Metaphor for Life
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Plot Device Publishing

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 10: METAPHOR FOR LIFE
Copyright (c) 2021 Liam Gibbs
All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

As awesome as this book is, it’s a work of fiction. I know, I know. We were all hoping, but it just ain’t gonna be. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s freaky imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely bonkers and coincidental. In other words, sadly you can’t get Schizophrenic’s autograph.

ISBN 13: 978-1777139636
First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

The Story So Far...

This stupendous, amazing, spectacular, not-at-all-overhyped comedy/science-fiction series can be found in the following parts:

Book 1: Serial Fiction Sideshow, available in the hearts of one and all

Book 2: Home Sweet Home Invasion, available in the hearts of one and all

Book 3: Technophobia, available in the h—you’re starting to see a pattern here, aren’t you?

Book 4: Armageddon Trigger Finger, available in...hey...your heart. And one and all’s too.

Book 5: The Genetic Equation, available blah blah blah.

Book 6: Power Tool, not available. Just kidding. Totally available.

Book 0: The Story So Far, you know the drill.

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Book 8: Untitled of Attitude Adjustments

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

Book 11: Oh, Crock, Here Comes a Meteor!

Book 12: His Kingdom Come

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Book 16: Life Like Broken Glass

Book 17: The Church of Steeple

Book 18: Blood Bunny

Book 19: Disease of Behavior

Book 20: The Paper Tiger’s Yardstick

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Book 23: Marching Orders

Book 24: We, Robots

Please visit www.inagalaxyfarfarawRy.com for more information.

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

Maybe check out these other things ’cause they’re superfine too!

Not So Superpowered, available at tiny.cc/nssuperpowered

Three Flash Fictions, available upon request from the author

Random limericks, available in bathroom stalls

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

Chapter One: Attention Shoppers

Chapter Two: Where There’s a Will...

Chapter Three: Jaw-Dropping

Chapter Four: Cattle Call

Chapter Five: The Home Version of Lets’ See if This Is Edible

Chapter Six: Not So Friendly but Still Fire

Chapter Seven: Take Charge

Chapter Eight: Ice Cream Is at Stake

Chapter Nine: All Aboard the Derailed Train of Thought

Chapter Ten: Still Life

Chapter Eleven: A Solid Defense

Chapter Twelve: Welcome to the Neighborhood

Chapter Thirteen: Morning, Sunshine

Chapter Fourteen: Labor Dispute

Chapter Fifteen: Crapshot in the Dark

Chapter Sixteen: Stimulating Conversation

Chapter Seventeen: Fancy Meeting You Here

Chapter Eighteen: Sideshow of Shenanigans

Chapter Nineteen: Block Party

Chapter Twenty: Getting Beaten Up Hurts...Tons

Chapter Twenty-One: ...There’s a Way In

Appendices

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Connect with the Series

This Isn’t Even My Final Form!

The following story ain’t professionally edited. I know, I know, why am I inflicting this on you?

For cool reasons.

Professional editing, covers, and the whole shebang takes money. And creating appendix material takes time. The In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy series has been steadily seeing new releases, but they’re release at the rate of one per year, while they’re written at a rate of one every nine months or so. Do the math. The series will never catch up.

The author, awesome brain that he has, only ever wanted to share these stories with the world.

Money wasn’t ever a goal. I know by offering these books for free—professionally packaged or not—I’ll be losing money. I honestly don’t care. Since releasing the books free of charge yet without the “professional” look, I’ve found the stress of running this whole series has gotten much manageable. This leaves me with more time to do what I set out to do: write the stories and share them.

I still attend trade shows and comic conventions and sell the books there. Each book will, eventually, be given the professional touch. But, while we’re waiting, all I want to do is share these.

If you see something ain’t right, or something you want to comment on, please feel free. Think of yourself as a beta-reader: a pre-reader of something unreleased. Voice your thoughts at liamgibbs@inagalaxyfarfarawry.com. Until the book gets professionally released, I consider it a work in progress.

So what you’re reading here is the book without the professional touches. I’ve edited this book a dozen times or more, and so I believe it’s as polished as I can get it. I feel comfortable letting you see it. It will one day be professionally edited. One day. But until then, know that you’re reading what I believe to be as polished as I myself can get it.

Enjoy!

Or don’t. I really have no control.

Chapter One: From Whence We Came

January 23, 9110. 6:51 a.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

Blam blam! Bad Guy leader Master Asinine fired his customary two-light-bullet warning shot into the brain of the mall security guard who stood a few yards down the amber-lit shopping hall. Fatal warning shots always did the trick and left a pleasant head puddle.

“Howdy, shoppers,” Asinine said into his gabber, that tiny communication device in his year, to all who patronized the Cambridge Spend-a-Lot Mall at such an early hour. Set to megaphone mode, the gabber projected his voice in a brain-blistering racket down the hall, rattling storefront windows and toppling over two or three mannequins. Was it two or three? He never could tell the difference between those numbers, but it was definitely more than zero and fewer than something else.

He’d achieved the necessary effect: cowering, blundering, fainting, and a few deep-reaching barfs, this time not from himself. When the last bargain hunter finished trembling, tripped over her bags, paused, glanced at Master Asinine’s beer hat, and laughed, Asinine lowered his gun but kept his eagle eyes on the crowd for anybody who wanted to be a dead hero.

Parades of stores flanked the marble-floored hall: a shoe outlet, a fitness depot, a clothes retailer...huh...a llama rental agency of all things. Dozens of shoppers shuddered in clusters and kissed their embraced knees. They blanched in ghostly hues, weeping. Asinine’s spinning bowtie caused their primal dread.

“Okay, listen up, everybody. That means you, too, muumuu-wearing granny pants.” Asinine sipped from one of the beer hat’s sixteen dangling straws. Sixteen. Yeah, he did beer hats right, though he filled the containers with carbonated gold such as cola, root beer, curdled milk, and drain cleaner to unclog his phlegm. Go big or go home, and since he forgot where he lived, he had only one option.

Underneath a drafty air vent, he scanned his audience. “I have an emergency here, my adoring public. Station Zilcho needs batteries, so I and my associates need you to scurry out of our way. Also need a mall map to show us, first, the nearest ice cream parlor—not frozen yogurt since that stuff tastes like dairy smog—and second, a battery outlet whose employees don’t mind us stealing thousands of double-A batteries and maybe some dryer sheets. We’re out. Also, if you can direct us to your Cineplex, that would be handy. Cosmonaut Chimp: The Movie/Ninety-Minute Toy Commercial ranks mucho highly on our to-do list.” He fired another warning shot, this time into the ceiling. “Also, a place that sells shampoo to clean out that ceiling stuff I warning-shot into my hair.”

Barely a month ago, the power cells feeding Station Zilcho, the Bad Guys’ spaceborne headquarters, had been destroyed. Since, the Bad Guys operated their station on residual scraps of energy in a single emergency power cell, but even that now ran low. Station Zilcho needed a more permanent solution. So accompanying Master Asinine on this power-seeking mission were three of his Bad Guy entourage and shopping buddies: cowboy hickster Master Asinine Sucks, barely-able-to-walk-under-his-own-power Multipurpose, and brawny Schizophrenic—both heads, though Righty would soon suffer an elbow to the face if he didn’t stop slurping from the Mr. Pibb straw because, when you’re this Pibb, they called you mister.

