Her face reemerged; she was fighting for breath. She pointed. "A ladder on the wall!"

They were sailing straight for it. Alicia grabbed hold first. Michael spun around her body, then, using his left hand, reached out, seized a rung, and hooked an elbow through it. At the top of the ladder was a metal grate, daylight beyond it.

"Can you make it?" Michael said.

They were being pummeled by the current. Lish shook her head.

"Try, damn it!"

Her strength was gone; she had nothing left. "I can't."

He would have to pull her up. Michael reached above her head and drew himself free of the water. The grate presented a different problem; unless he could find a way to open it, they were going to drown anyway. At the top of the ladder, he raised one hand and pushed. Nothing, not the slightest tremor. He reared back and shoved the heel of his palm into the slatted metal. He punched the grate again, and again. On the fourth blow, it burst open.

He shoved it aside, climbed out, and pressed his body to the pavement. The rising water had lifted Alicia halfway up the ladder. The light seemed to make a kind of halo around her face.

He reached down. "Take my hand-"

But that was all he said, his words cut short as a wall of water slammed into her-into both of them-bursting like a geyser through the open grate and blowing Michael halfway across the street.

The collapse of the bulkhead just south of the Astor Place station-one of eight retention dams protecting the subway lines of Manhattan from the greedy Atlantic-was the first in a series of events that no person, Michael included, could have anticipated. Freed from incarceration, the water shot through the tunnel with the hammering power of a hundred locomotives. It ripped and tore. It blasted to bits. It detonated and crushed and destroyed, plowing through the structural underpinnings of lower Manhattan like a scythe through wheat. Eight blocks north of Astor Place, at Fourteenth Street, the water jumped the tracks. While the main body churned straight north beneath Lexington Avenue, toward Grand Central, the rest veered west on the Broadway line, roaring toward the bulkhead at Times Square, which would subsequently fail as well, flooding everything beneath the pavement south of Forty-second Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue and opening the whole West Side to the sea.

And it was only just getting started.

In its thundering wake, the water left a trail of destruction. Manhole covers blew sky-high. Sewers exploded. Streets buckled and collapsed. Beneath the ground, a chain reaction had commenced. Like the ocean of which it was a part, the raging water sought only the expansion of its domain; the prize was the island itself, which, after a century of sodden neglect, was rotten to the core.

On the corner of Tenth Street and Fourth Avenue, Michael returned to consciousness with the unsettled sense that the world's relationship to gravity had altered. It was as if every object were moving away from every other in a state of general repulsion. He blinked his eyes and waited for this feeling to stop, but it did not. A great font of water was jetting from the grate, high into the air, dissolving at the top into a sparkling mist that cast a rainbow above the flooded street. In his mentally fogged state, Michael stared at it in astonishment, not yet connecting the sight to anything else, while also noting, rather blandly, that other things were occurring: loud things, concussive things, things that warranted further consideration if only he could marshal his thoughts. The street seemed to be sinking-either that or everything else was getting taller-and bits of material were sailing off the faces of the buildings.

Wait a second.

The structure he was looking at-a nondescript, mid-rise office building of dark tinted glass-was doing something peculiar. It appeared to be ... breathing. A deep respiratory flexing, like a baby's first breaths of life. It was as if this anonymous structure, one of thousands like it on the island, had awakened after decades of abandoned slumber. Spidering cracks materialized in its reflective face. Michael sat upright, balancing on his palms. The pavement had begun to undulate disturbingly beneath him.

The glass exploded.

Michael rolled and flattened himself to the ground, covering his head as a million shards rained down. Whole plates detonated on the pavement. He was yelling at the top of his lungs. Nonsensical words, vile curses, an aural vomitus of terror. He was about to be diced to ribbons. There wouldn't be enough of him left to bury, not that there would anybody around to do that. The seconds passed, glass cascading all around him, Michael waiting, for the second time that day, to die.

He didn't.

He lifted his face from the pavement. The sun was gone, the air grown dim. Tiny, twinkling shards covered his body, clinging to his arms and hands and hair and the fabric of his clothing. A gritty wind swirled the air. The sky, it seemed, had begun to issue snow. No, not snow. Paper. A single page dropped lazily into his hands. "Memo," it read at the top. And, beneath that, "From: HR Department. To: All employees. Re: Benefits enrollment period." Michael was momentarily transfixed by the strangeness of these words. They felt like a code. Within their mysterious phrasing lay an entire reality, a world lost in time.

Suddenly the paper was gone; a gust of air had stripped it from his hand. The street was darkening. A roaring sound came from his left. Second by second it increased, as did the wind. He turned his head to look uptown, toward the source of the noise.

A great gray monster was roaring toward him.

He scrambled to his feet. His head was swimming; his legs felt like wet sand.

He ran, nonetheless, like hell.

