The blast of static inside Clara’s left ear was like a firecracker detonating in an empty room.
Clara gasped, jerking her head back against the worn leather cushion of her wheelchair. Her hands flew to the black plastic headband of her Western Electric 52A headset, ripping the earpiece away from her temple before the electrical surge could bite into her eardrum.
The line wasn’t buzzing. It wasn’t humming with the dragging fifty-eight-hertz drone of the tower.
It was dead.
A flat, cold, hollow hiss whispered through the small receiver--the acoustic signature of an open circuit venting into the freezing Atlantic gale four hundred feet above their heads.
“Clara!”
Elena Rostova was across the console in half a second. Her cold fingers pressed firmly against Clara’s carotid artery, her grey eyes scanning Clara’s pupils with sharp, clinical intensity. The silver bells of her Littmann stethoscope swung against her grey wool sweater.
“Talk to me,” Elena ordered, her voice cutting through the hum of the cooling fans. “Did you take a backfeed shock?
