The roar of the reversed pneumatic station sounded like a jet engine spinning up inside a tiled bathroom.
Air was being violently dragged out of Nurse Station 4B.
Julian Vance braced his boots against the oak desk, gripping the counter edge with both hands. The atmospheric pressure inside the wire-glass enclosure plummeted with terrifying speed.
His ears popped twice, followed by a sharp, stabbing ache behind his temples. The sudden adiabatic expansion of the air caused the temperature inside the station to drop twenty degrees in ten seconds. Cold white fog condensed in the air, swirling around the fluorescent tubes.
The low-frequency vibration of the subterranean blowers penetrated the concrete floor slabs. It was an eighteen-hertz infrasound drone--a visceral acoustic hum that resonated in the hollow cavities of Julian’s chest. On the mobile medication cart, clear saline in plastic IV bags began to dance with standing ripples, while glass ampoules of morphine clinked together in their metal racks like nervous teeth.
Beneath Julian’s sneakers, the green linoleum tiles began to bubble. The adhesive beneath the flooring, applied fifty years ago with bitumen tar, was being pulled upward by the negative pressure gradient, threatening to tear the floorboards clean off the joists.
