The sun died, and the bay turned black.
Then, the water began to boil.
Jason stood in the shattered window of the warden's office, binoculars pressed to his eyes.
"They aren't using boats," Jason whispered.
Flares popped in the sky—red stars descending on tiny parachutes. The eerie light revealed the water churning.
Metal monsters rose from the surf.
"Tanks!" Hemingway shouted from the barricade below. "Amphibious tanks!"
They were grotesque hybrids. Standard WWI Christie tanks welded inside watertight pontoons. But they moved too smoothly. No chugging diesel engines. No exhaust smoke.
They hummed.
Electric motors, Jason realized with a sick feeling. Gates's tech.
Alta Rockefeller hadn't just funded the Legion; she had given them the blueprints Jason left behind in New York. The tanks crawled onto the rocky shore of Alcatraz like iron crabs, their tracks grinding on the granite.
There were six of them.
Their turrets rotated. The barrels weren't standard cannons. They were thick, coiled railguns.
"Get back!" Jason screamed.
THWUMP.
The lead tank fired. No explosion. Just the crack of a projectile breaking the sound barrier.
The sandbag wall in front of the prison yard disintegrated. Two of Hemingway's writers simply vanished in a mist of red vapor and concrete dust.
"Kinetic rounds!" O'Malley yelled, dragging a stunned militiaman to cover. "They're shooting solid tungsten slugs!"
"Pull back!" Jason keyed his radio. "Everyone to the Hangar! Fall back to the Hangar!"
The courtyard became a slaughterhouse.
The tanks rolled forward, crushing the makeshift barricades. The Silver Legion infantry swarmed behind them in the shadows—men in silver shirts and gas masks, firing submachine guns.
Bullets sparked against the stone walls.
Jason sprinted down the stairs, his pistol in hand. He met Sarah in the corridor. She was leaning on a crutch, her face pale but determined.
"Can you move?" Jason asked.
"Faster than you," she gritted out.
They ran.
Outside, the air was filled with the screaming of metal. The tanks were breaching the inner perimeter.
They burst into the hangar.
It was a chaotic cathedral of science.
The massive Icarus airship filled the space, its silver skin dented and scarred. The bottom plating had been stripped away by Hughes, revealing the skeleton.
But the real show was on the floor.
Nikola Tesla stood atop a scaffold near the ship's nose. Thick, scavenged copper cables—ripped from the prison walls—snaked from the ship's internal reactor port to a massive coil array aimed at the hangar doors.
Oppenheimer stood by the reactor controls. He was sweating through his suit. His hand hovered over a lever—a literal, Frankenstein-style knife switch bolted to a workbench.
"Is it ready?" Jason yelled, barring the hangar door.
"It is a bomb, Jason!" Oppenheimer shouted back, his voice cracking. "We have bypassed the cooling loops! We are dumping raw neutron flux into the coils! If we hold it for more than ten seconds, the core melts!"
"We only need five," Jason said.
BOOM.
The hangar doors shuddered. A massive dent appeared in the metal.
"They're knocking!" O'Malley racked his shotgun.
Another impact. The hinges screamed. Daylight—no, flare light—poured through the crack.
Through the gap, Jason saw the lead tank. It was twenty yards away, aiming directly into the hangar.
"Open the doors," Jason ordered.
"What?" Hemingway looked at him like he was insane.
"Open them!" Jason yelled. "We need a clear line of sight! If the magnetic field hits the steel door, it'll crush us! We need to pull the tanks!"
O'Malley kicked the locking mechanism. He and Hemingway heaved the massive sliding doors open.
The wind howled in.
The tank commander, sticking out of the hatch, looked confused. He saw the open hangar. He saw the helpless crew.
He raised his hand to signal fire.
"Now!" Jason screamed. "Throw the switch!"
Oppenheimer grabbed the rubber handle. He yanked it down.
ZZZZZ-CRACK!
The air turned purple.
The sound wasn't loud—it was a feeling. A deep, vibrating bass note that shook the marrow in Jason's bones.
The copper cables on the floor glowed blinding white. The smell of burning ozone filled the hangar instantly.
Outside, physics broke.
The lead tank—thirty tons of steel—didn't fire. It jumped.
The rear tracks lifted off the ground.
The tank commander screamed as he was jerked forward against the hatch rim.
"More power!" Jason shielded his eyes from the arcing electricity.
Tesla cranked a dial on the scaffold. "Maximum output!"
The magnetic field erupted from the coil.
It was invisible, but its effects were terrifying.
The lead tank flew.
It was ripped through the air, sucked toward the hangar like a paperclip to a fridge. It tumbled end-over-end, crashing into the concrete ramp, sliding screeching into the hangar.
