The high lasted for forty minutes.
Jax was buzzing with energy. He sat in the back of a southbound Red Line train, sprawled across two seats, watching the city slip by through the dirty windows. He sensed the shift in the grid under his feet. It was subtle, like a kink in a garden hose finally being smoothed out. The heavy pressure beneath Old Town was gone, vented into Silas's eager capacitors.
The trains were already running more smoothly. The static that usually made his teeth itch had quieted to a dull hum.
"Too easy," Jax mumbled, tapping his fingers on the plastic windowsill. A spark jumped from his finger to the metal frame, leaving a tiny scorch mark.
He glanced around the car. It was 3:15 AM, the "drunk train." Across the aisle, a guy in a faded Cubs hoodie was passed out, snoring against the glass. Further down, a nurse in scrubs stared blankly at her phone, dark circles under her eyes. A couple near the doors argued in hushed tones.
Normal. Chicago normal.
Then, the air changed.
It wasn't the sharp drop in temperature they had felt in the tunnels. This change was slow and insidious. It felt like walking into a room where someone had just died. The smell of stale beer and body odor vanished, instantly replaced by the heavy scent of funeral lilies.
Jax sat up straight. The hair on his arms, usually standing on end from static, fell flat.
"Oh no," he whispered. "She couldn't know yet. We were quiet."
The train was entering the subway tunnel between North/Clybourn and Clark/Division, right next to Isobel's territory.
The lights flickered. It wasn't an electrical surge, but a dimming. A brownout.
The snoring guy in the Cubs hoodie stopped. He sat straight up, moving jerkily like a marionette whose strings had just been pulled tight.
The nurse dropped her phone. It clattered loudly on the floor, but she didn't react.
The arguing couple fell silent mid-sentence, turning their heads together toward the front of the car.
"Hey," Jax said, standing up. His voice felt tight in his throat. "Everything alright, folks?"
No one replied. The sound of the train changed. The rhythmic clack-clack of the wheels grew muffled and heavier. The engine groaned, struggling as if the incline had suddenly tripled.
The guy in the Cubs hoodie slowly turned his head to face Jax.
His eyes were gone. In their place were pools of matte blackness, lacking light or reflection. They were Isobel's eyes.
"The soil is disturbed," the man said. It was not his voice. It was a chorus of whispers layered over each other—old voices, young voices, wet voices.
The nurse stood up. Her movements were fluid but wrong. She turned her black eyes toward Jax. "You stole the warmth, little spark."
Jax stepped back, instinctively reaching for the metal handrail above him. He tried to pull a charge to prepare a defensive blast, but the metal felt lifeless, cold, inert.
"Isobel," Jax shouted at the ceiling of the car. "This is low, Widow! Even for you! These are civilians!"
Every person in the train car stood up at once. It wasn't aggressive; it felt like weight. A collective, crushing presence.
"There are no civilians in Chicago, Jackson Miller," the chorus spoke through the nurse. "Only future tenants of my district."
The train began to slow down. The friction was immense. Jax could feel the drag through the floorboards. It felt like the train was wading through wet cement.
He grabbed his radio. "Dispatch! Sal, you on the line? I've got a situation on car 1412. Passengers are... non-responsive. Possible biological agent. We're losing speed."
Static hissed back at him. Then, Sal's terrified voice came through.
"Jax? It's everywhere. The whole system. Blue Line, Brown Line, all of them. Every train passing through the central corridor. The drivers are saying the passengers just... stopped. They won't get off at the stations. They're just standing there. The trains can't handle the weight. The grid is browning out."
Jax stared at the dozen people in his car. They weren't attacking him. They were just standing there, staring with those terrible black eyes, radiating cold and silence.
Isobel hadn't sent an army of ghouls to destroy the tracks. She had done something far worse to the Kinetic leader. She had stopped the flow. She had turned his sleek, fast trains into rolling hearses.
The train came to a complete stop in the middle of the dark tunnel. The emergency lights turned on, casting long, eerie shadows that seemed to stretch toward the unmoving passengers.
The nurse took a step toward Jax. The air grew so cold that his breath fogged up.
"You wanted to move the earth, little spark," the chorus whispered from her throat. "Now you carry its weight."