Chapter Two - A Night Without Night

The station's freezer case had a few frost-bitten ice packs left, but nothing else. Carl transferred emergency diesel with practiced efficiency. Lucy suddenly swore and pointed at the wall thermometer. It read 111F. Then the display flickered and changed to 118F. "That's not a broken display," she said. "The casing's warped. The sensor is reading wrong because it's been cooked out of alignment." Elliot felt his stomach drop. When even the temperature readings could no longer be trusted, the heat had already passed the range the infrastructure was built to understand. The city was not just losing power. It was losing the ability to measure reality. The motorcycles roared closer. "Go!" Carl shouted, hauling the diesel can.