[COUNTDOWN: 06 SECONDS TO SECTOR PURGE]
The amber light on the brass bright light flickered with sickening speed.
Lin Ke didn’t panic. With his left thumb, he reached under Geng’s numbed jaw and jammed his fingernail into the main neck blood vessel, manually pulsing the vessel against the joint padding to simulate living blood pressure.
[HEARTBEAT RESTORED: MARGINAL] [TIMEOUT RESET: 10 SECONDS]
“Meng Shan,” Lin Ke hissed, his jaw clenched so hard a tendon in his cheek twitched. “Get the ore cart. Pack the soldiers under three tons of crushed magnetic iron gravel. We have less than thirty minutes before Geng’s brain dies of oxygen starvation.”
Twenty-five minutes later, an unassuming wooden ore cart rolled through the rear gates of Smelting Ward Seven.
The guards at the gate saw only greasy coal dust and iron melted rock waste. Beneath the false bottom lay Captain Geng, his silver armor stripped away, his numbed body packed in crushed river ice and bitter preservation bitter pine-resin.
They carried Geng into Lin Ke’s private workshop and slammed the heavy oak door.
