A dry-cleaning monorail moved with the unhurried, mechanical cruelty of an automated meatpacker.
Every thirty seconds, an overhead pneumatic piston fired with a sharp, hydraulic hiss. The iron chain engaged, advancing the heavy forged hooks three feet along the greasy track.
CLACK-HISS-THUD.
The sound echoed through the vaulted cavern of Filtration Basin #4, regular as a heartbeat and twice as cold.
Julian Vance leaned over the catwalk rail, his hand shading his eyes against the sodium glare as the 365nm ultraviolet beam illuminated the lower processing deck. Beside him, Elena Rostov gripped the gurney rail so hard her knuckles turned the color of surgical cotton. Dr. Corvo lowered his brass loupe, his jaw set in a hard, grim line. Lin Mei stared down into the steam, her pencil frozen mid-stroke against her graph paper.
Suspended from the monorail hooks were human bodies.
There were eleven of them. They hung by their wrists from galvanized steel butcher yokes, their feet dangling two feet above the damp concrete floor. They were not ancient mummies from ninety-six, and they were not anatomical specimens preserved in formaldehyde jars.
They were freshly harvested casualties of the city’s graveyard shift.
