Elena Rostov’s breath fogged against the wired safety glass of the double doors.
Beyond the reinforced panes, the central mortuary corridor of Sub-Level 4 stretched sixty feet into the gloom. The concrete walls were lined with heavy cast-iron conduits, but what commanded Elena’s attention was the massive stainless-steel structure dominating the left-hand wall.
The Jewett thirty-six-drawer refrigerated mortuary vault.
It was a colossal monument to municipal refrigeration, built in 1968 out of brushed industrial steel and heavy brass hardware. Thirty-five square locker doors, plus Vault 09 at the far end, were arranged in five horizontal tiers of seven, each door equipped with a heavy Model J-44 chrome cam-latch.
Above every latch sat a round, brass-rimmed dial thermometer behind thick convex glass.
For thirty years, those thermometers had remained pinned at exactly thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, they were dying.
Through the glass, Elena watched the tiny, sharp red pointers creeping upward. The comforting drone of the heavy Freon compressors had vanished, replaced by the angry, sixty-cycle buzz of electric heating coils wired into the ventilation baffles.
