Heat rolled off the circular iron stairwell in thick, greasy waves.
Julian Vance paused on the fourth iron tread, his knuckles tight against the rusted railing. The air tasted of scorched polyester, sulfur, and cooked human tallow.
It settled on his tongue like cold candle wax. Deep in the bedrock below, something heavy stroked against the island’s stone roots.
Thump-shuck-thump.
The rhythm shook the iron risers under Julian’s boots. In his right ear, the baseline tinnitus hummed at forty-two hundred hertz, dry and steady as a wire under tension.
“Smells like an incinerator in an upholstery shop,” Mac Cole muttered behind him.
Mac’s prosthetic left arm gave a quiet brass click as he balanced Dr. Beatrice Hahn’s oak wheelchair on the narrow landing above. Mac had the chair tilted back on two large spoked wheels, his mechanical grip locked onto the rear push-bar with fifteen hundred pounds of pneumatic clamping force.
“Take your time, Mr. Cole,” Dr. Beatrice Hahn said.
