Julian Vance lowered the heavy olive-drab steel box stamped [#3A-KEYWAY] onto the linoleum beside the East Stairwell door.
His Seiko 5 read 02:17 AM.
The emergency amber bulbs along the ceiling cast long, amber-brown shadows across the third-floor corridor. The air was warming up slightly, rising from sub-zero to forty-two degrees Fahrenheit, though the smell of scorched ozone and fractured slate still hung heavy in the draft.
“We have forty-three minutes before the 03:00 AM master reset,” Julian said, checking his watch against the corridor wall clock. “Before we tackle the stairwell to Landing 3A, we clear the floor.”
Elena wiped a bead of sweat from her cheek with her coat sleeve, her Littmann stethoscope resting securely around her neck.
“The Prime Rooms,” Elena said, consulting her small clipboard. “Rooms 307, 311, 313, 317, 319, and 323. If Maya and Lin’s calculations hold, those are the only rooms where living students could survive the saturation wave.”
Lin Mei stepped up beside them, adjusting the Starlight Mart #04 pin on her cardigan lapel.
“The prime numbers avoid the standing harmonic frequencies of Matron Bell’s gong,” Lin Mei explained, her voice steady. “Every other room has a node that matches the building’s sixty-hertz ground. Anyone in an even room or a multiple of five was converted into an ink-bleeder weeks ago.”
