New York, seen from the air, produces a specific physical response before you've even landed. Something tightens in the chest.

Manhattan sits down there like a narrow stone arrowhead — pinched between the Hudson and the East River, pointed south. The further south you go, the denser it gets, the heavier it gets. More steel, more history, more weight per square foot.

Keep descending. You'll see the Statue of Liberty standing offshore, the way she always has. You'll catch a long reflection — two square pools, like eyes looking straight up at the sky. Then a white glass tower, catching light the way towers in this city have always caught light, like they're competing with the sun. And next to it, that strange white skeletal creature emerging from the ground.

That's where we're going.