Chapter 4: Darkness in the Wing
The sudden blackout swallowed the luxurious suite, leaving only the faint, pulsing blue glow of the computer terminal casting erratic shadows across the walls.
"Stay back!" Marcus ordered sharply, his arm immediately shooting out to shield Khloe as he pulled her back against the secure interior wall away from the windows.
Elaine let out a muffled scream, her footsteps stumbling blindly across the carpet as she tripped over an ottoman.
"Power failure on twenty," Victor’s voice rang out, calm and authoritative despite the sudden emergency, as he reached into his jacket for his encrypted mobile device. "The backup generators should kick in within five seconds—"
Before he could finish his sentence, a heavy metallic thud echoed from the hallway outside the suite, followed by the dull, rhythmic clatter of the emergency fire doors slamming shut across the entire wing.
"That wasn't a standard grid failure," Marcus muttered, his eyes straining against the gloom as he listened intently to the dead silence outside. "The manual override fuses for this entire floor have been tripped."
On the floor near the sofa, a sharp intake of breath gave away Isabella's position.
"Isabella?" Khloe called out, her hands resting protectively over her stomach as she squinted into the dark. "Where is she?"
Marcus lunged toward the sofa, his hands sweeping across the cushions, but his fingers met only empty velvet.
She was gone.
In the span of three seconds, while their attention had been diverted by the sudden blackout, Isabella had slipped out the door into the pitch-black corridor.
"Dammit!" Marcus swore, moving swiftly toward the doorway. "Victor, get the emergency relay online. Someone let her out."
"I'm trying, but the local terminal is locked out," Victor replied, his fingers flying across the console keyboard as he tapped into the hardwired backup system. "The mainframe is being flooded with an external override command from an internal terminal on floor nineteen."
"Floor nineteen," Marcus repeated, his mind racing through the hospital's architectural layout. "That's the executive archives and the private elevator bank."
"And it's restricted access," Victor added grimly, the screen suddenly flashing a warning amber as a secondary data packet downloaded automatically onto their terminal, bypassing all security firewalls. "Wait... they aren't just locking us in. They're sending us something."
"What is it?" Khloe asked, stepping closer to the terminal despite Marcus's warning hand.
Victor tapped the screen, and a single, high-definition video file began to play without sound.
It showed a man in a dark security uniform—a man Khloe recognized instantly as one of the senior evening supervisors—walking calmly toward her father’s private office on the executive floor, carrying a heavy leather briefcase.
"That's David Vance," Khloe whispered in disbelief, her breath catching in her throat. "My uncle's most trusted head of security."
On the screen, David stopped in front of the heavy mahogany doors, pulled a small electronic keycard from his pocket, and slid it into the biometric lock.
The door clicked open, and David stepped inside, disappearing into the shadows of the darkened office.
"He's not a traitor," Victor said, his voice tightening with sudden realization. "He's cleaning out the physical hard drives before the federal investigators arrive."
"Then he's working with whoever funded Isabella," Marcus said, his jaw clenching as he grabbed a heavy metal floor lamp from the corner of the room, unscrewing its heavy base to use as a makeshift weapon. "Victor, keep trying to force the door open. I'm going after him."
"Marcus, no, it's a trap!" Khloe pleaded, catching his arm with a grip fierce enough to bruise. "If Isabella planned this, the whole floor is rigged!"
Marcus looked down at her, his dark eyes softening for a fraction of a second before hardening back into an unyielding resolve.
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"If I stay here, they win," Marcus said quietly. "If I go down there, I secure the evidence that puts every single one of them behind bars for the rest of their lives."
He pulled away gently, stepped out through the open doorway into the ink-black hallway, and vanished into the shadows.
