Chapter One: Borrowed Wind

When the subway car hung beyond the broken bridge, Lin Yan was tightening a screw that did not belong to it. He had salvaged the copper screw from an old radio. Its thread was half a turn wrong, but Lin had a poor man's talent: he could make mismatched parts live a little longer. Now the car tilted twenty-seven degrees over a hundred-meter drop, and that screw held a maintenance cover in place, keeping the electrical arcs beneath it from burning through the floor. “Everyone to the rear!” he shouted. No one heard him over screams and twisting steel. Outside, an empowered man floated in the rain, blue-white lightning crawling beneath his skin. The news called this condition overload.