The Antidote Gambit

​The digital clock on the nursery wall began its rhythmic, mocking countdown.

​59:59.

​59:58.

​"Liam, move!" I screamed, shoving past my own paralysis. I scooped Leo’s limp body into my arms. He was burning up, a terrifying heat radiating through his pajamas, while the blue rash began to crawl up his neck like a strangler's vine.

​Liam was struggling to stand, his surgical stitches weeping red through his shirt. "The house is on lockdown, Nora. The windows are reinforced steel. We’re trapped in a kill-box."

​"No," I said, my eyes landing on the tablet Marcus Thorne had left on the desk. "I am the majority shareholder. I own the codes. If Eleanor used the Sterling system to lock us in, I can use the Sterling system to tear it down."

​I grabbed the tablet, my fingers flying across the screen. My hands weren't shaking anymore. They were cold. A mother’s rage is a focused, crystalline thing.

​"Mia, stay under the bed. Do not come out unless I call your name, do you hear me?" I commanded.

​Mia nodded, her eyes wide as she clutched her rabbit and crawled into the shadows.

​"Liam, get me the medical kit from the safe," I ordered as I bypassed the first layer of the house’s firewall. "We need to stabilize his heart rate. If he flatlines before we find that antidote, it won’t matter if we win."

​Liam lunged for the hidden wall safe. "What are you doing?"

​"I'm not choosing between my children, Liam," I hissed, the screen glowing in my eyes. "I’m going to find the person who made the poison. Eleanor didn't cook this in a lab herself. She used a Sterling pharmaceutical subsidiary."

​I hacked into the Sterling Global private server. My name—NORA DAVIS-STERLING—flashed as a Level 10 Administrator. The system hesitated, then bowed to its new master.

​"Search: Blue Rash. Toxins. Project Gemini," I typed.

​A file popped up, hidden behind a black-site encryption.

​TOXIN 49: THE SIRENS' KISS.

Developed by: Apex Bio-Tech (A Sterling Subsidiary).

Antidote Location: Vault 4, Manhattan Sector.

​"It’s in the city," Liam groaned, clutching his side as he brought the oxygen mask for Leo. "We’ll never make it through the lockdown gates and across the bridge in fifty minutes."

​"We don't have to," I said, my heart racing as a realization struck me. "Liam, look at the delivery log for Toxin 49."

​He leaned over my shoulder. The last delivery was made two hours ago. To our own kitchen.

​"The antidote isn't in a vault," I whispered, horror dawning on me. "It’s in the house. She’s playing with us. She wants to watch us crawl through the vents like rats for her amusement."

​Suddenly, the nursery monitor flickered to life again. It wasn't Eleanor’s face this time. It was a live feed of our own dining room downstairs.

​On the long mahogany table sat a single, golden vial.

​And standing over it, holding a long-wicked lighter, was a man in a gas mask.

​"The clock is ticking, Mr. Sterling," the voice boomed. "The antidote is volatile. If it reaches sixty degrees, it denatures. If I drop this lighter, it burns. You have forty minutes to reach the dining room. But be warned... the hallways are currently filled with a concentrated sedative gas. Only one of you has a mask in the nursery safe."

​Liam looked at the safe. He pulled out the emergency kit. There was only one respirator.

​He looked at me. Then he looked at Leo, whose breathing was becoming a series of wet, agonizing gasps.

​"Put it on, Nora," Liam said, his voice a ragged whisper.

​"No," I said. "You’re the one who knows the security bypasses for the downstairs doors. You’re faster."

​"I have a hole in my lung!" Liam shouted. "If I go into that gas, I’ll pass out in ten seconds. You’re healthy. You have to go."

​"And leave you here with a dying son and a terrified daughter?" I grabbed the mask, but I didn't put it on. I looked at the ventilation vent above the door.

​"The gas is heavy," I said, my brain working at a thousand miles an hour. "It’ll settle on the floor first. If we stay high... if we use the ceiling crawlspace..."

​"Nora, it's too risky," Liam said, but I was already dragging the heavy mahogany dresser toward the door.

​"Everything about our lives is a risk, Liam! Now, help me!"

​We hoisted each other up. I strapped the mask to my belt—I wouldn't use it until the last possible second. We crawled into the dark, narrow vents, the sound of the countdown echoing through the metal walls like the heartbeat of a monster.

​35:00.

​34:59.

​The air was thin and smelled of copper. As we crawled over the kitchen, I looked through the slats of the vent. The man in the gas mask was still there, but he wasn't alone.

​He was speaking into a radio.

​"Yes, Ma'am. They're in the vents. Just as you predicted. I'll wait until they reach the drop-point, then I'll ignite the gas."

​My blood ran cold. Eleanor hadn't just set a trap. She had turned the house into an oven.

​"Liam," I whispered, grabbing his ankle. "Stop. It's a trap. He’s going to blow the house."

​Liam looked back at me, his face glistening with sweat. "I know."

​"You know?"

​"I’m the CEO, Nora. I know things about this house even my mother doesn't." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, magnetic keycard I’d never seen. "There’s a fire suppression system that uses liquid nitrogen. It’ll kill the fire, but it’ll freeze everything in the room instantly."

​"Including us?"

​"If we aren't in the reinforced pantry," Liam said. He looked at me, a desperate, burning love in his eyes. "Nora, I’m going to draw his fire. I’m going to make him drop that lighter early. When he does, you grab the antidote and dive for the pantry."

​"Liam, no! You'll freeze!"

​"I’m already a dead man walking, Nora," he said, touching my cheek. "Save our son. Tell him... tell him I’m sorry I was late to be his father."

​He kicked the vent cover open and dropped into the dining room before I could scream.

Liam has sacrificed himself to trigger the trap. The lighter is falling, the gas is about to ignite, and Nora has a split second to choose: the man she loves, or the cure for the son they both live for.