Isaac looked at the spoon.
Then at Jadah.
Her eyes were still wet from gagging, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other trapped in the blanket on her lap like she didn't trust it to stay a hand if she let it out.
"It wasn't me," she said hoarsely.
Mina's eyes cut to the spoon.
Then to Jadah.
Then back to Isaac.
The pounding in the hall got closer.
"Doctor?"
"Doctor, open this now—"
"Is there an active—"
Mina moved before any of them answered.
She crossed the room in three quick steps, scooped the spoon up in a gloved hand, and shoved it into the bloody blanket puddled on the bench where the mother and daughter had been.
Then she looked straight at Isaac.
"You have five seconds."
He didn't know whether she meant for an answer or a lie that could survive contact with the hallway.
Ren solved it first.
"He came for us," she said.
Mina's head turned a fraction.
"He came through the building for him," Ren added, meaning Isaac. "The dead are collateral."
That was somehow worse because it was probably true.
Mina looked back at Isaac.
"Do you know him."
"No."
"Has he seen you before tonight."
Isaac thought of the landing.
The line of that gaze.
The way he'd spoken like he had been waiting on a timetable Isaac's body was somehow part of.
"I don't know," he said.
Mina hated that answer on sight.
Good. It deserved it.
The handle turned hard from the outside.
Mina was at the door in a second, not opening it all the way.
"Containment event," she said through the gap. "No entry. Soft team only."
A male voice outside, tight with adrenaline: "We heard a shot."
"You heard one shot. If I had needed more, you'd know."
That bought her half a beat.
Not more.
"Doctor—"
"Get me two plastic privacy screens, three blankets, a mop team, and no one with visible metal above the sternum."
Silence.
Then the voice outside said, weaker, "What happened in there?"
Mina looked over her shoulder once.
At the walls.
At the bench.
At the blood.
At Isaac last.
Then back to the crack in the door.
"Mass casualty."
Not a lie.
Not the whole thing.
She shut the door again before the questions could grow teeth.
The room breathed once, hard.
Jadah wiped her mouth with the back of the blanket and looked at the blood-slick bench, then away so fast it almost snapped her neck.
"I need to get out of here."
"No," Mina said immediately.
"I can't sit in this room."
"No."
"I just watched a kid—"
Her voice broke there.
Not into tears.
Into rage trying to choose a shape and failing.
The spoon had been one thing.
The walls were another.
Mina saw the break coming and cut across it.
"Look at me."
Jadah didn't.
Mina stepped closer.
"Look at me."
That got her.
Mina's voice dropped.
"If you run into that hall like this, you are not leaving this floor on your feet. So you stay put for sixty seconds, breathe like a person instead of a machine, and then I move you somewhere cleaner."
Jadah stared at her.
Then laughed once in disbelief.
"You really say insane things like they're normal."
"I work in a hospital."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting."
Ren had gone to the blood on the bench.
Not to mourn.
Not to stare.
To search.
Isaac saw what she was doing and felt sick for an entirely different reason.
The little girl's blanket.
The mother's exploded shape.
Any metal missed.
Any clue.
Any reason.
Ren came up with nothing but a blood-wet plastic hair tie and a child's sock. She dropped both on the foam table like they'd personally offended her.
Mina caught the motion.
"Nothing metal?"
"Nothing useful," Ren said.
Outside, boots thudded away down the hall. Not retreating. Reorganizing.
The hospital was learning this room now.
That would become a problem in about three minutes.
Mina knew it too.
She looked at Isaac again.
"What he said to you. Every word."
He repeated it.
This time the room had witnesses for it.
Jadah shut her eyes halfway through.
Ren didn't move at all.
Mina listened without interrupting, one hand pressed flat to the bloody wall beside her like she needed something solid that wasn't any of them.
When he finished, she asked the worst question yet.
"What did you feel before he appeared."
Isaac frowned.
"What."
"You hear me."
He did.
He just hated how close the question came to the private thing under his sternum, the useless little warning thread he still didn't understand and didn't want named out loud in a blood-painted waiting room.
He said it anyway because every lie tonight had come back sharp.
"A pull," he said. "Down. Like something below us looked up."
Mina's face changed.
Tiny.
Real enough to matter.
Ren saw it. "You know something."
Mina looked at her. "I know the hospital blueprints."
"Then talk."
"Sublevel one connects to the old service tunnels. Laundry, oxygen feed, morgue intake, records transport, loading access, utility choke points." She looked at Isaac again. "If something came in under the east gate and wanted the building without taking the building, that's where I'd put it."
That sentence sat in the room like a loaded tray nobody wanted to touch.
Jadah said, "You mean him."
Mina didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
Another sound rolled through the floor.
Not the same groan as before.
Footsteps.
Many of them.
Running.
Shouting.
Then a metallic crash far enough away to almost be relief and close enough not to count.
Ren went to the draped glass in the door and lifted one corner by half an inch.
The corridor beyond strobed white as someone rolled plastic divider screens into place. Three orderlies in disposable gowns pushed the screens in front of the waiting room entrance like they were covering a body at a crime scene before the families came through.
Smart.
Too late.
Still smart.
Mina followed Ren's line of sight.
"Good. That buys me ninety seconds."
"Then what," Isaac asked.
"Then I stop pretending this floor can hold you."
Jadah let out one brittle breath. "Finally, a bad plan I recognize."
Mina turned on her.
"Can you walk."
"Yes."
"Can you keep your hands open while looking at that wall."
Jadah looked at the bench again.
At the blood.
At the blanket.
The room waited.
She swallowed once. Hard.
Then looked at Mina and said, "Probably not."
"Good. Honest." Mina pointed at Isaac. "Then he walks you."
"I have legs," Jadah snapped.
"You also have a problem."
