The heavy iron boots of the forty Audit Legionnaires receded down the grand marble hallway.
Each pair of machines carried a bound, shivering Syndicate Director sealed inside a galvanized steel transfer crate, marching in flawless cadence toward the freight elevators under the automatic truce of Union Rule 77. The double mahogany doors of the Hall of Municipal Seals swung shut behind them with a low, final boom that echoed through the vast rotunda.
The silence that followed was immense.
The air on the 88th floor was still bitterly cold, smelling of scorched polyester, sulfur, and evaporating liquid nitrogen, but the violent gale had ceased. Across the shattered platform, reams of executive bonds and gold-leaf stationery settled onto the dark stone like fallen snow.
Julian remained on his knees in the center of the hall, his arms wrapped tight around Clara.
Elena knelt beside them with her trauma kit open on the floor. She had set up a small portable oxygen canister fitted with a ceramic thermal vapor bubbler. Steam rose from the small paper cup she held -- a simple pleated paper dispensary cup filled with warm, saline-and-oxygen-enriched water vapor.
“Take small sips of the steam, Clara,” Elena murmured, her voice softer than Julian had ever heard it. “Don’t gulp the air. Let the warmth coat your trachea first.”
