Twenty seconds was an eternity in formal logic, but an eyeblink in terminal ballistics.
Lin Mei knelt on the shuddering iron grating of the Prisoner’s Dock, her Pickett slide rule clenched between her teeth. With both hands, she smoothed the thick parchment of Comptroller Lydia Vane’s Payroll Writ across her knees, pinning the curled edges against the vibrating metal mesh. Beneath her boots, the left corner of the floor was sagging at a sickening fifteen-degree tilt, groaning under the sheer downward drag of sixty feet of empty space.
“Hold your center of gravity!” Lin Mei shouted over the metallic shriek of the floor frame.
“Every degree of deflection increases the shear stress on the remaining bolts by twenty-eight percent! If we shift our weight toward the gate, we accelerate the failure curve!”
“Kid, I don’t know what a deflection curve is,” Mac grunted, his boots slipping half an inch on the slick iron. “All I know is the floor is trying to dump us into the drink!”
PING! PING!
Two more brass shear pins sheared off below, screaming into the flooded dark like ricochets.
“Mac, hold that left rail!” Lin Mei called out around the slide rule. She spat the white plastic rule into her palm.
