Chapter 4 - The Fortress on the Lake
We drove in complete, suffocating silence for forty-five minutes, leaving the city grid behind and heading north along the misty shore of Lake Michigan.
The truck turned through massive wrought-iron gates guarded by armed sentries, winding up a private driveway toward a stone estate.
High surveillance towers and infrared cameras scanned our vehicle before the hydraulic garage doors rolled open into a subterranean medical wing.
Marco led me through stainless-steel doors into an operating suite that looked cleaner and more advanced than Mercy General’s primary trauma bays.
Lying on an adjustable surgical bed in the center was Dante Russo, his face pale and glistening with feverish perspiration.
His shirt was completely gone, revealing the rough stitches I had placed earlier that morning, now surrounded by a fiery red border of inflammation.
"You took your sweet time, Miss Shaw," Dante rasped, his dark eyes fixing onto mine despite his obvious agony.
"I told you the dressing needed to stay dry, Mr. Russo," I snapped, professional instinct instantly overriding my fear as I approached the bed.
"And I told you to avoid physical exertion, not run a war across Cook County."
A brief flicker of respect crossed Dante's face, though it was cut short by a violent shudder of pain that arched his back.
"The blade was coated with a synthetic neurotoxin," a private physician in scrubs said, stepping out from behind a computer terminal.
"Our standard antibiotics aren't penetrating the tissue. We need someone who knows the exact vascular depth of the initial incision."
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"I placed the sutures into the transversus abdominis layer," I said, snapping on latex gloves with familiar precision.
"Hand me a sterile scalpel and twenty units of broad-spectrum cephalosporin right now."
