The double stood thirty feet away under the iron framework of the luggage hoist, perfectly motionless.
It didn’t advance into the lit up circle cast by the overhead copper lanterns. It understood the physics of Rookvale as intimately as the living man across from it. The light didn’t kill it, but crossing the nonstop green beam caused a searing, blistered agony that it had no need to endure. Meanwhile, the doors remained barred and the living targets were pinned in the room.
The nook behind it was a cave of cold shadow, cut out of the granite foundation where freight elevators had once lifted steamer trunks up to the high passenger platforms.
The nook behind the copy was a vault of frozen air. Cut deep into the foundation granite forty years ago, the shaft had once housed the high-pressure balance weights for the heavy steam lifts that hoisted freight wagons up to the high passenger concourse. The guide rails, four-inch bars of cold-rolled iron crusted with sulfur scale, stretched vertically into the darkness above. Where the shadows pooled beneath the iron beams, the air heat was dropping rapidly. It fell well below freezing as the anchor grid completed its grounding cycle. Thin, feather-like needles of frost were already growing across the iron links of the balance weight chains, clicking softly as the metal tightened.
