Jax felt something before he saw it.
He was surfing a power line three blocks away, riding the alternating current like a skater on a half-pipe, when a hole opened up in his mental map of the city. It wasn't a blackout. A blackout still felt like something—a held breath, a paused potential.
This felt like an amputation. A tiny, pinprick void where a spark used to be.
He dropped from the wire and landed hard in the alley behind the Belmont station. His boots sparked against the wet pavement, but the air felt dry—wrong. It tasted like copier toner and antiseptic.
"Leo?" Jax called out.
He found the kid sitting on the curb outside "The Third Rail." Leo was staring at a puddle. He wasn't crying anymore. He was just watching the water sit there.
"Zip," Jax said, rushing over. He grabbed Leo's shoulder. Usually, touching another Kinetic led to a little static shock—a friendly zap of recognition.
Jax felt nothing. Leo's shoulder felt like a bag of wet sand.
"Leo, snap out of it. Did the Hollows jump you? Did you overdose on a charge?"
Leo looked up. His eyes were dull. The frenzied, twitchy energy that usually defined him—the bouncing leg, the tapping finger—was gone. He was perfectly, terrifyingly still.
"I'm compliant, Jax," Leo said. His voice was flat, monotone. "I was in violation of Statute 41. But they fixed it."
"Fixed what?" Jax grabbed Leo's hand. "Make a spark, Leo. Come on. Just a little pop. Light your vape."
"I can't," Leo said, pulling his hand away slowly. "Friction is a constant. Electron flow is regulated."
Jax stared at him. It was like talking to a voicemail recording. He reached out with his own power, trying to jump-start Leo's internal battery. He pushed a volt of raw blue energy into the kid's chest.
It didn't take. The energy didn't absorb; it just dissipated across Leo's skin and grounded into the sidewalk. Leo was an insulator. He was a closed circuit.
"Who did this to you?" Jax whispered, horror rising in his throat.
Leo reached into his pocket and pulled out a blank white card.
"The Bureau," Leo said. "They said if you feel the magic coming back, you should call. They have a cure."
The Foundry, The Examination Room
Silas Vane didn't breathe. He didn't blink. He stood over Leo, who was sitting passively on a steel examination table, and stared at the boy with a jeweler's loupe screwed into his eye.
Jax paced the room, leaving scorch marks on the floor with every turn.
"Fix him, Silas," Jax snapped. "You're the Alchemist. Transmute him back. Rewire his nervous system."
"I cannot fix what is not broken," Silas rumbled, straightening up. He removed the loupe. "Physiologically, the boy is in peak health. His heart rate is steady. His neural pathways are intact."
"He's a vegetable!" Jax yelled. "He's sitting there counting ceiling tiles!"
"He is not a vegetable," Silas corrected. "He is... Normal."
Silas walked to a chalkboard and drew a circle. Then he drew a line through it.
"Every living thing in Chicago has a trace connection to the Ley Lines," Silas lectured, his voice cold. "It is background radiation. Mages like us act as conduits—we focus that radiation. Leo was a low-level conduit."
Silas tapped the board. "Whatever this 'Bureau' did, they didn't damage him. They cauterized his metaphysical connection. They severed the link between his biology and the city's energy."
"Can you reconnect it?"
"No," Silas said. "It's like trying to un-burn a match. The potential is gone. He is now a biological dead zone. Magic cannot touch him, and he cannot touch magic."
Silas turned to look at Leo. The boy was staring at his hands, a look of mild, vague confusion on his face.
"It is a weapon of profound efficiency," Silas admitted, a note of dark admiration in his voice. "They are not trying to kill us, Jax. They are trying to evict us from reality."
"They asked about us," Jax said, stopping his pacing. "Leo said they asked about the train. They know about the Alchemist, the Necromancer, and the Kinetic. They called us a 'Triumvirate.'"
Silas's eyes narrowed. The copper wiring in his suit heated up, glowing a dull orange.
"Then the Masquerade is already broken," Silas said. "They are not investigating. They are hunting."
Suddenly, the lights in the Foundry flickered. Not a power surge—a shadow passed over the bulbs.
Isobel Grave stepped out of a dark corner of the room. She looked at Leo, then at Silas. She didn't need an explanation. She could smell the sterility on the boy from across the room.
"It smells like a hospital," Isobel whispered, covering her nose with a lace handkerchief. "It smells like a life without a soul."
"They took his spark, Isobel," Jax said, his voice cracking. "They just... deleted it."
Isobel walked toward Leo. The boy didn't react to her presence. Usually, mortals felt a chill near the Widow. Leo felt nothing.
"They are auditing the city," Isobel said. "My ghosts are quiet. They are hiding deep in the earth. They say men in grey coats are planting metal spikes in the cemetery gates."
"Nullifiers," Silas guessed. "Reality anchors. If they encircle the districts, they can choke off the Ley Lines entirely. We will be powerless."
Jax slammed his fist into a steel cabinet, denting it. "So we fight! We hit them before they box us in. I know where they hit Leo. The Belmont station."
"No," Silas said. "Direct conflict is inefficient against an enemy we do not understand. They have technology that negates our fundamental nature. If we attack them and fail, we prove we are monsters. We prove we need to be 'cured.'"
"So what? We wait until they turn us all into insurance salesmen?" Jax spat.
"We gather intelligence," Silas said. He pressed a button on his desk. A heavy iron door in the back of the room slid open.
Inside was a suit of armor. But it wasn't medieval plate, and it wasn't a sleek modern exosuit. It was a chaotic, terrifying hybrid of steam pipes, copper coils, grave-dirt ceramics, and Kinetic battery packs.
It was a suit built by all three of them.
"We cannot fight them as individuals," Silas said. "And we cannot fight them if they can simply 'turn off' our magic."
Silas pointed to the suit.
"We need to fight them with physics," Silas said. "That suit has no magic in it. It is purely mechanical. Hydraulic strength. Pneumatic pressure. If they want Normalcy, we will hit them with forty tons of Normal steel."
Jax looked at the monstrosity. "You built a tank that looks like a person."
"I built a contingency," Silas said. "But it needs a pilot. Someone who knows the streets. Someone fast."
Jax looked at Leo, sitting empty on the table. Then he looked at the suit.
"Strap me in," Jax said.