The three knocks came again.
Not louder.
Closer.
Isaac stood before he knew he'd made the choice, head turning toward the door.
Jadah was already shaking her head.
"No."
He frowned. "What."
Her eyes weren't on the door.
They were on the sink.
The taped-over cardboard plate where the metal fixture used to be gave one tiny dry tap from inside the wall.
Then another.
Then the third.
Not the door.
The pipes.
Isaac felt the back of his neck go cold.
Outside in the hall, somebody stopped short.
Then the nurse's voice came through the door, lower now, all business gone sharp.
"If that's the wall, do not touch anything metal."
Jadah barked out one ugly laugh. "Great."
The sink knocked once more from inside the wall.
A screw in the bolted plastic chair trembled.
Not moved.
Trembled.
Isaac looked at Jadah.
She had both hands jammed hard under her arms again, shoulders up, face gone pale in a way the bandage didn't explain by itself.
"It's not me," she said too fast.
"I know."
"I'm serious."
"I know."
The nurse on the other side of the door said, "Doctor."
Footsteps. More than one.
Then Mina's voice.
"Room twelve, I'm opening. Keep your hands where I can see them."
The latch clicked.
The door opened just wide enough for Mina to step through sideways.
No face shield now. No gown. Just scrubs, gloves, and plastic goggles that made her look meaner somehow. Behind her came the nurse with a laundry cart stacked with blankets, two plastic bins, and a coil of thick rubber tubing. Ren was there too, black case still under one arm, eyes already on Jadah's hands.
Mina clocked the room in one sweep.
The sink wall.
The trembling screw.
Jadah.
Isaac standing too close to the chair.
The bruised little silence between all of it.
"It's traveling through the plumbing," she said.
Jadah stared. "What is."
"The pulse. The response. Pick your favorite bad word." Mina crossed to the sink wall and put two fingers against the tile. Waited. Another faint knock answered under her hand. "You're not causing this one. Something else is ringing the line."
Isaac felt his jaw loosen by a fraction.
Beside him, Jadah sat down very carefully on the cot like her knees had just informed her they were done being decorative.
"Something else," she repeated.
Mina nodded once. "Two rooms down we've got another awake case. Not metal-heavy like Tara. Different. But every time the sky pulses, half the utility lines in this wing start talking to each other."
Jadah looked at the wall like she wanted to curse it out.
"Fantastic."
Ren spoke from the door.
"We need to move them."
Mina didn't look back. "I know."
"Then why are they still here."
"Because I was in trauma keeping your friend from bleeding into my floor tiles."
That got Isaac's full attention.
"Marlon."
Mina finally turned.
"Alive."
The word hit like water.
Not enough.
Still huge.
"He's out of surgery," Mina said. "Leg saved for now. Arm closed. Blood in. Pressure ugly but holding." Her mouth tightened a fraction. "He woke once. Asked whether the loud one was really gone. Then he swore at my anesthetist and went back under."
The room took that hit in silence.
Jadah looked at the floor.
Isaac looked at nothing.
Ty, dead in the street.
Marlon, alive under lights and tubes and somebody else's hands.
That was what passed for mercy now.
The nurse started pulling folded blankets off the cart.
"Where are they going."
Mina answered without looking away from Jadah.
"Old family waiting room off pediatric imaging. Rubber floors. Plastic furniture. We stripped it twenty minutes ago."
Jadah blinked. "You stripped a whole room in twenty minutes?"
The nurse snorted once. "Try working here."
Another knock came through the pipe in the wall.
Longer this time.
Not three neat taps.
A drag.
Jadah flinched, and one of the bed bolts gave a sharp metallic tick in reply.
Mina saw it.
So did Ren.
Nobody commented on it. Good.
Mina pointed at Isaac.
"You stay next to her when we move."
He frowned. "Why."
"Because she listens to you faster than she listens to me."
Jadah looked offended on principle. "That's not true."
Mina gave her a flat stare.
Jadah thought about it.
Then muttered, "I hate all of you."
The nurse started wrapping the sink pipe opening with towels and duct tape like she was trying to smother a living thing.
From the hall outside came the squeal of wheels, a shouted code Isaac didn't know yet, then a burst of running feet.
Ren's head turned before the rest of her body did.
"Problem."
Mina didn't ask how she knew.
She just listened.
The overhead lights dimmed for one heartbeat.
Then came back wrong.
Not darker.
Greener.
Hospital-green gone bruised and thin.
Every hidden piece of metal in the room answered at once.
Chair screw.
Door hinge.
The bolts under the cot.
Something in the vent overhead.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Jadah closed her eyes and swore under her breath.
"Not me."
Mina was already nodding. "I know."
Ren touched the radio clipped to the back of her waistband, then stopped before keying it, like she'd remembered too late what kinds of things in this building were listening.
Bad sign.
Isaac looked at her. "What."
Ren's face didn't change.
"East barricade."
The nurse stopped taping.
Mina did look up at that.
"What about it."
Ren listened to something too faint for Isaac to catch. Maybe a shout down the hall. Maybe boots changing rhythm.
Then she said, "They've got shooting."
Shooting meant human.
That should've been better.
Nobody in the room acted like it was.
The nurse whispered, "Against what."
Ren's eyes flicked to the black case under her arm.
Then to Mina.
Then back toward the hall.
"Not sure yet."
A radio somewhere outside the room came alive all at once, volume too high, voice cracked with static and fear:
"—east gate, east gate, we've got friendly casualties, repeat, friendly casualties, target not altered, target not altered—"
Mina's whole face hardened.
The radio kept screaming.
"—one man, one man, no visible weapon, he's just—"
The transmission cut in a burst of feedback so shrill Jadah clapped both hands over her ears.
The bed bolts rattled.
Isaac crossed the space between them fast and caught her wrists before the panic in them could spread outward.
"Hey."
Her eyes snapped to his.
"Look at me."
Outside, the radio came back through the static for one last broken second.
"—lifting them—"
Then nothing.
The room stayed still after that.
Too still.
Even the pipe in the wall shut up.
Ren looked at Mina.
Mina looked back.
Both of them already knew the shape of this before Isaac could catch up.
The man on the landing.
The one who said they wouldn't die there.
Not yet.
Mina spoke first.
Very quiet.
"Move them now."
The nurse grabbed the cart.
Ren opened the door.
And from somewhere deeper inside St. Agnes West, three floors below the bruise-lit sky, a sound rolled up through the building that Isaac knew instantly and wished he didn't—
a man screaming while his feet no longer touched the ground.