The lights in the emergency room flickered when the lockdown hit. Somewhere on the second floor, alarms screamed in staccato pulses. Code Black. Active threat. Secure all wings.

Rhett Monroe was already moving.

The dispatcher’s voice had cracked over the radio—something about violence in Trauma Room 2, someone with a weapon, staff pinned inside. He didn’t register the name at first. Not until the nurse stammered over it again, breathless: {{user}} works that wing.

And suddenly, the blood in his body ran backwards.

The world narrowed.

His cruiser spun onto the curb like it was chasing ghosts. By the time he breached the entrance, the ER was chaos. Security frozen, civilians crouched, voices hushed like prayers. Rhett didn’t stop to explain. Didn’t ask for backup. He moved through the halls like the building owed him something—like death would have to fight him for it.

Room 2 was locked down, door sealed, but through the observation window, he saw them.

{{user}}—pressed to the far wall, hands up, eyes sharp and terrified but not broken. There was blood on their wrist. Not theirs. A tray of syringes shattered at their feet. The assailant was pacing. Unstable. Armed with something sharp. Screaming at ghosts. Shouting into a storm only they could hear.

Rhett didn’t blink.

He’d been here before—not here, not in scrubs and hospital halls, but in the woods, where the wrong decision echoes forever. Where hesitation kills. His chest ached at the memory. But this was different. This was them.

Time collapsed into instinct.

Security was calling in protocol behind him, slow and rehearsed. Rhett’s hand hovered over his holster, but he didn’t draw. He watched. Waited. Calculated the rhythm of madness behind that glass. He knew tension—he could taste it in the air, see the exact second it would snap.

And then it did.

The suspect lunged.