Master Asinine’s words echoed down the corridor. No one responded, not even a rustling stutter of “thataway.” Hmph.

“Hey, brain trust.” Schizophrenic’s left head, Lefty, snorted, his engine-block chest leaning in. “You mean you didn’t check the layout of this shopping dump? So we might miss Cosmonaut Chimp? You filched me out of the double C again!” Schizophrenic’s backhand smacked Asinine’s skull. Asinine didn’t mind, though. He never did because Lefty had told him not to.

Master Asinine rubbed the bruise that sparkled his nerves. “I have a general idea of what’s happening.” He checked a guitar-festooned music store and its cowering shoppers: the usual tar-faced vampire goth wannabes. He found a dude who cringed with a bag cupped over his head to conceal his patchy haircut. To talk to the man, he hunched, his knees clicking. He tapped the buffed floor with his gun, which made a quiet ping bounce around. “Listen here, poop-head—”

“If you want to borrow an insult, just ask.” Lefty snorted. “Just saying, because anybody older than six doesn’t say ‘poop-head.’ Except you, poop-head.”

Asinine ignored him. Why listen to the jerk whose brother head drowned his sorrows in stolen Mr. Pibb? Now, about the man whose tear-saturated face pleaded for a merciful end. “Listen, buddy, I don’t want to kill you, but I singled you out because you blubber like a frightened boy, and that makes me want to kill you. So”—he slurped some cherry cola, which was yum in the tum—“I’ll ask you specifically where we can find the battery outlet. Hurry, because my shopping delegation and I want to make it in time for Cosmonaut Chimp’s exciting exploits on the big screen, and the next show starts in half an hour.” He drew another sip. “And you know the lineups at the concession stand.”

The sniveling fool’s eyes shimmered through the tears that streamed down his cheeks. His hand hung floppily off a raised wrist, and his finger aimed down the hall, though with his sissy composure, it only scuffed the air.

“Good boy.” Asinine patted the man’s head, then scratched him behind his ear. Unfolding into a stoic stance, he secured his hands on his hips. “Yo-ho-ho, my co-ho-horts. This fine coward with the pants and the shirt and the uneven sideburns has shown us the way. Onward! Or, in Multipurpose’s case, sit and wait for us to get back with a forklift.”

“Hey!” shouted Multipurpose, whose only interest in this mission was to power up the station’s food processor. He mashed a fist at Asinine, which was surprising since that involved movement. “My ninja physique can crocking handle—Ooh, ooh. Muscles burning with a thousand crocking ninja suns. Ooh.” Ah, there went the predictable shoulder rub and wince that probably caused even more pain.

“You just settle right there, discount-store ninja.” Lefty chuckled, then snort-chuckled. His toothpick dangled from one lip when he spoke.

“You’re just begging for me to shove my ninja moves so far up your crock, you’ll digest ninja fist for a crocking week.” Multipurpose jabbed a sai at Lefty’s nose.

Lefty turned from Multipurpose’s toxic reek of decayed pork. “Go avoid more exercise.”

Asinine’s ear twitched. Racked only by sobs and chokes, the relative quietude now competed with a quiet clank-clank, as if a faraway trolley barged toward them. He concentrated to locate the clamor that drew closer. Left? Right? By the lottery kiosk? In his pocket? Behin—

There! From the distant miniature soundstage, a metallic figure flipped over a shopper as lithely as if riding wind. The humanoid machine withdrew a sword, which it jabbed forward. Another grey-and-silver robot jumped, caught an open-faced vent, and swung over the crowd. It reached behind its head and produced ninja stars, which it fanned as deftly as an expert blackjack dealer fanned cards. A final robot somersaulted against a wall. It smacked its palm with a fist.

“Oh, no.” Asinine choked on saliva he now realized had trickled into his throat. He wrapped his pistol in a nervous clamp. His bowtie spun and flick-flicked against his mouth. “Ninjandroids, the ninjiest of all androids and the androidiest of all ninjas.” He leaped over a whimpering shopper and darted down the hall in a scribbled path. He tripped over an errant shopping bag, scattering its contents—“Run!”—but he didn’t look back. Didn’t dare. Just bolted away.

“You guys crocking move it.” Multipurpose ran his finger along his sai. “I’ll hold off these robot crocks.”

“Sitting in the way won’t help.” Master Asinine Sucks tipped his cowboy hat at Multipurpose and sped past, Schizophrenic hot on his trail.

Asinine skidded around the corner until he reached a fresh batch of shoppers of the noncowering variety. A toy store ahead! It summoned him with an imaginary opera note that flourished in rainbow lights. Through blazing lungs and a rhythm of stomps, Asinine mustered enough strength to yell a rally cry.

He collided with an elderly prune lady and toppled her motorized cart, which puttered as smoothly as a Slinky walked down earthquake rubble. He took his chance: righted it, hopped on, and revved the chatterbox engine.

“Hurry, hurry!” Traveling at three miles an hour, he shielded his eyes from the wind that whipped him from the cart’s sight-blurring speed. A toddler wobbled past him toward the candy shop. “We’ll barricade ourselves in that toy store ahead. We’ll arm ourselves with enough water guns to rust these ninjandroids to Kingdom Come. No, wait, talking dolls to freak ’em the crock out!”

Chapter Two: Where There’s a Will...

Good Guy computer expert Ace Spandex knocked aside his soda, which hissed over his desktop. He clutched his head as if his skull expanded vengefully to make room for all the crap fed to it through radio signals. This particular signal belonged to the invasive type. It barged into his thoughts like a socially inept oaf barged into the bathroom after you let a hot fart motor through your bowels.

The signal hazed his mind so much that his vision whirled, that his surroundings looked unfamiliar as Good Guy headquarters Station One’s master communication room, his sanctum, his home away from barracks. He pitched over empty pizza boxes and strewn datasheets containing manuals or the latest comic books. Those datasheets, sheet-thin computers, flopped lazily to the floor. He barely avoided the scattered heaps of discarded electronics.

Okay, he needed to control himself. In the weak light, he sat on the floor between two teetering piles of communication devices, brushing his scarred brow. He knew who sent this signal into his brain: Mechanism. Master.

Weeks ago, Bad Guy Mechanism had captured him and installed cybernetics in his body, along with a computer brain that Mechanism now controlled remotely. How he loathed Master yet puppy-dog-abided his every word, his every behest, his every self-serving command. Crock that. Ace Spandex tried to ignore the clanging signal, but it persisted like a gabber call you just knew was your mother-in-law calling to harass you about how to raise the kids.

He tried to block the signal with his daydream subroutine but, like a sizzle of static, this signal would not allow anyone to ignore it. Same as every other signal Master beamed to him from whatever far reaches of the starry yonder Station Zilcho had hurtled into. And so Ace Spandex answered with a computerized hello. But one of those hellos that made clear your disdain because maybe this call had pulled you out of the shower and now you were deluging the floor with water.

