Julian Vance stepped through the internal pass-through door without making a sound.
His boots moved across the dark floorboards of the Proctor’s Booth with the practiced grace of a night stocker carrying a tray of fresh eggs.
Beside him, Elena Rostova held her long insulated surgical forceps gripped in her right hand, her white cardigan buttoned tight. Lin Mei slipped in right behind them, holding her angled dentist’s transom mirror up to the top of the Dutch door to track the reflection outside in the lobby.
Outside the booth, in the dim, red-lit entrance hall, Sub-Proctor Silas Vance still leaned over the wooden counter shelf.
His back was turned to the lobby. His shoulders were hunched, his elbows resting on the oak ledge.
In his left hand, Silas held the heavy glass bottle of Black Notary Acid, its dark contents bubbling with tiny, greasy black blisters. In his right hand, the glass eyedropper was loaded with three drops of the smoking fluid, poised half an inch above the open brass card slot of the Simplex 2350 Master Time-Clock.
A single drop of that acid would dissolve the brass escapement gear and melt the pendulum balance into a puddle of foul-smelling slag.
