Chapter 24 - The Suture of Blood
"What does he mean, Dad?" I demanded, my voice echoing off the curved concrete walls of the cavern. "What third frequency?"
My father didn't answer. He turned his head away, his eyes locked on the heavy blast doors at the far end of the catwalk, where the red emergency strobes cast rhythmic, blood-colored shadows across the steel bulkhead.
"Jonathan," Marco growled, stepping forward, the muzzle of his rifle lowering until it was pointed directly at my father’s spine. "Don't play games with me. Not down here. If there is another link on that network, whose heart is it tied to?"
Before my father could speak, Marco staggered. A sudden, violent tremor rippled through his entire torso. He collapsed against the steel railing of the catwalk, coughing hoarsely, a dark, viscous stream of blood leaking from his nose.
"Marco!" I abandoned the gurney, rushing to his side, catching him before his knees could buckle completely.
I tore open his tactical vest, ripping his black undershirt down the middle. What I saw made the blood freeze in my veins.
The skin over his sternum was no longer merely bruised; it was bulging outward in a rhythmic, terrifying pulsation. The subcutaneous sutures that held the artificial pacing valve in place were tearing through the underlying muscle tissue. A massive hematoma was spreading across his left pectoral, purplish-black, expanding with every irregular beat of his heart.
"Pericardial tamponade," I gasped, my trauma training taking over instantly. "The sudden pressure surge from the dual-sync reset tore the anchoring vascular cuff. He's bleeding into the pericardial sac. If I don't decompress it right now, the fluid will crush his heart within five minutes!"
"I don't have a surgical tray, Laura!" my father said, rushing over, his face pale beneath the burn scars. "I have basic field dressings, an airway kit, and—"
"Give me the obsidian scalpel," I snapped.
"I told you, the blade carries a capacitive trigger—"
"I don't care about the trigger! I'm not cutting the terminal, I'm cutting the fascia!" I yelled, looking around wildly. "Marco, where did it fall? Did you see where the Clockmaker dropped it?"
"Beneath... the desk upstairs..." Marco gasped, his eyes clouding with hypoxia, his head lolling against my shoulder. "Too late... Laura... leave me... take Julian..."
"Shut up, Marco!" I snarled, tears of pure rage stinging the corners of my eyes. "You don't get to die on this catwalk after everything I did to keep you breathing!"
I thrust my hand into my father's trench coat, tearing through the pockets until my fingers found a twelve-gauge large-bore angiocatheter—an emergency needle used for relieving tension pneumothorax. It was four inches of rigid plastic and steel, designed to pierce human chest walls.
"This will have to do," I whispered.
"Laura, you're going to do a blind subxiphoid pericardiocentesis on a vibrating synthetic valve in the dark?" my father asked, his voice shaking. "If you nick the prosthetic conduit, the pressure will blow the entire ventricle apart!"
"Then shine the damn flashlight and hold him down!" I screamed.
My father clicked on a high-intensity penlight, training the beam directly onto Marco's sternum. He threw his weight across Marco's shoulders, pinning him to the steel grating.
I located the xiphoid process at the base of Marco’s breastbone with my thumb. Just to the left of the tip, angled forty-five degrees toward his left shoulder.
"Marco, look at me," I commanded, leaning over him so my face filled his failing vision. "Look at my eyes. Do not breathe. Do not move."
Marco's dark eyes focused on mine with an intensity that burned through the shadows of the vault. Through the agony, through the suffocating terror of his failing organs, he held my gaze.
"Do it, Nurse Chen," he whispered.
I drove the four-inch needle through his skin, just beneath the rib margin.
The resistance of the dense fascia gave way with a sickening *pop*. Marco let out a strangled groan, his fingernails digging into the steel grating of the catwalk until the flesh beneath his nails tore, but he did not move an inch.
I advanced the needle slowly, fractions of a millimeter at a time, angling toward the pulsation.
*Clink.*
The steel tip brushed against the titanium housing of the artificial valve. A fraction of an inch too far, and I would rupture the chamber.
I pulled back on the syringe plunger.
Immediately, thick, dark venous blood surged into the clear plastic cylinder under immense pressure. One cubic centimeter. Five. Ten. Twenty.
The bulging hematoma on Marco’s chest visibly collapsed. The violent, erratic thumping beneath his ribs smoothed out into a deep, steady rhythm. The lavender hue faded from his lips, replaced once more by the flush of returning oxygen.
Marco let out a long, shuddering breath, his head dropping back against the grating.
"Pressure relieved," I whispered, my whole body shaking as I locked the catheter in place with a strip of waterproof adhesive. "The bleeding has slowed, but it's an internal tear. You have less than an hour before that space fills up again."
"An hour is more than enough," Marco rasped, sitting up slowly, his jaw set with lethal resolve. He looked up at my father. "Now... Dr. Chen. Tell us about the third frequency. Before I take that flare gun from your coat and shoot you in the foot."
My father stood up, turning toward the heavy blast doors at the end of the tunnel.
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"The third frequency isn't in this room," my father said, his voice trembling with an emotion I had never heard in him before. "And it isn't Julian. The third frequency was never meant to be a weapon, Marco. It was designed to be the cure."
***
