Chapter 5 - The Oxygen and the Spark
The air in the hallway was growing hot.
Callahan’s men were moving with practiced, methodical precision. One shadow crossed the white wall at the end of the corridor, the long barrel of a suppressed MP5 appearing first, casting a long, black line across the fallen drywall.
"Clear the left!" a man called out.
Evelyn didn't wait for them to clear the right.
She took the heavy green oxygen tank, laid it on its side against the tile floor, and kicked it with the heel of her boot.
The cylinder rolled smoothly down the narrow hallway, its brass regulator clicking against the fallen plaster, stopping four feet from the boots of the lead shooter.
"What the—" the man started.
"Now!" Evelyn yelled, dropping flat onto her stomach and covering her ears.
Adrian didn't ask questions. He leaned around the doorframe, brought the front sight of his Sig Sauer down onto the brass valve assembly, and pulled the trigger twice.
BANG. BANG.
The first round missed the brass, ricocheting off the iron shoulder of the tank with a blinding white spark and a scream of tearing metal.
The second round struck the brass regulator dead center.
The valve sheared off instantly.
Forty pounds of pure, compressed oxygen under two thousand pounds per square inch of pressure erupted from the broken stem in a roaring, blue-white jet of gas that hit the dry wallboards like a firehose.
The spark from the ricochet met the concentrated oxygen stream.
The hallway did not explode with a flash-bang roar. It flashed—a sudden, blinding wall of blue flame that swept down the corridor like a living thing, consuming the white plaster dust, the dry wood framing, and the synthetic tactical vests of the two men standing in the front room.
"Ahhh! Back! Pull back!" Callahan screamed from the front door.
The shockwave of heat blew through the clinic, shattering the remaining glass panes and filling the air with the roar of burning oxygen.
The two shooters in the hall scrambled backward, their clothes singed, screaming as they tumbled through the broken front window into the rain.
Adrian was on his feet before the sound had died away.
He moved through the blue flame with the unhurried, terrifying grace of a predator that had done this a hundred times before. He stepped over the blackened cylinder, stepped through the smoking doorway, and fired three precise shots through the broken window frame into the dark street outside.
A heavy groan echoed from the pavement, followed by the sound of tires screaming as a black sedan sped away toward 31st Street.
Adrian lowered his weapon. The smoke was clearing rapidly now, sucked out through the destroyed front windows by the cold rain outside.
He turned back toward the hallway.
Evelyn was already standing up. She was covered from head to toe in white drywall dust, her dark brown hair hanging loose around her shoulders where the knot had finally given way. Her sweater was singed at the right cuff, and she was holding her heavy iron crowbar like a club.
She looked at the charred hallway, then at the front room where three chairs were currently on fire, then at Adrian, who was standing under the ruined doorway with his gun at his side.
"You ruined my clinic," she said. Her voice didn't shake. It was perfectly level, perfectly flat, and colder than the Chicago rain.
"I can buy you a better one," Adrian said.
"I don't want a better one!" she shouted, her voice finally cracking as the anger broke through her control. "I built this place! I painted these walls! I stole these supplies from Northwestern overflow! This was the only place in this entire rotten city where I didn't have to ask a lawyer or a cop if I could save a man's life!"
She took two steps toward him, pointing the crowbar at his heart.
"Get your man," she said through her teeth. "Get him out of my building. Get him out of my sight. And if I ever see your face again, Adrian Cross, I won't use a needle on you. I'll use this."
Adrian stared at her for five seconds.
The rain was falling inside the front room now, dripping from the scorched ceiling beams onto the ruined floor tiles.
He set his gun back inside his coat pocket. He didn't offer an excuse. He didn't offer money.
Instead, he walked past her into the back room, picked up the unconscious eighty-pound frame of Grant Hale as if he were a bag of laundry, and carried him out through the shattered rear door into the alley.
Before he stepped into the cold drizzle, he stopped and looked back at her over his shoulder.
"The invoice for the block is paid through 2030, Evelyn," he said softly. "The contractors will be here at six tomorrow morning to rebuild the front wall."
"Tell them not to come," she said.
May you like
"They're already paid," he replied. "And so are you."
He disappeared into the dark, leaving her alone in the smoking ruins of her sanctuary.
