was already on the floor with his hands behind his head.

A detective in a trench coat stepped through the wreckage of the door, his eyes scanning the chaos before landing on me. Detective Corbin. The man I had sent the encrypted files to three hours ago.

“Mrs. Vance?” he asked, lowering his weapon. “Are you unharmed?”

I didn’t answer him.

I couldn’t.

Because beneath my hands, the fingers I was holding tightly… twitched.

It was a microscopic movement. A tiny flex of the index finger against my palm. But it was there.

Then, Elias took a breath.

Not the mechanical, forced hiss of the ventilator. It was a ragged, shuddering, desperate gasp of air drawn by his own lungs. His chest heaved violently.

The tape covering his eyelids tore slightly.

Slowly, agonizingly, his eyes fluttered open. The pupils contracted sharply against the harsh light, trying to focus. He blinked once, twice, and then his gaze locked onto mine