The System Hunter

Chapter 5: The Cost of Six Seconds

Elias kept both hands on the cart controls.

The woman wearing Mara’s identity approached slowly, letting the floodlights show she carried no visible firearm. Behind her, the hospital shutters began to descend. Two guards stood inside the loading bay with shock batons. Their timer displays were hidden by black privacy badges, just like hers.

“Your sister requested family assistance,” the woman said. “Sign the transfer and this dispute ends.”

Elias looked past her at the service door. One guard had a bruised cheek. The other wore a communications collar with an exposed cable. Neither looked comfortable with the deception.

“Call her,” Elias said.

“We’re already connected.”

“Have her say the name of our first dog.”

The officer’s smile never moved. “Identity verification is not conducted through personal trivia.”

“Then you don’t need my answer.”

Tessa tapped his wrist twice, their improvised signal for danger to the right. A drone rested on the roof above the loading ramp, its restraint launcher trained on the cart. Elias needed the guard with the cable collar to flinch. A six-second skill might buy him less than one second of advance warning, but that was all the room they had.

He activated TRAJECTORY ASSIST.

LIFE BALANCE: -00:00:06.

Thin blue lines swept through his vision, marking the drone’s probable arc, the guard’s stepping foot, and the position of a loose brake lever on the loading ramp. The predictions did not make him faster. They showed where the machine would shoot if he moved left.

He moved right.

A dart buried itself in the battery cart as Elias drove toward the service door. He struck the brake lever with the cart’s front frame. A steel pallet slid down the sloped ramp, forcing both guards to leap aside. Tessa grabbed the open communications cable and jerked it loose, severing their link to the building’s command system.

“Inside,” she shouted.

Hollen slid from the cart and nearly fell, but Elias caught him by the collar. They crossed the loading bay as the shutters hit the floor behind them. A hospital worker in green coveralls stared at the chaos. Tessa pressed her old audit badge into his hand. “Take the fire stairs. Tell everyone the loading ramp is contaminated.”

He obeyed before thinking to question her.

Mara’s actual pin was moving beneath them. She had entered the basement oxygen plant, where the pipes made a maze that interfered with location scans. Elias knew the floor from a rescue call last winter. The oxygen valves needed manual keys, and the old service lift operated independently of the hospital’s main System link.

A voice came through the emergency intercom. “Elias, turn around.”

It was Mara. Real this time. She sounded furious rather than frightened. “They’re bringing a patient down here because they think I’m the one who stole the credits. He has seventeen minutes left and a ventilator battery that’s nearly dead. I can’t move him alone.”

Elias checked his balance: 03:05:53. He could reach his sister and leave. He could also stay for a man who might not survive the trip. The System had made the wrong choice lucrative again.

Tessa saw his expression. “You’re going to help.”

“He’s on life support.”

“Then you’re going to help quickly.”

They found Mara beside a wheeled bed in the oxygen plant. She wore a grease-stained uniform, her hair tied with a strip of torn gauze. Seeing her alive nearly stopped Elias. She punched him in the shoulder before he could hug her.

“You brought armed people into a hospital?”

“I brought a prisoner.”

“Wonderful difference.”

The patient on the bed was a boy of perhaps sixteen, pale and unconscious. His clock read 00:16:09. His ventilator flashed LOW BATTERY. Mara handed Elias the bed controls and took the cart battery connector from Tessa.

“I need forty seconds to wire this,” she said. “Keep him breathing.”

They worked without speaking. For one blessed moment, the job was simple: connect tubing, check pressure, count breaths, prevent a tube from slipping. Then Mara opened the stolen allocation file on her wrist display. The names scrolled past too quickly to read.

She stopped at the bottom. A heading glowed above a single new entry.

HUNTER ELIAS VENN—CANDIDATE FOR RISK CONVERSION.

SCHEDULED DEATH: TOMORROW, 00:00.

His clock still showed more than three hours. The System had already reserved his death for a different purpose.