rjsinclair
The ultimate quarantine is about to become the perfect trap.
Inside the hyperbaric chamber at University Medical, the world is deathly silent. For Joel, Hank, and Chloe, it was supposed to be a routine medical treatment-locked away inside a heavy steel vault at two-and-a-half times normal atmospheric pressure.
Then, through the thick acrylic viewing glass, they watch the world outside collapse.
A hyper-acute neurological pathogen is tearing through the hospital, instantly hijacking the minds of the staff and turning them into vicious, predatory hunters. It isn't airborne. The three patients inside the chamber are entirely helpless, forced to watch the bloody chaos unfold like a muted horror movie.
When their own operating technician is compromised, the chamber's automated console detects the abandoned controls and triggers an emergency abort. But you cannot simply open a pressure vault. To survive the transition to the outside world, they must endure a mandatory, agonizingly slow fifty-five-minute decompression cycle. If they force the door early, their blood will boil. If they wait, the electronic hatch will click open automatically, delivering them straight into a dark, red-lit hospital overrun by the infected.
As the digital clock above the door counts down, the tension inside the chamber reaches a boiling point. Trapped with a failing ventilator patient and a rapidly dwindling oxygen supply, they have exactly fifty-five minutes to adapt, scavenge their clinical prison for makeshift armor, and figure out how to survive the second the seal breaks.
They are perfectly safe. For now.
But the clock is ticking. And the door is going to open.