The red magnesium flare inside the Grading Annex hissed like a welding torch, painting the vaulted ceiling of the fourth floor in violent crimson shadows.
Up on the podium wall, the Bogen PA horn crackled again as Dean Vance Sterling spoke from his secure Uptown office. Gone was the polished academic smoothness of his pre-recorded syllabus tapes. The voice coming over the wire now was cold, human, and furious.
“You think auditing one senile 1964 Matron saves your sister, Julian Vance?” Dean Sterling’s voice echoed across the four hundred desks.
“Matron Bell was a fifty-year-old piece of brass salvage! You broke a single padlock on a building I own from the bedrock up!”
Down in the aisles, the cheering died in an instant. Four hundred barefoot, exhausted students froze between the mahogany desks, staring up at the vibrating speaker horn in terror.
Julian didn’t shout back at the intercom. He stepped to the edge of the raised podium, holding Strike-Bar #4 in his right hand while his left hand rested on the leather casing of his Detex watchman’s clock.
“Elena, check the floor vents,” Julian said evenly. “Lin, trace the Annex pneumatic line.”
“You can trace whatever you like, Clerk!” Sterling barked over the PA.
