"Are you in some sort of trouble?"

"I don't know." He took a deep breath while he mulled over the best way to tell her. "I'm a superhuman."

She smiled. "Uh huh."

"How were they killed?"

"You don't need to hear the details. Not now."

"I'm not sure I'm up to actually flying just yet."

"Only one way to find out."

"You have been granted a period of five minutes of this officer's time to present your appeal against your automatic conviction. If this officer believes that your conviction should be upheld, you will be taken to a juvenile detention center where you will be incarcerated for a period of two hundred and forty days."

"So who are you?"

"Look, see, the thing is... if you know my real name and say you get captured and tortured, then you might tell them my name, and next thing I know the bad guys are storming into my house while I'm asleep."

"Huh. Listen, pal, if I get captured and tortured and I find out you're asleep and not out there trying to save me, I will tell them your name."

Roz watched as the heavy gray clouds rolled in from the east. They were coming in fast and low, obscuring the buildings on the far side of Central Park, then over the park itself, until all she could see was a thick mist.

It lasted only a moment, and then the sky was clear again.

The ever-present hum of Manhattan's traffic was gone.

And in the middle of Central Park, where there once had been grass and trees and people, there was now a one-hundred-and-fifty-story glass-and-steel building.