It reached water, but she couldn’t stop. She had to get the confluence as far from land as possible – but the Hudson and Upper Bay were swarming with water traffic, commercial vessels and tourist boats rounding Manhattan’s photogenic southern tip. There would be casualties, no matter what. Her only hope was that any captain seeing the unnatural display would turn away at full speed . . .

She guided the disturbance onwards. It was now roughly equidistant between Manhattan and Liberty Island, in open water but still less than a mile from either. She tried to force it southwards into the wider bay, but she was out of time—

Nina used every remaining ounce of her willpower to hold the confluence in check, desperately trying to prevent the inevitable for a few more seconds.

It wasn’t enough.

Ten and a half thousand miles away, the planet’s raw power finally erupted in a massive burst. The effect was like the detonation of a nuclear device at the bottom of the Hudson.

Unimaginable energies flashed water to steam, blinding bolts of impossibly coloured lightning stabbing skywards as the blast kicked up a huge circular wall of water. It rushed outwards, consuming boats before smashing into land.

The flat, mostly artificial Ellis Island was all but obliterated, visitors to the Museum of Immigration suffering horrific casualties as waves demolished the historic building. Tourists on Liberty Island were also swept screaming into the bay, though the Statue of Liberty itself, high on its plinth, took only minor damage.

The same could not be said for New York, or Jersey City across the Hudson. The towering wave pounded both cities, overwhelming tidal defences and sending deadly tsunamis across parks and down streets. People were carried away by the force of the water, cars and buses and trucks dragged from the roads, subway lines and road tunnels flooded.

Then the cataclysmic release of earth energy faded to nothing, spent. The waves slowed, fell, retreated . . .

Leaving devastation in their wake.

The explosive release hit Nina almost like a physical blow, knocking her backwards – and cutting her link to the netherworld. She sat stunned for a moment, before scrambling back to the machine. What had happened to New York? She had to know . . .

She put her hands back against the crystals, re-entering the parallel world. It was instantly clear that the eruption had taken place: the pressure, the feeling of unimaginable forces straining to burst loose, was gone. She followed the paths back around the world to her hometown . . .

It was bad. The explosion had left a deep scar, severing the earth energy flows in a way that might take months or years to recover. Bringing her alternate senses closer, she found that in places where there had been life, now there was little, or none. A chill ran through her. She had failed. Hundreds of people had died, thousands injured . . .