The crumpled twenty-dollar bill was falling.
It was less than one inch above the stainless-steel change tray of Register 1.
Outside on Old Ferry Road, the sixty-foot document shredder descended like an iron guillotine from the clouds. The four massive pig-iron chains shrieked as they paid out from the overhead winches, link by heavy link. The downdraft from the spinning diamond drums blew through the shattered vestibule, tearing candy wrappers from the display racks and sending empty receipt rolls tumbling down the aisles.
The hydraulic pressure in the four red-ink umbilical cords was thunderous. They roared like high-pressure steam pipes, vibrating so violently that dust drifted down from the ceiling acoustic tiles.
Mac Cole threw his weight against the end of the counter, his iron prosthetic arm locking around the timber frame. “Kid, the whole ceiling is bowing inward!”
“That machine weighs forty tons! If it hits the roof, it will pancake the store into the basement!”
“It won’t hit the roof,” Julian Vance shouted over the roar of the chains. “The municipal grounding bus is holding the structure!”
Beneath the yellow oilskin sleeve, Thomas Vance’s fingers were being pried open by supernatural kinetic force.