The first building to fall was not the one Michael saw. By this time, the collapse of midtown Manhattan was several minutes old. From the south edge of Central Park to Washington Square, edifices large and small were in the process of acute structural liquefaction, melting and toppling into the gobbling sinkhole that the island's central core was on its way to becoming. Some fell independently, crumpling vertically into their foundations like prisoners felled by a firing squad. Others were encouraged by their neighbors, as building after building teetered and toppled into others. A few, such as the great glass tower on the east side of the trapezoidal city block at Fifty-fifth and Broadway, appeared to succumb entirely through the power of suggestion: My fellows are giving up the ghost-why don't I do that also? The process might have been likened to a swiftly moving metastasis; it leapt across the boulevards as if from organ to organ, it churned through the avenues of blood, it wrapped its lethal fingers around the bones of steel. Dust clouds roared in a great carcinogenic regurgitation, blackening the skies.

An ersatz night fell over Manhattan.

Beneath Grand Central Station, the water arrived from two directions: first via the Lexington Avenue subway line from Astor Place, then, a few seconds later, though the Forty-second Street shuttle line from Times Square. The currents converged; like a tsunami compressing as it approached the shore, the water's power magnified a thousand-fold as it tore up the stairs.

"You ungrateful bitch!" Fanning cried. "What have you done?"

He said no more; the water arrived, a pounding wall, blasting them off their feet. In a blink, the main hall was subsumed. Amy went under. She was rolling, tossing, her sense of direction obliterated. The water was six feet deep and rising. Glass was shattering, things were falling, everything was in a tumult. She broke the surface in time to see the hall's high windows burst inward; the current grabbed her, sending her under again. She flailed helplessly, searching for something to grasp. The body of a viral careened into her. It was the female with the hair. Through the roaring murk, Amy glimpsed her eyes, full of terrified incomprehension. She sank and was gone.

Amy was being swept toward the balcony stairs. She impacted hard-more bells, more pain-but she managed to grab hold of the rail with her right hand. Her lungs cried out for air; bubbles rose from her mouth. The urge to breathe could not be forestalled much longer. The only thing to do was let the current take her, in the hope that she would be carried to safety.

She let go of the rail.

She smashed into the stairs again, but at least she was moving in the right direction. If she'd been carried into the tunnels, she would have drowned. A second shock wave hit her, squirting her upward.

She landed on the balcony, clear of the water at last. On her hands and knees, she coughed and retched, foul-tasting water spewing from her mouth.

Peter.

Hurled up the stairs by the same current, he was lying just a few feet behind her. Where was Fanning? Had he been pulled under like the other virals, carried to the bottom by his weight? As she thought this, the floor lurched. The air cracked. She looked up to see a large chunk of the ceiling detach and tumble to the water.

The building was coming down.

Peter's chest was moving rapidly. The change had yet to begin. She shook him by the shoulders, called his name; his eyes fluttered open, then squinted at her face. She saw no recognition in them, only vague puzzlement, as if he could not quite place her.

"I'm going to get you out of here."

She drew him up by his arms and folded his body over her right shoulder. Her balance wavered, but she managed to hold on. The floor was sliding and undulating like the deck of a boat. Hunks of ceiling continued to break away as the building's structural underpinnings failed.

She looked around. To her right, a door.

Run, she thought. Run and keep on running.

Then they were outside, though it hardly seemed so. The sky was dark as night, the sun eclipsed by dust, the great city unrecognizable. A vast immolation, everything rushing to ruin. The noise hammered her ears, roaring from all directions. She was on the elevated roadway on the west side of the station. It was tipped at a precarious angle; cracks were spreading, whole sections collapsing. Amy picked a direction; under Peter's weight, the best she could manage was jog. Instinct was her only guide. To run. To survive. To carry Peter away.

The road sloped down to street level. She could go no farther; her legs were giving way. At the base of the ramp, she eased Peter to the ground. He was trembling-shaking with small, sharp spasms, like the chills of a fever, but growing stronger, more defined. Amy knew what he would want. He would want to die while still a man. The mortal instruments lay everywhere among the wreckage: segments of rebar sharp as knives, hunks of twisted metal, shards of glass. Suddenly she knew: this was what Fanning had intended, all along. That she should be the one. It's love that enslaves us, Amy. She was beaten; it was all for nothing in the end. She would be alone again.

As she knelt beside him, a great sob shook her, the pain of her too-long life, forestalled for a century, unleashed. The glimpse of life she'd been given: how fleeting it was. Better, perhaps, never to have had it. Peter had begun to moan. The virus churned inside him; it bore him away.

She made her choice: a three-foot length of steel with a triangulated tip. What function had it served? Part of a signpost? The frame of a window that had once gazed out upon the busy world? The underpinnings of a mighty tower soaring to the sky? She knelt again by Peter's body. The man inside was leaving. She bent and touched his cheek. His skin was damp and feverish. The blinking had commenced. Blink. Blink, blink.

A voice from behind: "Goddamn you!"

She went hurling through the air.

Michael sprinted down Fourth Avenue, the debris cloud roaring behind him. There would be no outrunning it. He turned right onto Eighth Street. At the ends of the block, both in front and behind, the cloud roared past with a tornadic whoosh, then, as if suddenly recalling his presence-Oh, Michael, sorry I forgot you-turned the corners, barreling toward him from two directions.

He dove through the nearest door and slammed it behind him. Some kind of clothing shop, coats and dresses and shirts hanging disembodied on the racks. A wide window with mannequins propped upon an elevated platform faced the street.

