Chapter 13 - The Race Against Dawn
Sarah didn't waste words. She whistled sharply, and three men emerged from the container carrying a canvas military field kit and a pressurized insulated cooler marked with blue medical cross emblems.
""The ledger goes to the broadcasting array on the radio tower,"" Sarah said, taking the drive from Jonas and inspecting the encryption seal. ""If this data is clean, every screen in the province will see Vance’s diversion valves opening by morning. The council won't be able to sweep this under the rug.""
""I don't care about the politics,"" Maya interrupted, stepping forward with clenched fists, her white shirt black with grime and soot. ""Give me the medicine! We have to go back to him!""
Sarah looked down at the eight-year-old girl, noticing the bloody scrape on her cheek and the fierce, unyielding defiance in her hazel eyes. The cynical expression on the black-market trader's face softened for a fraction of a second. She reached into her utility vest, pulled out a cold, sterile injector filled with amber fluid, and pressed it into Maya’s hand.
""That's pure neuro-stabilizer and concentrated electrolytes,"" Sarah said softly. ""Inject that into his carotid artery the second you get there. It will jump-start his cellular hydration and keep his heart from seizing until the IV can take over. Go.""
Jonas didn't wait. He scooped Maya into his arms and took the medical cooler in his other hand, running up the rusted metal emergency stairs that led to the industrial surface level. They emerged into the cold pre-dawn air near the edge of the abandoned train yards.
The sky in the east was beginning to turn a sickly, bruised violet. The temperature was already climbing, the relentless heat of the impending day gathering on the horizon like an invading army.
They sprinted through the skeletal remains of the rusted rail cars, the gravel crunching violently beneath Jonas’s heavy boots. The corrugated warehouse loomed fifty yards ahead, its broken doors swinging gently in the morning breeze.
""Grandpa!"" Maya cried, slipping from Jonas’s grip as soon as her feet touched the warehouse floor. ""Grandpa, we have the medicine!""
She bolted toward the back of the pickup truck, her small boots slapping against the concrete.
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The bed of the truck was empty.
Arthur was gone. On the floorboards of the cab, where the old man had been resting, was a single, fresh smear of dark blood, and a corporate retrieval tag pinned to the torn fabric of the seat with a steel dart.