W-what was this signal? What was th-this command that persisted so urgently? He now regretted answering. Closed his eyes, breathed deeply. He’d picture his happy place but last week Power Plant had set it on fire.

Okay, okay, sooner or later he’d have to check this signal. Fine. Check. What had he to lose? Like plunging into frigid water...he backed onto the diving board of thought...and darted into a cannonball into the pond of Master’s bidding.

His mission this time, should he choose to accept it? Actually, he had no choice, just like with the debacle that involved throwing his hands in the air and waving them ’round like he just didn’t care. Not Master’s message, but he often received signals from that pirate hip hop radio station. And he couldn’t imagine feeling that apathetically about hand-air interaction.

Anyway, his mission. Oh, boy. He gripped a signal locator in one hand and worked it over and over. First, he deleted the advertisement that piggybacked Master’s signal: no, he would not consider switching long-distance brainwashing providers. Now for Master’s decree. Master wanted him to...download pieces of the Good Guys’ database into his brain and use that information to schedule a downtime for Station One’s security program? Five days from now? No. Never. Wouldn’t happen. Sorry, Master, but betraying his friends would take more than this.

But why had that progress meter appeared overtop his vision? And why did it say, STATION ONE SECURITY DATABASE 15 PERCENT DOWNLOAD COMPLETED?

Chapter Three: Jaw-Dropping

Temporary Good Guy leader Reef jumped back when Kamikaze smacked into the training room’s seventy-foot-wide balcony window. He recoiled even though the ionizing shield screen vaporized anything that touched it. A hoot erupted from the Good Guy pilot/stunt flier: Kamikaze had seared off another layer of skin and, just maybe, the last tattered remains of his dignity.

“Hey, Kamikaze, concentrate on the training exercise!” Reef knocked on this side of the shield screen, the harmless side, his only response a dull clong-clong because, certainly, Kamikaze couldn’t bear to divide his attention between his commanding officer and his seventh disembowelment this week. Someone should separate that head from his body so he couldn’t autoresurrect so annoyingly quickly. Then again, cable never aired anything good, anyway.

In Station One’s training gym—the low-budget, nonholographic, barely automated training gym—Reef watched the sole combatant in this scenario do anything but train. And to call him a combatant scarcely came within arm’s reach of any hopeless definition the dictionary offered. Kamikaze acted more like a willing crash test dummy than any combatant Reef had ever supervised.

Kamikaze had been off field duty for almost two weeks now, since the famous crash at the Great Stellin Fusion Station. Famous because Funniest Home Accidents now included the disaster footage in its credit sequence. So, after that crash that had put Good Guy leader Lieutenant Colonel Legion out of commission and gave Reef his duties in the interim, during this two-week sabbatical, Reef wanted to sharpen Kamikaze’s skills before they dulled too much. Today, Kamikaze had proven that, not only had his skills not rusted during his absence, he strived to widen his insanity-versus-acting-normal ratio. Guess which was the larger proportion of the ratio. Kamikaze’s severed jaw served as a nice clue.

And why must the deliriously berserk Kamikaze act so deliriously berserk? Because of his hyperability to autoresurrect, a process that took anywhere from a minute to a day given the death’s gruesomeness. And died he did often: his hyperability had led him to a rather unwholesome delusion that pain and self-mutilation were acceptable pastimes not only for himself but—and here was the kicker—for everyone else. Yes, he’d somehow gotten the impression that resurrecting was simply part of everyone’s healing process...despite the vehement denials everyone gave him. And who knew where he’d acquired his fashion absurdity of wearing a pilot’s helmet over his head? His helmet’s dangling straps whacked his chin whenever he clouted the ceiling with his most breakable body parts.

Built from bicycle wheels, dechained chainsaws, and other accrual, the three lithe sparring robots circled Kamikaze, the...ahem...“combatant.” As if to thank the stars, Kamikaze shut his eyes and raised his face heavenward. Maybe he should fight back. Oh, he was fi—wait. No. He was just wrenching one of the chainsaw arms off a robot to beat himself over the head.

Reef sat and—ho boy—massaged his forehead into his palm. The only training exercises Kamikaze found interesting were those that scored a head count of only one: his.

He scratched his itchy eyebrows, which had finally bushed two weeks after their accidental singeing. He knew when to call it quits on a training sequence. He stole a sip from the flask—his It habit—that he concealed in an inner pocket and checked the speckled ceiling for the listener of the haunt control, that software that operated locations by verbal commands, so called because their automation made locations seem haunted. “Control, acknowledge. End training exercise. And page entity Kamikaze to this location. No advertisements—oh, what’s the use? You’re like an unimaginative infomercial with no listening skills.”

“Then maybe I should apply to Thinkometrics Learning Center,” the haunt control plowed into Reef’s sentence, “where listening skills—”

“Yeah, maybe you should.” Feeling his tanned complexion leech away, Reef creaked to his feet and sighed at that orange-skinned internal affairs weasel Invard, who slunk in the shadows to scrape the bottom of the humdrum barrel for loose ends in the Good Guys’ training reports. Invard had been summoned here by the Good Guys’ parent organization, Intergalactic Protection, to investigate their expenditures. Always triple-auditing figures, balances, and equations to pursue any misspent money. Constantly checking facts and testimonies about where the Good Guys had erred. Perpetually smelling their sump pump to determine what they’d ingested.

Invard finally separated himself from the back wall where he lurked, his Gharalgian shoes clicking against the floor. He drew his attention away from the datasheet in his hand, the one that stored their Power Plant tallies: the pie charts reported that the young Abends brother had spent 30 percent of his time eating pie. Even odder was what the bar graph showed.

Invard oozed a slimy aura akin to a five-foot-two garden snake wrapped in a thousand-moolah, pinstriped suit. He hand-ironed the creases of that beige suit, maintaining their perfect press. “So...this is the infamous Good Guy field agent Kamikaze, the man solely responsible for every casualty your organization has taken: zero.” Invard approached the balcony window and leered down into the littered arena. He raised an oily eyebrow at Kamikaze, who now tried to decapitate himself with a chainsaw arm. That never worked. Experts such as Kamikaze should know that.

“He’s also responsible for a lot of stress leave.” Reef watched Kamikaze react to the haunt control paging him to the operator’s balcony. Kamikaze smiled, winked at Reef, and ran-jjjuuummmmpppeeeddd onto some jagged metal he’d fashioned out of one of the sparring robots. At least that stopover was on his way up. He stepped back to retrieve his blown-off lower jaw.

“Good Guy leader Reef.” Invard paced underneath a light panel. His reflective wingtip shoes dazzled in the light. “I certainly hope your records can even begin to justify why such a psychopathic, sociopathic, maniacal, diabolical, sadistic—”

“Animalistic,” Reef said. Invard’s expression soured like pickle brine, so Reef sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. I thought we were rhyming.”

Invard’s eyes dropped to his datasheet and he finger-scribbled something in very emphatic handwriting. “I’m noting that unauthorized rhyme in my report. You just keep up with those couplets. Spend one more and you’ll find yourself and your Good Guy buddies in a nasty cellblock, you can believe that.” His shrill voice scratched Reef’s ears.

