Chapter 3
Twelve minutes later, he officially suspended me for administrative non-compliance.
Two armed hospital security guards were called to walk me down the long, winding corridor toward the main lobby. But before my foot could even cross the threshold of the automated glass exit doors, every single emergency alarm in the entire hospital complex began to scream in a terrifying, synchronized rhythm.
The primary lights flickered violently before plunging into darkness, replaced a second later by the eerie, pulsing crimson glow of the backup generators.
Warning: System server breach detected. Backup power active. ICU telemetry failure.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my eyes darting up to the digital security monitors, which were rapidly flashing red.
The guard beside me grabbed my arm, his radio crackling with chaotic static. “Bennett, move along. You’re officially suspended from the property.”
I wrenched my arm free from his grip and immediately sprinted back toward the elevators.
“Then call it in to your supervisor, because your federal patient is about to die.”
By the time I reached the secure doors of the ninth floor, the atmosphere was absolute pandemonium. The central monitoring station was completely dark, the electronic smart-pumps were throwing error codes, and the young travel nurse assigned to room 912 looked like she was on the absolute verge of tears as she stood over the general’s bed.
“I thought management sent you packing!” she cried out, her hands shaking as she tried to manually calculate a drip rate.
“They did,” I said, bypassing Dr. Price, who was staring helplessly at a dead tablet screen. “What exactly happened to his baseline?”
“The general’s crashing. His pressure dropped to fifty over thirty the second the main network servers went dark.”
I pushed past the panicking residents, arriving directly at the bedside as the general’s monitor began to emit a flat, ominous tone.
Suddenly, Thomas Calloway’s eyes snapped wide open.
They were clouded with pain, burning with the intensity of a septic fever, but as they swept across the chaotic room, they locked directly onto my face with a sharp, terrifying focus.
The entire room seemed to freeze.
Slowly, fighting against the immense weight of his failing muscles and the tangle of medical tubes attached to his arm, the dying four-star general lifted his trembling right hand to his brow.
And in front of the stunned doctors, the federal agents, and the administrator who had just thrown me out, he delivered a perfect, military salute.
“Captain Bennett,” he rasped, his voice cutting through the mechanical alarms like a thunderclap. “Report.”
“The hospital network is under a coordinated cyberattack, sir,” I replied instinctively, stepping into my old role without a single second of hesitation as I took control of his central line. “They’re trying to mask your vitals to induce a fatal arrest. But I’m still here.”
A faint, ghostly smile touched the old warrior’s lips.
“Still here.”
May you like
What followed was a masterclass in tactical medicine that Dr. Price and Victor Hale could only watch in stunned silence. While the hospital’s automated systems were completely paralyzed by the digital breach, I relied entirely on the raw combat training I had forged in the mud.
I manually adjusted his epinephrine titration based on his pupillary reflex, ordered the terrified resident to administer a specific autonomic blocker that bypassed the corrupted digital pumps, and stabilized his crashing rhythm using an old-school manual defibrillator override.
