Joe had spent what felt like hours scrambling through the ventilation system when in reality it had been minutes. The cramped, airless space would have been uncomfortable even for someone not sporting such an impressive frame. The sweat dripped down his nose and splashed into a little pool onto the cool metal below his face. Apparently the jokers who'd cut the power had managed to cut the system which controlled the air flow too. He would have thanked them not to have bothered quite frankly.

Scooting forwards by pulling most of his weight on his elbows, he tried to keep any noises to a minimum. It wouldn't do to alert the fools to his whereabouts before he'd had a chance to use the fact they didn't know where he was to his advantage. They'd know of his presence because of Abigail soon enough anyway.

Abigail. Joe thought with a shake of his head. He'd never suspected her of wrongdoing. Why would he. The unassuming assistant always keen to help with a smile constantly on her face. She'd alert the troops and he would have them on his trail eventually so better to keep moving.

He rolled his body to the side for a moment and reached his hand down to his pocket to grab his cell. The fit in the vent was tight enough that even this simple movement took more time and manoeuvring than he would have liked. Pulling the phone up to his face, he glanced at the screen confirming his fears. He had zero signal surrounded by all the metal of the vent.

Pushing the phone back into his pocket he scooted forward once again, grimacing at the sharp spike of pain that shot through his shoulder. The dull ache had been making it's presence known the longer he'd spent in the tunnel...but so had his will to ignore it. Gritting his teeth he aimed for a square shaft of light filtering through into the space indicating another approaching grate.

He'd stopped at every one attempting to make visual contact with the unfolding hostage situation outside but so far he'd only come across views of empty examination rooms and offices. Hopefully his luck would turn. The closer he got to the opening, the more obvious it got that this hope was well founded. Voices began filtering through to his ears and finally, as he reached his destination, he allowed himself a silent air punch of elation. The grate afforded a near perfect view of the room and most of its occupants.

The waiting room was on the smaller side for the department. Bayport hospital wasn't the biggest hospital in the world by any stretch of the imagination. The twenty or so people now being held hostage comprised of several nurses, a few of the reception team including Mary but mostly patients. The man that had been knocked unconscious previously now sat in a huddled heap on the floor, blood caked on his face and a slightly dazed look in his eye. One of the accompanying nurses was silently giving him the once over, a grim look of determination on her face.

Well done Joe thought to himself eyeing her actions. Very few of the hostages seemed to be keeping their cool and he'd possibly have need for the ones who could before the end. Mary, he saw with a grin, was definitely one of them. She sat defiantly on the ground, waspishly telling one of her young team who was sitting snivelling to pull herself together before shooting a look of pure loathing at the man standing a few feet from her stock still. Apparently the fact that he was toting a vicious looking gun wasn't impressing her much.

Joe finally had chance to take stock of their would be captors. There were four, interchangeable bruiser types and the smaller form of Abigail surrounding the crowd of people huddled in the centre of the room. They each stood holding their respective weapons with their legs apart seemingly ready for action. One more man, easily the biggest of the group, was stalking back and forth. Tension radiated from his entire being. In the weird, white light of the emergency lighting the scar across the lead guy's face stood out in stark relief. A sneer permanently marred his features. His closely cropped hair served to enhance the sharp angles of his face and the thickness of his neck. All in all his appearance screamed 'tough sonuvabitch'. Joe shook his head slightly. Given the path the guy had chosen in life, which had lead to toting a gun and walking circles around a bunch of scared and frightened civilians in the centre of a waiting room, the tough guy exterior was probably advantageous to his line of work, but it was less than impressive to the young detective. Though Joe himself was built on the stockier side, he had a problem with people using their sheer mass as a weapon to intimidate and naturally felt the need to step in when he saw others doing so. A trait which had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. Just thinking of taking this guy out had Frank's voice ricocheting through Joe's mind with one word.

