The mercury thread in Dr. Corvo’s thermometer stood at one hundred and forty-two point eight degrees.
Corvo shook the glass tube once, drying the brass tip with a sterile gauze pad. “The fourth trough is dumping boiling chemical waste,” he said.
His voice was calm, but the skin around his eyes was drawn tight. “The other six troughs are draining human bathwater. This one smells like cooked resin and cheap industrial varnish.”
“Cell Zero-Four,” Lin Mei said. She knelt on the wet tile, sliding the cursor of her Pickett slide rule three inches to the left. “That’s Position D on the turntable.”
Across the rotunda, the six human tubs hissed like tea kettles. The dial thermometers on their brass supply pipes had just passed one hundred and fifteen degrees.
In Position E, seventy-one-year-old Dr. Beatrice Hahn rested her chin on the edge of the canvas shroud. Her skin was flushed dark red.
Thin streams of nasal bubbles still rose from her nostrils, popping in weak, jagged bursts against the zinc rim. She was running out of air, and the water around her chest was churning with fresh, boiling saline.
“We have seven minutes before their skin starts blistering,” Mac Cole said. He hefted his heavy brass spanner against his leather tool belt.
