Elena Rostova slammed her canvas trauma kit flat against the brick porch railing as the steaming black tide reached her boot heels.
The boiling Diala AX transformer oil poured across the concrete apron at five inches deep, hissing as it met the falling acid rain. Thick, yellow-gray clouds of scorched paraffin smoke rolled across the porch, carrying the sickening, sweet stench of polychlorinated biphenyls. The dark liquid lapped against the lowest brick step of the Master Control House, rising toward the rubber casters of Mobile Register Annex #04-B.
“Don’t look down at the pool!” Elena shouted, grabbing Julian’s arm with both hands. “Julian, keep your eyes on the brick wall!”
Julian kept his chin up, but his right ear was screaming with a harsh, brassy vibration at forty-one ninety-six hertz.
“Gazette Rule Four,” Julian said through clenched teeth. “Look at your reflection in street puddles only once. Wipe your soles on dry newsprint before crossing the threshold.”
“This isn’t an ordinary street puddle,” Dr. Victor Corvo said.
Corvo stood with his back pressed against the rolled-steel vault door. He unbuttoned his black wool overcoat, reaching inside his leather forensic pathology case. His pale face was illuminated from below by an eerie, amber luminescence rising from the pool.
