The digital clock on the front counter flashed 09:30 PM in bright green phosphor.
Ninety minutes remained before the eleventh hour.
Outside the store, the darkness of Night 16 was absolute. The cold autumn wind had picked up from the bay, rattling the plate-glass windows and sending dry sycamore leaves skittering across Old Ferry Road. The streetlights flickered with their customary sixty-cycle hum, casting long, shivering bars of shadow across the wet asphalt.
Julian Vance knelt behind Register #1, holding a braided silver coaxial jumper cable in his teeth while he tightened an RF grounding lug with a nut driver.
“Coaxial shield seated,” Julian said, dropping the driver into his pocket. “Elena, check the carrier frequency on the spectrum analyzer.”
Elena stood on the clerk side of the counter, adjusting the vernier dials on a vintage Hewlett-Packard radio test set. The green oscilloscope trace glowed in the dim corner.
“Channel Zero-Four Red is centered at four hundred and sixty-two megahertz,” Elena reported, her eyes tracking the sharp green peak. “Signal-to-noise ratio is thirty-eight decibels. Harmonic distortion is under zero point two percent.”
“It’s clean, Julian.”
