The red numbers on the front brick wall burned into Julian Vance’s retinas:
07... 06... 05...
Seven seconds remained on the execution timer.
Across the vast floor of the 4th-Floor Midnight Study Hall, the collective movement of four hundred human bodies began.
Stiff wool blazers shifted against varnished pine chair backs. Leather shoe soles scraped dry floorboards.
Four hundred left hands, trembling from forty-four nights of relentless exhaustion, lifted three inches above desk blotters. Four hundred index fingers extended, preparing to point directly toward the southern wall where Julian, Elena, and Lin Mei stood in the shadow of Pilaster Eighteen.
The acoustic needle on the ceiling Bogen meter jerked violently:
27.8 dB... 28.6 dB... 29.3 dB...
