The severed braided hose whipped through the grease-thick air like an enraged viper.
It hissed with three hundred pounds of head pressure. Otto Kreutz roared through the vents of his blackened faceplate, staggering back against the shaking steel uprights of Unit 3.
His right arm was still locked in two hundred pounds of solid, flash-frozen lead. But his left hand had torn the main arterial supply hose right out of the red-ink fountain manifold.
“Julian! Down!” Mac bellowed.
A column of scalding crimson liquid blasted across the catwalk.
It was not normal ink. It was raw, boiling carminic-tallow fountain ink, cooked under the high-pressure steam boilers of Sub-Level 6.
It reeked of copper, lye, and scorched bone meal. The stream struck a three-inch tubular steel handrail ten feet to Julian’s left.
The steel did not just get wet. It warped, dissolved, and restructured itself before his eyes.
