Lin Mei held the chattering Casio register against her chest with both hands.
The little plastic machine was vibrating so violently that her teeth clicked in her jaw. The thermal printer head spat out inches of treated paper, the white ribbon curling over her trembling fingers in the sub-zero draft. On the bright green vacuum-fluorescent display, the letters pulsed with an emerald intensity that cut straight through the swirling gray dust of the rotunda.
[CALLING ALL NIGHT SHIFT CLERKS IN THE ZINC WALL] [FORM BAFFLE SHIELD -- NOW!]
Across the ten tiers of the vault, the silence of thirty years broke into pieces.
It didn’t begin with a human voice. It began with the sharp, mechanical strike of two hundred and fifty heavy bronze latches releasing in unison.
[CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK]
Around the lower four tiers of the rotunda, from Drawer Number One-Four-Zero to Drawer Number Three-Nine-Zero, two hundred and fifty heavy zinc doors sprang outward on their greased steel hinges.
These were the drawers of the Mill District 9 night workers. These were the longshoremen who had unloaded coal on the midnight piers, the third-shift bakers from the wholesale bread factories, and the municipal transit mechanics.
