The iron door groaned under the blast of four-hundred-degree chemical mist.
Julian shoved his shoulder against the cold brick wall beside the frame, keeping his face clear of the wrought-iron inspection grate. Through the heavy crossbars, the ground-floor lobby looked like the boiler deck of a sinking ironclad.
Dense, carmine-red vapor rolled across the black-and-white marble tiles in choking banks. Where the atomized droplets struck the oak wainscoting, the wood didn’t catch fire with normal yellow flames. It hissed, blistered, and turned into a blackened crust of dried municipal ink that smoked with the reek of burnt vinegar, copper shavings, and formaldehyde.
“Keep the freshmen back!” Elena shouted down the stairwell, her voice cutting through the panic.
“Do not let anyone touch the iron plating! The door is conducting heat!”
Hana Cho and the varsity rowers formed a human wall ten feet up the stairs, locking their arms together to keep three hundred terrified students from surging downward into the heat.
“Nurse Rostova!” Hana called out, her dark eyes wide through the smoke.
“The air is getting thin up here! The fire from Floor Four is eating all the oxygen in the shaft!”
