The air inside the thirty-six-inch blue boundary remained cool and sterile, but the darkness beyond the ring was suffocating.
Powdered phosphorus from the shattered fluorescent tubes coated the pine floorboards like toxic snow.
High above the double oak doors, the heavy iron minute hand of the Simplex master clock clicked again:
02:58:10 AM.
Exactly one hundred and ten seconds remained before the stepper camshaft dropped Mercury Switch #45 onto Terminal Nine.
One hundred and ten seconds before two thousand four hundred volts ripped through four hundred metal desks in the Midnight Study Hall, executing every student in Dormitory Seven.
Matron Bell stood six feet outside the glowing blue circle, her exposed iron torso ticking with manic precision.
Her six-inch bronze throat-gong flared with a low, sixty-hertz vibration that made the glass shards on the floor dance and rattle:
