The thick curved glass of the 1924 Siebe Gorman diving bell fractured with the sharp crack of a pistol shot.
A white spiderweb of fissures raced across the four-inch viewport. Thin, pressurized jets of formalin-saline hissed through the fractures, spraying misty plumes of chemical brine across the obsidian table.
Inside the bell, ninety-year-old Chairman Silas Thorne let out a choked, wet scream.
[SEAT 01: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY 34%]
[ACTUARIAL IMMUNITY PROTOCOL: TERMINATED UNDER RULE 07-A]
[RESUMING BIOLOGICAL TIME: +10,957 SHIFTS APPLIED]
Julian stepped back, his boots splashing in the knee-deep water.
He had seen old milk cartons swell and burst when the refrigeration failed on a hot July weekend. Watching the diving bell buckle under the foreclosure penalty was far worse. It was the physical collapse of ninety years of stolen vitality.
