The sound did not travel through the air alone. It drilled straight into Julian’s teeth.
The dual-tone scream of the Emergency Alert System--eight hundred and fifty-three hertz colliding with nine hundred and sixty hertz--vibrated through the structural steel of the tower with the force of an industrial drill. Every bolt, every cross-brace, and every guy-wire shuddered in harmony with the discordant noise. It was a piercing, abrasive screech designed by mid-century military engineers to cut through sleep, conversation, and engine roar.
Julian clamped his jaw shut until his molars ached.
The twenty-thousand-volt orange rubber gloves shielded his hands from the electrical corona dancing along the ladder risers, but nothing could shield his skull from the acoustic violence. The tone hammered behind his temples, making his eyeballs ache in their sockets.
He pulled himself upward, one agonizing step at a time.
Rung Sixty-Eight. Rung Seventy. Rung Seventy-Three.
At three hundred and twenty feet, the wind shifted with sudden, sickening violence. A sixty-knot Atlantic gust smashed into his left shoulder, pinning him sideways against the cold lattice. The lightweight field wire trailing from his harness down the central pipe hummed like an angry hornet.
Julian leaned his forehead into the crook of his arm, catching his breath.
