Code White

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

  If that was true, the solution was to flood Jamie’s brain with light—as much light as possible.

  “Yes, Mrs. Gore, I think there is a chance that Jamie is going to get better. But he needs your help. You need to hold his eyes open, like this.” She demonstrated. “Can you do that? I’ll get you some tape to help with it.” As Mrs. Gore leaned over the side of the bed, Ali switched on a wall-mounted light on an accordion bracket, and directed it toward Jamie’s face. “He needs to see the light. Keep him looking at it, okay? We’re going to be moving him out in a minute, and in the meantime I’m going to try to locate a phototherapy light—a special light that’s as strong as daylight. That should be exactly what he needs.”

  Ali turned away from the bed, and was startled to see an Asian man dressed in black standing close behind her. It was Special Agent Raymond Lee. Scopes was also with him, taking up a position about midway from the door.

  “Dr. O’Day, I need you to come with me,” said Lee.

  “I don’t have time for your third degree, Mr. Lee. I have a patient in crisis here. We’re in the midst of an evacuation. If you want to be of use, then help push some of these beds down to the lobby.”

  “If you refuse to come, I’ll place you under arrest.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Conspiracy to commit extortion and murder.”

  “That’s preposterous. I have nothing to do with this bomb and you know it. Get out of here and let me take care of my patient.”

  “Logline says you took a phone call here from Odin not more than five minutes ago, just before the countdown began. That’s a pretty damning coincidence.”

  “No. That was—”

  “I don’t have time for explanations. Come with me now. If you’re innocent, prove it by helping us shut this computer down.”

  “I don’t know how to do that. If I did, I would have done it long ago. I’ve already been over this with Harry Lewton. Ask him. He was the last person to speak with Kevin.”

  “It’s not Harry Lewton’s call.” Lee reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. As if by reflex, Ali stepped back and pushed an IV pole between herself and Lee. Seeing her resistance, Scopes started moving in.

  “Wait a minute!” cried Mrs. Gore. “Are you going to arrest the doctor? What’s going to happen to Jamie?” She pushed her arm in front of Lee, blocking him. At the same time, the short but rotund Dr. Brower planted himself in Scopes’s path.

  Remembering the pocket alarm Harry had given her, Ali groped for it in the pocket of her scrub top, found it and pressed the button. Harry, I need you! Oh, please God, let the receiver still be on!

  “I don’t believe this,” Mrs. Gore continued. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. Where’s your heart? The doctor is keeping this boy alive. He’s not a nobody. He’s been on national TV. If anything happens to him, questions will be asked. The reporters are right here in this building. I’ll raise goddamned hell. I will. Don’t think I won’t do it!”

  “Please step back, ma’am,” said Lee.

  She grabbed Lee by his sleeve. “Go ahead. Arrest me, too.”

  “And me,” said Dr. Brower, pushing his fingertips into Scopes’s chest.

  “Stop it, all of you!” shouted Ali. She glared at Lee. “Give me a moment to work things out with this patient, and then I’ll go with you.”

  “What do you need to do?” asked Lee.

  “Get him out of this tower, and then find him a phototherapy lamp. It won’t take but five minutes, and you can stay with me the whole time.”

  “All right,” said Lee, putting the cuffs away. “But make it fast.”

  A moment later, Jamie’s bed was hurtling down the corridor toward the Promenade, the glass-walled atrium that bridged Tower A with the main bank of elevators. Beds and wheelchairs were already lined up eight deep in front of each elevator. The elevators ran at their usual plodding pace. Because call buttons had been pressed on every floor, cars that were already crammed to the full on the second floor were forced to keep going, stopping at every floor on the way up and down. Any patient who could manage to hobble on two feet deserted the elevators for a slow-moving queue leading to the main stairway.

  “We’ll never make it to the lobby,” said Ali. “Not with twenty-five minutes left.”

  “What can we do?” asked Mrs. Gore.

