Page 93 of Anchor
COMMAND FLOOR – SYSTEM PORT C – 0408 HOURS
Her hands moved faster the angrier she got. The room was too quiet. A hum of power under the floor. Emergency lighting along the walls. Everything else was silent, except her fingers, hitting keys with purpose. Faster. Deeper.
Claire leaned over the terminal, shoulders tight, hair scraped back and forgotten. Her pulse was in her throat, in her fingertips, and in the questions she hadn’t asked aloud yet.
Behind her, she could feel him—Terry Fields. Standing just far enough back to pretend he wasn’t hovering. But she could feel his eyes. Every time the screen changed, every time her expression shifted, he leaned in the smallest bit. Like he already knew what she was going to find.
Why are you so nervous, Terry?Her jaw clenched.
“I’m not seeing where the blackout started,” she said out loud. “The trigger was in Sublevel Three, but this isn’t clean. Someone buried it. They twisted a normal system task and made it into a trap.”
Terry’s voice came a second too late. “Looks that way.”
Claire kept typing. He hesitated. She heard it in the silence between his words.
“Could’ve been hidden,” he said finally. “Slipped in early. Maybe it was set on a delay.”
Claire turned slowly and looked at him, not like a colleague, not even like someone she knew. She looked through him. “Do you believe that?”
He was lying. She didn’t need a readout or a log to know it. She felt it deep in her gut, in her skin, in the same part of her that used to spot the truth in her mother’s polished lies. She didn’t move, but let the silence tell himI see you.And I don’t trust you anymore.
CHASE MEDICAL – OR SUITE 3 – SAME TIME
The lights were blistering white. The air was sharp with saline, ozone, and blood. Machines beeped out a stuttering rhythm, and under it all—Reid Hanlon fought for his life.
Tuck Hanlon stood near the head of the table, just in front of the anesthesiologist, elbow-deep with suction, mask tight, voice sharp through his shield. “His blood pressure’s dropping again. The pericardium’s refilling.”
“Because the damn thing’s bleeding like a sieve.” Trevor Foley braced his forearm against Reid’s chest wall, hands slick, reaching into a rupture that refused to close. “Every vessel I plug, another one starts.”
“He’s not clotting.” Tuck didn’t look up. “We’re waiting on a tox screen. Something’s messing with his factors. Hang more platelets.”
Beth Reed Bailey and Pete Walter entered, already scrubbed, suited, and ghost-quiet as they moved in. Beth’s eyes met Tuck’s. “Where do you need us?”
Tuck barely nodded. “Pericardium and lungs.”
“On it.” Beth didn’t wait. She moved straight to the chest, reaching past Foley, working around the heart. “I need gauze. Pack around the superior edge; there’s leakage tracking toward the right atrium.” Beth, chief medical director, had flown in to check on Ann Arbor operations. “Trevor, we will have to reschedule our meeting.” She continued to pack Reid’s heart.
Pete was already beside her. “I’ll take the left lung. There’s fluid pooling.”
Trevor Foley pivoted without a word, dropping down toward the liver. “Hematoma just cracked. I’m gonna need more clamps when this opens.” He looked at the circulating nurse, who moved to grab another surgical tray.
Tuck shifted positions. “Kidney's not stable. Posterior edge is ripped. If it starts bleeding again, we’ll lose output.”
Beth worked with frightening precision. “He’s actively bleeding from all the microvascular beds. His body’s trying, but it can’t finish the clot. Whatever’s in him, it’s burning his platelets out.”
Pete nodded tightly. “Lung’s friable, like the tissue’s been heat-softened. No necrosis—chemical, not thermal. Could be synthetic. Military-grade.”
Foley’s hands never stopped moving. “Get me a better damn retractor. I can see the hepatic artery; now just give me the angle.”
Suction whirred. Monitors pulsed. For a moment, the team moved in perfect, brutal rhythm.
Beth locked eyes with Tuck. “Pressure’s climbing. You see that?”
Tuck checked the line. “Little bit. Not much, but…”
Foley blew out a breath that puffed up his mask. “We might be gaining on it.”
Pete nodded. “Just a hair. But it’s there.”
