Lin Mei laid her graph-paper notebook flat across the zinc corner of Table #1, her mechanical pencil moving with feverish mathematical precision.
Twenty-four minutes remained on the heavy brass wall clock.
The minute hand clicked forward, settling on 01:50 AM.
Every night at exactly 02:14 AM, the subterranean municipal operating system executed its automated daily audit. For sixty seconds, the legal boundary between the physical morgue and the Deep Shift dissolved.
The master rotary telephone inside Cold-Storage Vault 09 would begin to ring. The Toledo Model 4020 Counterbalance Scale would unlock its mechanical probate comparator beam.
And Magistrate Silt, suspended by his meat-hook from the ceiling I-beam, would descend to conduct the nocturnal Roll of Unclaimed Skins.
Most night clerks who survived long enough to learn about the Audit Minute crawled under their desks. They hid behind lead-lined file cabinets, stuffed cotton into their ears, and prayed that the inspectors would skip their names on the census roster.
Julian Vance was not hiding.
