The first thing to disappear was a 20-story condo. Really, it was a pair of condos, glass twins so clear they had to put up a net to keep birds from smashing into the windows as we bolted them into its steel skeleton.

Then a gloved hand pressed a button.

Not that it was really gone. In that moment, a shroud of perfect dark wrapped around it tight as cellophane. If you were watching, you'd have seen it shudder into void so quickly that an inverted ghost of it would have kept right on burning on the backs of your eyes.

It did for me, anyway.

When we got finished building, and the button was pushed, they called it "New Black Towers."