The countdown timer on the central dark rock end-post flashed in cold, rhythmic scarlet numbers:
10:42... 10:41... 10:40...
Beneath the floor of the machine room, the underground quarantine vault had unsealed with a high-pressure groan that shook the mountain to its roots.
Through the twelve-foot gap in the center of the dark rock dais, a swirling deep pit of pale, screaming static was churning like a whirlpool of liquid milk and crushed bone. Four hundred thousand corrupted ghost threads—piled up over ten thousand years of uncollected transit accidents, broken training attempts, and unshielded merchant drain tubes—were rising into the work-yard like an underground tide of living maggots.
The air smelled of rancid tomb grease, stale bog water, and freezing copper melted rock waste.
Outside the silver firewall, Elder Wu DeZheng was clutching a column of black meteorite stone with both arms, his glasses fogged with panic and his stitched slippers slipping on the black frost.
“Ten minutes!” Wu DeZheng shrieked, his voice jumping an entire octave into a dog whistle. “The end-post says ten minutes until ‘Total World-size Facility Purge’! That means forty miles of dark rock melted by ancient fire! If the mountain collapses into the deep pit, how do I file the post-mortem salvage receipts?! Who countersigns the total loss indemnities?!”
