Dr. Victor Corvo reached into his canvas kit for the heavy bone-saw clamp with fingers that did not shake.
The ascending paper web buckled beneath his boots as forty miles an hour of hot updraft slammed into their chests. Overhead, the black plug filled the entire concrete shaft.
It was six feet thick, bubbling with black petroleum slime from the Quality Assurance vats and woven through with thousands of glittering ribbons of microfiche from Human Resources. The mass was cooling fast in the updraft, hardening into an impenetrable black ceiling that smelled of burnt formaldehyde and dead plastic.
“Fifty feet!” Mac bellowed from the forward steering lines, his prosthetic brass arm groaning under the strain.
“Corvo! If you don’t pop that blister right now, we’re going to hit it like wet dough against a griddle!”
“Patience, Mr. Cole,” Corvo muttered under his breath, though his pulse raced hard against his ribs. “A surgeon does not rush the incision because the theater roof is on fire.”
A violent wobble ripped through the laminated paper sail as a gust of superheated gas caught the port edge. Corvo’s left heel slipped on the slick red ink of the paper floor. He stumbled back, his canvas bag swinging wild toward the open drop below.
