The following morning, the "dead zone" felt different. The air was still thick with the scent of over-roasted beans and the hum of the refrigeration units, but the woman in black found herself looking at the door every time the chime sounded. She told herself it was purely for the sake of situational awareness, a defensive measure against impending chaos.

She was currently attempting to dismantle a particularly purple prose sequence in a romance novel she was editing, her red pen hovering like a guillotine over a paragraph about "throbbing heartstrings."