BLOOD ON THE MARBLE STAIRS

Dr. Marcus Vance sat in his locked hospital office, the bottle of single malt Scotch on his desk already half empty. The fluorescent lights overhead hummed with a maddening buzz that vibrated straight through his temples.

On his computer screen was the falsified post-mortem registry. With a few keystrokes, he had erased a vibrant young mother from the world of the living.

Murderer.

The word echoed relentlessly inside his skull. He stared at the silver-framed photograph on his desk: his seven-year-old daughter, Chloe, her face pale and sunken from chronic liver failure, smiling weakly from a hospital bed. Marianne Sterling had delivered on her promise within ninety minutes. The regional transplant network had just notified him of a matching pediatric donor organ scheduled for harvest at dawn.

""A life for a life,"" Marcus whispered bitterly to the empty room, tears stinging his eyes. ""Forgive me, Elena.""

A sudden tap on the exterior window made him jump out of his chair.

His office was on the second floor, accessible only by a narrow metal fire escape. Marcus crept toward the blinds, parting them with trembling fingers.

Standing on the rusted iron grate, soaked in mud and rain, was Elena.

Marcus gasped, stumbling backward and knocking his chair to the linoleum floor. ""No... no, this is impossible. You flatlined. I saw you...""

Elena pushed the unlocked window upward and climbed silently into the office. She looked like a revenant pulled from the river Styx—hair matted with grave dirt, blood crusted across her temple, her eyes blazing with an unholy intensity.

""You pronounced me dead, Marcus,"" she said, her voice smooth and hollow.

""I had to!"" Marcus fell to his knees, covering his face with his hands. ""She was going to let Chloe die! She controls the donor allocation committee! I had no choice!""

Elena walked slowly toward the trembling doctor, stepping over the spilled alcohol. She reached down, took the framed photo of Chloe from his desk, and set it gently back upright.