The reverse magnetic-pull surge dropped not with a roar, but with a sound like a violin string snapping under forty tons of tension.
TWANGGGGGGG!
A blinding, needle-thin spike of pure white-gold back-EMF—fifty million volts of collapsing magnetic potential—ricocheted off the sky’s counter-rotating vortex.
It raced down the western spreading bypass wire, glowing so fiercely that the air around the copper guide-rod turned to rainbow-bright glass.
It was headed directly toward the western terrace, straight for the weathered stone planter where Frank’s favorite five-hundred-year-old wild mountain tea bush sat quietly in the mountain breeze.
“The Extinction Needle!” shrieked an elder from the Sovereign Sword Pavilion, throwing his hands over his face. “A packed strike of Primordial Severance! It will pierce the mountain to its molten core and burn up the western ridge!”
Frank didn’t look at the elder.
He was standing on the gravel path with an eight-foot length of heavy six-gauge copper jumper wire fitted with spring-loaded bronze alligator clamps.
