Pure white bright glare erased the universe.
For half a second, the mesosphere ceased to have color, depth, or shadow.
The hundred-gigawatt bolt of raw void-lightning struck the heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron apex mast with a bone-shaking blast wave that blasted the thin air outward in an expanding sonic ring.
The blast shattered five miles of upper cloud deck. It exposed the dark blue curve of the continent below in stark, terrifying clarity.
On the running pulpit, every hair on Giles Croft’s neck stood straight up.
The air crackled with heavy ozone, tasting like zinc filings and copper wire on the back of his tongue. Static electricity leaped between the brass rivets of his leather work jacket and the grounded steel console railing in nonstop blue sparks.
A normal steel skyscraper struck by a hundred massive power loads of sky charge would have exploded like a bomb.
The electric current would have boiled away internal channels, flash-melted elevator cables, and turned load-bearing steel into molten melted rock waste within split seconds.
