Elena’s gloved fingers closed around the cold bronze shaft of Key #RELAY-45 as Julian raised St. Jude’s White Chart Clip #4B between them and the advancing proctor.
Above the double oak doors of the Midnight Study Hall, the Simplex slave clock clicked to 02:56:00 AM.
Matron Bell towered over the red-chalk triangle she had scrawled across the floorboards. Her exposed six-inch bronze throat-gong vibrated at sixty hertz, shaking loose flakes of whitewash from the ceiling beams as her five-pound brass expulsion stamp hovered three feet above Elena’s wounded brow.
“FOURTH FLOOR JURISDICTION IS ABSOLUTE,” Matron Bell’s spliced voice boomed across the vestibule. “NO INFIRMARY ROOM EXISTS ABOVE FLOOR ONE. BY SHEDDING BLOOD ON FLOOR FOUR, NURSE #N-07 HAS DEFAULTED TO CANDIDATE STATUS.”
Julian didn’t flinch at the sixty-hertz pressure wave pressing against his eardrums.
Instead, he tapped the aluminum edge of White Chart Clip #4B three times with his yellow Dixon Phano grease pencil.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“You’re quoting a 1998 mimeographed exam syllabus, Matron,” Julian said, his voice crisp and unhurried. “Let’s check the 1964 municipal hospital and school board charter that actually paid for the bricks under your shoes.”
