The brass pressure gauge above the oak lintel read twenty-nine point four decibels.
Julian Vance stood in the fourth-floor ante-chamber, his shoulder muscles rigid beneath his grey work shirt. In his left hand, the heavy phosphor-bronze shank of Study Hall Master Key #SH-400 felt colder than pond ice. Beside him, pinned to Elena’s scrub collar, Margaret Bell’s 1964 registered nurse pin caught the amber glare of the emergency lights.
The double doors leading into the examination hall were three inches thick, framed in dark quarter-sawn oak. Two rectangular panes of wire-reinforced glass sat at eye level.
Behind Julian, the Simplex 2350 master wall clock clicked forward with a sharp internal ratchet strike:
03:04:12 AM.
For forty-four nights, that clock had never reached three in the morning. Every previous night shift had dissolved at twelve seconds before three, looping back into the cold rain of November fourteenth. Now the unmapped minutes were ticking away in steady succession.
“Julian,” Lin Mei whispered, her voice barely registering above the background hum of the hallway. “Look through the glass. Look at the desks.”
Elena Rostova stepped up beside them. She had already dressed the brow laceration above her right eyepatch with sterile gauze and butterfly closures. Her Littmann stethoscope hung securely around her neck, its cold silver bell tucked into her breast pocket so it wouldn’t rattle against her zipper.
