The green-phosphor screen behind Register 1 hummed with a high-voltage hiss that smelled of baked dust and ozone.
Across the front sales floor of Starlight Mart #04, the soft murmur of two hundred resting refugees died away into an uneasy stillness. Mothers in Aisle 3 hushed their sleeping infants, dockworkers set down their tin coffee mugs on the wire magazine racks, and elderly shipyard hands leaned against the frozen food cases, their eyes fixed on the flickering cathode-ray tube.
Julian Vance walked through the stockroom double doors, wiping machine oil from his right hand with a clean shop rag. Behind him, Elena Rostova was carrying Sammy Chen by the elbow, guiding the young relief clerk to a stool beside the cigarette counter. Sammy’s thumbs were swathed in thick layers of white cotton gauze, but the boy kept his head high, his plastic apprentice tag pinned proudly to his sweater.
Clara Vance stood beside Register 1, her bone-conduction transducer resting around her neck. Her fingers were trembling as she stared at the glowing monitor.
“It’s an executive override on the primary NCR loop,” Clara whispered, her face pale in the phosphorescent green glare. “The signal isn’t coming through the copper phone exchange. It’s coming down through the microwave repeater on the Uptown Spire.”
