The bitter taste of copper coins and burnt hydraulic fluid coated the back of Julian’s throat.
His right ear was shrieking with the four-thousand-one-hundred-and-ninety-six-hertz binaural throb of an active, high-priority lie-rule.
Fifty feet ahead on the footpath, the three wet crimson posters lay plastered across the granite slabs.
Thick carmine ink was seeping outward from the rag paper in pulsating, biological rings.
Everywhere the red ink touched, the solid grey stone liquefied into a boiling, grey-black slurry smelling of river-bottom silt and mortuary formaldehyde.
“Don’t move your feet!” Julian shouted over the roar of the diesel van.
He lunged sideways, grabbing Lin Mei’s shoulder with his left hand and hooking Elena’s belt with his right forearm.
He pulled both of them backward two steps, dragging their boots onto the broad concrete landing directly outside Dormitory Seven’s double entrance doors.
