The wrought-iron rear loading gate of Oakhaven Dormitory #7 clanged shut behind Julian Vance.
Behind the bars, the forty-four-night exam loop shattered like cheap glass. Pale seven-o’clock morning sun spilled across the campus grass where four hundred rescued students stood safe under Marcus Wu’s sanctuary dome.
Out here on University Heights Avenue, there was no sun.
Yellow sulfur fog choked the street from curb to curb. It smelled like wet coal ash, river silt, and old copper pennies.
Julian didn’t look back. He kept running, boots skidding on slick cobblestones as he clutched his canvas satchel against his ribs. Inside rode the 1964 Brass Detention Ledger and the 1998 Underwood Strike-Bar #4 from Oakhaven’s fourth floor.
“Curb’s ten yards ahead!” Nurse Elena Rostova called out on his left, one hand locked on her trauma kit strap. “Watch the storm drain—the grate’s missing!”
On Julian’s right, nineteen-year-old Lin Mei hopped over the open gutter without breaking stride. She shoved her cracked tortoiseshell glasses up her nose with a chalk-stained thumb, clutching the Red-Ink Notary Shipping Manifest against her cardigan.
“The street isn’t holding seven-o’clock dawn!” Lin Mei panted. “My watch second hand is dragging backward. The arterial road between zones is still locked in the Grey Shift!”