  “The Promenade has a frame and understructure that’s separate from the Towers,” said Ali. “Even if the bomb goes off, this area might be spared. So wait here, and keep an eye on the elevators. Once the second floor is cleared, these lines might start moving. If not, this is still about as safe a place as you can reach.” Ali wondered what might happen to all the glass if there really was an explosion, but sunlight was coming in brightly, and light was the one thing that was keeping Jamie alive. “Have him face the sun,” she said. “Keep his eyes open.”

  “All right, let’s go,” said Lee.

  “I need to get the phototherapy lamp.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Not far. The Neonatal Department uses these lamps for babies with jaundice. They have a central storeroom on this floor.”

  In silence, Ali began leading the two agents through a labyrinth of corridors. Not until they passed a deserted nurses’ station did she turn and speak. “There’s a computer at this station. If you want to get through to Odin, I suggest we try to tap into him from here.”

  “I’m not going to let you anywhere near it—or any terminal.”

  “Then how do you expect me to help?”

  “By giving us the program code and passwords. We know you have them somewhere.”

  “You don’t understand how Odin works. There are no passwords.”

  “We have a couple of IT specialists downstairs who understand more than I do. Give them what they need to hack into the system.”

  “I’ll do what I can, but you have to help me to help you. No one can hack into Odin’s core programming. If he senses an attack, he’ll defend himself—exactly as a person would if you pricked him with a knife.”

  “And your approach would be what?”

  “To reason with him. To show him that the bomb is just … pointless. Illogical. Wrong.”

  “We are talking about a computer, right?”

  “A computer with the lives of two thousand people under his sway,” said Ali.

  “That’s exactly why I’m not letting you near it.”

  They continued on through the outer double doors of the neonatal unit, and then stopped at a door, which Ali unlocked with a swipe of her ID badge. “The lamp is in here.”

  Ali opened the door and reached for the light switch. No sooner had she felt it than a desperate thought came over her. If I go along with these men, we will all surely die. They would settle her in a room somewhere, to watch helplessly while their team of so-called experts fumbled away at Odin’s firewalls, like mice trying to gnaw their way into a vast stone fortress. And precious minutes and seconds would dribble away in vain.

  The only hope was to confront Odin face-to-face. There was only one place where she could do that and be sure of controlling the conversation: Kevin’s lab. It was locked, she knew. Odin himself would have to open it to her. But if she did not reach it within minutes, annihilation was certain.

  So, although she moved her hand up and down with a flicking motion, she did not actually move the light switch. “There’s something wrong with the power in here,” she said. “Prop the door open, will you? It’ll give us some light.”

  As Ali entered the room, the two agents followed, no more than an arm’s length from her. Scopes pushed a cart against the door to hold it open. The room was filled with monitors, ventilators, IV pumps, bassinets, incubators—all sorts of equipment, much of it shrouded in plastic covers. Ali looked around. She saw several of the standard twenty-watt blue lamps used for treating jaundice, but she remembered once seeing something else here, something with far more power. There, in the far corner, she spotted it
, about five feet high on its gray metal tripod — the PH-36 Ultraviolet-B Therapy Lamp. It was too strong for routine use with newborns, but once in a blue moon it saw service in treating skin diseases like urticaria pigmentosa and atopic dermatitis.

  Ali threaded her way to the back. She was breathing heavily now, feeling sweaty around her hairline, thinking about how crazy she was to be doing this. There would be no going back. She’d be an instant Public Enemy No. 1—and that was if she succeeded. If she failed, she’d probably wind up with a bullet in her back.

  There was a lot to figure out, and she had only five or six seconds. Everything depended on chance. Someone had left the intensity dial of the lamp all the way up—good. Someone had left the power cord dangling, instead of winding it up in a nice tidy coil—even better. Now she had to find an outlet. Reaching out toward the PH-36, Ali gave its stand a feigned shake, and then looked back at Lee and Scopes, who stood silhouetted against the light from the doorway. “It’s jammed,” she said.

  “Need a hand?” said Scopes.

