The Ironclad was designed to survive a collision with a freight train. It wasn't meant to handle a hit from a god made of plastic.
Jax groaned as the warning lights in his cockpit flashed red. "Hydraulics critical," he said, shaking the dizziness off. "Armor integrity at 60%."
He glanced up through the cracked reinforced glass. The Asset was approaching him. It moved unnaturally, gliding just above the ground. The multicolored core in its chest pulsed violently—blue, green, grey, and gold—a chaotic mix of stolen lives trapped in a sterile cage.
"Compliance is mandatory," the Asset said. Its voice was not just one sound; it was a multitude of stolen voices layered together. Jax thought he recognized Leo's voice among them.
The Asset raised a hand. The air around it warped, rippling like heat waves.
"Dodge!" Silas shouted over the radio.
Jax jerked the control levers to the left. The Ironclad lurched, the servos whining.
A beam of pure, white nothingness shot from the Asset's palm. It missed the cockpit but clipped the suit's left shoulder pauldron. There was no explosion. The heavy steel plate simply vanished, leaving a perfectly smooth circular hole that revealed the pistons underneath.
"It's erasing matter!" Jax yelled. "Silas, it's deleting the suit!"
"It is using localized entropy," Silas responded, his voice strained. He was crouched behind the wreckage of the train, using a large, custom rivet gun to hold down a group of Bureau agents trying to flank them. "Do not let it touch the cockpit, Jax. If it touches you, you cease to exist."
"Great advice! 'Don't die!'" Jax gritted his teeth. "Okay, big guy. Let's dance."
Jax revved the diesel engine. This time, he didn't charge; he strafed.
The Ironclad moved sideways, its heavy feet crunching over the glass of the shattered archives. The Asset tracked him perfectly, its faceless head swiveling. It fired another beam.
Jax activated the emergency vent. A burst of superheated steam exploded from the suit's back, obscuring him for just a moment. The beam went wide, vaporizing a row of server racks.
Jax lunged through the steam. He swung the Ironclad's right arm, the one with the hydraulic pile-driver attachment.
WHAM.
The steel fist connected with the Asset's chest. It should have crushed the creature's ribs. Instead, its white polymer skin rippled like water, absorbing the impact. The kinetic energy was consumed.
The Asset grabbed the Ironclad's arm. Its grip was unyielding.
"Kinetic energy absorbed," the Asset droned. "Redirecting."
The white polymer glowed blue—the same color as Jax's faction.
"Oh, crap," Jax whispered.
The Asset held on. It channeled the force of the punch back into the Ironclad. The suit's arm exploded. Metal shrapnel flew everywhere. Jax screamed as the feedback shockwave rattled his skull inside the helmet. The suit was thrown backward, crashing against a support pillar.
The Ironclad was dead. The engine sputtered and died. The right arm was a twisted mess.
Jax was trapped in a metal coffin.
The Ritual Circle
Isobel didn't look up when Jax fell. She couldn't.
She stood at the center of a swirling vortex of ghosts. The spirits released from the jars were confused, angry, and terrified. They flew in circles, a tornado of translucent faces screaming in a way that shattered glass.
"Focus!" Isobel commanded, her voice amplified by the shadows. "Do not scatter! You are the storm!"
She needed to bind them. Without that, they would fade away or go mad. She needed a vessel.
She glanced at the Asset. She saw the core in its chest. It was not just fuel; it was a prison.
"Silas!" Isobel shouted over the chaos of battle. "I need a path! The creature is shielded!"
Silas Vane stood up from behind cover. He was out of rivets and threw the gun aside.
"The Bureau thinks they understand order," Silas growled, the copper wires in his suit glowing brightly. "Let us show them the volatility of chemistry."
Silas reached into his coat and pulled out a flask. It was not a potion. It was a block of unstable sodium, enchanted to react with air instead of water.
He hurled it.
The flask flew over the heads of the Bureau agents and smashed at the Asset's feet.
BOOM.
A blinding flash of white phosphorous fire erupted, engulfing the creature. The intense heat didn't burn the polymer, but it blinded the sensors. The Asset stumbled back, flailing.
"Now, Widow!" Silas yelled.
Isobel pointed both hands at the Asset.
"You stole their fire," she whispered, her eyes bleeding black tears. "Now choke on the smoke."
