A voice from below
First-person present narration puts you inside Zara’s fear, hunger, anger, and hard-won moments of connection.
A novel by J. N. Scott
Electrified
Descent
Power was never the gift. Surviving it is. A dystopian science-fantasy novel for adult readers.
Zara // Character conceptNot final cover art
The story Survival has a current
The city wants a weapon.
She wants to stay human.
In the Undercity, survival means keeping your head down. Zara “Sparky” Jones knows the rules: scavenge what you can, trust carefully, and never give the Government a reason to notice you.
Then blue light starts mapping circuits beneath her skin. She can feel the city’s electrical grid inside her bones. The connection frightens her. Wanting it frightens her more.
As the Energy Core falters and the hunt for the Charged closes in, the Flame offers resistance—and its own demands. Zara must decide who to trust with a power she can barely control, while every choice threatens the people still trying to survive below.
How much of yourself can you risk before survival stops being enough?
Dystopian science fantasyCyberpunk atmosphereDangerous powerDivided loyalties
Inside the story What awaits you
Close to the current.
Closer to the cost.
Power under the skin
Electrical abilities change what Zara can do—and what she can hide from the people hunting the Charged.
A city built on division
The elite keep the world above. Beneath them, failing systems turn every day into a negotiation with scarcity.
Trust with consequences
Government control and the Flame’s rebellion leave Zara navigating loyalties that demand more than belief.
Chapter One Pulse of the City
Start
below.
From the opening of the revision manuscript. Text may change before publication.
For adult readers: strong language, violence, bodily transformation, and coercive control.
The acrid stench of burning plastic jolts me awake. My body coils tight, my hands gripping the sheets in white-knuckled fists, before fragments of where I am seep back through the fog of sleep. Just another power surge. Just another violent pulse rippling out from the City’s unstable Energy Core, rattling through the skeletal remains of the Undercity’s decaying infrastructure. Just another gods-forsaken night in this hollow mockery of what passes for home.
Government announcements bleed through the thin walls, the manufactured voice penetrating even here, fifteen levels below ground: “ATTENTION CITIZENS: Resource consumption exceeds allocation limits. Sector 7 faces mandatory reduction protocol. Remember: Your efficiency ensures your survival. Your sacrifice ensures our future. Compliance is life.” Behind those polished words, someone’s probably already been dragged from Sector 7: the Spark Pit, with its flickering lights and empty doorways, its unwashed windows facing the gray concrete barriers. Their absence is justified before it even happens by these pre-recorded warnings that slither into our heads.
I check the time on my makeshift terminal, the salvaged tech humming with a fragile promise in my cramped hideaway. Still hours before the gray lightening of the perpetual smog might pass for “dawn” in this forgotten underbelly. The smog burns my eyes and coats my throat with every breath. It’s choked the sky since the Environmental Catastrophe shattered our world decades ago. After that, the Uppies kept the city above for themselves and shoved the rest of us down here, under layers of concrete and steel. In some sectors the layers break open into gaps and light wells, enough for a glimpse of sky or a fall of rain, but most streets never see either. Topside is closed and patrolled. For people like us, the surface is death.
Want to know when it’s ready?