  “No, I’ve got it.” Ali bent down and began groping in the darkness. Next to her was a microwave on a counter. She felt the power cord of the microwave dangling over the edge of the counter, and let her hand travel down along it until it reached the wall. Thank God, an outlet. In a second, she had plugged in the PH-36 and stood up behind it, facing the two agents. “It’s free now,” she said. “I’m going to hand it over to you.”

  Scopes reached for the lamp. Ali had one hand on the pole stand, and the other hooked around the front control plate, where her fingers found the big round ON button just below the intensity dial. Scopes’s face was twelve inches away as she angled it out toward him. He and Lee were both facing the dark corner, their pupils maximally dilated to take in every stray photon. The open door was just ahead. With a deep breath, Ali shut her eyes and pressed the button, flooding the room with eight hundred dazzling watts of illumination.

  Ali heard a howl as Scopes let go of the lamp. Dropping the tripod, she dashed to her left, zig-zagging through the rows of equipment. Lee had his hands out, but missed her by an inch as she flew past him. An IV infusion pump fell in her wake. When she got to the exit, she kicked the cart aside and pulled the door fast behind her. A clang, a rumble, and a string of fucks and hells and god almightys told her that Scopes, close on her heels, had stumbled over the infusion pump.

  She had bought herself at most a ten-second head start, and she had to make it count. She ran straight for the neonatal ward. The inner door was under heavy security to prevent abductions, and she had to swipe her badge and show herself at a reception window to get buzzed in by the floor nurse. This will slow them down, she thought.

  “Crib six,” said the floor nurse, evidently assuming she had come to help with the evacuation.

  Like all the tower units, the neonatal ward was shaped like a wheel, with a nursing station at the hub, and six glass-walled modules, or cribs, sleeping four to six babies apiece. In one of the far modules, a cluster of nurses and orderlies was frantically scooping up babies and charts and carrying them out by a rear emergency stairway.

  Ali raced toward the stairway. Hearing the buzzer go off, she looked over her shoulder and saw the two FBI men coming through the door. Damn them! They must have been given access badges. They can go anywhere I can.

  She pushed into the stairwell. It was jammed with evacuees moving downward, as far above and below as she could see. “Emergency! Emergency!” she called out, as she leapfrogged through the queue, using the inner guard rail for leverage as she pushed past the stubborn, the slow, and the obese.

  She had reached the second floor by the time a commotion up above told her that her pursuers had also entered the stairwell. She heard Lee cry out, “Stop! FBI!” but his voice did not carry, and in any case, no one could possibly have stopped against the descending crush. Ali didn’t look back. She kept on pushing, pushing, pleading, praying—and hoping that the two men behind her moved no faster than she did.

  On the ground floor, the stairway opened onto a deserted medical oncology ward. The stream of evacuees split and passed on either side of the central nurses’ station, at the same time resolving itself, like a column of fluid in laminar flow, into an inside lane hobbling along at the speed of an arthritis patient, and an outer lane for those nimble enough to scamper and run. Ali was among the nimblest, and quickly reached the last bottleneck, the main entrance of the oncology ward, where all the streams reunited in a turbulent mixing of fast and slow in a space about six feet wide.

  Ali drove herself through the tangle. Almost free now! Then all resistance disappeared, as the human stream spilled out the double doors and burst into the vast space of the main hospital lobby, like spray out of a nozzle. Ali ran. She skirted the throngs around the main entrance, and darted into the long corridor leading to the first-floor level of the Pike. Only a few evacuees came her way, and she easily darted past them. But Kevin’s lab was still one floor below. Every stairway and elevator was choked by the exodus. How was she to get downstairs?

  She heard Lee shout behind her. “Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot!” When she did not stop, he spoke once more—with a single, emphatic, authoritative gun blast that resounded with an echo throughout the corridor, and sent every patient cowering to the floor.

  Ali glanced over her shoulder. It had been a warning shot. But Scopes had his gun out, too. As Lee closed in, Scopes stopped, holding his gun in both hands at eye level, drawing a bead on her. “Aim low! Aim low! We need her!” she heard Lee shout.

