The freezing wind whipping off the black canal smelled of wet rust and dead coal smoke.
Julian Vance adjusted the heavy brass chain around his left wrist, checking the padlock that bound him to Mobile Register Annex #04-B. The converted stainless-steel cart stood firm on its pneumatic rubber casters, its twelve-volt marine battery humming smoothly beneath the lower shelf. On the upper tray, the Casio TE-2400 register and the Epson thermal printer sat bolted to cold channel steel, their green status lights glowing in the dark.
Beside him on the concrete approach ramp of Skybridge #2, Marcus “Mac” Cole rested both hands on the push bar of the cart. Lin Mei knelt near the cart’s battery box with the portable PosLink terminal resting on her knees, while Elena Rostova kept her eyes on the plate-glass doors of Apex Super-Mart #02 twenty yards behind them.
Inside the supermarket, three hundred neighborhood residents were huddled between the cereal gondolas and the dairy coolers. The store’s relief clerk, a woman named Shirley with silver hair and an apron pinned with union buttons, pressed her palms against the glass, watching the fog-bound catwalk of the footbridge.
“Five minutes to five o’clock,” Lin Mei said, glancing at her wristwatch. “The Spire’s automated quota clock doesn’t give grace periods. When the minute hand touches twelve, Rule Ninety-Two goes live.”
