Lin Mei pushed her cracked tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of her nose as the crimson strobe washed the white tiles in blood-red light.
A dry, metallic rasp echoed from the cast-iron pedestal of the Toledo scale.
Clack-clack-tick.
Inside the rounded housing, a spring-wound steel gear unwound with the steady, relentless tempo of a kitchen timer. Cold air poured from the open ticket slot, smelling of shaved iron and frozen tallow. The temperature around the scale dropped five degrees in three seconds.
“Sixty seconds,” Lin Mei said. Her fingers tightened around her mechanical pencil as her eyes darted across the scale’s cast-iron base, mapping the internal linkage. “The balance comparator didn’t just reject the tare.
It tripped a mechanical forfeiture clock.”
“Get away from that pedestal!” Dr. Corvo shouted.
The coroner lunged forward, his vulcanized rubber apron slapping against his shins. In his left hand, he held his #11 scalpel; in his right, he raised the heavy stainless-steel frame of the Stryker 810 Bone-Saw.