  She braced herself for the shock of the bullet. But still she ran. She was so focused on the open space in front of her that she never even heard the deafening whoop of a fire alarm going off. Fire doors began closing automatically just ahead of her, while a crisply recorded woman’s voice sounded over the speakers:

  COMMENCING CERBERUS QUALITY ASSURANCE TEST QA12. PLEASE STAND CLEAR OF ALL DOORS AND EXIT ALL ELEVATORS. THIS IS A FUNCTIONAL TEST OF THE CERBERUS INTEGRATED SECURITY SYSTEM.

  She saw the gap between the doors shrinking. Lee was so close she could hear him panting like a foxhound. The gap! The gap! With one great bound, she slipped between the two mechanical jaws, turning her body sideways as she grazed the metal. Lee slammed against the doors behind her, trying to force them open, his left arm extending through the crack. But the doors did not give way, and with a curse Lee was forced to pull his arm back. There was a click as the door shut firmly, and a deadbolt slid into place.

  CERBERUS QUALITY ASSURANCE TEST QA12 IS NOW IN PROGRESS. LOCK TIME 18:17 CENTRAL STANDARD TIME. RESET TIME 00:00.

  Ali could run no more. Gasping for breath, she doubled over, supporting herself with her hands on her knees. A half-dozen terrified evacuees crouched around her, staring at her wildly. Twenty yards ahead, another set of fire doors had closed. There were no exits, no elevators from this section of the corridor. As Lee and Scopes began shoulder-ramming the doors behind her, trying to break their way through, she realized that she was trapped.

  But, no. One route of escape was left. On her left, a small balcony overhung the reception area of the Division of Radiation Oncology one floor below. Peering over the railing, Ali saw at least a sixteen-foot drop. Although climbing trips with Kevin had made her comfortable with heights, she knew that a straight fall of that distance could snap her ankles or spine like dry wood. But luck was with her. Alongside a bronze sculpture of a man, woman, and child coming through a door, someone had parked a half-dozen gurneys. These were at last three feet high, with padded mattresses that could break the impact of her fall—if she could manage to land on one.

  No time to think about it. Ali swung herself over the railing. As she dangled over the precipice, she planned to release herself in a controlled drop. But her sweaty palms slipped on the smooth brass finish of the railing. She fell at an awkward angle. There was a crash as she landed on the edge of one of the gurneys, knocking it onto its side, and scattering its neighbors in every direction. />
  “Oh, God,” she muttered. Her left thigh and forearm had taken the brunt of the impact. Her hip hurt like hell, but nothing was broken.

  And then, before she could catch her breath, she heard the crackle of the overhead speakers—not with the crisp woman’s voice of the Cerberus announcement, but the lush, silvery baritone of Odin:

  “TIME TO DETONATION: TWENTY MINUTES.”

  Ali scrambled to her feet and ran down the basement level corridor. A terminal! I’ve got to find a terminal! Radiation Oncology was deserted. There were computers behind the reception counter, but if Lee and Scopes made it over the balcony they would spot her there immediately. She kept running, until she reached a door marked “Thoracic Imaging Reading Room.” There was nothing else beyond—only another set of locked fire doors. So she ran into the reading room, limping and out of breath.

  The room was like a darkened cave. Inside were six work stations, each comprised of a tall bank of frosted-white light boxes for viewing X-ray films, and a desk on which sat four monitors—a white screen for dictation, a blue screen for looking up patient records, and a pair of black plasma screens for displaying digitized X-rays and CT scans. Although everyone was gone, some of the screens were still active, indicating that the area had been evacuated in haste, and so recently that the automatic ten-minute logouts hadn’t kicked in.

  Ali headed for a station in the corner, out of view of the hallway. She was just pulling out a chair, when a sound from the corridor outside made her freeze. The footfall of a man, moving quickly and decisively toward her. Ali let go of the chair and hid behind the light box, flattening herself tight against the wall, letting out her breath to make herself even flatter.