Nguyen didn't come back easily.
She fought it.
Not just the hands on her, not just the drugs flooding her veins—but the very idea of stillness. Her body bucked like it was rejecting gravity itself, muscles firing out of sequence, nerves screaming without direction. Whatever had taken hold of her wasn't panicking.
It was resisting.
Her body jerked against the restraints as if whatever was happening inside her didn't want stillness, didn't want quiet, didn't want to give them even a second to think. Her teeth clenched so hard Sharon could see the muscles in her jaw knot beneath fever-flushed skin. Foam gathered again at the corner of her mouth, thin and pink, sucked back in with each shallow breath.
The smell had changed—burnt, metallic, wrong—like overheated wiring.
The monitor screamed.
Patel shouted numbers that barely sounded like numbers anymore.
"Pulse—gone—no, wait—"
Sharon pressed down harder.
Her palms burned. Her wrists ached. She didn't feel it. Pain was background noise now.
What mattered was rhythm. Depth. Force. She counted in her head even when McAllister did it out loud—muscle memory layered over desperation.
"Stay with me," Sharon snapped—not to Nguyen, not really, but to the room. "Do not stop."
McAllister counted compressions aloud, voice hoarse. "Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty."
Reyes bagged, tears slipping down her cheeks and soaking into her mask. She didn't wipe them away. She couldn't spare the hand.
Her shoulders shook with every squeeze, breath forced into lungs that didn't want it.
"Epi's in," Patel said. "Come on—come on—"
Nguyen arched suddenly, back bowing off the bed in a violent seizure that yanked a scream out of Angela's throat.
It wasn't human.
It was electrical.
"Hold her—don't loosen the restraints!" Sharon barked.
They held.
Hands everywhere. Ankles. Shoulders. The bed rattled. The metal frame shrieked.
For a split second, Sharon thought it might collapse.
Then—nothing.
Flatline.
The sound landed like a punch.
A clean, merciless tone.
"No," Reyes whispered.
Sharon didn't stop.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Her arms trembled now, not from fear but exhaustion. She adjusted her stance, locked her elbows, used her weight. She refused to let fatigue decide anything.
She thought of the baby's cry down the hall.She thought of the moaning below them.She thought of the way time was folding in on itself.
"Shockable?" McAllister demanded.
Patel leaned over the monitor. "Yes—charging—"
"Clear!"
Sharon pulled back.
The defibrillator cracked through the room.
Nguyen's body jolted hard enough to lift her shoulders off the mattress. Her head snapped to the side. The oxygen mask slipped, then was jammed back into place by Reyes with shaking hands.
The monitor flickered.
Stalled.
Then—
A thin line.
A blip.
Another.
Patel sucked in a breath. "We've got electrical activity."
Sharon didn't stop compressions yet.
She didn't trust hope.
"Pulse?" she demanded.
Patel checked, fingers pressing hard into Nguyen's neck. His face went still.
Then—
"I've got it," he said. "Weak, but it's there."
Sharon gave two more compressions.
Then she stopped.
For a moment, no one moved.
The room smelled like sweat, antiseptic, ozone, and fear.
Nguyen lay limp, chest barely rising under assisted breaths. Her skin was mottled now—fever-red bleeding into gray, like her body couldn't decide which side it belonged on.
The monitor beeped.
Uneven.
Fragile.
Alive.
Reyes collapsed back against the wall, sliding down until she hit the floor. She pressed her fists into her eyes and made a sound that wasn't quite a sob, wasn't quite relief.
Angela leaned against the crash cart, shaking, whispering, "Oh my God, oh my God," over and over like a chant that might keep the rhythm steady.
Patel wiped his face with his sleeve. His hands were slick with sweat and blood.
Sharon didn't sag.
She didn't sit.
She didn't breathe.
She stared at Nguyen's face, eyes flicking to the twitch in her jaw, the tiny tremors still shuddering through her limbs.
"She's still seizing," Sharon said.
Patel nodded grimly. "Subclinical. But it's there."
Nguyen's fingers curled—slow, unnatural, like they were remembering something muscle-deep.
Sharon's voice sharpened. "She will not survive this awake."
The room went quiet.
Not shock—understanding.
McAllister looked at her. "Sharon—"
"We don't have time," Sharon said. "Every seizure is spreading it. Every spike is burning more tissue. We cannot let her brain keep firing like this."
Patel swallowed. "You're talking about—"
"A medical coma," Sharon said. "Now."
Angela looked up sharply. "That's—"
"—the only way to slow this," Sharon finished. "If this thing is hijacking neural activity, then we shut the system down."
Reyes lifted her head. "What if she doesn't wake up?"
Sharon met her eyes.
"Then she doesn't die screaming," Sharon said. "And she buys us time."
No one argued.
They moved fast.
Propofol drawn. Benzos pushed. Anti-seizure meds layered until the tremors eased, then faded.
Nguyen's body finally went still.
Not peaceful.
Controlled.
The monitor steadied into something that looked almost honest.
Patel adjusted the ventilator. "She's dependent now."
Sharon nodded. "Good."
Angela whispered, "God help her."
Sharon didn't answer.
She stepped back from the bed, peeled off her gloves, and immediately grabbed another pair.
"Secure her," she said. "Every line. Every tube. No chances."
McAllister started checking restraints again. "What about infection control?"
Sharon's jaw tightened. "She is infection control."
She turned toward the door.
"Where are you going?" Patel asked.
Sharon stopped.
Her shoulders were tight. Her voice was steady. Too steady.
"To Evan."
The name dropped like a weight.
Reyes pushed herself up off the floor. "No."
Sharon turned. "Yes."
"He's—" Reyes shook her head. "He's not human anymore."
"He's information," Sharon said. "And right now, he's the only thing in this building that might tell us how to stop this before Nguyen's brain cooks itself from the inside out."
Patel hesitated. "You think there's a window."
"I know there is," Sharon said. "Because he's still functioning."
McAllister frowned. "Functioning how?"
Sharon's eyes went cold. "Adapting."
Silence stretched.
Somewhere down the hall, a baby cried—soft, insistent, alive.
Far below, the dead answered with a low moan, closer than before.
Angela whispered, "What if going back in there—"
Sharon cut her off. "We already crossed that line."
She looked back at Nguyen one last time—at the stillness, the tubes, the controlled breathing.
"This coma is not mercy," Sharon said. "It's a pause."
She reached for the door.
"And pauses are only useful if you do something with them."
The monitor beeped behind her.
Steady.
For now.
Sharon stepped into the hallway.
Toward Evan.
Toward whatever answers were left.
Before time ran out again.