She thrust her will forward. The tornado of ghosts didn't attack the creature physically. They dove into it.
Hundreds of spirits swarmed the Asset, phasing through the white armor and latching onto the multicolored core in its chest.
Inside the Ironclad
Jax kicked the emergency release latch. It was stuck. The canopy wouldn't open.
Through the cracked glass, he saw the Asset convulsing. The white armor flickered. The smooth, faceless head twisted as if faces were trying to push out from the inside.
...let us out... let us out...
The voice from the Asset was no longer synthesized. It screamed. The stolen magic fought against its containment. The creature was at war with itself.
Jax looked at his control panel. The suit was dead. No power. No hydraulics.
"Physics failed," Jax panted, wiping blood from his nose. "Okay. Okay."
He looked at his hands. They shook. He hadn't used his magic in days. He feared the Nullifiers. But the Nullifiers were meant to stop projected magic. They stripped energy from the air.
But what if the energy never left his body?
Jax closed his eyes. He didn't reach for the subway lines. He didn't reach for the grid. He reached for the battery of the suit itself, the heavy-duty lead-acid battery behind his seat.
He grabbed the terminals with his bare hands.
"Clear!" Jax shouted.
He drained the battery dry in a microsecond.
Pain. Pure, white-hot pain. But with it came the rush. The Static. The Speed.
Jax didn't blast the door open. He became the current. For a moment, he turned his physical body into pure electricity. He phased right through the locked steel hull of the Ironclad, reforming outside in a shower of sparks.
He hit the ground, smoking, stumbling, but alive.
He looked up. The Asset was distracted, clawing at its own chest as Isobel's ghosts tore at its programming.
"Hey! Siri!" Jax yelled, his eyes glowing brighter than ever—a blinding, dangerous white-blue.
The Asset turned, twitching.
Jax didn't run. He didn't slide. He vanished.
He moved so fast that he broke the sound barrier in the room. CRACK.
He appeared on the Asset's chest, gripping the polymer plating with both hands.
"You took my friend," Jax snarled, his voice vibrating with lethal voltage.
He didn't shock the monster. He vibrated it. He used his kinetic control to shake the molecules of the creature's chest plate at a frequency that shattered molecular bonds.
The white polymer didn't melt. It disintegrated into dust.
The core was exposed. A glass sphere pulsing with the chaotic light of a thousand souls.
Jax raised his fist. He concentrated every volt, every amp, every joule of energy he had stolen from the battery into his knuckles.
"School's out."
He punched the core.
The Explosion
It wasn't fire. It was a shockwave of pure liberation.
The core shattered.
A blast of multicolored light erupted from the Asset, blowing the roof off the Old Main Post Office. The white polymer body of the creature vaporized instantly.
Thousands of sparks shot up into the Chicago night sky, like a reverse firework display. They spiraled out, seeking their owners, rushing back to the mages, fortune tellers, and couriers across the city.
Jax was thrown backward by the blast, skidding across the floor until he hit the wrecked train.
Silence fell over the room. The Bureau agents were gone—either knocked unconscious or fled.
Jax lay on his back, staring up at the hole in the roof. He watched the lights scatter over the city.
"Did we win?" Jax wheezed.
Silas approached, helping Isobel, who looked ready to faint. He looked down at Jax.
"The containment is breached," Silas said, offering a metal hand to pull Jax up. "The stolen magic has returned to the ecosystem."
Jax groaned, accepting the hand. "I think I broke my everything."
"Look," Isobel whispered, pointing at the shattered remains of the Asset's core.
Lying in the glass shards, curling into a fetal position, was a translucent blue form. It looked like a boy wearing a hoodie.
"Leo?" Jax breathed.
The ghost of Leo looked up, smiled, gave a thumbs up, and then dissolved into a stream of blue light, shooting out the roof, heading north toward Belmont.
"He's going home," Jax said, a grin breaking through the blood on his face.
"We should do the same," Silas said, looking at the tactical readout on his wrist. "Thorne has activated the self-destruct. We have three minutes to exit the blast zone."
Jax glanced at the wrecked Ironclad. "RIP, big guy."
"I will build another," Silas promised. "Bigger."
They turned and ran toward the train tunnel, disappearing into the dark just as the alarm sirens began to wail.