Heavy wool felt wrapped around Julian’s boots muffled every stride below nineteen decibels.
Behind him in Row 15, Arthur Pendelton’s Casio pocket register chattered quietly against the dark oak blotter. Every two seconds, the thermal print-head spit out another ribbon of grocery prices and barcode sums. The magnetic floor brackets on Desk #304 stayed wide open, fooled into thinking a real student was still hunched over the exam.
Lin Mei wiped damp chill from her forehead with her sleeve. She didn’t look back at her old seat. She kept her eyes glued to the center aisle ahead.
“Keep your knees bent,” Elena whispered from Julian’s left elbow. “The floorboards near the heating grates creak if you drop your full weight.”
“I’ve got it,” Julian murmured.
His right ear hummed at its steady baseline of four thousand two hundred hertz. It was a dry, thin whistle that felt like cold air whistling through a cracked window pane. As long as the tone didn’t drop four cycles to that sour copper pulse, he knew there wasn’t a fresh lie-rule within arm’s reach.
They slipped past Row 12, stepping through pools of emerald light cast by the green banker’s lamps.
On both sides of the narrow aisle, students sat with their spines locked straight. Strips of white surgical tape held their eyelids wide open.
