Chapter 29 - The Blackout Ward
Twelve hours later, the private Gulfstream jet provided by federal intelligence touched down through a veil of sleet at O’Hare International Airport.
Olivia hadn't slept in nearly four days. Her scrubs were stained with bunker soot and sweat, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow, but the adrenaline pulsing through her veins was more potent than any clinical stimulant.
Dr. Mercer rode beside her in the back of the armored suburban, sirens wailing as a tactical motorcade tore through Chicago’s rain-slicked expressways toward the hospital.
"Chicago Memorial has been placed under full federal quarantine," Mercer reported, reading from a secure DOJ tablet. "Local police have cordoned off a four-block perimeter. The infants in the PICU, including Ethan Cole, are under twenty-four-hour armed guard."
"How is Ethan?" Olivia asked, her voice raspy.
"Stable. Intracranial pressure remains normal. His parents are with him. Clara says he drank an ounce of formula an hour ago." Mercer offered a tired smile. "You saved him, Olivia. You performed a miracle through an unshielded MRI coil."
"The miracle won't matter if Vance’s shadow program uploads the rest of the database," Olivia murmured, looking out at the gray Chicago skyline. "Those other children won't have a whole PICU team standing by to save them."
The motorcade screeched to a halt outside the looming, soot-stained brick facade of the Old St. Jude’s Pavilion—a condemned, five-story Victorian structure connected to modern Chicago Memorial by a bricked-up subterranean catwalk.
Tactical federal officers with assault rifles and night-vision goggles surrounded the entrance.
"Building is dark," the tactical team leader reported as Olivia and Mercer hopped out of the vehicle. "Power was severed to this wing fifty years ago, but thermal imaging shows a massive heat signature coming from the fourth-floor surgical amphitheater."
"The old surgical theater," Olivia whispered. "The place where Arthur Vance began his surgical residency forty years ago."
"We go in hard and fast," Reynolds ordered, racking his shotgun. "Nurse Bennett, you stay behind the perimeter."
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"Not a chance," Olivia said, grabbing a tactical flashlight from an agent's vest. "Vance’s systems are integrated with pediatric life-support architecture. If you shoot the wrong terminal, the feedback loop could send an electrical surge straight into the modern PICU next door. You need me to identify the junction boxes."
Reynolds stared at the stubborn young nurse, saw the unbreakable steel in her eyes, and nodded grimly. "Stay behind my point man. If anyone opens fire, you drop to the floor."