"So does he."
"I noticed."
That shut all three of them up for one beat.
Mina moved to the foam table, cleared the bloodied blanket off it with one decisive pull, and yanked the black case closer to Ren with the same motion.
"Listen carefully. We are going to the old MRI prep wing."
Ren frowned. "That's a terrible idea."
"It's lead-lined, overbuilt, and most of the room fixtures were stripped years ago. Minimal exposed metal. One door. Two vents. Thick walls."
Ren thought about it for less than a second. "Fine."
Isaac said, "Marlon."
Mina answered while pulling gloves off with her teeth and replacing them with a fresh pair from her pocket.
"Not with us."
Everything in him recoiled.
"No."
"Yes."
"He wakes up and we're gone?"
"He wakes up at all, that's my win condition." Her eyes sharpened. "Do you want him alive or nearby."
That was filthily unfair.
Also the only real choice on the table.
Isaac looked down at the floor because if he looked at anyone else the answer would come out like anger instead of what it was.
"Alive," he said.
Mina nodded once.
"Then let me do my job."
Outside the waiting room door came a new voice.
Older male. Calm. Security or administration, hard to tell.
"Cooper."
Mina didn't turn.
"What."
"We've got north stairwell reports now."
Ren's hand tightened on the case.
"Of what."
A pause.
Then: "People saying there's more than one."
The room changed temperature.
Jadah whispered, "No."
Mina did turn then.
Not to the door.
To Ren.
To Isaac.
To the blood.
She made the decision immediately.
"Move now."
She opened the door herself this time and stepped out into the corridor like if fear wanted to stop her it could file a formal complaint. Plastic screens boxed off the waiting room from the rest of the floor, turning the hall into a narrow white tunnel.
Three staff stood beyond them in disposable gowns, faces bloodless under fluorescent light. One of them looked over Mina's shoulder and visibly flinched at whatever he saw in the room.
"Eyes off," Mina snapped.
He obeyed.
Isaac got to Jadah first. Her legs worked, barely, but not enough to trust on the first step. He offered his arm this time instead of his hand.
She looked at it.
Then took it without commentary.
Good.
No energy left for theater.
Ren came out with the case.
Mina in front.
Isaac and Jadah behind.
The bloody waiting room closing behind them as one more place the night had eaten.
They moved through the screened corridor while hospital staff stared very hard at anything but their faces.
At the far end, Mina cut them through an unmarked side door and into a narrower service hall with thicker walls, lower lights, and the dead echo of old machines. MRI PREP and HOLD had been stenciled over the doors once; now tape and marker had turned them into STORAGE A, CLEAN HOLD, DON'T OPEN, NO METAL.
Appropriate.
The hall felt different from the rest of the hospital.
Deader.
Heavier.
Like whatever happened here usually stayed here.
Isaac felt the thread under his sternum flicker once.
Not down this time.
Everywhere.
That was new.
That was bad.
He slowed.
Mina noticed instantly. "What."
He hated all of them seeing this happen in real time.
"It changed."
"How."
He looked at the shut prep room doors.
At the thick walls.
At the overhead lights humming too loud.
"Not one place," he said. "More like…" He swallowed once. "Like it's already inside."
Nobody liked that sentence enough to breathe after it.
Ren looked down the hall.
Then back.
"Move faster."
They did.
Halfway to the MRI prep wing, a door on the right banged once from the inside.
All four of them froze.
A laminated sign on the window read AUX HOLD 3.
Someone hit it again.
Then a voice from inside, muffled by the thick reinforced glass.
"Please."
Human.
Male.
Young.
Mina swore under her breath. "No."
The voice came again, cracking.
"Please don't leave me in here."
Jadah looked at the door.
Then at Mina.
Mina already knew what was on her face.
"No."
"He sounds—"
"I know what he sounds like."
Another bang.
Then sobbing.
Then silence.
Isaac felt the pull under his sternum jerk toward that room and then away so violently it almost turned his stomach.
"Not that one," he said.
Mina's head snapped toward him.
"You sure."
He nodded once.
Too fast.
Didn't care.
"Not that one."
That was enough for her.
"Keep moving."
They passed AUX HOLD 3.
From inside, the young man's voice rose into raw begging.
Then into threats.
Then his mother's voice.
Then Ty's laugh.
Jadah made a choking sound and covered her mouth with the blanket.
Isaac didn't look back.
Didn't need to.
The room had declared itself.
Mina keyed open the MRI prep room at the end of the hall and shoved them through.
Thick walls.
Plastic recliners bolted down.
Cabinets stripped bare.
No visible fixtures besides light covers sealed flush into the ceiling and one plastic wall clock that had stopped at 2:11 and never apologized.
Safer by design.
Maybe.
Ren set the case down in the far corner.
Mina locked the door behind them with a heavy manual turn.
This time, when the latch clicked, it sounded like a challenge instead of shelter.
Nobody spoke.
Then, from somewhere far away in the hospital—too far to locate cleanly, too deep to ignore—came another gunshot.
Then three more.
Then a scream that cut off mid-breath.
Jadah sat down hard in the nearest recliner and stared at her wrapped hands.
Isaac stayed standing because he didn't trust the floor not to change categories under him.
Mina turned to Ren.
"If there's more than one, this building doesn't hold."
Ren nodded once. "I know."
"And if he asked for the case at east gate, he knew exactly where to apply pressure."
"I know."
Mina's jaw flexed. "Then I need everything you're not saying."
Ren looked at Isaac.
Then at Jadah.
Then at the door.
Then back at Mina.
Not agreeing.
Not refusing.
Worse.
Choosing.
And before any of them could decide which truth to cut open first, the dead plastic clock on the wall ticked once and its frozen second hand lurched forward by exactly one second.