“Well, we need it to die,” he murmurs. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” I let Talon’s eyelid fall back into place. “But this changes the timeframes.”
Not by much. But enough to matter.
I step to the drug tray and do the math in my mind—metabolic rate, weight, the fragile vessels behind that right eye—and when I settle on the plan, I grab a vial.
“I’m going to paralyze his muscles,” I say. “He won’t feel it. The sedative has him deeply under. But I don’t want his body fighting the process.” I pause. “Just in case.”
“What exactly are you using?” Cassian asks.
“Rocuronium,” I answer. “His lungs will stop moving on their own, so we’ll breathe for him when we bring him back.”
Cassian’s fingers tighten around the rail.
“Sounds dangerous,” he says quietly. “Is it really necessary?”
“It will make the process more controlled.”
“I see.”
I draw up the rocuronium and inject it slowly into Talon’s vein. The muscles in his neck, his jaw, his chest melt into complete stillness. Within seconds, the rhythmic rise and fall of his ribcage stops entirely.
The monitor doesn’t alarm yet. His oxygen saturation holds at ninety-eight. Ninety-seven. The preoxygenation is doing its job, buying us borrowed time, but it will drain soon.
I reach for the bag-valve mask on the crash cart and hold it out to Cassian.
“Every five seconds,” I say. “One squeeze. Steady, not hard.”
Cassian takes it without hesitation. He positions the mask over Talon’s nose and mouth and seals it cleanly on the first try.
He squeezes. Talon’s chest rises. Falls.
Again. Rise. Fall.
The saturation steadies at ninety-nine.
“Good,” I say. “Just like that. Don’t stop until I tell you.”
Cassian nods once. His eyes don’t leave Talon’s face.
I roll the crash cart a little closer. Then, I apply conductive gel to the paddles and rub them together.
“Inducing ventricular fibrillation,” I mutter. I place one paddle on Talon’s upper right chest, the other on his left flank. “Clear.”
I press the discharge button.
The jolt runs through Talon’s body, making his muscles twitch once under the paralysis. The monitor flares, then dissolves into chaos: irregular spikes, jagged and frantic. The numbers at the side vanish. No heart rate. No normal rhythm.
“Stop,” I tell Cassian.
I set the paddles back in their cradle and glance at the wall clock.
Technically, as of right now, Talon is dead.
Time: 08:07.
I pick up a stopwatch and start it, focusing on the seconds, not on the strange quiet that has settled over the room. The human brain is not built to stand calmly and watch a heart fail. Every instinct revolts against it, a low hum of wrongness that sits behind the teeth and won’t be swallowed. But if I do my job right, it will be over soon, and Talon will come back to life.
