The cold was not a heat. It was a blade of iron driven into his forehead.
When Qiao Ming broke the emerald skin of the flood, the roar of the tiered arena was put out, replaced instantly by the deaf, roaring hum of deep water. The hyper-saline salt water, thick with dissolved sulfates and crushed silt, bit into his eyes with a fierce chemical burn. He kept his eyelids squinted to narrow slits, trusting his pupils to adjust to the cold green twilight that filtered down from the churning surface.
The downward current caught him like a fist.
The intake throat of Sluice Nine was an inverted funnel, drawing millions of gallons of water toward the four-foot opening beneath the stalled drop-gate. The speed was terrifying—nearly ten meters per second of downward gaining speed that tried to peel the satchel from his ribs and tumble his body headlong into the narrow gap.
If a man panicked and fought that current with his arms, he was dead in ten heartbeats. The human shoulder could generate barely forty pounds of thrust. The chute was pulling with four thousand.
Qiao Ming did not fight the vector. He streamlined his form.
He pressed his arms tight against his flanks, holding the Jacob’s staff flush against his chest with his left forearm. He extended his legs, pointing his toes downward, and allowed the speeding up column of water to carry him down the face of the northern granite door post. The granite was slick with…