Reef scratched the laser burn on the back of his neck, a memento of the Palicomic Psychic War. “Pissing pencil pusher.”

“What was that?”

Reef’s eyebrows arched. “I said, ‘Oh, my.’”

Kamikaze leaped into the operator’s balcony through the sliding door on the far end. A gnarled rail protruded from his abdomen, straight out the back of his black impact suit. At least suffering from a skewered stomach kept him away at dinner. More peas and carrots for Reef, and yet Kamikaze always kept everyone on edge by ignoring the peas and carrots in favor of some cockamamie mixture of poisons, anyway.

Kamikaze fished a roll of duct tape out of a cabinet. He peeled off a length, wrapped it around his jaw, and slapped it to his cheeks while avoiding the chinstraps of his pilot’s helmet. Oh, good. Now he could speak, though his tongue flopped out of a gap in the quick fix.

Kamikaze pointed passionately at the gym-spanning spectator window. “Hey, did you see that? Did you see that? How I jumped in front of those training grenades? That. Was. Breathtaking. Ha ha! That screwy bureaucrat you told me about? Better not tell that killjoy about my record-setting calamity down there or else...” He finally noted Invard, who cleared his throat and stood stiffly like a school marm. “And you must be that screwy bureaucrat. How’s it going, killjoy? Being screwy and killing joy?” Eerie how Kamikaze pronounced all those words while his tongue flapped around his cheek.

“Gervix Invard of Intergalactic Protection’s Internal Affairs. I’ve investigated your profile, Mr. Eberfield.” He spat that name as if he’d swallowed cat hair.

“Eberfield?” Kamikaze’s smile curled into a less psychotic version of itself, which still looked psychotic enough to give knife-wielding maniacs reason to pause. “No one’s used my name since I started here.”

Reef raised a hand, scarcely missing the light panel that buzzed around him. “That’s not true. Power Plant uses it to make fun of you. In song.”

Invard stretched open his datasheet and scrawled an irate note. “In song? More unauthorized rhymes. Your funds aren’t deep enough for that kind of creative growth. The people I represent will be very interested to hear about this flagrant expenditure. Don’t you consult your budget advisor?”

“The people you represent were supposed to send one, but that didn’t fit their budget.”

Kamikaze bound his jaw with another stretch of tape, chuckling. “That’s as funny as me managing a suicide hotline.” One final tug tore the last of the duct tape from the roll. He smacked it to glue it to his cheek, then dropped the spent roll. “Anyway, how are you?” He capered toward Invard, sticking out a gore-painted palm for a handshake. Invard eyed it with adverse refusal. Kamikaze looked as if he wondered why.

“With Avant-Garde impact tuxedos, engage in gunplay in style with your new unwanted Intergalactic Protection arrivals at the front lobby!” the haunt control said into the training gym’s windowed balcony, cutting what Reef wished was silence but was Kamikaze itemizing tomorrow’s beheading itinerary. The haunt control not only spoke its advertisement but exhibited a picture on an empty wall.

More unwanted “guests”? Reef still had to chew out the first one, Invard. Masking his whiskey breath, he rose to his feet. He stood over Kamikaze by half a head, taller when Kamikaze got his decapitation wish. “Look, Mr. Invard, the people you represent don’t even pay our bills. So why should they care?”

“Why should they care?” Like a guided missile, Invard’s heat-seeking stare launched across the brown room, the weasel’s composure now shattered in a tactical rocket of blind hatred. “The people I represent are still responsible for the actions of this little drama club, Good Guy leader Reef. Although we don’t contribute to the Good Guys’ funding, it’s still a child group to Intergalactic Protection. The way you conduct your business reflects positively or negatively on our organization. Bear that in mind and remember we have the power to shut—you—down.” His breath smelled leathery.

Kamikaze wrung his hands tightly around the corkscrew rail that lanced his abdomen. He wrenched, wrenched again with a stomach-gurgling chug, and finally shrugged. “Eh. It’ll sort itself out.”

Reef shirked past Invard and stopped at Kamikaze. “The reason I called you up here wasn’t to lower our socially unacceptable greeting budget, though Invard is jotting something down on his secret datasheet, so I think we’re too late. The reason was to tell you how you totally trampled on the entire objective of that training exercise downstairs. Didn’t I explain its objective? And reattach your lower jaw. It’s already loose.”

Kamikaze noticed the detaching body part with a start and set it in place by mashing it into its socket. He gave it a trial chomp before saying, “I trampled nothing. You said the training was to exercise restraint. I needed to deactivate those robots without fighting. Did you see me? They’re deactivated, and I didn’t put up a fight at all!”

“Still, you—but—I mean...” Reef kicked the operator’s desk. “I hate your use of totally inapplicable logic.”

“Almost as much as you hate my dashing good looks and witty charm.”

“Nice boldfaced lie.”

“Loosen up. Die a little. Let me die a little. What are you, my father?”

“Sometimes I feel like it. Maybe I should call you Silas.” Reef instantly felt guilt crawl through his mind. It had been a long time since he’d had a son...since he’d failed him.

“Yes, sir, dad, sir.” Kamikaze saluted with a piece of shrapnel embedded in his hand.

With a chipper jingle, the haunt control broke the conversation. “Your unwanted guests have now arrived. Remember Avant-Garde: great for weddings, graduations, and riot control.”

Reef skipped the usual act of asking it to shut its advertisement function up because, whenever he did, it treated him to an advertisement about how to shut its advertisement function up. And those products hadn’t worked the previous four times. “Great. If you’ll excuse me, I need to meet our next uninvited guests. And, control, tuxedos and impact suits are mutually opposed styles.” Reef hotfooted toward the sliding door. “Who’d have thunk it? Intergalactic Protection paying the Good Guys an obtrusive visit, I say with a hateful leer at Invard.”

Invard swished a finger over his datasheet. “Hateful leer noted in the bitter expressions expenditures budget.”

Reef reached the door. “Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door.”

“Closest door unlocked. Biorhythms of the agents on the other side read heightened aggression and body heat. You’re in deep piss.”

With a jetpack whoosh, the door slid aside to reveal two figures, both taller and blockier than any agent Reef had ever met. One, a Terran whose suit badge read, “Agent Adamson,” shoved Reef aside and tromped in with perfume waving from her acridly. Reef shielded his stung eyes. The other, a Terran whose suit badge read, “Agent Nicholson,” followed, his hand stiff as if sutured to his tan-suited hip where he caressed what Reef assumed was a sidearm under his full-length jacket. His skin showed the crags and creases of war. Both wore sunglasses that reflected back at whomever they loomed over.

“Good Guy leader Silas Reef?” Agent Adamson said. Had Reef smelled more perfume misting from her mouth when she’d spoken? Had she swallowed a cosmetics counter before work? Reef’s breath didn’t smell like potpourri, but this woman’s designer odor put his whiskey tongue to shame. Adamson’s skin smelled as if she soaked it in preservatives.

With a tepid nod, Reef acknowledged Adamson. “Yeeesssss?”

