Sparks cascaded down Mac Cole’s leather jacket like molten lead.
The ozone in the corridor was thick enough to coat his tongue in copper slag. Twelve feet overhead, the six-hundred-volt traction current howled through the ceiling I-beam, an unholy sixty-cycle scream that made the steel plates in Mac’s prosthetic left forearm vibrate until his teeth clicked together.
Crawling webs of blinding blue electricity branched down the vertical ceiling hanger rods.
Every time a surge struck the steel face of the Jewett mortuary wall, the metal shrieked. The black neoprene door gaskets melted, bubbling into foul, acrid black tar that dripped onto the wet floor tiles.
Through the viewing ports, the zinc compartments glowed dull orange.
“Mac!” Dr. Corvo yelled over the roar of the electrical surge, shielding his eyes with his scorched rubber apron. “The heating coils are drawing three hundred amps!
The thermometers on Drawers #08 through #14 are at ninety-seven degrees! If that zinc crosses ninety-eight point six, the shift covenant burns the contracts! They will be cremated in their trays!”
Inside the wall, the frantic tapping had become a thunderous, chaotic clamor.
