Fifty feet above their heads, at the top of Vertical Pneumatic Freight Shaft #04-B, the slave repeater of the store’s 1968 Simplex time-clock clicked forward with a heavy metallic clack.
CLACK.
The split-flap numerals inside the upper stockroom hatch housing dropped from 10:56:59 to 10:57:00 PM.
Three minutes remained until eleven o’clock at night. Sixty seconds remained until the two-minute Time-Card Slot A punch-in window opened at 10:58:00 PM.
The six of them hauled themselves rung by rung up the vertical iron ladder inside the narrow brick shaft. Above them, the air pressure inside Starlight 24-Hour Mart #04 locked into place with a sharp, concussive snap that popped Julian Vance’s ears.
Through the open stockroom floor-safe grate ten yards above their heads, the sixty-hertz magnetic ballast hum of the store’s T8 fluorescent tubes dropped half an octave. It settled into a deep, vibrating drone that made the iron ladder rails hum against their palms.
Running vertically alongside the right-hand ladder rail was the frosted half-inch copper refrigeration return pipe of Walk-In Beverage Cooler #3. It sweated cold beads of thirty-eight-degree condensation as the compressor kicked on upstairs with a rattling cough of refrigerant gas.
Clipped to Julian’s vest pocket, the portable Casio PCR-T280 Pocket-Register—housing the sixteen-bit digital consciousness of Clerk 03, Arthur Pendelton—buzzed sharply against Julian’s ribs.
