Julian stepped across the brass threshold bar, his work boots touching the warm condensation on the corridor concrete.
The heat hit him instantly. The hallway smelled of scorched electrical insulation, warm hydraulic fluid, and the sickeningly sweet reek of damp lime.
High overhead, the industrial ceiling conduits buzzed with sixty-cycle static. A fine haze of steam drifted along the ceiling, rising from the ventilation louvers of the Jewett mortuary wall. The air had the heavy, oppressive density of a laundry boiler room, making every breath taste of wet concrete and ozone.
Behind him in Bay 1, Elena held the heavy wired-glass door open by three inches. Mac stood directly behind her, his mechanical left arm braced against the steel frame, ready to haul Julian back if the hallway collapsed into a high-voltage discharge. Through the small gap, the rhythmic hiss of Clara’s respirator sounded faint, fragile, and impossibly far away.
Julian carried three tools.
In his left hand, he held Dr. Corvo’s five-foot braided copper grounding lance, its trailing ground wire clamped firmly to Bay 1’s threshold sill.
In his breast pocket rested Elena’s stainless-steel dental mirror. Clipped beside it was his 365nm ultraviolet detector pen.
And nestled in the palm of his right hand was his last line of defense: a single, unsharpened six-inch Dixon Phano #77 yellow china-marker grease pencil.
