Corbus Vane pressed his back against the rusted chain-link enclosure of Freight Elevator #00.
Without his noise-canceling earmuffs, the noise of the depot flooded into his head like filthy canal water. His ears throbbed with a persistent, nauseating tone. Four thousand one hundred ninety-six hertz. It was the electromagnetic carrier frequency of an active audit, vibrating the fillings in his teeth.
Above that carrier wave rose the relentless mechanical clatter of brass cogs.
Clack-clack-clack-clack!
Thirty feet away, the seven-foot revenant of Chief Inspector Silas Vane strode across the damp concrete. Each heavy boot-fall sounded like an iron ingot dropped on stone. The tarnished brass buttons on the conductor’s long uniform coat caught the harsh yellow flare of the sodium floodlights.
Inside the slit of the revenant’s stiff leather collar, the five-digit cyclometer glowed a fierce, chemical crimson.
The white-on-black reels had ceased spinning. They rested rigidly on one number: 99819.
One hundred eighty units in arrears.