No

Joe almost smiled to himself at the thought but a sudden movement in the room sucked any and all humour out of the situation. A scuffle had broken out with one of the men sitting with the hostages and the nearest goon. With a jolt, Joe realised it was one of the guards he'd noticed sitting outside of the small ward from earlier. His partner sitting next to him jumped to his feet trying to wrestle the man off the guard as he was thrown to the floor and kicked viciously and repeatedly. Hanging from the thickset arm of the attacker he didn't noticed another of the goons walking up behind him. Without much preamble the man kicked the back of the guard's knee knocking him to the ground before lashing out with a ham sized fist. His hand connected with the guard's face with a thud, sending him crashing fully to the floor, dazed.

"Hey, what did we tell you?" the leader said, stalking stiff legged to the guards who were rolling around clutching themselves in obvious pain "any trouble and you'd eat lead. Boys."

Nodding to the two meat heads who'd reacted with such vicious force, he resumed pacing without another glance. They looked at each other with steel eyes before reaching down and grasping the neck of the prone guard nearest to them. Pulling them both up to a kneeling position they coldly pointed the barrels of their guns to the back of the guard's heads. The guards barely had chance to glance at each other before two shots rang out sending them back to the ground. They were dead before they hit the floor.

Joe had to physically bite back a shout at what he had just witnessed. Two young men had lost their lives in moments without any sign of emotion. He still didn't know who he was dealing with but they had just seriously upped the stakes. They were not kidding around.

The deaths triggered absolute pandemonium. The people sitting closest to the guards had been sprayed with blood and grey matter and, after a moment of shock, had panicked. Shrieking, the hostages surged and attempted to run from the centre of the room out of the pen of chairs. Anywhere to get away from the giant men and their giant guns. The armed circle closed in, pushing the would be escapees back with as much, and in some cases more, force than was necessary. From his position up above Joe saw Abigail knocking back more than one person who by first sight would have overpowered her easily. He had been right, it was wrong to underestimate her.

"Sit your punk asses down. NOW!" the leader hollered stepping forward and brandishing his gun. The combined effort of the captors and the boom of his voice served to calm the crowd back into submission.

"Nick, take care of this mess," he said, kicking at the foot of one of the dead guards.

"You got it Lance," Nick replied. Grabbing a limp arm and dragging the body across the room and into one of the abandoned offices, leaving a streak of blood and gore behind him.

Lance thought Joe as he watched Nick repeat the procedure with the second guard. He finally had a name for the lunatic in charge of this operation. But what do they want?

The question hung in his mind as he surveyed the room once again. One of the goons closest to the door of the curtained ward turned slightly as if he heard something. Nodding, he turned towards Lance.

"Hey, the boss wants a word."

Lance stopped his pacing immediately and turned on a dime heading for the door.

I need to see what's in that room. Joe thought looking forwards along the shaft to figure out if the venting turned into the ward. Matching it up with what he could see through the grating into the room he realised with a jolt that it would and instantly began his maddeningly slow scramble towards his destination. As he approached the grating which would afford him a view of the room, typical hospital noises started filtering back to him. The beeps and clicking of machinery laced through with a deep, throaty mumble of a voice which, though quiet, held an icy edge which told Joe that the owner would not be the type of person to be ignored.

He fought against his need to look into the room enough to slow himself to a silent crawl. The ward looked tiny from the outside and any noises he made would no doubt be amplified. Approaching the grating, he caught his first glimpse of the occupier. It was an older man, definitely in his sixties though at which end Joe couldn't tell. His thinning hair was a steel grey and plastered across his forehead with sweat. The sallow colour of his skin emphasised the deep, purple bags under his eyes and his jowls shuddered with every breath he heaved into his hefty bulk of a body. Despite his obvious lack of health and disregard for fitness, his eyes spoke of a deep intellect and a ruthless intent. Dark and framed by thick, bushy eyebrows, they pierced through the gloom of the room and were constantly on alert.

"Lance, this noise. It displeases me." The words were velvet trimmed with knives. Your best friend and your worst nightmare rolled into one. The voice of a predator. It made Joe's skin crawl.

"Sorry boss," Lance said. A slightly wild look in his eye.

"What, my dear, is the hold up with getting me out of this hell hole?"

"We didn't know the police were going to get here as quick as they did boss. That wasn't part of the plan," Lance replied, wincing slightly as if expecting a blow to the face.

