The darkness outside the thirty-six-inch blue ring was alive with sixty-hertz electromagnetic static.
Matron Bell paused her turned hickory pointer three inches above the pine floorboards.
The heavy wood hovered over the grain, trembling with the pent-up tension of three counter-wound Swedish leaf springs.
Inside her blackened iron chest, the six-inch escapement wheel was spinning so fast its bronze teeth blurred into a solid disc:
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
A thick cloud of overheated lubricating oil vapor puffed from her brass collar seams, curling into the red beam of Julian’s flashlight.
Above the double oak doors, the Simplex wall clock clicked forward with a heavy, hollow thud:
02:58:52 AM.
