The burgundy cloth cord hissed like a hot iron dropped in grease.
It snapped tight around Clara’s left wrist, biting deep into the pale skin above her watch strap. The coarse wool braid twisted on its own, cinching down with the crushing force of a steel tourniquet.
Clara gasped. Her back arched off the vinyl padding of the St. Jude’s wheelchair.
Her teeth slammed together with a dry ceramic click. Inside the single Bakelite earpiece clamped to her left ear, the wet mechanical breath hissed in reverse, feeding her own ragged gasps back into her skull with a half-second delay.
Across the front of the walnut switchboard, white frost bloomed outward from Jack #304.
It didn’t spread like normal ice. It crept across the black phenolic resin in sharp geometric needles, freezing the brass collar into a solid ring of white rime.
At the sorting table beside the Front Desk threshold, Elena Rostova dropped her ledger clip and lunged into the alcove.
Her right hand plunged into her canvas trauma satchel. She whipped out her seven-inch Lister surgical shears, the heavy stainless-steel blades snapping open in the freezing air.
