Chapter 96: The Sonic Boom
The high pitched singing of the ceramic cones mounted along the roofline sharpened into a piercing whine that drilled straight into the skulls of the thirty five men clustered on the terrace. The air itself seemed to tighten, growing thick with an invisible, trembling tension that made the hairs on their forearms rise against the wool of their sleeves. Snowflakes drifting down between the gables did not fall cleanly, caught instead in microscopic oscillations that blurred the white flakes into faint gray static before their eyes.
Douglas stood frozen in the drift beside the foundation wall, his gloved hands locked around the cold shaft of his steel crowbar.
A sudden, sharp vibration hummed through the iron tool, buzzing against the bones of his palms with enou
