Standing in the shattered doorway was Silas Preston.
He didn’t look like the golden boy of Seattle Grace anymore. His expensive white coat was gone. His tie was undone, hanging loosely around his neck. His face was soaked in sweat, and his eyes were wide, bloodshot, and completely manic.
And in his good hand—his uninjured hand—he held a silver .38 revolver.
It was shaking wildly as he pointed it directly at Harper.
“You ruined everything,” Silas screamed, his voice cracking into a pathetic, high-pitched wail.
“Silas, drop the gun,” Harper said calmly, keeping her own weapon lowered, analyzing his stance. He had no trigger discipline. His finger was inside the guard. He was terrified, which made him infinitely more dangerous than the trained professionals on the floor.
“My life!” Silas sobbed, taking a step into the room, waving the gun between Harper and Kinsley. “My reputation! I am a god in this city! I save lives! I am a Preston!”
“You’re a butcher, Silas,” Harper said, her voice cutting through his hysteria. She took a deliberate step to the left, placing her body squarely between Silas’s gun and the cowering Kinsley. “And it’s over. The police have your father. The General has your records. It’s done.”
“It’s over when I say it’s over!” Silas screamed, cocking the hammer of the revolver. The metallic click echoed loudly in the room. “Drop the gun, Bennett, or I shoot the kid! I’ll do it! I’ll say it was self-defense! I’ll say you attacked us!”
Harper looked at Kinsley. The young nurse was hyperventilating, her eyes locked on the barrel of Silas’s gun.
Harper slowly lowered her Glock to the floor and kicked it away.
“Okay,” Harper raised her hands. “I’m unarmed. Let Kinsley go.”
Silas smiled. A sick, triumphant, twisted smile. “No. No one is going anywhere until that screen hits one hundred percent. And then… I think both of you had a tragic accident while resisting security.”
PURGE: 98% COMPLETE.
“Drop it, Preston.”
The voice didn’t come from Harper.
It came from the hallway behind Silas.
Silas spun around, swinging the gun toward the door.
Standing in the hallway wasn’t the police. It wasn’t General Halloway. It wasn’t more security guards.
It was the nurses.
Twenty of them.
David, the charge nurse, stood at the front of the pack. Behind him stood Chloe from pediatrics, Marco from the ER, nurses from oncology, the ICU, and the maternity ward. They had shed their fear.
They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, completely blocking the hallway. They weren’t armed with guns or stun batons. They held heavy aluminum IV poles, steel oxygen tanks, and thick medical clipboards.
They looked terrified. Their hands were shaking. But not a single one of them was backing down.
“Get out of my way!” Silas yelled, aiming the gun at David’s chest. “I will fire! I swear to God, David, I’ll fire!”
David stepped forward. His chin was held high. The man who had lived his life looking at the floor finally looked the monster in the eye.
“No, you won’t, Silas,” David said, his voice ringing with a newfound authority. “Because there are cameras everywhere. And we are all witnesses. You can’t fire everyone. You can’t kill us all. It’s over.”
Silas wavered. The gun in his hand felt like a lead weight. The sheer weight of the moment—the collective gaze of the people he had abused, degraded, and dismissed as “trash” for a decade—crushed his fragile ego. He wasn’t looking at victims anymore. He was looking at a wall.
While his attention was split, Harper moved.
She didn’t attack him.
She spun back to the server rack. She gripped the hard drive handle.
“Major, the purge is at 99 percent,” Halloway’s voice crackled in her ear. “Pull it!”
Harper roared. Using every ounce of strength in her combat-conditioned body, she yanked.
CRRR-SNAP!
The heavy plastic locking mechanism shattered. The metal bay groaned, and then the master hard drive ripped free from the server with a shower of sparks.
The monitors on the desk instantly went black.
The purge was dead. The data was physically isolated in her hand.
Silas turned back to Harper, his eyes widening in absolute horror as he saw the brick of metal in her hands.
