A security camera mounted above a door at the far end of the hall pivoted, its small red light blinking once.

“He’s letting us in,” Mara muttered.

“Because he thinks he has already won,” I said.

We walked past three empty research rooms.

The floors were littered with discarded medical wrappers and plastic tubing.

At the end of the hall, the corridor opened into a wide, circular rotunda.

In the center of the room stood a glass-walled isolation chamber, its sliding doors sealed shut.

Inside the chamber, a single hospital bed was surrounded by banks of monitors.

A figure lay under a thin white sheet, motionless.

The green light from the heart monitor cast a rhythmic pulse across the glass.

“Dad,” I whispered.

My chest tightened, a familiar pressure I had ignored since my basic training days.

We crossed the rotunda, our footsteps finally echoing on the polished concrete.

Mara stopped near the entrance of the circular room, her back against a concrete pillar.

“I’ll watch the hall,” she said, her hands shaking slightly as she raised her weapon.

“Keep your head down,” I said.