Ten seconds remained until the audit.
On the dashboard of Coach #404, the mechanical impulse clock gave a heavy, spring-loaded jolt. The green electroluminescent digits flickered across the black dial:
[02:13:50 AM]
The coach hammered across the wet asphalt of the Old Ferry Bridge at thirty-two miles an hour. Outside, the suspension cables loomed like black iron harp strings stretched into the salt mist. Below the steel floorboards, the Detroit Diesel turned at eleven hundred revolutions a minute, sending a rhythmic fifty-eight hertz hum into Julian Vance’s combat boots.
Behind them, the headlights of Coach #000 blazed with sulfurous yellow light.
The ghost bus was running bumper-to-bumper with Coach #404. Its rusted front bumper hung less than six inches from their rear emergency bumper. Through the dirty rear window, Julian could see the shattered glass of the trailing bus. Its steering wheel spun wildly back and forth in the empty cab, guided only by the magnetic drag of the river channel.
“Hold your line, Mac,” Julian said, his voice flat and controlled.
“I’ve got the line, Chief,” Mac Cole growled from the driver’s pedestal.
