Story code: ST-000254
Part 2: The Time-Delay Safe
Marcus cleared the top of the plexiglass barrier, his boots slamming down onto the raised floorboards behind the counter. The impact reverberated up his shins, knocking a plastic tray of sorted capsules into the air. David scrambled backward, throwing his hands up in a desperate attempt to protect his face. Marcus didn’t throw a punch. He used his forward momentum to drive his shoulder into David’s chest, slamming the gaunt man hard against the wooden shelving unit behind the main computer terminal.
Amber pill bottles rained down, clattering against the scuffed linoleum in a chaotic wave. Marcus pinned David’s left forearm against his chest with his own body weight, his right hand violently digging into the pocket of the pharmacist’s stiff white coat.
David thrashed, surprisingly strong in his absolute panic. His wire-rimmed glasses flew off his face, skittering under a commercial pill-counting machine. “Get off me!” David yelled, his voice cracking in the sterile, alcohol-scented air.
Marcus ignored the shouting. His fingers scraped the bottom of the deep pocket until they closed around the jagged metal teeth of the silver key. He yanked his hand free, shoved David backward to keep him off balance, and pivoted back toward the workstation.
Beneath the desk, next to the digital scales, a small red LED light pulsed in a rapid, unforgiving rhythm. The silent alarm was already active. Panic, cold and sharp, tightened Marcus’s throat. His hands moved with ruthless efficiency. He dropped to one knee, jammed the key into the heavy metal lockbox, and twisted. The deadbolt gave way with a heavy click. He yanked the steel drawer open. Resting on the cold metal bottom was the wrinkled white square of paper.
Marcus snatched the prescription, smoothing it out to ensure it wasn’t torn. His eyes darted over the hurried, heavily stylized scrawl of the hospital specialist. *Pentobarbital Sodium. 100mg/mL injection. Administer immediately.*
It was an extraordinarily lethal dose under normal circumstances. But Marcus’s wife, shivering in the passenger seat of their idling sedan, was far past normal. The rare, aggressive neuro-inflammatory storm ravaging her body was driving her core temperature up by the minute. The specialist had been brutally clear during the chaotic discharge: only a medically induced, immediate shutdown of her central nervous system could stop the thermal runaway. She needed the heavy barbiturate to essentially put her brain on ice before the proteins in her cells permanently denatured.
Looking at the extreme dosage on the paper, Marcus suddenly understood the pharmacist’s blank refusal. To a retail employee, a late-night handwritten script for enough pentobarbital to euthanize a large animal looked exactly like a crude forgery for an elaborate suicide.
Marcus shoved the vital piece of paper into his front pocket and looked toward the front of the store. The brightly lit aisles of greeting cards and seasonal candy were completely empty, but the electronic automatic doors at the main entrance remained shut, their security deadbolts audibly clacking into place.
The realization hit Marcus like a physical blow to the ribs. The triggered alarm burned his exit strategy. If he managed to pry the front doors open, ran to his car, and sped off toward the independent pharmacy across town, he would be pulled over in a matter of minutes. An erratic driver fleeing a triggered silent alarm would be subjected to an immediate felony stop. They would drag him out at gunpoint on the asphalt and confiscate the paper. His wife would be left in the passenger seat to die while the bureaucracy sorted out the misunderstanding.
He could no longer leave. He had to get the vials from *this* store. Right now.
Marcus turned back around. David had pushed himself up into a sitting position against the lower cabinets, breathing heavily and feeling blindly along the floorboards for his lost glasses. Marcus stepped forward, grabbed the lapels of the white coat, and hauled the pharmacist violently to his feet.
“I’m not leaving,” Marcus growled, his voice dropping to a harsh, dangerous register. “I know the pentobarbital is a Schedule II narcotic. I know you keep it locked up. You are going to pull the vials, right now, or I swear to God I will tear this place apart.”
David blinked rapidly, his unfocused eyes wide with genuine terror. He swallowed hard, a thin line of blood appearing on his bottom lip where he had bitten it during the struggle. Trembling, David raised a hand and pointed a shaky finger toward the rear wall of the pharmacy enclosure.
Marcus followed the gesture. Recessed into the heavy masonry of the back wall was a massive, double-door steel safe. A heavy digital keypad protruded from the center, glowing with a faint green LCD screen. Marcus didn’t hesitate. He kept his grip on David’s collar and dragged the stumbling man over the scattered, rolling pill bottles toward the formidable metal box.
“Open it,” Marcus commanded, shoving David toward the keypad.
David’s hands shook so violently he could barely isolate his index finger. He punched in a six-digit code. The keypad beeped in a sharp, electronic cadence. A green light flashed on the panel, but the heavy steel bolts inside the doors did not unlatch. Instead, the LCD screen blinked, and a digital timer appeared on the display: *10:00*.
Then, it shifted. *09:59*.
*09:58*.
David pressed himself flat against the masonry wall, shrinking away from Marcus’s furious glare. “I can’t,” David gasped, his voice thin and reedy. “All Schedule II narcotics are kept in a time-delay safe to deter armed robberies. The mechanism cannot be overridden. It takes ten minutes to disengage.”
Marcus stared at the descending red numbers. Ten minutes. He looked up at the cheap analog clock mounted above the refrigeration units. His wife’s window for the critical injection was closing with brutal, unforgiving speed, and now he was physically tethered to a ticking steel box.
A low, rhythmic wail suddenly broke the dead silence of the pharmacy. It started as a faint echo, then quickly grew louder, multiplying into a chaotic chorus. Sirens. Multiple police cruisers were cutting through the quiet suburban night, approaching fast from the main highway.
Marcus slowly turned his head toward the front of the store. Through the vast pane glass windows, past the endless rows of sterile merchandise, he could just barely see the dark outline of his sedan idling alone in the massive parking lot. His wife was trapped inside, her brain steadily burning up. And the police were seconds away from surrounding the building, trapping them all, with nine minutes and thirty seconds still left on the clock.