"Ah. The plan," the boss replied. A smile crossing his face that did not reach his eyes. "Would this be the foolproof plan you assured me would work? Without, as you so eloquently put it, a 'hitch'?"

Lance didn't say anything for a moment. He was clearly working on a response which wouldn't result in him having a higher content of lead in his face.

"We were just going to wheel you out boss. Get the boys in scrubs and take you under their noses but one of the sheep noticed Tony's pistol and started hollerin'. We had to...control the situation."

"And now you've landed yourself in a room full of cattle with no way out in a building surrounded by pigs?"

"We're working on it boss..." came Lance's pathetic reply.

"See. That. You. Do," the boss replied. The threat apparent in every word. "Oh and Lance? Send in one of those nurses. A pretty one. I think it's time for my meds."

Lance left the doorway with a stiff nod. Joe heard him ordering one of the nurses into the room. She entered and busied herself with checking the bleeping machines, not making eye contact with the man before her.

So it's a ruse Joe thought to himself. All in place to get this clown out of the hospital. But why was he in here and what was stopping him from just walking out himself...figuratively speaking of course. Then Joe remembered the guard detail on the door of the ward earlier, a pang of sadness as his mind played back their fate in HD. Who the heck was this guy?

"My dear, this troubles me," the boss said, lifting his hand into the air. Or...no...not his hand. Joe saw with a start that the arm the formidable man was lifting into the air ended in a swath of bandages with tubes leading in and out of the layers of white. It was quite clear that the limb was now missing a hand.

The nurse looked up from the machinery she was checking before making her way down to the clipboard at the end of the bed. It was the same nurse Joe had noticed earlier tending to the unfortunate hostage whos face had had a chat with the wrong end of a gun. She was darkly beautiful, there was clearly some sort of ethnicity in her background. Olive skin and jet black hair pulled into a no nonsense bun on the top of her head. She peered up through her thick lashes at the man before her and slightly raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

"Mr...Marchetti," she began, scanning the details on the paper before her.

Joe felt like he'd been punched. The air almost physically whooshed out of his lungs at the name.

Marchetti! He was dealing with the family Marchetti. One of the older and well known mob families in the New York area. The stakes had been risen, if possible, even higher. So this ageing yet lethal individual lying before him like an old, wounded lion must be..

"Call me Dante my dear," he purred at her, the wheeze in his voice becoming more pronounced.

Dante Marchetti. Head of the gang with a rap sheet as long as his family tree. He had been in and out of cells up and down the east coast ever since he was old enough to wield a weapon, ending in a life sentence in the nearby infamous Old East Penitentiary for the brutal murder of a lawyer and his family who had worked on a trial which had seen Dante's brother sent down himself. A brother who'd gone to sleep one night and been found with his throat ripped from ear to ear the next morning. The Marchetti's were renown for their ability to stay out of prison as a rule but unfortunately for Dante, the maid hiding in the closet had witnessed the entirety of the savage torture and killing of the lawyer's family that she worked for. Joe figured she'd be in witness protection for life once she was finished with the therapy. Dante and his family were infamous throughout New York and the surrounding areas, including Bayport. Not a town was untouched by Marchetti fingers and the Hardys had dealt with more than one fallout from their family dealings.

So it seemed the mob had taken the chance to bust out Dante during a hospital stay relating to his hand.

"It says here you were admitted to the hospital a week ago with a severed hand?" the nurse asked. Eyeing up Dante again.

"That's right. I had a little...accident," he replied, his voice thick like caramel.

"Surgery to reattach the limb was impossible due to the nature of the wound..." she continued, scanning the notes "you're on quite the cocktail of pain medication."

"And I'd like another hit," he said with a greasy smile.

"And those people out there would like to go home to their families tonight," the nurse shot back.

Dante's smile froze on his face but a thrill of what he was really feeling glittered across his eyes. "My dear. You should really concentrate on your job if you want to go home to your own family tonight."

The nurse raised her head, sticking out her chin in defiance, but her shoulders sagged slightly in defeat.

