A breath passed through the hollow shinbone, and the sewer tunnel went silent.
It wasn’t the natural silence of an empty hall. It was a choking, unnatural empty pocket, as if the air itself had been stripped of its ability to carry normal sound. The constant dripping of water ceased to register. The splashing of sewage fell dead against the flat stone slabs.
Then came the shaking.
It began below the threshold of human hearing. A deep, crawling pulse that set the stale muck in the drainage trough shivering in nested rings. A heartbeat later, the tone spiked with violent, nauseating speed into the extreme upper register.
SKREEEEEEEEEEE—————!
The sound was not music. It was the agonized, wet wail of a dying woman trapped beneath ten feet of icy river water, amplified a thousandfold and funneled through seven jagged bone sky-slits.
The sound wave didn’t travel as a diffuse cloud. Bound by the Uncanny taboo of the drowned maiden, the high-hum shaking gathered into a tight, invisible lance of sonic pressure aimed directly at Lu Chen’s skull.
Lu Chen’s eye diagnostics reacted right away.
