"They're not just archiving records up there, Maya," Ray whispered. "They're wiping the physical drives."
"Where does the auxiliary fire riser come out?" I asked.
Ray reached into his canvas jacket, unclipped a brass key on a heavy iron ring, and pressed it into my palm. It wasn't an electronic badge; it was an old master skeleton key, notched and worn down to dull brass.
"B-stairwell," Ray said, his breath hitching. "Behind the laundry intake. Door has a hazard notice taped across the latch. If you get caught up there, Arthur won't just pull your license. He'll call the county sheriff for burglary. He's got three board members in his pocket, and you're off the payroll."
"He thinks I'm sitting in my car crying in the parking lot," I said.
I took the brass key and slipped through the metal side door before Ray could change his mind.
The stairwell smelled of lime wash, wet dust, and trapped steam. The concrete treads were slick with ambient moisture. My shoes made no sound on the rubber risers as I took the steps two at a time, keeping one hand flat against the cold concrete wall.
At the second landing, I heard the faint, metallic drone of the hospital paging system: Dr. Henderson to telemetry, line four. Normal hospital life continued below, routine and blind. At the third floor, the air turned heavy with industrial sanitizer.
By the fourth landing, the light fixture overhead was dead. The emergency egress lamp buzzed with a sick, yellow flicker. Across the steel fire door, yellow hazard tape hung in torn ribbons, its adhesive dried and curling.
I didn't touch the push bar. I knelt, inserted Ray's brass skeleton key into the manual cylinder beneath the card reader, and turned it slowly clockwise. The lock gave a heavy, mechanical thunk that vibrated up my wrist.
I pulled the door inward an inch.
The hallway beyond was a tunnel of black plastic sheeting hung from the dropped ceiling. Floor tiles were pulled up in irregular patches, exposing the gray slab. The air was colder here, smelling of mildew and scorched wiring. But thirty yards down the corridor, through the cloudy plastic of the old nursing station, a rectangle of pale blue light glowed against the floor.
Someone was sitting at the maintenance desk with an open laptop, the fan humming loud in the dead corridor.
Beside the laptop sat a green wire basket filled with physical paper charts, each labeled with red mortality review folders from the third-floor ward. And resting on top of the stack was an open requisition ledger, stamped with Arthur Vance’s personal executive seal.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I stayed low, keeping my back flat against the concrete block where the drywall had been stripped away. My hand rested against my coat pocket, fingers curled around the screen of my personal phone. If I backed down the stairwell now, Arthur Vance would finish the purge before morning. By the time I could file an emergency injunction with the county probate judge, every physical log tied to Room 312 would be pulp in an incineration hopper, and the digital backups on the local bridge server would be magnetically scrambled beyond recovery.
A single step forward on the exposed slab made no noise, but my rubber heel caught the edge of a loose acoustic tile. The brittle mineral fiber snapped with a dry, sharp pop.
The technician froze. His hand stayed planted on the edge of the open requisition ledger. He didn't turn around immediately; instead, his posture stiffened, his shoulders rising toward his ears like a man caught somewhere he knew he had no legal right to stand.
"Vance?" he called out, his voice thin, dry, and tight with nerves. "I told you forty minutes. Elevator takes too long between cycles."
I stepped around the corner of the draped plastic into the wash of cold blue monitor light. "Arthur isn't coming back up, Miller."
The man whipped around so fast his rolling stool scraped a screech across the bare subfloor. It wasn't the uniform guard from the rotunda; it was Greg Miller’s younger brother, Darren, an independent contractor Vance had brought in three weeks earlier under the title of systems integration specialist. Darren’s eyes went wide, flicking instantly from my face to the brass key still gripped in my left fist, and then to the badge reel clipped to his own belt—the white plastic card bearing my name, my photo, and my administrative master code.
"Dr. Ellis," Darren stammered, pulling his hands back from the keyboard as if the keys were scalding iron. "You're... you're not allowed in this sector. Vance said security cleared you off the campus."