Chapter 5 - Echoes of the Scalpel
The wooden door rattled against its frame under the heavy impacts from outside.
"Open the door, Miss Lin!" a cold, masculine voice bellowed through the wood. "Mrs. Vance only wants the child! Leave the girl and you walk out of here alive!"
"You're lying!" Maya shouted back, her back pressed against the door as she scanned the dim storage room for an exit or a weapon.
The room was filled with shelves of sterile supplies, IV bags, surgical trays, and tanks of industrial medical gases. High above, near the acoustic ceiling tiles, a narrow ventilation grate hummed softly.
"Maya..." Lily whimpered from behind a stack of linen carts, covering her ears. "I'm scared."
"I know, baby. I know," Maya said, her mind racing at a frantic pace. She knew the wooden lock wouldn't hold against a tactical boot for more than twenty seconds. She needed a distraction—something violently effective.
Her eyes landed on two large green cylinders resting in a rolling cart near the wall: Compressed Oxygen and Nitrous Oxide.
Maya leaped across the room, grabbing a heavy stainless steel orthopedic wrench from a lower shelf. She rushed to the oxygen tank, her bruised hands working frantically to unscrew the primary pressure valve.
Outside, the first heavy kick splintered the center of the wooden door.
"Ten seconds, Miss Lin!" the voice warned.
Maya jammed the wrench between the valve handle and the high-pressure nozzle of the oxygen tank, snapping the brass fitting completely off. A deafening, high-pressure roar filled the enclosed room as pure, concentrated oxygen blasted into the air.
She grabbed Lily by her waist, hauling the child behind a heavy lead-lined X-ray barrier in the corner of the room.
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Maya pulled a disposable surgical igniter—used for cauterizing small wounds—from her hoodie pocket. Her thumb hovered over the sparking wheel.
"Forgive me," Maya whispered, and struck the flint.
