Julian Vance wiped a smear of icy condensation from his forehead with the back of his glove.
His Seiko 5 watch read 02:13 AM and ten seconds.
Fifty seconds remained before the Thirteen-Second Bell.
Beside him at the dead-end corridor, the massive slate blackboard loomed under the deep arterial glow of the ceiling fixtures. The carmine-red chalk of Lie-Rule M-102 glistened with wet, viscous intensity, pulsing with an invisible electromagnetic field.
Inside Julian’s right ear, his tinnitus screamed.
The pitch spiked straight to 4,196 Hz with the screech of metal grinding against metal. A sudden, sharp ache pounded behind his right temple, and a thin trickle of warm blood leaked from his right nostril.
“Don’t look at the text directly,” Julian warned, wiping the blood from his lip with his sleeve. “The carmine pigment carries a resonant charge. It’s radiating forty millivolts of static.”
Lin Mei held her dentist’s transom mirror at waist level, carefully angling the small glass disc away from the slate.
