Ava sprinted through the sterile corridors of the hospital, her heels clacking against the linoleum, hair clinging to her temple with sweat.
Staff shouted orders through walkie-talkies, while nurses wheeled patients out of critical units in a scramble of fear and confusion.
"The server room!" a tech shouted as she passed.
"The ventilator systems are crashing!"
She didn't pause.
Bursting into the server room, Ava found the young technician hunched over the main control panel, his face illuminated by the flashing red error messages on the screen.
"Status?" she demanded.
"Power surge isolated to our secondary grid," the tech panted. "It's frying backup relays. If we don't reroute, we're gonna lose support to the ICU... and neonatal."
Ava didn't hesitate. She dropped beside him, already punching in override codes.
"Kill the automated loops. Manual failover. Bypass the corrupted node using the ground-level UPS." She glanced at him.
"You know where the line splits?"
