The Burning Wire

private construction before joining the company, moving his way up from apprentice to journeyman. He was thinking of going on and becoming a master electrician, and he would someday, but for now he liked working for a big company.
    And what bigger outfit could he find than Algonquin Consolidated, one of the top companies in the country?
    A half hour earlier he and his partner had gotten a call from his troubleman that there’d been a curious fluctuation in power in the supply to a subway system near Wall Street.
    A gauge in a nearby MTA substation reported that for a fraction of a second there’d been a dropout. Not enough to cause any disruption of subway service but enough to be concerned—considering the incident at the bus station early yesterday.
    And, damn, an Algonquin employee was the one behind it. Ray Galt, a senior troubleman in Queens.
    Barzan had seen arc flashes—everyone in the business had at one time or another—and the spectacle of the burning lightning, the explosion, the eerie hum was enough to make him promise himself he’d never take a chance with juice. PPE gloves and boots, insulated hot sticks, no metal on the job. A lot of people thought they could outthink juice.
    Well, you can’t. And you can’t outrun it either.
    Now—his partner up top briefly—Barzan was looking for anything that might’ve caused the current to dip. It was cool here and deserted, but not quiet. Motors hummed and subways shook the ground likeearthquakes. Yep, he liked it here, among the cables and the smell of hot insulation, rubber, oil. New York city is a ship, with as much structure under the surface as above. And he knew all the decks as well as he knew his neighborhood in the Bronx.
    He couldn’t figure out what had caused the fluctuation. The Algonquin lines all seemed fine. Maybe—
    He paused, seeing something that made him curious.
    What is that? he wondered. Like all linemen, whether up top or in the dark grid, he knew his territory and at the dim end of the tunnel was something that wasn’t right: A cable was spliced to one of the breaker panels feeding the subway system for no logical reason. And, instead of running down into the ground, to reach the subway, this went up and ran across the ceiling of the tunnel. It was well spliced—you judged a lineman’s skill by how well he joined lines—so it’d been done by a pro. But who? And why?
    He stood and started to follow it.
    Then gasped in fright. Another Algonquin worker was standing in the tunnel. The man seemed even more surprised to run into somebody. In the dimness Barzan didn’t recognize him.
    “Hi, there.” Barzan nodded. Neither shook hands. They were wearing PPE gloves, bulky—thick enough for live-wire work provided the rest of the dielectric was adequate.
    The other guy blinked and wiped sweat. “Didn’t expect anybody down here.”
    “Me either. You hear about the fluctuation?”
    “Yeah.” The man said something else but Barzan wasn’t really listening. He was wondering what the guy was doing exactly, looking at his laptop—all linemen used these, of course, everything on the gridbeing computerized. But he wasn’t checking voltage levels or switchgear integrity. On the screen was a video image. It looked like the construction site that was pretty much overhead. Like what you’d see from a security camera with good resolution.
    And then Barzan glanced at the guy’s Algonquin ID badge.
    Oh, shit.
    Raymond Galt, Senior Technical Service Operator .
    Barzan felt his breath hiss from his lungs, recalling the supervisor that morning calling in all the linemen and explaining about Galt and what he’d done.
    He now realized that the spliced cable was rigged to create another arc flash!
    Be cool, he told himself. It was pretty dark down here and Galt couldn’t see his face very well; he might’ve missed Barzan’s surprised reaction. And the company and the police had made the announcement only a little while ago. Maybe Galt had been down here for the past couple of hours and didn’t know the cops were looking for him.
    “Well, lunchtime. I’m starving.” Barzan started to pat his stomach and then decided that was overacting. “Better get back upstairs. My partner’ll be wondering what I’m doing down here.”
    “Hey, take care,” Galt said and turned back to the computer.
    Barzan too turned to head toward the closest exit, stifling the urge to flee.
    He should have given into it, he quickly realized.
    The instant