Fifteen inches above sixteen-year-old Halin’s frost-crusted hair, the twelve-foot ring of pale semi-clear blades revolved with a low, slicing hum that turned every breath inside the chalk boundary into visible white mist. Around the base of the central floor test needle, a thin wisp of acrid blue smoke still curled from the three inverted venting sockets where Seyun’s copper needles had sparked.
Halin knelt on the cold black slate with his right wrist clamped in the silver restraint cuff. He cried openly, his shoulders heaving in ragged, scared jerks that he kept trying to suppress before they could disturb the rhythm of the braided wire.
“Please, Seyun—step back across the chalk line!” Halin begged, his voice cracking as tears froze along his hollow cheekbones. He didn’t pull his right arm away from the floor needle. Instead, he leaned his bruised chest closer to the bronze spike, shielding the braided silver-and-copper wire with his own ribs as if Seyun were an assassin trying to cut his throat. “Don’t let Mina touch the cuff! Don’t touch the collar again!”
“Halin, listen to me,” Seyun said, staying on one knee two feet from the boy with his scorched left wool glove resting open on his thigh so Halin could see his hands were empty. “Look at the frost around your knees. Look at the purple lines climbing your right arm. When the seventh latch drops, that floor needle is going to turn your channels into a permanent step-up bridge between the mountain seam…