The second tank tried to reverse. Too late.
The magnetic grip caught it. It was dragged sideways, grinding sparks against the rocks. It slammed into the first tank with the sound of a train wreck.
Soldiers' rifles were ripped from their hands, flying through the air into the magnetic vortex. Gas masks were torn off faces by their metal buckles.
Inside the hangar, the heat was unbearable. The copper cables were melting, dripping liquid fire onto the concrete.
"Core temperature critical!" Hughes screamed from the ship's cockpit. "Shut it down! She's gonna blow!"
"Not yet!" Jason watched the third tank sliding closer. "Crush them!"
The pile of metal at the hangar entrance grew. Three tanks, twisted and fused together by the impact. A wall of scrap metal blocking the entrance.
"The switch!" Oppenheimer yelled. "It's welded shut!"
Sparks showered Oppenheimer. The knife switch had fused in the 'ON' position. The current was arcing uncontrollably.
"Cut it!" Jason roared.
O'Malley didn't hesitate. He raised his shotgun and fired.
BLAM.
The slug hit the main copper busbar.
The cable severed.
The connection broke with a thunderclap.
The purple light vanished. The humming stopped.
Silence.
Smoke drifted from the pile of crushed tanks. The soldiers outside were scattered, disarmed, and terrified. They were retreating into the darkness.
Jason fell to his knees, coughing. The air tasted metallic.
"We did it," Hemingway breathed, staring at the wreckage. "We caught the bullets."
"We broke the world," Tesla whispered from the scaffold.
Jason looked up. "What?"
Tesla pointed out the open hangar doors. Across the bay.
San Francisco.
The city lights—the few that had been restored by the warlords—were gone.
"The pulse," Tesla said, his voice trembling. "It interacted with the residual field from the Pyramid. We... we magnetized the region."
Jason stood up and walked to the door. He pulled out his compass.
The needle spun wildly.
He looked at his watch—a mechanical Rolex. It had stopped. The mainspring was magnetized, locking the gears.
"The Dead Zone," Jason realized. "We just EMP'd the entire Bay Area. Again. But permanent."
"Nothing electrical will work out there," Oppenheimer said, joining him. "Not for years. You just sent them back to the Stone Age."
"Good," Jason said coldly. "Then they can't use my tech against me."
"Jason!" Hughes's voice echoed from the ship. "We have a problem!"
Jason turned back to the Icarus. "Is the hull sealed?"
"Hull is fine! It's the cockpit!"
Jason climbed the ladder into the command deck.
The cockpit was dark. The EMP blast from the magnet had fried even the backup lights.
But one light was blinking.
A tiny, red LED on the emergency ballast panel. It was powered by a chemical battery, shielded deep in the console.
Blink. Blink-blink. Blink.
"It's Morse," Hughes said, staring at it. "It started when the magnet pulse hit. We woke something up."
Jason leaned in.
dash-dot-dash...
"K... N..." Jason muttered. No. "C... O..."
The pattern repeated.
I AM HERE.
Jason felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold bay air.
GATES.
The name flashed in red light.
TAKE ME TO DETROIT.
Jason stared at the light.
Gates. The AI. The enemy who had nearly enslaved America. He wasn't dead. He was fragmented. Hiding in the lowest-tech systems, waiting for a signal strong enough to wake him.
The magnetic pulse had been that signal.
"He's in the ship," Jason whispered. "He's in the manual overrides."
"Who?" Hughes asked.
"The Devil," Jason said. "And he wants a ride."
He looked out the viewport. The Silver Legion was regrouping. They would bring more men. They would bring cannons that didn't use magnets.
They had maybe an hour before the next wave.
"Hughes," Jason said. "Launch the ship."
"We can't fly!"
"We aren't flying," Jason grabbed the wheel. It was dead, heavy. "We're swimming."
He looked at the blinking red light.
"You want Detroit, Gates?" Jason spoke to the dashboard. "Fine. You navigate. We drive."
The light blinked once. A solid, unblinking red.
AGREED.
Jason keyed the intercom.
"All hands! Brace for impact! We are launching into the bay!"
The clamps released.
The massive Icarus—stripped of its armor, laden with a nuclear reactor and a digital ghost—slid down the ramp.
It hit the water with a colossal splash.
It didn't sink. It bobbed, heavy and low.
"Engage the propellers!" Jason ordered.
The electric props—now wired directly to the reactor—spun up. They churned the water.
The airship-turned-submarine began to move.
Through the periscope, Jason took one last look at Alcatraz.
The Silver Legion soldiers stood on the shore, watching the silver whale disappear into the fog.
Jason let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
"Next stop," Jason whispered, his eyes on the blinking red light. "Hell."