Four inches of creosote-soaked oak was not much of a life raft when the water beneath it ran with sixty years of stolen time.
Julian Vance stood balanced on the narrow timber of Tie #011, his work boots planted edge-to-edge. Behind him, Mac Cole’s steel prosthetic fingers gripped Julian’s canvas jacket, holding both of them steady against the damp drafts whistling through the Line Zero bore. Right behind Mac, Dr. Victor Corvo held the six-foot yellow fiberglass grounding wand pressed firmly against the soot-blackened masonry of the left tunnel wall, acting as a human strut over the flooded pit.
Two feet to their right, the sixty-pound cast-iron third rail hissed with its flat, predatory frequency, throwing faint violet corona sparks across the standing black water.
“Julian, what are you looking at?” Mac muttered, his breath warm against Julian’s neck. “The niche is right in front of us! One more jump to thirteen, and we can reach the switch cabinet!”
“Look at the kerning on that numeral,” Julian said.
His voice was a razor-thin whisper, cold and flat. He did not turn around. His right hand remained locked on his 365nm ultraviolet inspection pen, directing the tight violet cone straight down at the brass plate screwed to the timber three feet ahead.
