Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

For one endless October night, a fissure opens between here and Elsewhere…

Live Wire opens with four individuals sequestered in a filling station during a freak thunderstorm. Fifty miles east at the Very Large Array, Medusa Engineering unleashes Project Dragonfire, a bold technological effort that summons something Shadowless from the fabric of creation—perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not. Soon, one-hundred-foot electrical towers―miles of them―stalk the New Mexico desert. In tandem, The Signal is broadcast, a dissonant machine language that subverts the human mind…harvesting buried guilt, shame, and trauma.

The night wears on everyone: Pale Brody and his son Caleb, en route to Austin to start a new life; Ken Lightfeather, an Apache trucker with a .44 on his hip; Otis Thompson, a man hiding alone in the great wide open; and brilliant Nikki Barlowe, who suspects a parallel, sinister operation―led by shadowy Medusa Engineering executive Armand Jenks―is in play. High stakes and high octane fuel the incendiary action: high-tension towers on a pulverizing rampage, an outbreak of mass murder and suicide, and a brutal skyborne firefight above the VLA. Only the end of the circuit reveals the nexus of power, and at dawn on Route 60, a final showdown pits human resolve against brute force and inner horror. Will an ancient, Shadowless terror find dominion on Earth?