The silence in the ante-chamber carried a different weight than the silence of the loop.
For forty-four nights, the quiet had been thick, high-voltage, and poisonous, humming with the sixty-hertz vibration of a coiled trap.
Now, the air was still, cold, and clear.
The Simplex 2350 master impulse clock on the northern wall gave a dry, metallic click:
03:02:14 AM.
Julian stood with his boots planted on the pine floorboards, watching the second hand sweep through its sixty-second circuit.
Two full minutes had elapsed since the threshold fell.
Two minutes of uncharted, unmapped time.
