The wall clock behind Register 1 clicked forward, its red mechanical second hand sweeping past twelve to mark 07:00 AM.
Twenty-four hours of continuous darkness had officially passed. Outside the plate-glass windows of Starlight Mart #04, there was no dawn. The morning sky over New Marrow was an impenetrable vault of black soot and freezing fog, smelling of burnt petroleum, cold wet asphalt, and sulfur slag.
Inside the crowded back office, nineteen-year-old Lin Mei pushed up the bridge of her taped spectacles with a chalky thumb. She was standing before the fogged glass panel of Walk-In Beverage Cooler #3, drawing a complex branching syntax tree in yellow China-marker grease pencil.
“Look at the logical vectors,” Lin Mei said, tapping the glass with the blunt wax pencil. “Vance Sterling didn’t build a single defensive line. He built an interlocking binary gate designed to kill anyone who approaches.”
Julian Vance leaned against the metal desk, a lukewarm mug of black coffee in his hand. Beside him, Elena Rostova was adjusting the straps of her trauma kit, while Dr. Beatrice Hahn sat quietly in the rolling office chair, her fingers resting on the black oilcloth cover of FORM MUN-WAYBILL-96.
“Walk us through it, Lin Mei,” Julian said, his voice quiet and level.
