Lin Mei watched the second hand on her stainless steel watch jump backward like a frightened spider.
Click.
The hand didn’t move forward to thirty seconds. It hopped back to twenty-nine.
Then twenty-eight. Then twenty-seven.
Each backward tick sent a faint, high-voltage jolt through the metal casing against the skin of her wrist, smelling faintly of hot copper wire.
Above them, Lift #00 slammed to an abrupt halt against the massive undercarriage of the sunken bronze flood-doors. The impact drove Lin’s knees into the perforated steel floor plates, her titanium transcript spool ringing like a muffled gong as it struck her heavy brass belt buckle.
“Status!” Mac shouted, catching Clara before she pitched headlong into the brass scissor-gate. “Did we hit the ceiling?”
“Pressure stop!” Julian yelled, struggling to his feet beside the elevator control pedestal. He hauled on the emergency release valve, his knuckles white against the iron lever. “The safety brakes tripped! The hydraulic governor cut the flow at three hundred feet! We’re right under the street culvert!”
