The backup trench line at the entrance to the heavy-duty aqueduct was drowning in a chorus of agonized coughing.
Over four hundred wounded civilians, cadet sentries, and local foundry workers were collapsed along the concrete stone retaining walls. Their bodies shivered with violent, uncontrollable fevers. Many were clawing at their throats. Their lips stained with was dark, frothy sputum tinged with a terrifying azure soft glow. Where the sick breathed out into the cold morning air, their breath condensed into crystal-clear blue frost that fell to the mud like crushed glass.
Arthur Vance stumbled into the aqueduct staging yard, his left arm pinned in its tight pressure dressing, his right hand gripping his carbine.
Beside him, Professor Bramwell Heseltine and Dr. Morrigan Calder were kneeling over a convulsing young girl whose fingers were already turning dark, crystal-clear blue. Heseltine’s hands were trembling as he adjusted his sight magnifying glass, his pipe lying forgotten in the dirt.
“It’s not standard chemical poisoning, Arthur,” Heseltine rasped, his face pale with horror. “The Splicer drones blew up forty barrels of viral slurry directly into the main settling basin. Look at the tiny blood vessel beds in her eye.”
Arthur dropped to his knees beside the girl, shining his penlight into her eyes.
