CHAPTER 10 THE FLOOR THAT DIDN'T EXIST
Darkness swallowed the hospital.
Not the dim glow of a power outage.
Complete darkness.
Even the emergency exit signs were dead.
For three endless seconds...
No one moved.
Then panic erupted.
Nurses shouted instructions.
Patients cried out.
Somewhere down the corridor, a metal tray crashed onto the floor.
Marcus instinctively stepped in front of Khloe's bed.
Richard pulled a compact flashlight from his jacket.
A narrow beam cut through the blackness.
"Stay together."
Dr. Bennett was already reaching for his phone.
No signal.
Not weak.
Gone.
Every communication system inside the hospital had been disabled simultaneously.
Richard checked his own satellite phone.
Nothing.
He looked up slowly.
"They're not jamming us."
Marcus frowned.
"Then what?"
"They've isolated the building."
Thirty seconds later, backup generators finally roared to life.
Lights flickered.
One by one, the hallway returned.
Doctors breathed a sigh of relief.
Until they looked around.
Two security guards were missing.
A nurse who had been standing at the medication cart moments earlier had vanished.
And...
Khloe's hospital room door was wide open.
Marcus spun around.
Khloe was still there.
Barely.
The wheels of her hospital bed had been unlocked.
Someone had already started moving her.
Richard crouched beside the bed.
Fresh rubber marks led into the hallway.
"They were interrupted."
Marcus's jaw tightened.
"They came while the lights were out."
Meanwhile...
Hospital engineers rushed into the control room.
Every system was rebooting.
One technician frowned at the building blueprint.
"That's strange."
"What?"
"The elevators."
"They all stopped on Level Nine."
"So?"
"There isn't a Level Nine."
Silence.
The chief engineer walked over.
"What are you talking about?"
The technician enlarged the digital schematic.
The hospital officially had:
Basement.
Ground floor.
Levels 2 through 8.
Then...
Level 10.
No Level 9.
Yet every elevator log displayed the same destination.
FLOOR 9
The room fell silent.
One engineer whispered,
"That's impossible."
The chief engineer looked pale.
"It wasn't impossible..."
"...before the renovation."
Richard received the maintenance logs seconds later.
He read them once.
Then again.
Marcus noticed.
"What is it?"
Richard rotated the screen.
Twenty years ago, the hospital had contained nine floors.
After a catastrophic fire...
The entire ninth floor had supposedly been demolished.
The building had been rebuilt.
Renumbered.
Officially...
The ninth floor no longer existed.
Marcus frowned.
"But Bennett said the fire happened eighteen years ago."
Richard nodded.
"He lied."
Before Marcus could respond, Dr. Bennett walked into the room.
His face immediately changed when he saw the file.
"You accessed the old blueprints."
"You knew," Marcus said coldly.
Bennett lowered his eyes.
"I hoped no one ever would."
He took a deep breath.
"The ninth floor wasn't destroyed."
Richard looked up sharply.
"What?"
"It was sealed."
"Why?"
Bennett remained silent.
Marcus stepped closer.
"Why?"
Finally...
"Because they never found all the children."
Silence.
Richard whispered,
"What children?"
Bennett's hands trembled.
"The hospital secretly treated children transferred from Saint Mary's."
"Children with no legal identities."
"No birth certificates."
"No families."
"Only numbers."
Marcus felt the air leave his lungs.
"Genesis."
Bennett nodded.
"The fire wasn't an accident."
"It was an evacuation."
"Someone came to erase every record."
Marcus's voice hardened.
"And my father?"
Bennett looked him directly in the eye.
"He helped six children escape."
Marcus froze.
"Six?"
"He only managed to save five."
Richard already knew the answer.
"The sixth..."
Bennett nodded.
"Was Number Twelve."
The room became deathly quiet.
At that exact moment...
One of the hospital elevators chimed.
Ding.
Its doors slid open by themselves.
No one had pressed the button.
No one was inside.
Marcus frowned.
Then noticed something impossible.
The digital display above the doors read:
9
Richard stared.
"But..."
The hospital had no ninth floor.
The display changed.
9...
8...
9...
8...
As though the elevator couldn't decide where it belonged.
Then...
Without anyone touching it...
The doors slowly closed.
The elevator began descending.
Marcus hit the emergency stop button.
Nothing happened.
Richard forced the doors open just before they shut completely.
Inside...
The elevator was empty.
Except for one object resting on the floor.
A small wooden toy horse.
Old.
Hand-carved.
Worn smooth by tiny hands.
Marcus picked it up.
His heart skipped.
A faded letter had been burned into its underside.
12
His fingers trembled.
"I've seen this before."
Khloe, still lying weakly in the bed, whispered from behind him:
"You carried it every night."
Marcus turned sharply.
"What?"
"When we were children."
"You wouldn't sleep without it."
A flood of fragmented images crashed into Marcus's mind.
A dark hallway.
Children crying.
A nun humming softly.
A wooden horse clutched tightly against a little boy's chest.
Then...
Flames.
Screams.
A man carrying him through thick smoke.
Marcus staggered backward, gripping his head.
Richard caught him before he fell.
"Marcus!"
Marcus gasped for air.
"I remember..."
"What?"
"The fire..."
"It wasn't in the orphanage."
Everyone stared at him.
Marcus looked toward Dr. Bennett.
His voice was barely a whisper.
"It happened..."
"...here."
Before anyone could process his words, the elevator behind them suddenly lurched.
Instead of continuing downward...
It began moving up.
The floor indicator changed.
10...
11...
12...
13...
The numbers kept climbing.
Far beyond the height of the hospital.
Then the display stopped on a floor no blueprint had ever shown.
G
Not Ground.
Just...
G
The doors slid open by themselves.
Inside the elevator cabin...
A child's voice echoed softly.
May you like
"Welcome home, Number Twelve."
END OF CHAPTER 10
