The device’s projectiles were marble sized force field orbs, traveling through the air until they met something solid.

Aron was hit by dozens of them. As soon as they made contact with his skin they expanded into rings and spheres that stuck to his body. He was immobilized in space, half sitting, pressed to the marshmallow covered floor.

His wide eyes were fixed on the eldritch apparatus upon its mundane pedestal. The boy tried to calm himself. He was still winning. Only the length of half the building separated him from the object.

Something swooshed.

A hissing sound he knew too well. There were tiny holes in the floor and ceiling. Many of the pipes had been broken but that didn’t stop the gas from flowing into the room. More toxin. And who could say if this one was lethal? How many layers of successive traps had the Shadow planned? If any of his devices gave him powers like Junior’s it might actually be impossible to escape alive.

Not that Aron was about to give up.

Breaking the exterior walls was too risky as it might have brought down the whole building, which was probably wonky enough after his rampage. So he tore pieces out of the floor and dropped them down until he was on the only sizeable platform left. That should give him a little more air.

He was about to do the same with levels below to finally break the gas pipes comfortably far down and redirect them outside. The floor under the pedestal crumbled. The alien device fell.

And Aron didn’t fall with it!

With a gross crunching sound, the ugly thing impacted below from where smoke and dust were rising, limiting his vision.

He transfigured the cashmere covered marshmallow pile under him to glass surrounding his body as a dome to secure non-toxic air flow for as long as there was oxygen in the half sphere. He had bought himself a few minutes to think.

If the device could be moved and he was still stuck in the same spot that meant…the force fields were fixed to the specific objects and not in relation to the device. And it also meant his motion wasn’t as limited as he thought. At least in one direction. If he couldn’t get himself there, he had to bring it to him.

More detonations far below. The sound of glass breaking. Vibrations traveling through the construction.

Aron crumbled the ground under himself and fell onto the same level as the device. There were enough marshmallows left to save his spine.

Of course his glass dome shattered but he transformed it whole the moment he impacted, before any precious air could escape. There was fire everywhere. As an afterthought he turned the glass to diamond to keep it from fracturing in the heat. Now where was it? He couldn’t see it anymore – this floor had interior walls. The smoke was so thick that nothing outside his dome was even visible. Much of the surrounding was ablaze with some strange, oily fuel that gave off black smoke.

There was a chance that freezing the area to put the fires out was going to trigger more detonations so he didn’t attempt it.

How could he get to the device? Turn the floor into a slide leading to the middle of the level below and just hope the thing was going to drop into his hands? But that relied on luck. He knew exactly where it was. How could he use that to his advantage? And even after that he still had to escape with a paralyzed body.

Aron had an idea. It was a mad one. And possibly one with catastrophic consequences. Quite possibly, really.

Despair won over caution.

He could only hope the plaza had been evacuated. There was a good chance he’d hit someone. Or something. No avoiding that.

***

It happened a lot quicker than it felt. And it felt really quick.

Step one: Aron disintegrated the floor on which the device laid and five below that, making it fall to where he needed it to be.

Step two: Aron disintegrated the level he was on and everything between him and the device’s level. For all of a second he was free falling through a cloud of dust inside the crumbling structure, holding his breath.

Step three: Aron moved the building around him.

The entire skyscraper snapped at the base and jumped to one side. Two hundred thousand tons of steel and concrete were slammed onto the plaza by the force of a boy’s mind.

While the skyscraper moved, Aron fell, making his way vertically – but seemingly diagonally – towards the device. An arm’s length before he touched it, he was in reach. As expected, this force field didn’t block transfiguration either. The horrid eldritch thing turned to dust and everything below it did too.

He was still falling. There had to be about thirty or forty floors left.

Now for the tricky part.

Aron moved the tower again. This time leaning it forward so it would fall onto the plaza and hopefully avoid bringing down any other skyscrapers with it. The back wall approached him as he kept falling. Everything between him and the outside disintegrated during free fall and the boy found himself passing the hole to the exterior.

The outside was sunny but a bit dimmed by all the rising smoke from the multiple fires that up the unfinished front.

The collapse was surprisingly loud. The inner structure fought against its demise with every piece of steel baked into it.

As the building became more and more horizontal, Aron hit the concrete on the outside wall and transformed it into a slide as he went along, gliding down the skyscraper. His fall turned into a ride, then got slower and as the building almost laid flat he halted himself by turning the wall into something grittier that caught onto his now shredded overall.

There was a lot of smoke and dust and debris. Even more rose as the tower smashed into the earth.

Aron broke the part he was on into chucks and made his way down, falling through the remainder of the unfurnished lobby. He came to a rest at the broken base of the burning building. By now he could move a hand or a foot but spasmed whenever he tried.

What was his plan now? Wait until he could move again? What if somebody found him in the meantime? He’d have to hide. Once he was able to move he would have to ask around for a pay phone. Somebody in this city had to speak the kind of English he could actually understand.

His mind was occupied with ideas of transforming his attire into something a backpack tourist could credibly wear and how to turn rocks into Hong Kong Dollars when a link prodded his mind.

“Aron? Are you awake?”

“Minhyun?”

“Yes! Thank goodness. I’m so happy, you have no idea. Do you know what that looked like? Did you do that? On purpose? I was already planning your funeral.”

The paralyzed boy laughed. His lungs and chest muscles didn’t really agree with that, but as far as possible in his condition, he laughed. It turned into a teary cough and his vision blurred, but that didn’t stop him from sending.

“How did you find me?”

“Junior,” Minhyun sent. “He watched TV all day to get a glimpse at the news before they happened. When he foresaw the collapse of this building half an hour ago, he recognized that it broke in an impossible way. Not something that’s too hard to obfuscate. It’s not even making international news. Are you okay? We’re almost there.”

“Sure,” Aron sent, now breathing more easily, slowly, with his eyes closed. “But… I can’t move.”

“What do you mean? You’re trapped?”

“No...I’m paralyzed...And I hope you can get to me fast, because…now that all the excitement is gone, I think…I’m falling asleep. Please…Min…hyun…”

Above him, Aron heard the blades of a helicopter.

Then everything went black.

***

The next day, Aron spent in a hospital where he got the best detox cure the doctors could figure out. Without knowing what the specific gas was he’d be lucky if there was no permanent damage to his nerves. The spasms would continue for a while. Recovery time was pegged somewhere between a week and a month.

Then he was moved home to the main base.

It was extraordinarily weird, sitting in a wheelchair. He was used to having working legs for one thing. But unlike most people he was also used to moving things with telekinesis. Only himself and the things he touched were unmovable to him. And that was the weird part. He had an easier time maneuvering absolutely anything other than his wheelchair. He had never realized how odd that was, because…well, he had been able to just go places.

Minhyun shoved him around with endless patience. The base had ramps for internal transport of large stuff. But the rest wasn’t accessible, exactly. Doorframes were a repeating obstacle.

All the sweet treats in the world couldn’t lift his mood the way Minhyun’s care did. Things went almost back to normal. Now that the feeling was returning to his limbs, the spasms actually hurt. But that was as bad as it got and only temporary.

Aron was glad to be alive.

There were thoughts that kept him going. They were mean thoughts, technically, but he found them comforting. Oh, how very sorry the Shadow would be once they had him.