The heat on the apex platform had reached fifty-two degrees, an oppressive, choking fire that made the skin on Lin Tao’s forearms prickle with incipient heat blistering.
The air smelled of ozone, burning bakelite. The sweet, nauseating stench of scorched transformer heat padding. Every sound shaking from the main bus rang directly in Lin Tao’s jawbone. That made his back teeth ache with an intense, rhythmic thrumming. The floor plates were expanding under the huge heat load, their edges groaning as they ground against the anchor bolts.
Lin Tao took a single step toward the apex console. His right hand drew his hardened star-iron cold chisel and his eight-ounce steel ball-peen mallet from his tool belt.
Suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the dark recess behind the eighth-tier stone railing.
HISSS!
A figure wrapped in crumpled black starmetal armor lunged from the blind spot behind the pillar, moving with the silent, desperate speed of a dying viper. It was Archon Shen Tu, the Headsman. His iron visor was crushed into his face, one eye fully swollen shut and blackened with clotted blood, but in his left hand, he gripped an eight-inch stiletto forged from cold-drawn star-fallen iron.
The blade was aimed directly at Lin Tao’s exposed left kidney.
