The Northern King's Vendetta

Chapter 5 : The Hospital

​The armored SUV's tires squealed on the pavement as Caleb pushed the vehicle to the max, darting through the gridlocked traffic of a city still reeling from the sudden blackout. The shadow of the City B Central Hospital was visible in the distance, with the upper floors flickering with the strobo-light of emergency sirens and muzzle flashes.

He didn’t wait for the car to stop before he hopped out, checking the slide on his handgun and adjusting the combat knife at his belt, and he headed for the side entrance as he spoke into his comms unit to see how his remaining men on site were doing.

"This is Vance, I am at the North entry, give me a sit rep now and tell me how the perimeter wasn’t held," Caleb growled into the radio as the rhythmic thud of his boots on the pavement rang through the empty street.

"Sir, they came in through the service tunnels and planted C4 in the elevator shafts, we're on the first floor and it's them moving up through the surgical wing," a soldier called out amid shattering glass and screams, "don’t fight us, they're just going straight to your aunt’s room, and they cut the power to the floor so we’re in the darkness."

​“Hold your position, and secure the lobby, I don’t need any more of my men dying in a choke point just because I’m not there to lead you,” Caleb said as he flung open the stairwell door and began racing up the stairs three at a time, his breathing deep and measured in spite of the burning in his lungs.

He arrived at the third floor, then cracked open the door, finding a hallway strewn with thrown-away medical instruments and two private security guards who hadn’t stood a chance against Isabella’s professional assassins, and Caleb vanished into the shadows of the hall like a phantom, ducking behind a number of bulky laundry carts so as not to be seen by a mercenary who was standing guard at the far end.

The mercenary was a stocky man in a grey tactical vest, and he was nonchalantly looking at his wristwatch as he reclined against a nursing station, looking completely uninterested by the carnage he was assisting in creating.

"Jensen, how long is the captain going to take in there with the old lady?" the mercenary asked into his own radio, "because eventually the cops are going to learn how to get around the signal jammer and I don't want to have a standoff with the SWAT team over a small job."

"Blind man, spoon and all; can you at least watch the door the captain is making sure the toxin is applied right so it will seem like heart failure from her physical wounds," a voice crackled from inside, "Isabella wants that to a clear message to her nephew when he eventually comes, so just let us two more minutes."

Caleb didn't wait for the two minutes to pass, he took off from behind the carts and snatched the mercenary around the neck before the man could bring up his rifle, and with a sharp twist of his torso, Caleb slammed the man’s head into the corner of the metal desk with enough force to render him unconscious in an instant.

He caught the man's body before it hit the floor to minimize the noise, and then he headed for the room where the "captain" was, his heart rate spiking as he heard the slight, terrified groans of his Aunt Elena.

He burst through the door, and there was a man in a black combat uniform pressing a syringe containing a clear, oily solution between Elena's neck and the man's neck. Two other mercenaries holding her down on the bed of the hospital were his bruised face and the pure fear in her eyes that made red to Caleb's vision. The captain pivoted toward them, eyes wide, but Caleb didn’t let him say a word or reach for his holster before he fired two shots into the chests of the men holding Elena and then closed the distance to the captain in three long strides. He seized the man’s wrist, snapping it backward until it broke, the syringe dropped to the floor, breaking, and then Caleb pummeled the dude’s face with a series of short, savage strikes until the mercenary collapsed against the heart monitor with a smashed jaw and his eyes bolting to the back of his head.

​"Caleb... Note: Involve a human editor to polish the outputs so that it is suitable for the public.

"you shouldn't have come here, it's a trap, they said I was never going to leave this room," Elena whispered and her voice was nothing more than a strand of sound as she extended a shaking hand in his direction.

"I'm here, Elena, and no other person is going to lay a hand on you as long as I have breath in my body, so just do your best to calm down while I get these restraints off you," Caleb said, his hands moving quickly to unlock the leather straps on the bed, but as he moved her to check her injuries, his eyes caught a strange bulge underneath the skin of her upper arm that didn't look like a surgical bandage.

He gingerly pulled back the medical tape and a cold pit formed in his stomach as he saw a tiny red light blinking deep within a fresh incision in her muscle, and he understood the abductors hadn’t simply placed a tracking device in her — they’d concealed a localized explosive as well, designed to kill anyone who tried to rescue her.

“Don’t move, Elena, I mean it, don’t so much as twitch,” Caleb said, his voice breaking with inexplicable fear as he stared at the intricate components of the micro-bomb, “not only did they want to kill you, they wanted to take me out with you.”

Is it a bomb? Just leave me here, Caleb, go save Mia and forget about me,” Elena sobbed, tears soaking into the pillow in the hospital,

“I’ve lived long enough and I’m not going to let you die because of me."

"You're not going to get rid of me, and I've gotten through to people in much worse situations than this in the field in the North, so I need you to trust me and hold your arm really still while I do a field extraction," Caleb said as he retrieved a pair of surgical scissors and a small pair of forceps from a nearby tray, blinking in and out of focus in the sweaty haze and dabbing at his eyes with his shoulder.

The only sounds in the room were the soft, rhythmic beeping of the machine and the faint noise of his men braking down the door down the hall, and Caleb’s hands, which had only moments before been trembling with fury, steadied like rock as he methodically worked through the seams. He needed to be surgically precise sliding around the pressure sensors and heat triggers (there were heat triggers and pressure triggers, but no joypads!) that Isabella’s engineers had installed, and he felt time bearing down on him as the blinking light started flashing faster, showing that a remote signal was attempting to detonate the charge.

“Almost there, just one more wire,” muttered Caleb to himself, and with the last gentle tug of the forceps he pulled out the small metal cylinder form Elena’s arm and dropped it into a heavy metal biohazard container, sealing the lid as a muffled thump emanated from within the bin.

He rested his forehead on the edge of the bed for a moment, exhaling a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and then he looked up at Elena and offered her a brief, weary smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

”It’s over, the bomb is gone, the mercenaries are dead, and I’m going to get you out of here and onto a secure flight out of the city,” Caleb said as he began to wrap her arm in clean gauze. "but first, I need you to tell me exactly what Isabella said to you before they brought you here, because I need to know her next move before she realizes I've survived her little surprise."

​"She said she was going to take everything from you, Caleb, and she mentioned something about a ledger that your mother left behind," Elena whispered as she gripped his hand, "she's scared of what's in that book, and she'll burn the whole city down to make sure you never find it."

​Caleb nodded, his mind already spinning with new calculations, and he helped Elena into a wheelchair while checking his weapon one last time.

​"Then we’ll just have to make sure I find it first," he said, and he pushed her out into the hallway to meet his men, ready to take the fight directly to the Sterling tower.