The ante-chamber smelled of scorched ozone, cedar sawdust, and ancient mothballs.
High above the pine floorboards, the sixty-hertz fluorescent tubes flickered with a violent yellow pulse that set Julian’s right ear buzzing at four thousand two hundred hertz.
Matron Bell stood frozen in the center aisle, her eight-foot frame locked in an agonizing shudder.
The turned hickory handle of her five-pound brass notary stamp remained suspended three inches above Lin Mei’s temple.
Inside the entity’s blackened cast-iron chest, the heavy brass escapement gears were screeching against their bronze pins.
Click-whirrr-buzz.
A thin ribbon of black machine oil leaked from the collar seam of her bronze throat-gong, dripping down across her starched white bib and sizzling against her heated torso plates.
“Two seconds,” Julian said again, his voice flat and unhurried. “Do you hear the internal logic fault, Proctor Bell? You cannot stamp an expulsion demerit while your own ledger is in arrears.”
