The steel orb floated in the air above the city, vibrating with potential energy. For the first time, I was really able to grasp hold of something. I felt like a professional baseball pitcher picking up a ball for the first time in the season.

  My left hand held the range to the kaiju while my right held the baseball, a several-hundred-pound sphere of condensed steel. Due to the Mandeville Limit, I had a perfect understanding of the distance between myself and my target. I could feel the kaiju as well as I could feel my left hand.

  “It is 28,450 feet away, or 5.4 miles,” Sparrow said, her tone completely serious. All signs of the earlier banter were completely gone.

  Sparrow knelt down like a sniper preparing to fire, and she held a thick pair of binoculars up to her eyes. Not looking away from the kaiju, she asked, “Do you have the shot?”

  “I couldn’t miss if I tried.”

  With the invisible baseball in my hand, I punched forward into my open palm. Matching my movement, the steel cannonball shot forward, cracking as it broke the sound barrier. It accelerated every millisecond until the moment it struck the kaiju in the chest after 1.55 seconds. At the moment of impact, the cannonball was traveling at Mach 20.

  The cannonball, flying at the speed of a meteor, struck Electrozilla in the chest. There was an explosion of heat and viscera as the steel projectile pierced right through the creature’s body. The cannonball crashed into Lake Michigan a few miles behind the creature, and a plume of water erupted several thousand feet into the air. Tremors shook through the ground as Kaiju 21 took two faltering steps back, and I held my breath as I waited to see if it would fall.

  Half a dozen bright beams of light shot out from various points in the city and struck Electrozilla in the terrible, gaping wound that I had just dug in his scaly exterior. The creature thrashed and stumbled as the flaming tornado diverted toward the injured beast. The flame, writhing as if it was a living organism, crawled into the creature’s wound and began burning it from the inside.

  Electrozilla stumbled once more and finally fell into the water. The living flames withdrew just before the kaiju was submerged, falling back to the port from which they originated.

  Once the kaiju disappeared from view, all that remained was a circle of dark red blood spreading toward the port like an oil spill. I allowed myself to let out a sigh of relief. That was easier than I expected. That really was the privilege I had been given by this earth-shattering power. There probably wasn’t anything in the world that could survive one of my attacks.

  “Who was controlling the fire?” I asked, relaxing and rotating my shoulders.

  “Akuma,” Sparrow answered shortly. Her eyes were still fixed on the water that had just been dyed red.

  “Why are you worried? I put a hole in that thing’s chest. There’s no way it could have survived,” I asked with a relaxed smile on my face.

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  The bloody water began to bubble. Seconds later, Electrozilla’s head reappeared. He stood up once more, and all evidence of that lethal wound I had dealt to it just seconds before was gone. In a matter of seconds, Kaiju 21 had completely healed itself.

  “Not fair!” I shouted petulantly as Electrozilla began walking toward the port once more. It seemed completely unbothered by my efforts to kill it.

  Sparrow pressed one finger to her ear, and her skin paled significantly. Her eyes widened with fear, and she looked at me with the expression of a drowning woman looking at a life preserver.

  “I just received a message from the higher ups. They’re asking if you can kill Kaiju 21. If you can’t, they need to start evacuating the entire city immediately. They need an immediate answer. Can you do it?”

  I stopped and turned my senses inward. Could I do it? How much power did I have left in the tank? Once again, I looked down at my hands and thought about how much power was contained within.

  “I can win,” I said with total confidence.

  Far below the surface, I felt a well of power that I had not yet drawn from. The flesh of Electrozilla was weak, and I just had to rip and tear until he couldn’t regenerate any more. The only question was how much collateral damage would I cause. Parts of the city were already flooding from the instability in Lake Michigan caused by my telekinetic assault.

  “I need one of those ‘higher ups’ to agree to take responsibility for any collateral damage I cause. If they want the city to be saved, I’ll need to break some stuff.”

  While Sparrow carried out a conversation on her earpiece, I sat on the lip of the building and watched Electrozilla continue his slow approach. I pulled my MP3 player out of the pocket of my prison uniform and started scrolling through my playlist. My eyes were drawn to the band Chicago, and I started looking through songs in their catalogue.

  Ryan approached me, and I waved at him in greeting. He was wearing civilian clothes. He must have changed in the Albatross. Sparrow seemed to be involved in a pitched argument, so we probably had a minute to talk.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but you’re really the strongest telekinetic in the world,” Ryan said with a strangely wistful look in his eyes. “You have the power to change the world.”

  “If I survive,” I said with a smile.

  “Yeah.” Ryan chuckled. “I’ll probably get out of here in a second, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. You’re a wanted man, after all.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be able to get all that stuff worked out. Stay strong, friend.”

  “You too.”

  Ryan Kovacs stood from his location on the perch, and he disappeared a few seconds later into the apartment building. No matter what happened during my fight, I believed he would survive. He was stronger than the strongest normal human. He could survive an evacuation.

  “Macro-Kinetic,” Sparrow called out. “They responded. Speaker of the House Melissa Monroe says she will take responsibility for any collateral damage caused by you.”

  “Good enough,” I said, shrugging. I rose to my feet, popped my earbuds into my ears, and began playing 25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago on my MP3 player.

  “Let’s go to work.”