After a moments pause she slowly returned the clipboard to the end of the bed before turning to a trolley, discarded when everything had hit the fan, which housed a vast array of drugs and medications. After filling a syringe with a clear liquid she moved to the left of the bed where an IV line was plugged into the arm missing a hand. Before she could administer the concoction however, Dante's other arm shot out faster than you'd give him credit for, and meaty fingers enclosed her slender wrist.

"You're very lovely," he began, his eyes like iron "it would be a shame to waste such a pretty face."

He held her arm slightly longer than was comfortable, to her credit she didn't bat an eyelid, before releasing her and settling back into the pillows of the bed. She shot him a look of pure hatred before leaning over and finishing administering the drugs. Without another word she stepped back, throwing the used needle to the trolley before stalking out the room.

One of the goons, possibly Tony, darkened the doorway with his back to the room as Dante's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he fell into a dug induced sleep.

Joe blew his cheeks out and shook his head slowly. Whatever his next move he had to do it and do it fast. There would be no reasoning with these people and if he found himself on their wrong side then it would be game over.

I've got to talk to Frank. Of the four or five examination rooms attached to the department there were two possible ones he could attempt to reach which were far enough away from the waiting room that he could whisper a conversation without hopefully being over heard. He began the slow and arduous task of monkey crawling his way along the vent once again. Sweat covered his body making his arms slick and the muscles in his back quivered with exertion.

Finally reaching his destination, he had a moment of panic when thinking about how he was going to get out of the vent. The fasteners were on the outside. Luckily they were just on hinges and easily pushed to one side...well easily for someone with thinner fingers. Joe had a moment of struggle with each one before they would open. Looping his fingertips through the holes he lowered the top of the grate, as silently as he could. He shuffled forward until his knees were level with the opening and slid his legs through slowly. He felt with his feet for the top of the table he had seen from inside the vent and lowered himself down onto it. Allowing himself a moment to catch his breath, he whipped out his phone silently praying that he would get signal from inside the office. The light on the office phone was out showing that they had disabled those along with the power. So it was cell or bust.

He had to hold in a yell of elation when he saw full bars on the screen. Dialling Frank, he held the phone close to his face and crossed his fingers that his big brother would pick up. Frank may have had a love for technology in general but he had a sore spot about phones and it wasn't unlike him to put it down somewhere and completely forget about its existence.

So convinced was he that the gods would be against him and his brother wouldn't answer that when Frank's voice came through after three rings he jumped out of his skin. It seemed far too loud after the self imposed silence of the last hour or so.

"Joe!"

"Oh my god, Frank, am I happy to hear your voice," Joe began, barely speaking his words incase he was overheard.

"Joe? Why are you whispering? I knew you'd be involved in whatever was going on," Frank said, half exasperated but the relief he felt that Joe was alive was palpable in his words.

"I genuinely get blamed for everything," Joe quipped, wanting to feel annoyed at Frank's admonishing...but realising that it was, once again, justified.

"What is happening in there?" Frank asked, "are you ok, there's been gun shots!"

"I know. Believe me I know," Joe began before giving Frank an abridged version of what was going on.

"The Marchettis!" Frank said, understanding immediately how perilous the situation was, dread falling like a lead balloon into his stomach that his little brother was in the middle of it.

"Yeah, what is happening outside? They spoke about the police being here," Joe replied.

"The Chief is here with half the world's population of officers. They were setting up a team to scout the perimeter when I last spoke to them. I'm going to have to relay your information back to them," Frank said, looking around him wildly for the retreating form of Ezra.

"There's only two entrances into this ward and they're covered," Joe said, speaking rapidly. He didn't know why but he had the sudden gut feeling his time with Frank was running out. "They're shooting to kill right now so if they send people in they have got to be careful. Frank I'm going to have to keep moving. My doctor's assistant is in on this and she knows I'm not out with the other hostages right now. I figure they must think I got away but if they even catch a hint that I'm still here..."

"Joe I want you to get out of there if you can," Frank said sternly. "There's no need for heroics, the police will be in there soon."

Joe smiled to himself at Frank's words echoing his own to the good doctor earlier.

"Hey, don't worry Frank. I'm Iron Man."

I entirely share Frank's hatred of mobile phones...

All comments and critiques welcomed as usual!