Both agents tapped their suit’s breast pockets. The pockets blipped up holographic projections of their IP badges. Adamson’s studious eyes investigated the room. “I’m Agent Nicole Adamson and this is Agent Adam Nicholson. We’re—”

Reef curled a smile, probably a product of the whiskey more than anything else. “Wait, wait. Nicole Adamson and Adam Nicholson? You’re serious? This is an act, right?” His eyes pingponged between the agents. “It’s not. I just spent more of our foot-in-mouth budget, didn’t I?”

In a fluid wrist snap, Adamson whipped off her sunglasses and folded them. Her teeth clicked together. “Do you find something funny?”

“Shouldn’t you?” Reef examined their fossilized expressions that would crumble at the hint of a smile. He shielded his eyes since long exposure to Adamson’s scent nipped at them. “Apparently not.”

“Aha.” Invard emerged from his shadowed vantage. He approached Adamson and Nicholson and extended his hand. “I wasn’t told you were joining us. I assure you, agents, these matters are under my complete control, you can believe that. I’m right now combing through their overextended sneeze budget. A lot of unmerited gesundheits.” He slanted an eyebrow at Reef scandalously. “A lot.”

Adamson ignored Invard’s hand with her perfume accentuating a snarl. “Good Guy leader Reef, we’re in search of Good Guy field agent Kamikaze.”

“You’re looking for Good Guy field agent Kamikaze?” Reef tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “Dr. Untrainable, Esq. is over there.”

“What’s up?” Kamikaze spun around, banging the corkscrew metal that jutted from his abdomen into a closet door. He tried again: same result, so he turned the other way. “What a coincidence. You’re looking for Good Guy field agent Kamikaze? I’m looking for Good Guy field agent Kamikaze’s kidney. I dropped it somewhere, and I need that thing to process castor oil.” A showman’s glint filled his eyes with sunshine. “Castor oil is a substance you do not want to leave to only one kidney.”

Adamson butted past Reef. Thankfully she brought her signature pungency with her, though some of the sting lingered. Nicholson followed and produced from his hip a...set of handcuffs? What?

Reef jolted into a trot and caught up with Adamson’s too-fruity stink but not her body. He dodged her jackknifing heels. “Hey, wait. What is this about? Who gives you the authority to just waltz in and—Wait. Intergalactic Protection gives it to you. Okay, stupid question. But still, very rude.”

Adamson acknowledged Reef’s questions with nothing but a Rottweiler’s sneer tossed over her shoulder. She reached Kamikaze and snapped her fingers at her partner. “Nicholson, cuff him.”

“Gladly.” Nicholson seized Kamikaze’s arm and propelled his face against the closet door. Nicholson’s body crunched against him, elbow jabbing the nape of his neck. With prejudiced hostility, Nicholson cased Kamikaze’s hands with these cuffs that fitted over the whole hand. Kamikaze would have hooted in joy except his jaw was dangling loosely in the duct tape. His arm smacked onto the balcony’s window with a bang, his hand slapping the pane. Oh, and there was that missing kidney. Turned out he was holding it the whole time.

“Hey, you can’t do this. Get away from my field agent!” Reef bounded into the fracas to pry Nicholson’s grip from Kamikaze. Nicholson dispensed a whack into Reef’s sternum that sent Reef tumbling into Invard.

With officialdom, Adamson said, “On the authority of Intergalactic Protection, Good Guy field agent Kamikaze, you are hereby commanded to suspend operations as a Good Guy field agent for the negligent homicides of seventeen workers at the Great Stellin Fusion Station, as well as gross incompetence in the line of duty and failure to file one hundred ninety-seven suicide reports. Also, you ran through a stop sign when you plowed into the station. Because this ranks as a priority-one federal matter, this is effective immediately. How do you plead to these assertions?”

Mashed against the wall, Kamikaze’s cheek slurred his words, but his madness shone through. His pilot’s helmet fell off. “I’m going to jail? I knew running that stop sign was a good idea. I plead I want my kidney back in. Takes hours to grow a new one. Reef, I’m going to jail! They have guys in there who shiv you just for looking at them the wrong way. The shiv! Imagine what they’ll do to me when I steal their corn bread.” His nose pecked against the closet. “There go my nostrils.”

What? Reef thrust closer. “You can’t do this. When does the trial start?”

Adamson didn’t face Reef when she replied so robotically that gears probably whined within her cheeks: “Trial? No, no, no. Intergalactic Protection wants this media maelstrom swept away. Medical professionals have deemed Good Guy field agent Kamikaze an unstable individual. Intergalactic Protection will remit him to a mental institution, ridding the universe forever of his disregard for life. I hope you like isolated rubber rooms, Good Guy field agent Kamikaze. Deep, permanent isolation.”

“Huh? What? An asylum? A white room with padding? But...there’s nothing interesting or dangerous in there. How will I shave without my cheese grater?” His eyes welled. For the first time since Reef had met him, Mr. It’s Not Fun Till Someone Loses an Eye’s face wrinkled with puzzlement. A shudder rippled through him. “I’ll...I’ll be alive the whole time.”

Nicholson twirled Kamikaze around and prodded him past Reef. Escorted toward the exit, Kamikaze leaned at Reef, his eyes sloped, his lower lip extended.

“Reef, don’t let them take me away!” Kamikaze wrestled against the two IP cops, but they heaved him through the door into the hallway.

Take Kamikaze to an asylum? Nobody barged in and hauled away Reef’s friends. Nobody! “This isn’t right. You can’t just...snatch...Kamikaze away, trap him in an asylum against his will because of some half-baked, vicarious evaluation. You’re not even letting him plead his case. You’re cornering him away for an eternity completely bereft of social contact!”

Reef grabbed Nicholson’s arm to wrest him aside. Nicholson wrenched free, leaving a shocked Reef to say, “He might be a powder keg of bones and guts...or at least on alternating Tuesdays...but he has rights, and one of them is the right to die. I can’t believe I’m making a case for him.”

And then a muffled snap-pop. It bulleted through the doorway. Reef jolted. Even Invard perked up with attention, wondering at the hall.

Kamikaze banged alongside a wall. Nicholson grappled against him to hold him back, but Kamikaze propped his feet on the wall...blasted away. He charged backward in flight, leaving a scorch mark marring the white insta-paint, and pummeled into Nicholson. The IP enforcer writhed in the door’s threshold.

“You’ll never take me alive! Dead we can negotiate.” With handcuffs still casing his hands behind his back, Kamikaze landed. His face batted around.

Reef stumbled forward, but Adamson scrambled up beside him and shoved him against the wall. “Do not interfere.” Her overperfumed hands held a pistol tucked in her palms. “Good Guy field agent Kamikaze, freeze!” She didn’t wait. She yanked back the trigger once—blam—twice—

“No!” Reef chopped a hand over Adamson’s wrists. The pistol fell away, and a bullet punched the ceiling. “One, shooting him is just giving him what he wants. Two”—Reef kneed Adamson in the stomach—“lighten up on the perfumes. You’re like shots of eau de toilette shoved up my nostrils.”

He swung around. “Kamikaze, run!”

Kamikaze broke down the hall, toppled into a first aid stand, deflected, and skidded around the corner. A squeak of boots followed him out where Nicholson dived to seize his foot. Missed—narrowly.

