Julian Vance lunged toward the conveyor out-feed as the blistering heat of the X-ray tunnel hit his face like an open blast furnace.
Dense white smoke curled off the leather corners of his Contradiction Ledger. The air around the belt reeked of scorched bisphenol-A thermal resin, hot ozone, and melting animal glue. Six inches inside the split lead-rubber curtains of the Astrophysics tunnel, four banks of quartz nichrome heating coils glowed at a blinding 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Above the belt, Chief Inspector Halvorsen’s three-pronged pneumatic ceiling claw held the heavy book pinned against the hot rollers like an iron hawk gripping a rabbit.
Marcus “Mac” Cole charged up beside Julian, his prosthetic left forearm clicking as he aimed his steel ticket-punch jaws at the pneumatic claw’s wrist joint.
“I’ll shear the air hose, Kid!” Mac barked.
“Don’t touch the claw, Mac!” Julian shouted, catching the burly driver’s shoulder and pulling him back half a step from the live frame. “That scissor-arm is pressurized at eighty PSI!”
“If you cut the hose or pull against the talons, the jaws will snap shut and rip the spine in half. Eight hundred pages of loose paper will scatter straight onto the heating coils!”
