The heavy steel door groaned on its bronze pivots as Julian shoved it inward.
A wave of dry, freezing air rushed out to meet them. It wasn’t the wet, rancid stench of the outer autopsy hall.
This air was bone-dry and thirty-six degrees, smelling of old bookbinding paste, cedar shelving, dried iron-gall ink, and paraffin slide wax.
The digital timer on Julian’s watch read 03:11:15 AM.
“One hundred and sixty-five seconds,” Julian said aloud, stepping across the brass sill. “We’ve got two minutes and forty-five seconds until three-fourteen.”
“I’m holding the door,” Elena said, planting her boots squarely in the threshold.
She uncoiled the tubing of her Littmann stethoscope and rested the steel chestpiece against her palm. In her left hand, she raised the laminated top carbon sheet of the White Master Chart like a shield.
“Under White Rule W-1,” Elena said, “so long as I hold this rounding warrant in the doorway, the entrance stays an active nursing post.”
