“Move your boots, Lin Mei!” Julian Vance shouted into the dark.
The iron rungs of the vertical freight ladder rattled under his palms. Fifty feet below them, the subterranean foundation of Old Ferry Road tore itself apart. The shattered Dead-Letter Master Printing Press screamed as all seven inverted floors of the Bureau collapsed inward.
Two rungs above Julian, Lin Mei choked out for breath. The heavy 1998 Underwood Standard Typewriter strapped to her canvas pack banged against the steel side-rails with every step.
“I’m moving, Senior Clerk!” Lin Mei shouted back, pushing her cracked tortoiseshell glasses up her nose with a chalk-stained thumb. “This machine weighs thirty-two pounds of solid cast iron! It wasn’t built for vertical climbing!”
“Drop the carriage lock so the platen stops swinging!” Julian called up. He braced his right knee against the ladder spine to steady her boot when it slipped on wet condensation. “Elena, grab her top frame!”
Above them, Elena Rostova leaned down from the upper landing rung. Her blood-stained St. Jude’s scrub coat flapped in the hot updraft, and her #SJ-404 plastic badge swung near her collarbone.
She hooked one strong hand into Lin Mei’s pack webbing and hauled the nineteen-year-old upward like a crate of trauma supplies. “Got her weight,” Elena said, her voice steady. “Clara’s already at the top plate--keep climbing, Clerk.”
