Chapter 8 - The Power Outage
"We need to get back to Emily right now," I said, spinning toward the stairwell door.
Vance didn't argue. She was already drawing her sidearm, speaking rapidly into the shoulder mic of her police radio. "Dispatch, this is Vance. I need immediate units to County General pediatric ER. We have a suspected breach in progress."
We bolted down the concrete stairs, bursting through the doors into the ground-floor triage hallway.
The overhead fluorescent panels flickered once, buzzed violently, and then died completely.
The entire emergency wing plunged into pitch darkness.
Screams echoed from the waiting area. A split second later, the dull red glow of battery-operated emergency exit signs illuminated the long, tiled corridor, casting everything in bloody, distorted shadows.
"Emergency generators should kick on in ten seconds," Vance muttered, sweeping her weapon back and forth as we hurried down the hall.
Ten seconds passed. The lights stayed off.
"Somebody cut the main junction box," I said, recognizing the symptoms immediately. "If you cut the primary feed without bypassing the transfer switch, the backup diesel generator trips its internal safety breakers. It won't kick in until someone resets it by hand."
"How do you know that?"
"I wired this hospital's cold-storage morgue three years ago."
We reached Room 104.
The sliding glass door was wide open. The white hospital bed was empty, the IV tube severed with a clean scissor cut, dripping saline onto the linoleum floor.
Emily was gone.
On the small bedside tray, resting beside her discarded teddy bear, was a pair of yellow gardening gloves.
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The exact same yellow gloves Mrs. Harris had been wearing when she took Emily over the fence.
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