The crimson poster fluttered down through the yellow fog like a poisoned leaf.
Julian didn’t look up at the paper. He didn’t have to. The four-thousand-one-hundred-and-ninety-six-cycle ring in his right ear told him everything he needed to know.
The air smelled of wet asphalt, sharp sulfur, and quick-setting chemical lime.
Ahead of them, across sixteen feet of courtyard path, the granite flagstones had completely dissolved.
Under Notary Poster Rule N-09A, the flagstones were no longer solid rock. They were a churning morass of grey, liquified silt. The mud bubbled with hot chemical steam, waiting to swallow anyone who set foot off Benchmark Stone Four.
“Look at the steam coming off the slurry,” Elena whispered, crouching low. She touched the insulated tip of her surgical trauma shears to the edge of the bubbling grey froth.
The stainless steel blade hissed as the grey sludge bubbled against the metal.
“It’s an exothermic lime mixture,” Elena said, her lone grey eye narrowing behind her bangs. “The chemical reaction generates over one hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit.