Adamson recovered. “Good Guy leader Reef, you’re in a lot of trouble.” She sped past and shrank down the hall.

“I’ve faced bodily harm hundreds of times since we hired that loon,” Reef said after them. “Trouble I can handle.”

Chapter Four: Cattle Call

Good Guy navigator Franchise woke to the bawl of a siren booming through his sky blue living quarters. His ear felt lacerated from the sound. Or maybe that was leftover pain from when Jeffy jabbed into him with that coffee injector. He smacked his lips, cracked a knuckle, and blinked away the drunken sleep that kept his thoughts in vapors. His thoughts right now resembled any second-grader’s after a gourmet midnight snack of black licorice and flat soda.

Which reminded him: he reached for the glass of soda that sat staling on his nightstand. Checked it. Yeah, Jeffy’s fly ice cube—the plastic ones that never melted—still bobbed around, but that at least indicated that the kitchen’s cookbots hadn’t gotten to his drink. Otherwise, his drink would have glowed red and caused hallucinations.

He guzzled the soda and tossed the glass into the dishwashing receptacle by the wall. Let those dishwashing robots worry about extracting that fly to reuse the ice cube for another drink. Or to reuse the fly.

Franchise shook off the last of his sleepiness. Crock. That howling siren meant he would probably have to navigate something. If his luck held out—the bad variety, because these days he never got any of the good stuff—Jeffy would serve on this mission, wide awake and pushing something flammable through something explosive. The news didn’t call him the Little Engine-Wrecker That Could for nothing.

“Entities Pincushion, Power Plant”—Franchise smacked his forehead—no! Also, ow—“and Sixth Sense, report to transport B-Eagle for emergency combat duty. Entities Franchise and Withered Old Battle-Axe, report to transport B-Eagle for flight duty. Follow the carnation pink line to your transport.”

His chest squirmed, its cold grip like one of Death’s close calls. He glimpsed the holographic clock that floated spectrally in the corner. He hadn’t slept for even six hours since their previous mission, that false alarm when someone thought she’d spotted Master Asinine at the Gaian fairgrounds in his newest fashion craze. Turned out to be an ordinary jester.

He cracked the rest of his knuckles. Two missions today. “C-computer, acknowledge. D-do I really have to go?” He always asked that as if by tradition. Kamikaze sliced off a finger as a premission ritual. Franchise asked to stay and cower under a pillow. The cool side of the pillow, mind you.

“Yes, you do!” A noisemaker buzzed over the haunt control’s voice. “If you survive this death-defying mission, take advantage of Party Massacre’s great savings on bladed pinwheels, now legal on four of the Local Andromeda Triangle’s twenty-seven planets. Free xenon balloons for the kids.”

Franchise grabbed his wallet and mission supplies, pocketed them, and shuffled out the door of his living quarters, wondering if transport B-Eagle had that engine that flooded. There, the pink line on the ground—

Someone knocked past him. Jeffy, the Good Guys’ Power Plant, whose living quarters sat next to Franchise’s. They smacked shoulders and Jeffy twisted with the collision. “Hey, Jakey Jake!” Jeffy grabbed Franchise’s collar with the passionate excitement for danger Franchise wished he himself shared. Wait, maybe not. He had a weak stomach. Either way, his heart wasn’t into it, especially since he’d put his hyperability of self-multiplication on hold after starship debris had skewered his last clone. His spine shook, hazing his head with shockwaves. He had to forget the clone, forget the clone, crack his knuckles, forget the clone.

Jeffy wrenched in closer. “Ya ready for’s dis mission? S’been like eleventeen years since las’ one!” An explosion at Jeffy’s feet. The rank of sulfur. His latent-technology boots—l-clothes being the only l-tech Legion allowed on Station One—splashed apart in fingers of substance. A ripple of light lifted him airborne.

“Hey, ohhhhh, boy.” Franchise bicycle-kicked when Jeffy’s hyperability of flight lifted him off the line-slashed floor. He pried at Jeffy’s fingers, but that tense clutch felt impossible to break. “Oh no no no no no. You’re gonna th-throw me at the transport again, aren’t you?”

“Best way ta get there an’ mebbe break somethin’!” Jeffy fired down the hall, Franchise his unlucky passenger. Franchise’s lips flapped against his teeth, his cheeks pressed against his bones, his bladder emptied. They dodged a corner, swerved around another. Franchise made it, but his flailing limbs almost didn’t. Neither did that trickle of urine.

His words elongated into botched stuttering. “I p-prrreeeeffffeeeerrrr nnnnooot brrreeeaaaakkkkkiiinnnggg sssoommmeeeetthiinngggg.”

“Nah, ya don’t. Ya prefer gettin’ blasted off.”

The carnation line bent ahead, led outside, past a building, into the hangar building, down lengthy hallways, and to a bay door that glowed a darker shade of carnation. The door swooshed aside thankfully before Power Plant smacked into it. So there really was a first for everything.

Franchise shut his wind-whipped eyes to avoid watching Jeffy zigzag over charging cables, zip underneath subtitan-class starships, and barrel-roll other maneuvers nobody should attempt, especially with a passenger and especially when that passenger had eaten way too much vomit-ready food.

They reached transport B-Eagle, the Fireball subtitan-class starship that towered above them. Jeffy paused only long enough for Franchise’s vomit-ready food to go from “maybe” to “yes all over your shirt.” A gush of chicken wings, salad, and soda decided it was time to stream over the concrete floor. Jeffy didn’t notice, too busy exploring other ways to risk Franchise’s life. Franchise’s clothes had cleansed, sterilized, and scent-sweetened the nervous sweat that leaked unbidden all over his chest. It now went to work on the sauce painting Franchise’s shirt that hadn’t been sauce when he’d eaten it. Funny how the stomach made everything taste and smell like compost.

Oh no, oh boy, oh piss, that mischievous spark glinted in Jeffy’s impish eyes, oh geez. Jeffy burst airborne, ignoring the ramp that led to the transport’s access port in less perilous fashion but, hey, since when was safety Jeffy’s forte? At an altitude of sixty feet, Jeffy launched Franchise through the access port and into the transport, luckily not into the port’s doorframe this time.

Franchise’s tailbone hit the floor—“ow”—his head struck next—“ow”—then his shoulder—“ow”—and finally the back of his skull plowed into one of the seats arrayed in two rows of ten. That was one way to make an entrance. Another was safely.

He rubbed his stinging head and stood, faltered, stood again. Smelled the pine-scented air. His clothes had autowashed themselves. Thank the laundry gods for nanocleaners. Of course, anybody who worked with Jeffy needed automatic laundry suits and probably several life insurance policies. Maybe also a helmet. Franchise would look into that helmet. Jeffy, of course, landed painlessly on l-boots whose light-dispersed soles coalesced.

Franchise panted and clambered into the seat he had struck. Pincushion, Sixth Sense, and the elderly Mabel had already arrived. Pincushion and Sixth Sense confabbed in the flight deck. Mabel’s peach-fuzz head lolled back, her teeth rattling from her earthquake snores and not swimming in a glass where they belonged. She’d gathered at least a dozen cats to accompany her this time, one of which pierced its claws into Franchise’s poor navigator’s chair and left an egg-reeking steamer on its pleather surface. Franchise had grown accustomed to this: he fished his cushion out of his back pocket and threw it aside so it would inflate. Always arrive prepared for a brown gift on a mission with the kasha-reeking Queen of the Cats.

