The Chicago River was never just water. It was a record of history, coated in silt and pollution. It held rusted car frames from the twenties, charred wood from the Great Fire, and enough industrial waste to ruin anyone's mood.
Usually, it was calm. Tonight, it was seething.
Beneath the Wells Street Bridge, the water started to bubble. It wasn't heat; it was movement. The surface churned, changing from stagnant black to a frothy, violent brown.
Two miles away, in a penthouse at The Foundry, Silas Vane was fixated on a seismograph. The needle was flinging back and forth so hard that it was tearing the paper.
"Impact tremors," Silas muttered. "Localized. Underwater."
"Is it the train?" his assistant asked, nervously adjusting his glasses.
"No," Silas said, striding to the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the river. "The train was the match. This is the powder keg."
The Riverwalk
Officer Miller (not related to Jax) was having a quiet night patrolling the Lower Wacker drive path. He leaned on the railing, watching the city lights dance on the surface of the water, when a foul smell hit him.
This was not the usual river stench. It smelled like decay—like wet ash and old grease.
GLURP.
A bubble the size of a Volkswagen rose in the center of the channel and burst, releasing a cloud of toxic green gas.
"Dispatch," Officer Miller said into his radio, "I got gas leaking near the Franklin Street bridge. Send Fire."
Then the river erupted.
A geyser of mud and water shot forty feet into the air. When it crashed back down, something remained.
It rose slowly, shedding waterfalls of muck. It looked humanoid in a way that reminded one of a mountain that might resemble a face if you squint. It stood thirty feet tall. Its "skin" was a shifting collage of Chicago's discarded past. Its left shoulder was the rusted hull of a 1920s tugboat. Its ribs were charred beams from the Great Fire. Entangled in its chest was a mess of rebar and fiber-optic cables, pulsing with a faint golden light—the leftover "Vitality" Jax had put into the ground.
It had no eyes, only deep, dripping hollows in a head made of wet cement and limestone.
It let out a roar. The sound was a mix of tearing metal and the gurgle of a drowning man.
The Loop – The Golden Train
Jax was still sitting on the deck of the train, trying to regain feeling in his legs when the roar echoed through the city. It vibrated the bronze railing he leaned against.
"Oh, come on," Jax groaned. "I just sat down."
"Mr. Miller," Silas's voice returned to his ear. "We have a secondary event."
"I heard it. What is it? Godzilla?"
"Golemic construct," Silas corrected. "Spontaneous animation. You grounded the Alchemical charge into the riverbed. That energy is pure life. It found the densest concentration of matter—the debris layer—and gained consciousness."
Jax pulled himself up using the railing for support. He looked toward the river. Between the buildings, he could see the massive shape stomping toward the lower level of Wacker Drive. It swatted a streetlamp like it was a dandelion.
"It's heading for the Loop," Jax said. "It's attracted to the source. It wants more energy. It's coming for the train."
"Correct. If it consumes the train's capacitor, it will become self-sustaining. It will grow until it consumes the city."
Jax glanced at his trembling hands. He was running on empty. He had maybe one big spark left in him.
"I can't fight that thing, Silas. I'm empty. And you can't transmute something that big before it crushes you."
"No," Silas agreed. "Force is not the answer. We need entropy. We need to stop it from moving."
Jax stared at the monster. It was made of dead things—dead boats, dead buildings, dead history.
"We need the Widow," Jax said, hating himself for saying it.
St. Michael's Cemetery – The Crypt
Isobel Grave was on the floor. The backlash from the Golden Train felt like a stroke. Her connection to the ghosts had been cut violently, leaving her deaf to their whispers for the first time in decades.
She dragged herself up, using a marble sarcophagus for support. Her vision was blurry.
Her phone buzzed on the floor. It was a burner, one of three she kept for emergencies.
She picked it up. "Speak."
"Isobel," Jax's voice was breathless. "Don't hang up. We made a mess."
"You burned my network, little spark," she hissed, her voice like dry leaves. "You filled my quiet dark with your noisy light. I should let you burn."
"You can," Jax said. "But there's a thirty-foot trash monster eating Wacker Drive. It's made of debris from the 1871 fire. It's... it's all dead stuff, Isobel. But it's moving."
Isobel paused. She could feel it now. Not the whispers of ghosts, but the heavy, thudding vibration of disturbed earth. A desecration. The dead should stay dead. Animation without a soul was an abomination.
"It is a golem," she said, her voice steady now. Cold and sharp. "It is a mockery of resurrection."
"Silas and I can't stop it," Jax admitted. "It's too big. We fed it too much energy. We need you to kill the signal. You're the only one who can pull the plug on dead things."
"And why should I save your city, Jackson?"
"Because if you don't," Jax said, "it's going to stomp on the riverwalk. And I know you keep your favorite bodies in the river mud."
Isobel smiled, a terrifying and sharp expression.
"Get it to the Wells Street Bridge," she commanded. "I will be there."
Wells Street Bridge
The Dredge—as news copters were already calling it—was slow but unstoppable. It crashed through the guardrail of the riverwalk, dragging its massive weight onto the street. Cars swerved and crashed to avoid it.
It lunged for the support beams of the "L" tracks, sensing the golden energy vibrating in the rails above.
"Hey! Junkyard!"
Jax stood in the center of the Wells Street Bridge. He looked tiny next to the towering creature. He held a flare in one hand—an actual road flare, not magic.
"You want the energy?" Jax shouted. "Come and get it!"
The Dredge turned. Its eyeless face locked onto Jax's energy signature. It roared again, spraying river sludge across the bridge. It took a step, shaking the entire structure.
Jax didn't budge. "Now, Isobel! Now!"
The streetlights on the bridge exploded.
Darkness flooded in, swirling around them. From the shadows of the bridge's lift towers, Isobel stepped out. She looked pale and exhausted, but her power felt different now. It was not the subtle whisper of the grave. It was a cold vacuum.
She raised both hands.
"Dust to dust," she whispered. "Rust to rust."
She didn't blast the monster. She simply enforced reality.
She projected the concept of end onto the creature. She reminded the wood that it was burned. She reminded the steel that it was rusted. She reminded the concrete that it was cracked.
The Dredge stopped in mid-step. The golden light in its chest flickered, struggling against entropy, but Isobel was a black hole. She pulled the animation out of the debris.
The "Vitality" drained away, releasing harmless steam.
The creature groaned—a sound of collapsing structure. Then, it simply fell apart.
Tons of debris crashed onto the bridge deck. The tugboat hull clattered down, crushing a taxi (empty, thankfully). The rebar snapped. The mud dissolved.
In ten seconds, the monster was gone. All that remained was a massive pile of wet garbage blocking traffic.
Isobel lowered her hands. She swayed, nearly falling, but steadied herself on the railing.
Jax jogged over to her. He offered a hand, but she glared at it until he pulled it back.
"We're even," Isobel said, her voice a faint whisper. "You broke my silence. I fixed your noise."
"Yeah," Jax nodded, looking at the mountain of trash. "We're even."
A sleek black car pulled up beside the debris pile. The back window rolled down. Silas Vane looked out, his expression unreadable.
"The clean-up crew is on the way," Silas said. "Good work. Though the property damage is significant."
Jax glanced at Silas, then at Isobel. The Alchemist, the Necromancer, and the Kinetic stood in the wreckage of their own power struggle.
"We can't keep doing this," Jax said, wiping sludge from his coat. "Next time, we don't just break a bridge. We break the city."
Silas adjusted his cufflink. "Agreed. Perhaps it's time to discuss a formal Council."
Isobel looked at the trash pile, then at the two men. "Fine," she whispered. "But the meetings happen in the dark."