The soundproof glass of the Dean’s Grading Annex vibrated faintly against Julian’s knuckles.
Outside in the cavernous study hall, four hundred students sat under the emerald banker’s lamps, their steel pens scratching wood pulp under the threat of the thirty-decibel ceiling blade.
Inside the annex, the only sound was the harsh sixty-cycle hum of industrial fluorescent tubes and the ragged, shallow breathing of Notary Clerk Hollis.
Hollis lay pinned across the zinc sorting table. Julian’s left forearm pressed hard against the clerk’s throat, holding his starched collar pinned flat against the metal.
Beside the radiator riser ten feet away, apprentice clerk Vane-Jr. sat bound and gagged with heavy surgical tubing. His red leather notary gloves had been stripped from his hands and tossed into the waste bin.
He glared at Elena with terrified, watering eyes as she kept her insulated trauma shears rested on the radiator valve.
“You’re making a mistake, night clerk,” Hollis wheezed, his lips pulling back in a blood-flecked sneer. “You think you can assault officers of the Board of Trustees and walk out of this dormitory?
Dean Sterling owns the police commissioner. Corbus Vane owns the transit authority.