With his chocolate, insomniac’s eyes, Field Leader Pincushion, with the hypermutation of spiky protrusions all over his body, looked at sweat-bathed Franchise. The hundreds of cuts he’d received from Ace Spandex’s rescue from the Bad Guys, ones raking his skin, his black eye, and his bruises, were gone thanks to healing putty. Patches of his torn-out hair, however, had yet to regrow. “Franchise, you look like refried beans...refried.” He tilted his head down and looked along his shaded-chocolate brow at Franchise.

“Gimme a minute.” Franchise swallowed back a pant. “I took the Power Plant Express here.”

“Y’ owes me ten thousand train tokens now.” Jeffy bounced forward and threw out a palm face-up.

Franchise eyed the palm. Several heartbeats later, he shrugged and reached into his pocket for his bank’s thumbprint reader. “Deal, but only because this time you didn’t make up a number.”

“Okay, brothers, let’s carry out our play transactions later,” Pincushion said, so Franchise stuffed the reader back into his pocket and found the resolve to stand and remain within psychotic striking distance of Jeffy.

“Okay, everyone, here’s the mission,” Pincushion clapped his cocoa brown hands together. “Master Asinine is attacking the Cambridge Spend-a-Lot Mall on Gaia. Normally this wouldn’t cause an emergency, but there’s no display in front of the hologram picture store this time to distract him for a few hours.”

He faced Franchise. The sleepless bags under his eyes made Franchise thankful for even paltry hours of sleep. Pincushion said, “Franchise, sorry to summon you in so soon after your last mission, but duty calls. And it calls on the red phone. We need a navigator, and Kamikaze is unavailable. He probably fell into the incinerator and is now missing a head.”

Jeffy clicked his tongue. “Again? Man, he fall in, like, every week or whenever’s his turn t’ clean the lounge.”

“Heh.” Franchise finally calmed after his trip on the rocket ship of doom he called Jeffy. With the imminent danger forgotten, he now only quivered faintly. “Remember our paintball tournament in the solarium? He didn’t come out of that incinerator for a week.” He and Jeffy slapped palms and, this time, they aimed properly.

“That wasn’t a solarium, guys. You blew a hole through the ceiling into the upstairs bathroom, which is why you got all those weird looks whenever you talked about spotting the moon. Anyway, that’s enough. Y—” Pincushion threw a double take at the transport’s access port. “Who are you?”

Yeah, who was that? Someone no older than twenty age cycles stood in the access port with tight posture, a button-up shirt, hair cut short and slicked neatly, and precision-pressed khakis over rigid legs. He held a datasheet in one hand, his finger poised for lightning-quick note-taking. He made Franchise forget all about the mission and its perils. Until he thought that last thought. Oh man, oh man.

“Oho, Ed!” Jeffy bounced over to the access port. He slapped his palms over the newcomer’s hands in a hyperactive greeting. “Glad ya can makes it.”

“Always on time, sir.” Ed’s voice pronounced every letter precisely. He scrutinized a cat that investigated something first with a nose twitch and then with a coughed-up hairball mixed with some of that tainted catnip with which Jeffy and Franchise had tried to poison it.

Pincushion examined the newcomer, his face angled at Jeffy. His eyes shifted with a whisper of officialdom. “Power Plant, who’s this?”

Pressed, laundered, and ironed, the newcomer extended a hand. “Edward Delton, Mr. Pincushion. From Saint Emmanuel’s Business Collegiate. I’m—”

“He my intern! He do what I say so’s he can graduate that school thing,” Jeffy said.

Mabel snorted awake and punched something into the flight computer. Plotting a course into the nearest cliff-side again? With a rumble, the engines roused. Somebody should probably have stopped her, but Franchise still felt too rubber-legged to flounder into the cockpit. Plus that tabby cat in his path looked nasty times ten.

“Power Plant, what...how...” Pincushion gruffly exhaled and started over. “Okay, brother, let’s ignore the fact that someone just handed over a student to your tutelage—as stupid as that is—may I ask how you contacted a school asking for an intern and they managed to figure out what you said?”

“Dunno. I says, ‘Gimme,’ an’ they says, ‘Okeydokey.’”

The ramp had retracted and the access port sealed, bumping the intern a step inward. Nobody but Franchise noticed, certainly not Pincushion, whose pale-knuckled hand blocked his face to massage his temples.

Pincushion apprised the boy Jeffy referred to as Ed. “And you agreed to this?”

“Yes, Mr. Pincushion. If I perform forty hours with President Abends—”

“Oh, good.” Pincushion rolled his eyes at Jeffy. “So you divulged your real name to a citizen, which, sad as that sounds, isn’t the worst part of this epic antisuccess.”

Ed stepped further in. “If I perform forty hours with President Abends, I’ll earn two college credits. I’m studying for a career in politics. By the way, Jefftaria was my safety fake nation, so please don’t screw this up for me.”

“You’re not even in a military curriculum?” Franchise smiled. Forget the mission’s perils. This was rich. Franchise couldn’t resist unleashing a happy guffaw that resulted in a humiliating snort. He covered his nose in red-faced embarrassment.

“Nah, he interninizin’ Jefftaria,” Jeffy said.

Pincushion dipped in bowlegged dread, lower on his squeaky metal knee. His face stretched forward and his mouth...a jaw could hang that low? He said to Ed, “I don’t think straight what with my lack of sleep, so help me out. You’re interning at a never-was-and-never-will-be nation? His flag depicts a pair of underwear that orbits his sock drawer. His undersecretary of defense is a Cosmonaut Chimp poster, and his inspector general of nachos is this guy!” He flung a hand at Franchise.

Franchise snapped back to avoid Pincushion’s hand. “Hey, I’m good at what I do. I don’t know what it is, but still...I have a nameplate.”

Pincushion whirled the intern around and nudged him toward the access port. “You need to disembark this transport and find somewhere else to fulfill your internship. An actual political institution might help, but a pirate ship would be a better option.”

“No can does,” Jeffy said. His arm bent back and he rapped his palm on the access port. His raps responded in soprano pings. “We’s in space.”

Pincushion jerked his chin up and glanced at the access port, out the windshield, at the diagnostic computer that scrolled flight data. His hands, one fisted and one loose, tensed into claws that reached for his head and balled tufts of hair between its taut fingers. His head looked primed to explode.

“Don’ worry, Pinny,” Jeffy said. “He c’n help shoot Asinine. He totally good at Duck Hunt. Tested him m’seff.”

“And Franchise”—Pincushion fixed Franchise with a leer that looked half disapproving, half frustrated, and all where-no-one-has-gone-before incredulity—“why are you still wearing your pajamas?”

With a start, Franchise examined his outfit. “Holy wardrobe malfunction.”

