Dean leaned against a shattered wall, the agony in his left shoulder spreading like fire, but he grinned.
Sam sat beside him, using his last bandage to bind the wound on his chest.
Castiel stood before the slowly drying yellow stain, his fingers still held in the position of touch, an almost dazed calm in his eyes.
Reports from the various teams continued over the communicator:
"...Sector Four cleared, twelve hosts captured..."
"...Aerial units reporting no escaping energy streams..."
"...Municipal center confirms the borax concentration in the water supply has reached purification standards..."
Everything was over.
Yet the feeling of victory lasted less than thirty seconds before the building began to shake.
It was not an aftershock from an explosion, but a deeper tremor rising from the building's skeletal framework.
Dean felt it first. A dull pulse came from within the wall at his back, like the heartbeat of some colossal beast.
Once, twice, three times.
Spiderweb cracks appeared across the wall's surface, pale yellow light seeping through them.
"What..." Sam pushed himself up.
Before he could finish, the entire floor suddenly heaved upward.
The whole forty-eighth-floor penthouse level was shoved violently upward from below by an invisible giant hand. Concrete slabs shattered, buckled, and slammed into one another.
The satellite transmitter toppled over, striking the ground in a shower of sparks.
The corpses of those black-robed Leviathan hosts slid toward the center and piled together.
"The energy core!" Castiel spun around, his face drained of color. "Leviathan's primary consciousness has been destroyed. Its energy core is about to collapse—it was embedded in this building's foundation, and it's out of control!"
As if to confirm his words, a series of muffled explosions sounded from within the building.
Sheets of glass curtain wall peeled away, and steel reinforcement bars twisted out