Story code: ST-001259
Part 2: The Collateral
Vance threw his entire weight forward, hooking his elbow over Elias’s chest and pressing his forearm under the man’s chin to keep his skull from bouncing off the floor. The teacher’s left heel hammered against the hollow wooden cabinet beneath the sink. *Thud. Thud. Thud.* Each strike was a beacon, broadcasting their exact location through the thin drywall and out into the corridor.
Vance jammed his custom leather shoe over Elias’s ankle, pinning the leg to the linoleum. The older man’s strength was terrifying, fueled by a total short-circuit of his nervous system. In the relentless, nauseating flashes of the red emergency strobe, Vance watched the teacher’s face contort. His eyes were rolled back, catching the crimson light in the whites, and a thick rope of saliva bubbled at the corner of his locked jaw.
“Stop fighting,” Vance breathed, though he knew the man couldn’t hear him. Vance slipped his free hand behind Elias’s head just as the man violently arched his back. The back of Elias’s skull smashed into the back of Vance’s hand, crushing his knuckles against the iron gas pipe of the workstation.
Vance bit down on a curse, tasting copper, but he didn’t pull his hand away. He held the man’s head steady, absorbing the brutal impacts with his own flesh.
Thirty seconds passed. The silence outside the door remained, thick and oppressive, broken only by the rhythmic, wet tearing sound of Elias trying to draw air through a restricted airway. Then, as suddenly as the electrical storm in his brain had begun, the violent thrashing stopped.
Elias went completely flaccid. His weight settled heavily against Vance’s side. The sudden stillness was infinitely worse than the seizure.
Vance kept his hand braced behind the teacher’s neck. “Elias,” he whispered. “Hey.”
There was no response. The teacher’s chest lay utterly still for ten agonizing seconds, then heaved upward in a desperate, ragged gasp before falling still again. The cold sweat soaking through the man’s frayed wool cardigan transferred to Vance’s charcoal suit jacket, chilling him to the bone.
Vance shifted his weight, his knee popping in the quiet room. He blindly patted down the pockets of Elias’s slacks, his fingers brushing against a stiff plastic cylinder. He pulled it out, holding it up just as the red strobe washed over them. It was a tube of glucose tablets. Vance popped the plastic lid with his thumb and shook it into his palm.
Nothing fell out. It was completely empty.
Vance tossed the useless tube aside and felt around Elias’s collar, his fingers hooking a metal chain. He dragged it out from under the shirt collar. The silver medical alert tag caught the red light for a fraction of a second. *TYPE 1 DIABETIC.*
The man wasn’t just having a panic attack. He was slipping into a severe hypoglycemic coma. Without glucose, his brain would begin to starve in minutes, shutting down respiratory function entirely.
Vance looked at the heavy manila folder lying abandoned on the sticky floor. If Elias died right here, the medical lien would immediately default into a tangled probate nightmare. The firm would spend years fighting surviving relatives for a fraction of the equity. It was a complete forfeiture of Vance’s commission. It was an unacceptable loss.
At least, that was the clinical, ruthless logic Vance forced himself to focus on to drown out the horrifying reality: he could not sit in the dark and watch a helpless man suffocate to death.
Vance gently lowered Elias’s head onto the legal folder to keep it off the bare floor. He peered out from under the chemical-resistant workstation. The chemistry lab was a sprawling grid of long black tables, metal stools, and emergency showers. At the far end of the room, positioned near the hallway door with the reinforced glass window, sat the main teacher’s desk.
When Vance had marched into the room ten minutes ago, single-minded and aggressive, he had noted the clutter on that desk. Graded papers, a heavy tape dispenser, and a large, clear plastic bowl sitting right next to the computer monitor. A bowl full of wrapped hard candies meant for students.
It was thirty feet away. Thirty feet of open floor, completely exposed to the hallway window.
Vance checked Elias again. The teacher’s lips were turning a dark, bruised purple in the strobe light. The agonizing pauses between his breaths were growing longer.
Vance flattened himself against the cold linoleum and slid out from the safety of the workstation. He kept his belly to the floor, using his elbows and the toes of his ruined leather shoes to drag himself forward. The tactical crawl pulled his suit jacket taut, the fabric binding his shoulders. Every time the red strobe fired, the room leaped into sharp, terrifying focus; every time it went dark, Vance felt utterly blind, terrified his hand would knock a forgotten glass beaker off the low utility carts lining the aisles.
He navigated the narrow space between the lab tables, his breathing perfectly controlled despite the adrenaline searing through his veins. He reached the front of the room, pressing his back against the solid oak front of the teacher’s desk. He was now less than five feet from the classroom door.
Vance rose to his knees, staying well below the window line. He reached a hand up onto the surface of the desk, his fingers sweeping blindly over the cold laminate. He found a stack of papers. A pen cup. Finally, his fingertips brushed the smooth plastic curvature of the candy bowl.
He dragged it toward the edge, his hand slipping inside. His fingers closed around three crinkling cellophane wrappers. He pulled them out, clutching the tiny lifelines in his fist.
From the back of the classroom, Elias let out a sudden, guttural moan.
The sound was impossibly loud, a hollow rattling groan that seemed to echo off the tiled walls. Vance froze, his hand still hovering over the desk.
Out in the corridor, the heavy, methodical footsteps instantly returned. They didn’t walk past this time. The boots pivoted, stopping dead right outside the door of Room 204.
Vance dropped beneath the desk, his heart slamming against his ribs. He clutched the hard candies to his chest. Through the narrow gap between the desk and the floor, he could see the bottom of the classroom door.
A blinding beam of pure white light suddenly sliced through the door’s rectangular window, obliterating the red emergency strobe. The beam swept across the ceiling, panned down the walls, and began methodically searching the aisles of the chemistry lab.
The white light drifted past the front desk, moving down the center aisle. It tracked directly toward the back of the room, stopping abruptly on the heavy resin workstation. In the harsh glare of the flashlight, Elias’s gray-trousered legs were clearly visible, motionless on the floor.
A gloved hand slammed violently against the reinforced glass of the door, and the heavy metal handle of the lock began to turn.