She took the Hopper off auto and dipped the nose to move it north, followed the black scar of the East River toward midtown. The contrast between the landscape to her left and right was stark. Lower Manhattan still had a vestigial echo of its earlier street life, but the higher they went, the more empty roads she saw. Towers clustered like grass, the base of each one a hundred-foot wall of reinforced concrete. Rings of smart-home defense systems pushed out to the property line, robot sentries watching sodium-orange streets lacking any life. Above them, skyscrapers rose as rods of light, some subtle with the translucent walls of a geisha house, others stripped naked to reveal their structural trusses. All were empty this low down. Alice looked up. A mile overhead the towers became lumpen and buckled like diseased trees as they cupped hidden worlds. She’d never been up there; never would.