Page 103 of Anchor
The suction screamed.
“Two.”
Reid’s lips were blue. His skin—gray.
“Three.”
Tuck’s last compressions looked like prayers.
“Four… flip!”
They moved like a choreographed dance. Foley caught Reid’s shoulder. Pete took his hips. They rolled him to the side, fast but controlled. Blood slushed against the surgical wrap—thick, cold, copper-slick.
Foley didn’t pause. A technician swabbed the lumbar spine, and Foley took the needle. “Field’s clean. Injecting intrathecally.” The spinal needle slid into the cord space, precise and silent.
“IV going in,” Pete said. “Three, two…”
Amber gold flowed. One into the spine. One into the vein. The antidote, a miracle in a syringe, threaded into Reid’s failing system. They flipped him on his back.
Beth leaned toward the monitor. “Still flatline…”
Tuck’s voice came low, growling and unbreakable. “No. We’re not done.”
And just like that, Tuck was back on the table, knees planted, hands around Reid’s heart. Martin barely breathed. Compression. Slush. Wet muscle and colder hope. And…
Beep. And another.
Beth’s eyes shot to the monitor’s screen. “That’s a beat.”
No one cheered. No one exhaled. They just kept working.
Tuck decreased the compression rate as Reid’s heart began to move on its own, first a squiggle. “Intracardiac epi, now.”
Pete injected the medication directly into the heart muscle.
Tuck compressed some more.
“Pulse returning.” Pete’s breath hitched. “Weak, but there.”
Foley leaned back slightly, eyes on the heart beating on its own. “Now we wait. The antidote has to reach CNS saturation.”
Beth nodded. “Then we hold him right here.”
Martin couldn’t look away from Reid’s chest. From Tuck, still cradling the heart like something holy. From Beth’s hands, stitching one corner closed, blood-soaked and graceful.
He had run this company. Run the Chase Security world. Commanded teams, signed off on black budgets, helped design a surveillance web that spanned half the planet. And now? He was just a man standing in the coldest room of his life, watching everything that mattered bleed on the table.
Tuck’s voice broke the silence. Quiet. Almost a whisper. Meant for no one but the boy beneath his hands. “You stay with me, Reid. You hold this line.”
Martin swallowed hard. And stepped back.
0722 HOURS
Tuck Hanlon’s hands were frozen. Not in the way civilians meant it. Not stage fright. Not shock. Literally. He couldn’t feel his fingertips anymore. Couldn’t tell blood from saline, from meltwater. His skin was pale, pruned, slicked in red and threadbare from sterility.
Every squeeze of Reid’s heart came from personal memory, muscle memory, instinct, rhythm etched into his spine after decades of flight medicine and combat trauma. And still, he didn’t stop. Couldn’t.
Reid’s heart had stopped. His blood had nearly gone still. And Tuck—uncle, operator—he didn’t flinch, even when the cavity filled with slush. Not when they packed the organs. Not when the whole room went tight with silence that smelled like loss. Now, the tide was turning.
