Lin Mei’s flathead screwdriver bit into the rusted slotted screws of Meter Panel #01 with sharp, metallic clicks.
The panel was an antique piece of industrial hardware dating back to the substation’s original nineteen fifty-eight construction. The black slate was cold to the touch, framed by heavy angle-iron brackets secured with three-quarter-inch hex nuts. Across the surface of the slate, dozens of round glass dials monitored line voltage, frequency, and harmonic distortion across New Marrow’s primary distribution grid.
Behind the two-inch slab of black slate, the copper busbars hummed with thirty thousand amperes of primary current. The air inside the wiring trough was baking hot, smelling of dried linseed oil, ozone, and old asbestos tape. Lin Mei levered the heavy sheet-metal access cover free, letting it clang flat onto the quarry tiles.
“Julian, shine the UV light right here,” Lin Mei urged, her forehead slick with sweat. “Look at the terminal block behind the step-down transformers.”
Julian leaned over her shoulder, holding his ultraviolet pen steady.
His left wrist was still chained to Cash Drawer #2, the steel links clinking rhythmically against the metal handle of Mobile Register Annex #04-B. Beside him, Clara held the heavy rubber umbilical cable that fed backup 120-volt current from Tie-Breaker #04 into the cart’s inverter, keeping the fresh neon tube burning bright emerald and gold.
