The heavy metal spool left the Head Stenographer’s fingers and arced across the collapsing expanse of Sub-Level 5 like a spinning silver gyroscope.
Lin Mei braced her boots against the laminated center crease of the rising paper web, reaching out with both hands as the updraft kicked their raft sideways. Her fingers locked around the cold brass flanges of the cylinder, and she pulled it tight against her cotton clerk’s vest—heavy as an artillery shell and smelling of clean machine oil.
“Hold on to that tape, Lin!” Julian shouted over the rush of wind. He was down on one knee five feet away, his work boots braced against the paper crease while his fingers held the steel eyelets Mac had punched into the web. “Don’t drop it!”
“I don’t drop inventory, Vance!” Lin yelled back. Wind whipped loose strands of dark hair across her cracked spectacles as she hugged the spool to her ribs. “Never have! Never will!”
She looked down past the edge of the rising paper sheet.
The great courtroom was coming apart.
Columns of black Vermont marble were snapping like dry pine twigs. Huge blocks of dressed stone tumbled through the dim air, dropping into the dark well where the printing presses were already crushed. Thirty feet below, along the mahogany railing of the jury box, people were still standing.
