Seventy feet above the street, the air smelled nothing like lilies or wet concrete. It smelled of burning ozone and old urine. To Jax "High-Voltage" Miller, it smelled like home.
Jax rode the roof of the Red Line train as it sped south toward the Loop. He didn't hold on. He didn't need to. The rubber soles of his boots were magnetized to the steel roof, a trick of polarity he managed without thinking, like breathing or blinking.
Below him, the city appeared as a grid of trapped lights, but up here, it looked like a blurred ribbon of movement.
He closed his eyes and extended his senses downward, past the wheels, past the tracks, locking onto the hum of the Third Rail. Six hundred volts of direct current sang to him. It was a clean, angry sound. But tonight, there was static on the line.
Thump.
The train lurched. The sparks flying from the contact shoes beneath the carriage changed from a healthy blue to a sick, violent green.
"Whoa, easy, girl," Jax muttered, his voice crackling. He tapped his headset. "Dispatch, we got a hiccup on the northbound near North and Clybourn. The ground is... burping."
"We're seeing it, Jax," a distorted voice replied in his ear. "Power spikes are off the charts. It's rising from the bedrock. If the voltage jumps again, the transformer on this train will blow. You've got a hundred commuters inside."
"Not on my watch."
Jax crouched. The wind whipped his trench coat around him like bat wings. The train was hitting fifty miles per hour, rattling violently as it neared the subterranean tunnel entrance at North Avenue.
He felt the knot of magic Silas had warned Isobel about. It was a blockage in the earth, a massive arterial clot of magical pressure radiating from the cemetery. Since Isobel wouldn't let Silas vent it, the pressure found the path of least resistance: the conductive steel of the train tracks.
The train hit the invisible wall of energy. The lights inside the cars flickered and died. The wheels screamed, locking up.
Jax moved.
He dropped from the roof, swinging through the open window of the motorman's cab. The driver, a calm woman named Sal, wrestled with the emergency brake.
"It's not the brakes, Sal! It's the juice!" Jax yelled over the screech of metal.
He kicked the door open and stepped out onto the small metal gangway between the cars. The air was thick with green static. He could feel the hairs on his arms standing up like needles.
"Alright," Jax grinned, his teeth bared in a manic smile. "Let's drink."
He grabbed the safety railing with his left hand and slammed his right hand directly onto the live Third Rail.
It should have killed him instantly. Instead, Jax screamed in joy.
The excess magic flooding the track surged into him. It was hot, dirty, and tasted like battery acid. His veins glowed a brilliant, blinding blue beneath his skin. The Lichtenberg scars on his neck flared white. He became a living capacitor, drawing the lethal overcharge out of the train's system and holding it in his body.
For three seconds, he was the brightest thing in Chicago.
Then, with a heave, he pushed the energy outward, firing a bolt of lightning from his chest into the night sky. It struck a nearby billboard for a personal injury lawyer, exploding it in a shower of sparks and burning wood.
The train shuddered, the green light faded, and the wheels unlocked. The interior lights flickered back on.
Jax slumped against the carriage door, smoke curling off his shoulders. He felt drained, twitchy, and alive.
Twenty minutes later, the train pulled into the Quincy station in the Loop. Jax hopped off, his boots clanking on the wooden platform. He needed coffee. Or a car battery to lick.
"Impressive display," a voice rumbled.
Jax stopped. Standing by the turnstile, looking out of place among the tired commuters, was Silas Vane. The Alchemist was dry, despite the rain, his suit perfectly pressed. He looked like a statue that had decided to go for a walk.
"Forge," Jax said, wiping soot from his cheek. "You're far from your blast furnaces. Don't you rust in this weather?"
"I saw the spike," Silas said, ignoring the jab. He walked closer, his heavy footsteps vibrating the wooden planks. "The blockage at the cemetery is getting worse. Isobel refuses to grant access. The pressure nearly derailed one of your trains. Next time, it could be a derailment. Mass casualties. The disruption of the Line."
Jax leaned against a steel pillar, pulling a cigarette from his pocket. He snapped his fingers, and a small spark lit the tip. "Isobel is stubborn. She likes her ghosts quiet. You want to go in there with jackhammers. I understand why she's mad."
"I'm proposing a solution," Silas said. "I can't drill from the surface without sparking a war with the Hollows. But you..." Silas pointed a tungsten finger at the tracks. "You control the tunnels. The Red Line runs directly beneath the cemetery."
Jax narrowed his eyes. "You want to drill up?"
"I want to use your maintenance tunnels to access the Ley Line from below. We can bypass Isobel's surface wards entirely. We stabilize the grid. I get my power, you get safe tracks, and the Widow is none the wiser until the work is finished."
Jax took a long drag of the cigarette. It was a tempting offer. The "Current" was all about flow, and the blockage was ruining that flow. But working with Silas felt like sleeping with an anvil.
"And what do I get out of it, heavy metal?" Jax asked. "Besides safe tracks? I can fix the tracks myself. I just did."
"Access," Silas said low, his voice like grinding stones. "The Foundry has developed a new capacitor. It can store Ley energy without grounding it out. I'll retrofit your entire fleet. Your trains will run faster, cleaner, and hit harder. You'll own the fastest transit system in the world."
Jax flicked the cigarette onto the tracks. He watched the sparks die on the wet rail. Speed. Pure, unadulterated speed.
"If Isobel catches us," Jax grinned, a spark jumping between his teeth, "she's going to raise every dead rat in the subway system to eat our eyes."
Silas extended his metal hand. "Then we better be fast."
Jax looked at the tungsten hand, then grabbed it. A shockwave of static popped between them, startling a passing commuter.
"Deal," Jax said. "But I drive."