Miles stares at the ragged hole in the glass. Jesus, he did it! All that training paid off! He blew the son of a bitch away!

Suddenly the remaining glass is shattered by a barrage from below. Miles turns, ducks, and dives for the door. They'll be after him now. No time to get dressed. He runs out into the hall and automatically turns toward the elevators. He stops. No. Too easy to trap him there. He whirls and runs for the stairs.

As he reaches the door he hears a commotion behind him. He looks back and sees a squad of NWO troopers rush out of the elevator foyer.

"Damn!" he whispers and pushes through into the stairwell.

He starts down but hears the sound of running feet echoing from below. He's got only one option now, and since there's only one floor above him, that doesn't leave him far to go.

He bounds up four flights to a red door. The sign says:

FOR EMERGENCY ONLY ALARM WILL SOUND

He pushes through and, just as promised, the alarm starts ringing. And now he's on the roof and he knows it's Alamo time. He won't get out of this alive, but he'll take as many of the bastards as he can with him before he dies.

The oblivious city is lit up around him. In how many other buildings is this same scene being played out?

He finds an air conditioning vent and crouches behind it, points the AK-47 at the door, and waits.

Suddenly a nylon rope whips around his upper body and tightens like a noose, pinning his arms at his sides. He drops the rifle as he is yanked off his feet and into the air.

He looks above and sees a giant black helicopter reeling him in like a cheap toy in an arcade game. Why can't he hear it? Why doesn't he feel the wash from its rotating blades?

Rough hands haul him into the black maw in the side of the craft. As the rope is loosened and pulled over his head, an accented voice, much like that of the trooper he killed, whispers in his ear.

"We've been looking for you. You're too valuable to kill, so we've got a special spot reserved in one of the re-education camps. You'll make a fine addition to one of our units."

No! He won't be brainwashed!

Miles kicks out and leaps from the helicopter. Death first!

But a hand grabs the back of his shirt, and a different voice, a very American voice, starts shouting…

"Easy, now. Easy. You don't want to hurt yourself." Miles looked down and saw the street eight stories below. With a cry of alarm, he turned and lurched away——into the arms of a large black man in some sort of uniform.

"Hey, now, that's better!"

It took Miles a second to recognize him as a hotel security guard.

"Where am I? He said, shakily pulling free of the guard's grasp.

"Up on the roof."

"How—how'd I get here?"

"Sleepwalking, I think. You sure didn't look completely awake when you passed me in the hall a few minutes ago. And since it's my job to be on the lookout for things like people wandering around dressed in their skivvies at four-thirty in the morning, I decided to follow you. Good thing I did or you'd be splattered on the sidewalk by now."

Miles shuddered. "But I never sleepwalk."

"Well, you did tonight. Come on," he said, gesturing toward the door to the stairs. "Let's get you back to your room."

Shakily, Miles led the way.

"We don't have to tell anyone about this do we?"

"I'll have to put it in my report," the guard said, "but it won't go beyond that."

"Good," Miles said, relieved. "Thank you. I have a reputation to uphold in this organization."

"I hear you. It's just a good thing I was upholding your ass a few moments ago or you wouldn't be worrying about your reputation or anything else."

The guard laughed good-naturedly. Miles saw nothing funny about it.

Jack…

…feels his bed move and opens his eyes.

His eyes search for the clock's red numerals and can't find them. The room is dark…too dark. Light from the street lamps below usually leaks around the edges of the drapes, but not now. A sound leaks through instead…a deep basso rumble shuddering through the floor and walls.

His bed trembles as the rumble grows, mixing with frightened cries and wails from outside.

Jack rises and pads across the vibrating floor to the window where he pulls back the drapes. The moon is high and full in a pristine sky, bathing the world outside with glacial light. The street is clogged with crawling cars and frantic people screaming, running, clawing over each other in a scene out of every giant monster film ever made. It's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms times ten, but this is no movie; this is real. Even up here on the fifth floor he can smell the raw-edged panic as the mob struggles downhill, west, toward the river. He scans his limited view to the east to see what's driving them. All he can tell is that the rest of the city is dark.

Power failure, he thinks, and then blinks. An icy phantom breeze ripples his nape hairs as he cups his hands around his eyes and squints through the glass…it's too dark. Even with the power gone and the lights out, the moonlight should pick up something.

Jack slides the window back and pokes his head through the opening for a better look. If nothing else, the metallic top of the Empire State Building should be visible. But the sky is empty there, stars twinkle where buildings stood.

And that rumble, growing ever louder, deafening now, jittering the entire building on its foundation.

And then, still staring east, Jack sees an office building tilt, then fall away, disappearing behind the structure before it. And now that building is collapsing, and then the one in front of it follows, a wave of destruction coming his way.

Jack is about to pull his head inside and run downstairs to join the crowd below when he sees it, moving inexorably along the street at the speed of a brisk walk, devouring everything in its path. Not a ravaging behemoth from another age, something much simpler and much, much worse.

A hole…so wide the moonlight can't find its far edge, so deep Jack can't hear the buildings hit bottom when they tumble into its ever-expanding maw. If the world were flat, a dirt pancake floating in space, and its edge began to crumble and fall away, this is what it would be like on that edge.

Part of Jack is saying this is a dream, it has to be, but another part is saying you wish it was a dream: this is too real to be a dream. Either way, he knows he can't escape, knows the hole will swallow the hotel well before he reaches the lobby. So he watches in fascinated dread as Hell's Kitchen crumbles and disappears into the approaching edge of infinity. Panic reigns supreme below as the marching rim undermines the pavement, sending cars and screaming bodies tumbling into the void, but Jack feels an unnatural calm. Gia and Vicky are already gone, swallowed with the rest of the East Side; soon he will be following them and there is nothing he can do about it, nothing he cares to do about it.

The rim is almost to the hotel now. Jack grabs a chair and uses it to smash the window. Then he climbs out onto the ledge and strains to see into the depths, but the bottom is lost in midnight shadow. He feels the building shudder and tilt to a crazy angle. As the hotel leans, poised on the rim, Jack leaps from the ledge. If he's going to fall, he'll fall his way.

He swan-dives into the abyss…

And hears a loud crash! It's not the hotel…it's something else…something smaller…closer…

Jack blinked in the darkness. Not complete darkness. The glowing red numerals on the clock read 4:33; light from the street filtered around the drapes. No cosmic rumble or sound of mass panic in the street outside.

He let out a deep breath. Another nightmare. But what was that noise? Sounded like it had come from—