The blue spark of the lead guard’s shock-baton cracked through the freezing spray with the sound of tearing canvas.
Julian felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight inside his wool cap. The air between him and the two charging men smelled of scorched salt and sharp, metallic ozone.
The exterior catwalk at four hundred feet was barely three feet wide. To Julian’s left stood the two-inch reinforced quartz window of Level 4, where Director Evelyn Cross watched with cold, predatory satisfaction.
To his right, beyond a waist-high galvanized steel pipe railing, yawned four hundred feet of empty Atlantic hurricane. Far below the diamond-plate grating, the black rollers of New Marrow Harbor exploded against the basalt headland, throwing plumes of white foam into the dark.
There was nowhere to run, and nowhere to duck.
On the wall clock inside Level 4, the green Nixie digits clicked to 02:11:00 AM.
Three minutes remained until the 02:14:00 AM harvest broadcast. Two minutes and fifty-three seconds remained until Julian’s 02:13:53 AM switch window.
Guard #1 lunged forward through the sleet.
