‘Look out!’ Sachs cried. Seeing something flying out of the blackness toward Leron. It glinted in the light from the doorway as it arched overhead. She knew the bottle contained toxin, more cicutoxin or maybe that zombie fish crap.

No known antidote …

‘It’s poison!’ she called and ducked instinctively. Leron leapt to the left but stumbled and fell on his back, hard. He grunted in pain.

But it seemed the unsub hadn’t been aiming for her or the guard directly. Of course not. Their flesh wouldn’t shatter the poison container; he’d tossed it high, at the ceiling.

Leron was directly under the bottle when it hit a pipe and shattered. The poison rained down on him. He dropped his Nano and began screaming.

By the time Sachs rolled to her feet, the unsub had pushed through a second door to the specimen room, thirty feet up the corridor. She heard his footfalls fading as he sprinted toward the doctors’ office building.

She turned back to Leron, who was moaning and wiping desperately at his face. ‘Water, wash it off … I can’t see.’

What the hell was it? She smelled a noxious odor, astringent.

Acid! It looked like parts of his flesh were melting off.

Jesus!

Sachs debated. Go after the unsub … or do what she could for Leron?

Hell. She grabbed her phone and called 911 again, reporting that the perp was escaping through the connecting tunnel to the doctors’ office building next to the hospital.

She then ran to a nearby fire station and yanked the hose off the rack, turning on the stream of water and spraying Leron’s face and chest, though this didn’t seem to offer much relief, to judge from his screams, which were far louder than the fiercely loud rush of water.

‘Nuh, nuh, nuh …’

Then the heavyset man was sitting up, waving his hands fiercely. ‘Enough, enough, enough!’

He started choking and Sachs realized she was firing the water directly into his face, half drowning him. She shut off the stream.

Leron rose to his knees, spitting.

His eyes were red, but he seemed otherwise all right – aside from the choking.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked. ‘Are you burned? Was it acid? Poison?’

‘’S okay, ’s okay … I’m all right.’

Sachs squinted at the floor, the broken glass. She walked over to a shard that held a yellowing label.

Oh.

Leron nodded, squinting. ‘He threw one of them samples at me, a specimen. One of the jars, right?’

‘Looks that way. Probably formaldehyde.’

‘Stings, but not bad. You washed most of it off me.’

Sachs then scanned the floor and noted the tissue sample on the floor, near where Leron sat. She’d thought the unsub had thrown acid, which had melted off the guard’s skin. In reality, the flesh was what had been in the bottle.