Escalation arrived like weather.
Typesetters swarmed, their silver eyes reflecting nothing back. The glue retreated, sulking, then surged again in sheets. Copy-Children moved as a choir of mannequins, mouths shaping silence. Above it all, the Printer’s voice remained gentle in the way cliffs are gentle to falling men.
“Escalating.”
A typesetter latched its pad to Lena’s chest. Cold flooded in. Her pulse tried to fall into the neat four of a march. But Dominic’s name crossed her mind and her heartbeat skipped, stumbled, laughed wrong. The ampersand burned. The rubber pad softened; the typesetter split along a seam that hadn’t existed a second before and fell in two indecisive halves.
Dominic’s blade rang against Copy-Dominic’s in a bright, bitter music. Sparks jumped—more of them sticki
