"He's here! Someone's here!" The voice from behind the barricade was panicked, female, and not Sarah's.
"Don't open it! It could be a trick!" a man's voice barked back.
Leo staggered down the hall, the blaring alarm an incessant hammer against his skull. The chemical smoke was beginning to clear. He could see them now—faces peeking through the gaps in the barricade, their eyes wide with terror. There were a half-dozen of them.
He reached the makeshift wall of beds and IV stands, his breathing ragged. He was covered in sweat, grime, and monster ichor. His side was bleeding. To them, he must have looked like just another horror the hospital had spawned.
"My name is Leo Miller," he shouted over the alarm. "My sister is in there. Dr. Sarah Miller! Is she there?"
The faces disappeared from the gaps. There was a frantic, muffled conference. After a moment, a new face appeared. Older, with tired eyes and dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, but with a familiar, determined set to her jaw. Sarah.
Her eyes widened, first in disbelief, then in a flood of raw, unadulterated emotion. "Leo?" she breathed, her voice choked. "Oh god, Leo!"
"Sarah!" Relief washed over him, so potent it almost buckled his knees. "I'm here. Let me in. We don't have time."
"He's my brother!" she yelled to the others. "Help me move this!"
Hands, weak but willing, began to pull at the barricade. They scraped a small opening, just large enough for him to squeeze through. He slid past a bed railing and stumbled into the relative safety of the sealed-off ward.
The moment he was inside, Sarah was on him, her arms wrapping around him in a fierce hug. He hugged her back, burying his face in her hair, the simple, real contact a balm on his shattered nerves. It was her. She was real. She was safe.
The reunion lasted only a second. She pulled back, her professional doctor's eyes already assessing the gash on his side. "You're hurt."
"I'm okay," he said, cutting her off. "Sarah, listen to me. The whole hospital is running on one backup generator. It has less than three minutes of fuel left. There's a manual fuel-valve override in a maintenance closet on this floor. I have to get to it, now."
The color drained from her face and from the faces of the other survivors around them. They understood immediately. The lights, the precious few medical monitors they had running, the air circulation—it was all about to die.
"This way," Sarah said, her voice regaining its sharp, clinical edge. She grabbed his arm and pulled him down the hallway, past the huddled forms of a dozen patients. "The main West Wing maintenance closet is just around this corner."
They rounded the corner. The closet was there, a simple metal door with a small placard that read "MAINTENANCE."
But the door was wrong.
Leo felt it instantly, his Sense Contamination skill screaming a silent alarm. The same sweet, cloying smell of lavender and burnt sugar. The same fine, glittering pink dust spread on the floor before it.
The Night-Stalker had been here. It had anticipated him. It knew this was his goal.
"Don't touch it," Leo warned, holding Sarah back.
"What is it?" she asked, her eyes wide.
"It's a trap," he said, his own gaze fixed on the door. He could see the faint, shimmering strands of solidified spite webbing the handle, the hinges, the very seams of the door. But this time, it was different. Thicker. A faint, malicious purple light pulsed from within the web. This was not a simple trap to be cleaned. This was a seal. A curse.
The overhead lights flickered violently. The fire alarm stuttered and died, plunging the hallway into a terrifying, deep red silence, broken only by the frantic beeping of a nearby heart monitor.
Leo looked at his watch.
Time remaining: 2 MINUTES.