Mercy General's basement had the nerve to be ordinary.
Ty expected a tomb because the route had sent him there with his own death tag. Instead, he found sweating pipes, yellow floor arrows, stacked linen carts, an old vending machine with a dead screen, and a maintenance door propped open by a mop bucket.
The hospital lived above them, water running through the walls while wheels rattled overhead. Somewhere in the building, a monitor beeped with the bored insistence of a machine that had watched people live and die for years without becoming wiser.
JJ stepped through the red route behind him and grabbed the wall.
"This place is worse because it smells like people work here."
Ty looked at her.
"The archive announced itself. This place just kept a mop bucket."
Heissman adjusted his torn cuff while studying a faded sign.
"Basement records, morgue, sterile storage, and security office."
"Institutional banality has covered several crimes across human history."
