Julian Vance did not look away from the clattering brass drop-flags.
In retail, when an automated time-clock starts printing red tape before you have even swiped your badge, the payroll office is looking for an excuse to write you up for abandoned post. In the Grey Shift, that same red tape meant an involuntary surgical commitment.
“Two forty-five in the morning,” Lin Mei reported, holding her stopwatch against the green Vermont marble of the Admitting Desk. “We have exactly five minutes before the grace period on the night shift roster expires. If our names are not entered into the ledger by two fifty, our status reverts to unclassified vagrants.”
“Look down the central corridor,” Mac whispered, shifting the twenty-five-pound cast-iron ballast brick under his left arm. “We’ve got company coming from the wards, and they ain’t bringing coffee.”
Down the long, vaulted corridor of white glazed tile, four figures emerged from the shadows beneath the green mercury-vapor lamps.
The hall was built in the nineteen-twenties, back when municipal architects believed white subway tile and leaded glass could sanitize human madness. The green lamps hummed at that relentless fifty-eight hertz frequency, casting sickly olive shadows across the checkerboard marble.
The four approaching figures moved in perfect, synchronized lockstep, their rubber-soled nursing shoes squeaking against the polished floorboards like wet balloons.
