Julian Vance turned around.
For the first time in sixteen minutes, his eyes left the sixteen-inch convex acrylic mirror.
The rear exit doors were sealed shut. The heavy twin steel leaves sat locked behind their pneumatic deadbolts, holding ninety-five pounds of continuous Bendix air pressure. Through the thick safety glass of the door panes, the churning void of the Marrow River receded into the fog, replaced by the solid concrete piers and sodium lighting of the western riverbank.
Above his head, the ceiling fluorescent tubes burned with steady, commercial sixty-hertz light. The sickly purple flicker of Register Two was gone. The air smelled of hot engine oil, rubber flooring, and clean diesel heat from the front blower vents.
At the rear of the cabin, the four vinyl bench seats in Row 12 were completely empty.
The ghost commuters had dissolved into thin mist the moment the rear door leaves slammed together. Only four puddles of gray river silt and a few strands of waterlogged wool remained on the ribbed rubber matting, slowly evaporating in the dry heater draft.
Julian unclipped Elena’s single silicone earpiece from his left ear.
His hearing returned to natural balance. In his right ear, the baseline tinnitus hummed at its calm, clean 4,200 hertz. The four-hertz binaural beat of Sheet 4A, Rule 8 had vanished completely. His skull felt clear, free from the crushing weight of the bridge’s planted lies.
