Chapter 68 - The Chicago Blackout
“What is he doing?” I shouted over the rising whine of the turbines, kneeling beside Marco whose pulse was racing toward critical fibrillation.
“The city grid…” Marco managed to say, his face drenched in cold sweat. “The intake cribs were designed to siphon power from the Commonwealth Edison offshore grid in an emergency. He’s reversing the polarity… he’s drawing every megawatt from the downtown substation directly into the submerged core!”
On the monitors, green schematics of Chicago flashed. The shoreline from Navy Pier down to the Loop was mapped in glowing lines. One by one, sections of the city grid began to flash red and go dark.
Miles above us, in the real world, the city of Chicago was being plunged into a catastrophic blackout.
“Why?” I cried, looking up at the speaker. “Why destroy the city?”
“*Not destroy, Laura. Reclaim,*” Vance’s voice purred through the horn. “*For eighty years, Vance and Bellini traded blood for influence. We gave their politicians life, gave their judges synthetic breath, tied their very survival to the rhythm of our engines. Tonight, the debts come due. When the blackout hits, every hospital, every vault, every VIP life-support system connected to the Bellini network will fail… unless they bow to the new frequency.*”
“He’s holding the whole city hostage,” Marco snarled, dragging himself toward the antique console below the vacuum monitors. “He’s using Prototype Zero as a broadcast tower.”
“Marco, your heart can't take the electromagnetic surge!” I warned, grabbing his arm. “Look at your telemetry!”
The violet light under his skin was turning a chaotic, blinding white—the same frequency Vance had wielded on the ship. The feedback was bleeding into my own chest, making my vision pulse with every beat.
“I don't care,” Marco gritted out, his hazel eyes flashing with unyielding Bellini steel. “My father died in that chair trying to stop this. My grandfather died in this one. I’m ending it here.”
He reached into his tactical harness, pulling out the remaining breaching block—the last high-grade plastic explosive we had.
“If I blow the broadcast terminal, the frequency dies,” Marco said, fixing the adhesive charge directly to the skeletal chest of his grandfather. “The turbines will stall.”
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“Marco, wait!” I realized with horror, staring at the circuit cables running from the skeleton’s spine directly into the floor. “The fail-safe! It’s bi-directional! If that charge detonates while Prototype Zero is broadcasting, the inductive spike will travel back through the airlock conduits! It will vaporize this entire chamber!”
***