The cloud arrived.

The window burst inward; Michael's hands shot up to protect his eyes. Dust engulfed the room, blasting him backward. Pricks of pain announced themselves all over his body-his arms and hands, the base of his throat, the parts of his face that had been exposed-as if he'd been attacked by a swarm of bees. He tried to rise; only then did he discover the long shard of glass embedded in his right thigh. It seemed strange that it didn't hurt more-it should have hurt like hell-but then the pain arrived, annihilating his thoughts. He was coughing, choking, drowning in the dust. He scrambled back from the window and crashed into a clothing rack. He yanked a shirt from its hanger. It was made of some kind of gauzy material. He wadded it in his fist and pressed it to his mouth and nose. Breath by hungry breath, oxygen flowed back into his lungs.

He tied the shirt around the lower half of his face. With stinging eyes, he looked out upon the dark street. He was inside the cloud. Everything was silent except for a faint pattering: the sound of airborne particles falling upon the pavement and the roofs of abandoned cars. His hands and arms were slick with blood; his leg, where the long piece of glass was buried, screamed with the slightest motion. He drew his blade and cut, then tore, the leg of his trousers away. The glass, a long, narrow splinter, irregularly edged and slightly curved, had entered at an angle; the wound was roughly halfway between his groin and his knee on the inside flank of his leg. Good Christ, he thought. Another few inches higher and that thing would have sliced my nuts off.

He reached over his head to yank another shirt from the rack and used it to wrap the exposed end of the shard. He supposed it was possible that removing the glass would open the wound wider, but the pain was unendurable. Unless he removed it, he wouldn't be going anywhere. To do it quickly: that was the best way.

He took the wrapped shard in his fist. He counted to three. He pulled.

All up and down the block, man-sized figures, moving in the dust, halted in their tracks and swiveled their faces toward the sound of Michael's scream.

"This was a temple!"

Fanning's hand caught her across the cheek. The blow sent her careening backward.

"You do this to me? To my city?"

She raised her hands to protect her face. Instead Fanning yanked her by the collar, hauled her up until her feet left the pavement, and tossed her away.

"I am going to take my time with you. You're going to want me to kill you. You are going to beg."

He came at her again, and again. Tosses, slaps, kicks. She discovered herself lying facedown. She felt detached from everything. Her thoughts possessed a lazy, unmoored quality. They seemed on the verge of some permanent and final severing, as if with the next blow they would sail up and away from her body, swallowed into the sky like a balloon cut from its string.

Yet, to yield, to accept death: the mind forbade it. The mind demanded, against all sense, to go on. Fanning was somewhere behind her. Amy's awareness of him was less as a physical presence than an abstract force, like gravity, a well of darkness into which she was being relentlessly sucked. She began to crawl. Why wouldn't Fanning just kill her? But he'd said so himself: he wanted her to feel it. To feel life leaking out of her, drip by drip.

"Look at me!"

A crack to her midriff lifted her off the ground; Fanning had kicked her. The wind sailed from her chest.

"I said, look at me!"

He kicked her again, burying his foot below her sternum and flipping her onto her back.

He was holding the sword over his head.

"We were supposed to meet at the kiosk!"

We?

"You said you would be there! You said we would be together!"

What was he seeing? Who was she to him? The transformation: it had done something to his mind.

"I never should have loved you!"

She rolled away as the sword came down. It struck the pavement with a single-noted clang. Fanning howled like wounded animal.

"I wanted to die with you!"

She was on her back again. Fanning had raised the sword above his head, ready to swing. She raised her arms in forbearance. One chance was all she had.

"Tim, don't."

Fanning froze.

"I wanted to be there. To be with you. That was all I ever wanted."

His arms tensed. At any second, the blade would fall. "I waited all night! How could you do that to me? Why didn't you come, why?"

"Because ... I died, Tim."

For a moment nothing happened. Please, she thought.

"You ... died."

"Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

His voice was numb. "On the train."

Amy spoke cautiously, keeping her voice even. "Yes. I was coming to see you. They carried me off. I couldn't stop them."

Fanning's eyes floated away from her face. He glanced around uncertainly.

"But I'm here now, Tim. That's what matters. I'm sorry it took me so long."

How long could she sustain the lie? The sword was everything. If she could convince Fanning to give it to her ...

"We can still do it," she said. "There's a way we can always be together, just like we planned."

He looked back at her.

"Come with me, Tim. There's a place we can go. I've seen it."

Fanning said nothing. She sensed her words gaining traction in his mind.

"Where?" he asked.

"It's the place where we can start over. We can do it right this time. All you have to do is give me the sword." She extended her hand. "Come with me, Tim."

Fanning's eyes were locked on hers. Everything was inside them, the whole history of the man he'd been. The pain. The loneliness. The interminable hours of his life. Then: "You."

She was losing him. "Give me the sword, Tim. That's all you have to do."

"You're not her."

She felt it all collapsing. "Tim, it's me. It's Liz."

"You're ... Amy."

Fifty yards away, lying faceup on the ground, the man known as Peter Jaxon had begun to disappear.