The crash of metal hitting mirrored shields echoed through the 88th-floor rotunda.
Sparking blue ozone erupted from the front bumper of Mobile Register Annex #04-B. The heavy stainless-steel cart shuddered, its industrial rubber casters screeching across the polished black Carrara marble.
Mac planted his work boots, teeth bared in a snarl, his splinted prosthetic left arm locked tight around the welded push-bar. “Hold the line! Don’t let them tip the register!”
Elena threw her full weight against the side rail. Her knuckles were dead white where she gripped the cold tubing. Beside her, Dr. Victor Corvo wedged the steel tip of his cane beneath the left axle, keeping the four-hundred-pound cart from rolling backward down the gentle slope of the entrance ramp.
Forty seven-foot Audit Legionnaires formed an unbroken wall of black composite armor and mirrored riot shields twenty feet ahead. Their polished visors reflected the emerald-and-gold neon glow of the OPEN 24 HOURS sign bolted to the cart’s upper rack.
The rotunda was vast, cold, and dead quiet except for the hum of the legionnaires’ induction coils. Gilded brass chandeliers hung sixty feet overhead, their crystal pendants trembling in the draft from the elevator shaft.
High on the dais behind the legionnaires, Notary General Vance Sterling stood at a carved mahogany lectern. He rested his manicured fingers on the polished wood, looking down at them through gold-rimmed spectacles.
