In the aftermath of Mike's battle, no boss appeared to challenge him. Instead, Mike drifted through the air towards where he could see the New York City skyline from his aerial vantage point. Marius joined him soon after. "Well done, Mike. I had hoped you would use a little more of the talents in your fight, but there is nothing wrong with falling back on what you know."

Mike grunted in response. The adrenaline dump was hitting him harder than either of the two times he had stepped into a cage. It had given his body a case of the shivers and there didn't seem to be any strength left in him. If he did have to fight again that day, he didn't think he was up to manhandling any more opponents. "Boss, I think I might be spent."

"Hold on just a minute, Mike . . . ." Marius pointed towards the skyline they faced.

In the distance, one of the skyscrapers appeared to be growing taller. Mike squinted at it. No, not growing taller. Lifting straight up into the air like a rocket. "That's really bad."

Marius frowned. "How big is that building? There is no way an ordinary kinetic could be lifting it. Zellar Wilson has to be there. You ready, Mike?"

Mike sighed. "What are we supposed to do? In case you hadn't noticed, I can barely lift a car. Carrying a skyscraper is out of the question."

"I'll handle the building. If Zellar Wilson can rip it free of the ground and lift it, then I can catch it. This is the moment we become famous, Mike. My army will be seen stepping in to prevent a disaster."

"You got marching orders for me, boss?"

"Stay close to me and be sure to smile for the cameras." With those words, Marius surged forward towards where the skyscraper levitated above the city, turning on its side as it rose. Mike followed a split second behind, eyes glued to the scene unfolding before him.

They passed over the remainder of New Jersey and crossed the Hudson Bay in seconds to reach Lower Manhattan. Above, the flying skyscraper had reached an insane height and hung poised like a spear. It shot forward then at a forty-five degree downward angle. Mike squinted at the pointed building for a moment, recognizing it from the King Kong movie. The Empire State Building. The damn Empire State Building had been uprooted and thrown. His eyes tracked the path it traced through the sky. While hard to determine its exact target, Mike felt he had a pretty good guess based on the general area.

"It's going to hit One World Trade Center!"

Marius waved away the comment. "I don't know what that is."

"Biggest building in the city!"

"It's not going to hit anything, Mike!" Marius took off like a bullet, charging towards the falling projectile. From where he was, Mike felt the immense corona of Marius unfold. Mike followed as close as possible, hampered by the powerful corona of his mentor.

The skyscraper began to slow as they approached, and Marius struck a victorious pose, feet wide apart as if standing on the air as his hands braced above him as if he was lifting the building. Mike spun around his mentor in a wide circle, eyes alternating between watching the show and spotting for enemies. No one showed for him to fight. Everything seemed to be going as good as they could hope, given the circumstances.

"Mike! Give me a hand with this!"

"What!"

"I have to fight its momentum on top of its weight! Help me stop its fall and I will set it down myself!"

Mike flew himself closer to the building, placing himself closer to the base, where the smooth cut revealed the teleotic talent had severed it from its foundation. He reached out with his corona and pushed against the building with everything he had. On the wind, he heard snatches of what Marius shouted. "How did he lift this himself . . . Cassandane wouldn't help with this . . . new kinetics useless . . . too heavy . . . impossible . . . fuck!"

The building had only stayed aloft as long as it had due to its forward momentum. Their efforts to stop its fall were only delaying the inevitable.

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Marius suddenly was at his side. "Mike! We have to leave now!"

"The building!"

"Doesn't matter. He's here. Fuck! He's here, Mike! I don't know how, but it has to be him!"

Mike glared at Marius. "Catch the damn building, Imperator!"

"You have no idea."

"Marius! If you don't do this, you're useless!"

"If we stay, we're dead!"

Mike grit his teeth and pushed with all he was worth. Beside him, Marius continued to shout hysterical warnings, but Mike shut out the noise. At least while Marius argued, he still lifted with his corona.

At the center of his mind, the precursor poured out as rapidly as it ever had, but it still wasn't enough. Worse, the prodigious rate caused a lot of residue to form. His spiral pattern managed to deposit the substance on the ever larger pile, but the resistance continued to increase anyway. As Mike struggled, he saw the residue forming, little bits of precursor slightly off from the appropriate spectrum interacting with each other, clumping and binding together.

Mike pushed at the pile of residue, trying to compact it. Once more, he wished he didn't have to interact with the residue indirectly. Then his perspective suddenly shifted. He saw the residue reacting to his thoughts. Not in the obvious way that true precursor did, making itself immediately available for action. More like the mental paradigm created an attractive field that influenced the behavior of residue. Seeing it, Mike managed to shift his mind, altering the rules that residue followed within him, forcing the binding to continue. Clumpy bits began to meld together and vanish, freeing up space.

Only somewhat aware of the world around him and of the fact that he was engaged in the most important action of his life, Mike found his consciousness diving into the depths of his mind. Extraneous thoughts faded, even his memories abandoned in the interior space he found himself. Squeezed down to his bare essence, Mike's entire focus became two fixed points. The first, the core of his mind gushing precursor. He felt the flow of elemental power, deep and wide, stretching away from him in a direction that he did not know or understand, one stranger even than the open and loop dimensions, a direction he could only label outside. The second fixed point was a pile of residue, off-spectrum precursor, that steadily diminished as it consumed itself in a violent embrace.

Those two points burned like twin fires. The precursor came in hot and ready, the residue left even hotter.

Mike twisted and distorted the laws of his environment, making the residue's cherry red glow brighten to yellow, then blue, then pure burning white. Its rate of consumption increased, yet the pile did not shrink. Greedily, it pulled more residue into its devouring fire, not letting a single iota of residue remain untouched. Still, it demanded more. Precursor began to interact and spoil itself, the resulting residue jumping into existence seemingly just so that something could be sacrificed to the raging pit that sat where once a pile had been. The potent draw created a flow impossible to resist. The pit consumed residue, which demanded the formation of fresh residue, which pulled forth ever more precursor. The flow grew to insane proportions, swirling like a hurricane.

Not knowing or understanding quite what he did, Mike twisted the rules once more and bent the flow in on itself. Precursor producing core reached towards residue destroying pit. The two connected.

His thoughts, such as they were, raced faster and faster, shifting the mental landscape with rapid intuition. Core and pit formed a powerful self-reinforcing loop. Residue, in the moment of its death, now spawned fresh precursor. A portion of that precursor degraded into residue to feed the cycle. The flow grew more rapid by far, until a wave of awesome energy exploded outwards from the core.

The skyscraper still fell. Marius shouted threats to leave without him. His pulse pounded in his ears. Several day old sweat-drenched clothes clung to him.

Mike screamed as a wave of power rose up within him. His corona exploded out from him, cradling the building above, pushing aside part of the force Marius brought to bear. Above them, the skyscraper stopped. His mind raw, Mike found himself barely able to concentrate. "Where do we put it?"

Marius stared at him, then pointed. "The park at the point of the peninsula."

They hefted the mighty spear of a building forward, moving it past the rows of tall buildings, slowly letting its height decrease until it barely cleared the final block before Battery Park. Marius moved to the top end of the skycraper as Mike went to the bottom end. The two of them lowered the Empire State Building onto its side, slowly reducing the kinetic field to prevent any further damage to it or its occupants as it landed. Then Mike floated to land on the top side of the beached building, hands on knees as he huffed air.

"We did it, Mike, now we have to leave!"

"I thought you wanted the cameras. And Zellar Wilson."

"It's not Wilson. Nallit is here. Come on, Mike, we have to run and hide. Now."