The "Ghost Loop" was an urban legend for most Chicagoans, a supposed turnaround track for the subway built in the 1920s and abandoned before the concrete had fully set. For Jax, it was just another Tuesday.
It lay eighty feet below the pavement, deeper than the sewers, deeper than the gas lines. Here, the air was still and cold, preserving the smell of a century's worth of rust.
"Watch your head," Jax whispered. His voice echoed too loudly in the damp tunnel. "And keep track of your voltage. The air down here is... sticky."
Behind him walked two of Silas's "Foundrymen." They looked more like deep-sea divers shaped by a blacksmith than people. They wore heavy, lead-lined suits with brass viewports and carried a massive cylindrical device between them that resembled a mix of a torpedo and a jackhammer. Silas called it The Auger.
One of the Foundrymen, a brute named Kovacs whose voice sounded like an idling chainsaw, grunted. "Readings are dropping. Thermal output is zero. It's freezing."
"That's because we're right under the crypts now," Jax said. He stopped and raised a gloved hand. The flashlight mounted on his shoulder cut through the darkness.
Above them, the tunnel ceiling was a patchwork of weeping brick and ancient limestone. Through the stone, Jax could feel it: the suffocating, heavy pressure of the blocked Ley Line. It felt like a migraine waiting to hit. Worse was the static.
In the realm of electricity, static is just noise. In the Hollows, static meant the dead trying to speak.
"This is the spot," Jax said, pointing to a patch of ceiling that looked slightly discolored, stained with a dark, oily residue. "The pressure valve needs to go right here. If your boss's math is correct, that's the artery."
Kovacs and his partner set The Auger down with a heavy metallic clank. They started flipping switches. The machine hummed to life, a low-frequency thrum that vibrated the fluid in Jax's inner ear.
"Deploying anchors," Kovacs rumbled. Pneumatic spikes shot out from the machine's base, digging into the tunnel floor for stability. "Initiating harmonic drill. It won't break the stone; it'll temporarily liquefy it."
"Just do it fast," Jax said, pacing. He lit a cigarette, the cherry glowing bright red. "The 'residents' upstairs are light sleepers."
The machine pointed upward. A beam of concentrated heat—white-hot and silent—shot from the drill's tip. The brick above them didn't crack; it started to glow, then melt, dripping down like honey.
They were in.
As the drill pushed upward toward the Ley Line, the tunnel's temperature dropped sharply. Jax's breath formed clouds in front of him. The frost on the rails grew thick and jagged in seconds.
"Interference," Kovacs barked. "Auger targeting systems are glitching. Something is scrambling the signal."
"It's not a glitch," Jax hissed, spitting out his cigarette. He took a step back from the machine and turned to face the darkness of the tunnel behind them.
The shadows were in motion.
Not shifting like shadows do when a light moves. These shadows were pulling away from the walls. They were elongated and jagged, moving along the floor toward the drill's light.
"Keep drilling!" Jax yelled.
"We need two minutes to set the valve!" Kovacs shouted back.
The shadows rose, forming vague humanoid shapes. They had no faces, just hollows where their eyes should be. They were the leftover spirits from the cemetery above, the psychic alarm system Isobel hadn't even needed to pay for.
One of the shadowy figures lunged at Kovacs. It didn't hit him; it passed through him. The heavy lead suit was useless. Kovacs screamed, a pure sound of frozen terror, as the ghost drained the warmth right out of his lungs. He fell to one knee, the drill wobbling.
"Hey! Casper!" Jax yelled.
He grabbed a rusted power conduit against the tunnel wall. He didn't just touch it; he pulled.
Jax ripped the electricity from the dormant line, channeling it into his own body. His eyes flared blue. He became a living strobe light in the darkness.
"You want energy? Here!"
Jax clapped his hands together. A shockwave of blue lightning burst outward in a sphere.
It didn't kill the ghosts—you can't kill what's already dead—but electricity and ectoplasm don't mix. The lightning disrupted their form. The shadows shrieked, a sound like tearing metal, and dissolved into harmless mist.
"Kovacs! Now!" Jax roared, smoke rising from his hair.
The Foundryman, shaking violently, slammed a lever on The Auger. The machine surged. There was a wet thwack as the device punched through the last layer of bedrock and connected with the Ley Line.
The effect was instant.
The heavy pressure in the tunnel disappeared. A hum of pure, warm power flooded the space. The Auger began to glow gold as it siphoned off the excess magic, storing it in the capacitor banks Silas had prepared.
"Flow established," Kovacs wheezed. "Pressure stabilizing. We're... we're green."
Jax leaned against the wall, his heart racing. The static was gone. The ghosts had retreated, kept away by the sudden surge of raw, hot magic flowing through the new valve.
"Pack it up," Jax panted. "We got what we came for. Let's head back to the Red Line before the Widow realizes her basement is leaking."
St. Michael's Cemetery – The Surface
Isobel Grave sat in her parlor, sipping tea that had grown cold an hour ago. The room was silent except for the ticking of a grandfather clock that didn't tell time but measured the distance to the next death in the house.
She paused, the porcelain cup halfway to her lips.
A vibration. Not in the floor, but in the air. A sudden, subtle change in the room's weight. The screaming pressure that had built under the earth for weeks—the pressure she had been using to keep the spirits restless—had just... vented.
Someone had pulled the plug.
She stood, walked to the window, and looked down at the subway ventilation grate on the street corner. A faint wisp of blue steam rose from it, quickly snatched away by the wind.
"Clever, Silas," she whispered. Her reflection in the window pane shifted, showing her face as a skull. "You hired a rat to dig under my fence."
She placed her hand on the glass. The frost pattern on the window rearranged itself, forming a map of the city's transit lines.
"If you want to play in the dark," she murmured, "I suppose I should turn off the lights."