Twelve-fourteen in the afternoon arrived without a single ray of sun.
Julian stood on the wet sidewalk of Oakhaven Boulevard, his collar turned up against the falling ash. High above the rooftops, the midday sky was the color of a charred woodstove. If not for the luminous green numerals on the bus dashboard, no one in New Marrow would have known it was noon.
Dr. Victor Corvo stepped out of the bus right behind him, holding a clean glass test tube in his gloved fingers.
Corvo reached out, caught three falling flakes of black soot from the air, and rubbed them between his fingertips.
“Not furnace carbon,” Corvo remarked, his velvet voice quiet in the gloom. “This is shredded rag pulp mixed with lampblack. The city presses are running at maximum speed.
They are printing the noon laws on emergency broadsheets.”
Suddenly, a loud, metallic clatter echoed down the avenue.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG.
