“Get him behind the tool bench!” Julian ordered, grabbing Mac’s right shoulder.
“I can walk on my own two feet, kid!” Mac grunted, though his left boot dragged heavily across the grating.
“Do not lean on that side, Mr. Cole,” Dr. Victor Corvo urged, taking Mac’s good arm.
“The hydraulic fluid is acting as a lubricant beneath your soles,” Corvo pointed out.
“Lean on me, Mac,” Lin Mei said, ducking under Mac’s arm to support his weight.
“You’re nineteen years old, Miss Lin,” Mac said with a pained grin. “You shouldn’t be hauling old machinists around.”
“I lift forty-pound crate loads at the dorms,” Lin Mei said, setting her jaw. “Keep moving.”
Together, the three of them hauled Mac twenty feet across the grating, tucking him behind the heavy steel roughneck tool bench.
