Marcus “Mac” Cole was forty-six years old, and he had never slid down a two-hundred-foot garbage chute at forty miles an hour.
The stainless-steel walls screamed like circular saws.
Friction heat rose through the heavy denim of his trousers. The air smelled of scorched thermal paper, burnt BPA resin, and hot beef tallow from thirty years of cafeteria grease traps.
“My pants are catching fire!” Mac yelled, shifting his weight.
“Lean on your heels, Mac!” Elena shouted from beside him. “Keep your fabric off the hot seams!”
“Easier said than done at sixty miles an hour!” Mac barked back. “This slide has no brakes!”
“Use your rubber heels as rudders!” Julian called back, leaning into a sharp forty-five-degree banking turn. “Follow my line!”
“I am trying, kid!” Mac grunted. “My artificial arm is dragging on the weld!”
