The Blue Line tunnel beneath the UIC-Halsted station was officially closed for maintenance. In reality, it was being used to build a bomb.
The bomb was a train.
Silas had stripped down the exterior of the lead car to its frame and rebuilt it with dull, lead-lined iron plates. It no longer resembled a transit vehicle; it looked like a battering ram on wheels. There were no windows, only reinforced slits. The front coupler had been replaced with a massive, plow-shaped wedge of solid tungsten.
"Shielding is at 100%," Silas announced as he walked the length of the platform. He tapped the hull with his metal knuckles. It didn't ring; it thudded. "The entire carriage is a mobile Faraday cage. Their Nullifiers won't penetrate the hull until we breach the perimeter."
Inside the car, the atmosphere felt heavy.
Isobel knelt in the center of the floor. She wasn't praying; she was painting. Using a mixture of grave dirt and crushed charcoal, she drew a complex, spiraling diagram that covered the entire floor of the train car.
"The resonance is faint," Isobel whispered with her eyes closed. "Leo and the others... they're screaming at a frequency only I can hear. When we breach the tank, I'll need to be the microphone. I must amplify their will to escape, or they'll simply dissipate."
"Just make sure you don't wake up the whole cemetery," Jax's voice boomed from the front of the car.
Jax was sealed inside the Ironclad suit, locked into a magnetic docking clamp near the front wedge. The mech took up half the carriage. He felt like a sardine canned inside a tank inside a train.
"System check," Jax grumbled. "Hydraulics green. Diesel engine idling. I feel like a steampunk cosplayer."
"You are the payload, Mr. Miller," Silas said, stepping onto the train and sealing the heavy iron blast door behind him. "The train is the delivery system. Once we impact the foundation of the Post Office, the inertia will carry us through the outer wall. That's when you deploy."
"Smash the glass, grab the souls, get out," Jax recited. "Simple."
"Hardly," Silas corrected. "The Post Office sits directly over Congress Parkway and the tracks. It's a fortress. We have one shot at the support pillars. If we miss, we derail into the highway. If we hit too soft, we bounce off. We need to hit them at exactly eighty miles per hour."
"And we can't use the third rail," Jax noted. "Because Thorne is watching the voltage."
"Correct." Silas walked to the rear of the car, where a massive, spherical tank was bolted to the floor. It wasn't alchemical gold or necromantic black. It was full of a sloshing, translucent liquid that smelled like high-octane gasoline.
"Alchemical combustion," Silas said, placing his hand on the release valve. "Old school. No magic signature. Just thermal expansion."
He looked at Isobel. "Are you ready, Widow?"
Isobel stood up, wiping charcoal from her hands. Her eyes were pitch black. "The choir is ready to sing, Silas."
He looked at the Ironclad. "Mr. Miller?"
"Let's wreck some federal property," Jax revved the suit's engine.
Silas turned the valve.
The Tunnel
The train didn't accelerate smoothly. It kicked.
The combustion engine roared, an explosion in the confined space of the tunnel. The wheels shrieked as they dug into the rails. Without the smooth glide of magnetic levitation, the ride was violent. The iron carriage shuddered, rattling Jax's teeth inside the helmet.
"Velocity increasing," Silas called out, holding onto a strap. "40... 50..."
They tore past the Clinton station platform. A few late-night commuters looked up, startled by the roar of the engine and the dark, windowless blur that shot past them.
"Approaching the target zone," Silas shouted over the noise. "Brace for impact!"
Ahead, the tunnel widened. The tracks curved slightly, leading directly into the subterranean foundation of the Old Main Post Office.
Usually, the train would pass through a reinforced gate. Tonight, the gate was down. A massive steel shutter blocked the track, emblazoned with the Bureau's geometric sigil.
"They closed the blast doors!" Jax yelled.
"That door is rated for standard impacts," Silas said calmly. "It is not rated for tungsten."
Silas didn't slow down. He opened the throttle.
70... 80...
The iron train screamed through the dark.
CRASH.
The impact was cataclysmic. The tungsten wedge hit the blast door like a bullet hitting a sheet of tin. The metal shrieked, buckled, and tore open.
The train didn't stop. It plowed through the debris, surrounded by a cloud of sparks and concrete dust, and burst into the basement level of the Post Office.
Nullifier beams immediately crisscrossed the air, red lasers cutting through the dust. They hit the lead-lined hull of the train and fizzled out.
"We are inside!" Silas yelled. "Deploy the Ironclad!"
Jax punched the release button. The magnetic clamps on his suit disengaged.
"Knock knock!" Jax roared.
He charged forward. The front ramp of the moving train dropped open, scraping against the concrete floor. Jax ran down the ramp in the two-ton suit, hitting the ground running.
He was in the Archive.
It was a cavernous room filled with the blue glow of thousands of jars. Bureau agents in tactical gear scrambled, firing rifles that did absolutely nothing to his armor.
"Target acquired!" Sonder's voice echoed over the PA system. "Titan Protocol! Release the Asset!"
Jax ignored him. He saw the main server bank. He saw the jar labeled CALZONE.
"I'm coming, Leo!"
Jax raised the Ironclad's hydraulic fist and smashed it into the nearest server rack.
Glass shattered. Blue gas hissed out, swirling violently.
"Isobel! Now!" Jax screamed into the radio.
Behind him, the train screeched to a halt. The side door flew open.
Isobel Grave stepped out. She didn't look at the agents. She didn't look at the guns. She threw her head back and opened her mouth.
She didn't scream. She inhaled.
The blue gas didn't dissipate. It rushed toward her. And then, with a sound like a thousand whispers becoming a shout, she let it out.
"WAKE UP."
The Archive exploded. Not with fire, but with ghosts.
Thousands of trapped souls, energized by the sudden freedom, burst from their jars. The room became a hurricane of spectral light. Agents dropped their weapons, clutching their heads as the psychic backlash hit them.
"It's working!" Jax yelled, swatting a tactical agent aside with a metal backhand.
Then, the floor shook.
A massive section of the ceiling collapsed. From the darkness above, something fell. It landed with a heavy, wet thud that cracked the foundation.
It stood up. It was ten feet tall. It was humanoid, but made of smooth, white polymer. It had no face, only a single, vertical slit where eyes should be. In its chest, pulsing with a sick, erratic rhythm, was a core made of a dozen different colors of trapped magic swirling together in agony.
The Asset.
It looked at Jax. The vertical slit on its face opened, revealing a void of pure nothingness.
"Oh," Jax whispered inside his suit. "That's not good."
The Asset raised a hand. It didn't fire a beam. It simply... deleted the space between them.
A shockwave of pure force hit the Ironclad, lifting the two-ton suit into the air and slamming it into the far wall.
"Disruption detected," the Asset spoke. Its voice was a chorus of the stolen souls. "Sterilization in progress."