“What’s your point, Jack?” Harte asked, unease crawling down his spine. Perhaps he’d played his game a little too well: Jack had not only taken the hook, he now seemed to be dragging him out to sea. “And what does this have to do with that machine? Or with the future?”
“Everything.” Jack stopped short. “It has everything to do with the future. Every day, the world sends more and more of its filth to our shores. Among them, Mageus sneak into our city. Filthy. Uncivilized. Dangerous. Their very existence threatens our civilization and, as we’ve seen for ourselves, the safety of our property and our citizens. But this machine will change everything, Darrigan.” He ran his finger over the tip of the tower’s roofline. “It will put a stop to that threat once and for all.”
“The Brink already keeps the Mageus in their place.”
“Maybe that was true during a simpler time,” Jack said. “When the Brink was created, there were far fewer coming here. It was enough to simply trap them on the island. But the numbers have been steadily increasing. There have been attempts to meet the growing threat, of course. Ellis Island, for instance, was supposed to keep Mageus from ever setting foot on our shores, but those measures haven’t been enough. Devious as they are, more maggots slip through the inspectors every day. There are even reports that some have made it off the island and onto the mainland. That cannot stand. The Order knows something has to be done. They’ve been working on a plan to increase the Brink’s reach, but what they’re doing won’t work.”
“No?” Harte kept his eyes trained on the model of the building, feigning interest to cover his fear.
“Not as long as they’re using old-fashioned ideas—old-fashioned magic—instead of modern science. And so long as they’re thinking too small.”
“The Brink is small?” Harte asked, trying to keep his voice even.
Grew nodded. “But my machine won’t be. Consider this, Darrigan. Tesla’s tower will revolutionize wireless transmission, true, but it’s only the beginning of what could be done with it. With the kind of power this receiver can generate, it could make the Brink obsolete.” He smoothed out the rumpled paper bearing the Philosopher’s Hand again. “The Brink was created more than a century ago by a ritual manipulation of the elements through the Aether. It’s old-fashioned alchemy: Five artifacts, each imbued with the power of one of the basic elements, were used to complete the ritual. Like this hand—all the elements are connected through the Aether, the palm. It creates a circuit of sorts. When a Mageus passes through it, their power unbalances that circuit, and whatever magic they possess is drawn toward the elemental energies of the Brink as it attempts to balance itself.
“The whole system is self-perpetuating, powered by the very feral magic it takes, which is why it’s lasted for so long with very little maintenance. But the Aether is the key,” Jack said eagerly. “There are two problems with the Brink, though. First, the power taken from any Mageus who tries to cross the Brink becomes part of the circuit, but we can’t do anything more with that power. For all intents and purposes, it’s lost. We can’t use it.” Jack eyed him. “That’s a waste, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Harte forced out, his stomach turning. “Quite.”
“This machine would put an end to that. Instead of redistributing the power it harvests, it collects it and holds it separately.”
“And the other problem?”
“The Brink is limited by its size. When it was first created, no one knew how quickly the city would grow or that the wilds of Brooklyn and beyond would become what they have. No one could have imagined how many people would come to our shores. No one imagined that they would come despite the Brink.”
“Desperate people will do desperate things,” Harte murmured. They would chance the Brink and commit themselves to living in a rattrap of a city because it was still better than the places they came from, places still ravaged by the hate spurred on during the Disenchantment. Because the hope for a different future was that powerful.
“It’s not desperation, Darrigan. It’s a complete disregard for our way of life. ?The Order is aware of this problem, of course. They were hoping to unveil their grand plan at the upcoming Conclave, when the entire Order gathers, but it isn’t working. The original artifacts aren’t powerful enough to expand the size of the Brink without making it unstable. Now they’re trying to replicate the original creation of the Brink, all in the hope that perhaps they might be able to re-create it in other places, trap any Mageus that manage to avoid New York. That hasn’t worked either.” He shook his head, a mocking expression on his face. “But will the Inner Circle listen to me?”
“No?” Harte asked, trying to hide his hopefulness.
“Of course not. They’re stuck in the past, and its weight is dragging them under. It will drag us all under.” ?With a violent motion, Jack swept the papers off the table, causing them to flutter into the air and then settle onto the ground at Harte’s feet. “They’re so focused on containing the maggots, they don’t realize it has never worked. They’re like rats, the way their numbers seem to be growing. Like rats, they need to be exterminated, and when I get my machine working, that’s exactly what we’ll do.” He walked over to it and ran his hand over the shining metal of one of the orbital arms. “Once this machine is installed in Tesla’s single tower, it will have enough energy to clean a one-hundred-mile radius of any feral magic. Much more efficient than the old rituals. Imagine one of these in every major city. It would send a message—a warning—to any who would come to this country and try to turn us from our destiny.”
“One hundred miles?” Harte asked, feeling almost faint. “You’re sure?”
“The last time we tested it, the field it generated reached as far as Fulton Street, and that was only at a fraction of its capacity.” Jack smiled slyly.
“Quite impressive,” Harte said, but he thought of ?Tilly as he said it and felt sick. He hadn’t realized what Jack capable of. He’d been goading him on, encouraging him, when he should have been paying more attention.
“It is, isn’t it?” Jack agreed. “When I multiply what this machine is capable of by the power of Tesla’s transmitter, we can easily wipe out all the feral magic in Manhattan, maybe even reach as far as Philadelphia and Boston. But unlike the Brink, the power this machine will generate once it’s installed in Tesla’s tower would be usable. Imagine it—feral magic eradicated, transformed into civilized power that could be used to guide and shape the future of this new century. Or . . . it could become a weapon unlike any the world has ever seen. This country could become even greater than the empires of Europe after the Disenchantment.”