The copper-braided ribbon cables didn’t give an inch. They hummed with four hundred and eighty volts of raw alternating current, scorching the oily water around Clara Vance’s boots into sizzling, foul-smelling steam.
“Jules!” Clara cried out, her hands scraping frantically against the wet mahogany floorboards as the motorized winch inside Chair 03 reeled her in.
Julian lunged across the slick floor, throwing his full weight forward. He caught Clara’s outstretched wrists, his boots skidding across the oil film as the electrical voltage stung his palms like a thousand hot needles.
His right ear shrieked with a piercing 4,200-hertz whistle that vibrated straight through his jaw.
“Hold on to me!” Julian shouted, digging his heels against the raised brass sill of the rudder cutout.
“Mac! Elena!”
Across the octagonal chamber, the scene had devolved into pure mechanical chaos.
High-voltage strobe lamps bathed the waterlogged walls in violent pulses of crimson and sterile white. The heavy oxblood leather chairs--built on cast-steel pneumatic pistons anchored deep into the ship’s 1924 timber frame--were grinding forward on their brass floor-tracks with the relentless torque of hydraulic presses.
