Dead, wax-caked fingers dug into the collar of Julian Vance’s orderly smock.
The corpse from Hubbard Tank Number Eight hung halfway over the polished chrome rim.
Its icy dead weight dragged Julian down toward the churning black water.
“Julian!” Elena shouted from Crate Four, balancing on the balls of her clogs. “It’s pulling you into the vortex!”
“I’m holding the copper pipe!” Julian shouted back, his left arm locked around the intake line.
“The thermometer wheel won’t turn!” Elena yelled, checking the head-mirror. “You can’t move that iron spoke by hand!”
“I don’t need to turn the wheel,” Julian grunted, his teeth gritted against the corpse’s freezing grip. “We have the original institutional baseline.”
“What baseline?” Elena cried out over the shrieking turbine.
