The Towering Sky

"Every rise has a fall."

The Towering Sky is the third and final book in The Thousandth Floor trilogy. The book was published on August 28, 2018.

Synopsis
It's New York City, 2118.

In Manhattan’s glamorous thousand-story supertower, millions of people are living scandalous lives. Leda, Watt, Rylin, Avery, and Calliope are all struggling to hide the biggest secrets of all, secrets that could destroy everything, and send their perfect worlds toppling over the edge.

Because every rise has a fall.

Prologue
There has always been something otherworldly about the first snow of the year in New York.

It gilds the city’s flaws, its hard edges; transforming Manhattan into a proud, glittering, Northern place. Magic hangs heavy in the air. On the morning of the first snow, even the most jaded New Yorkers pause in the streets to look up at the sky, stilled by a quiet sense of awe. As if every hot summer they forgot that this was possible, and only when the first flakes of snow kiss their faces can they believe in it again.

It feels almost as if the snowfall might wash the city clean, reveal all the monstrous secrets buried beneath its surface.

But then, some secrets are best kept buried.

It was on one of these mornings of cold, enchanted silence that a girl stood on the roof of Manhattan’s enormous skyscraper.

She stepped closer to the edge, and the wind whipped at her hair. Snowflakes danced around her in splintered crystals. Her skin glowed like a hologram in the grey predawn light. If anyone had been up there to see her, they would have said that she looked troubled, and sharply beautiful. And afraid.

She hadn’t been on the roof in over a year, yet it looked the same as ever. Photovoltaic panels huddled on its surface, waiting to drink in the sun and convert it to usable power. An enormous steel spire twisted up to collide with the sky. And below her hummed an entire city—a thousand-story Tower, teeming with millions of people.

Some of them she had loved, some of them she had resented. Many she had never known at all. And yet in their own way they had betrayed her, every last one of them. They had made her life unbearable, by depriving her of the one person she had ever loved.

The girl knew she’d been up here too long. She was starting to feel the familiar slippery lightheadedness as her body slowed down, struggling to adjust to the decreased oxygen, to pull resources in toward her core. She curled her toes. They were numb. The air downstairs was oxygenated and infused with vitamins, but up here on the roof it felt whip-thin.

She hoped they would forgive her for what she was about to do. But she didn’t have a choice. It was either this, or go on leading a shriveled, starved half-life; a life deprived of the only person who made life worth living. She felt a pang of guilt, but even stronger was her profound sense of relief, that at least—at last—it would soon be over.

The girl reached up to wipe at her eyes, as if the wind had stung them to tears.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though there was no one around to hear. Who was she talking to, anyway? Maybe the city below her, or the entire world, or her own quiet conscience.

And what did it matter? New York would go on with or without her, the same as ever, just as loud and electric and raucous and bright. New York didn’t care that those were the last words the girl ever spoke.

Character Appearances

 * (The list of characters are in order of appearance.)