Chapter Five: The Home Version of Let’s See if This Is Edible

Fire-wielding Good Guy Burnout listened to the haunt control’s voice fade, snatching at tranquility like a trapdoor spider snatched at prey: attacking one second, retreating the next. His bones itched so palpably with agitation he wanted to scratch through his flesh. Why? His brother was called to a mission. And Burnout was on a forced medical sabbatical because of a recent beating from that bottom-feeder Master Asinine: a broken nose that had healed and a twisted ankle that should have received medical attention had IP not denied the funding.

Burnout pulled out the single image still he owned of his younger brother, Power Plant, that wasn’t a newspaper datasheet printout of him toppling a giant tower in a well-populated area. Jeff, six months old. He wore weathered clothes that looked fifth-hand. No hair, no fat, ears that protruded like little wings. Burnout remembered Jeff’s innocence: trying to eat a brick, careening out of a crib, guzzling engine fluid as if it were water. But enough about yesterday.

Burnout remembered those times he protected his brother not only from the injustices Asinine and the universe wrought upon him, not only because of his stolen youth misspent as one of the Good Guys’ most powerful agents, but from their “parents,” hateful reprobates who had treated children like stress-relief toys. Whenever their drunken dad returned home and decided he’d had enough from life, he pounded his frustrations into Jeff. Their mother reacted only to shout at Jeff to shut the sobbing up. They ignored Burnout. All this until, sick of the years their dad had pummeled Jeff, Burnout had decided his younger brother needed a new environment. After teaching their “dad” what consequences were, Burnout had escaped with Jeff. He never looked back. Jeff had, but only to grab his Cosmonaut Chimp pajamas and cheerily say bye to the flesh bags who served as their inebriated barely-parents.

Burnout pocketed the image still and, favoring a bad ankle, hobbled toward Station One’s blue-and-gray cellblock. He held the regular food tray of canned gruel with a side of gruel-in-a-bowl and frosted gruel for dessert, all things still considered edible only through some legal loophole. It smelled like burned flesh. Too good for their despicable prisoner, that nose-picking smell-a-thon Scapegoat. He was one of those Bad Guys, those degenerates who continually risked his brother’s life. They deserved no better than death.

“Control, acknowledge. Unlock cellblock door.” Burnout stepped into the lockup where he found three cells. He wanted to tip the food tray, let its contents splash over the floor and decay through the grid-arrayed stones, but watching someone eat it was more entertaining. Burnout’s guess: Scapegoat couldn’t chew past the first bite without it congealing in his throat to smother him.

“Control, acknowledge. Unlock cell one,” Burnout said. Acting as the cell’s transparent wall, the buzzing shield screen flickered away. “Hey, jailbird, crap’s here. Better wolf it down quickly. Its eat-it-before-it-eats-you date has passed.”

Burnout clip-clopped toward the cramped cell, eyes on the unresponsive hunchback Scapegoat. For almost two weeks, Scapegoat had rotted in here except for the four-times-daily feedings, a once-daily shower, and an occasional sanity check. Kamikaze performed the sanity check, though, so Burnout didn’t know what to call it.

“Hello? Prisoner?” Burnout poked the Bad Guy’s shoulder with one hand, the tray balanced on the other. “Prisoner? Your...food...I guess you call it.” He’d use finger quotes but his hands were full.

Scapegoat didn’t react when Burnout clattered the tray onto the cell’s cot. Before fellow Bad Guy cohort Ice Cream Headache’s escape, this chump diced his sentences until they didn’t resemble English. Lately, however, he sat on his cot, stared at the chalky floor, and sat more hunched than his obtuse-angled back usually allowed. He looked gaunter than when he’d arrived midmonth. Burnout leaned closer and caught the prisoner’s face in the light: withdrawn, miserable. Hopeless. His eyes hid in deep-set sockets, abandoned of life.

Burnout edged out of the cell, transfixed on Scapegoat who didn’t stir except for lethargic breathing. The prisoner didn’t even budge to escape, though Burnout hadn’t commanded the cell’s shield screen to rematerialize. A tear shimmered in the hunchback’s eye.

Huh. Whatever. “Control, acknowledge. Lock cell one.” The shield screen rematerialized. Data spilled across it, updated from “Prisoner’s temperament: subservient” to “Prisoner’s temperament: has the blues.”

Burnout spun on his good foot and shuffled to the door. “Eat up, prisoner. I’ll return later to grab your leftovers if they haven’t grown arms and strangled you to death.” Hopefully they’d grow arms. Burnout could finally tell Jeff he’d found his younger brother a food-related puppet show.

Chapter Six: Not So Friendly but Still Fire

Kamikaze burst from the stairwell and onto the first floor. He needed cover! “They really want to take me away”—Kamikaze banged on a door, but it, like the bite-sized missiles he tried to access for breakfast, remained locked—“bolt me in an asylum, keep me in a rubber room with nothing sharp or explosive to eat”—he jammed into another door, which was also locked—“ask me, ‘How was your day, Kamikaze’ and ‘Would you like another pudding for dinner, Kamikaze’”—sweat glistened down his eyes, burned them, dripped off his lashes—“force pills on me that, never mind the taste, are too blunt to poke out my eyes”—he blasted into the air and threw his shoulder into the next door, which didn’t budge either—“and I just can’t let anyone shut me away, I can’t!”—who the crock locked all these doors? And, yes, he’d like another pudding, thank you for asking.

These agents could have caught Kamikaze easily if not for his flight hyperability. And their handcuffs didn’t dampen his hyperability. Still, they stalked him relentlessly despite their well-kempt grooming, their businesslike attitudes, and Adamson’s hazardously perfumed aura. Their boots clicked behind him whenever he stopped to evaluate his options: throw his left arm at them or his right. Which would disgust them more? Probably an eye. They looked like eye people.

Should he break open these handcuffs? Should he wrench this twisted rail out of his abdomen? Should he leap out that window? At the very least, they’d drag him off after they plucked out the window shards. But he’d go kicking and screaming.

He hooted. A glass-paneled floor leading to the second story! He loved useless decor. He could burst through that, and no one would catch him. These agents were IP yes men with no inborn hyperabilities. Once they reached this floor, they’d have to scurry back upstairs to follow.

The stairwell door ruptured open and out spilled Nicholson, a carnivorous stare directed forward. “Good Guy agent Kamikaze, you’re only worsening your situation.”

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze?” Reef clambered out after. “Cut the officialdom and call him ‘that crock-demented crackpot.’ Everyone else does. Except Franchise. He calls him ‘fear itself.’”

“I can’t go anywhere. I have a date with a wood chipper later.” Kamikaze stooped to leap, to shatter through the access, hopefully with glass carving his neck like a dinner turkey, ha ha, ho ho. Nicholson’s pistol remained poised in its holster, his hand ready to pull it out and squeeze the trigger.

With the confidence of a crooked cop about to abuse her authority, Adamson drew her pistol. “Good Guy agent Kamikaze—”

“I’m telling you, ‘crock-demented crackpot’ works just as well.”

“—don’t move. Under the authority of Intergalactic Protection’s psychosis unit, we are here to detain you. Please surrender.”

“But...but...I can’t.” Kamikaze’s healing jaw felt stiff, but it remained attached. “There’s nothing there for me. I’ll go insane! More insane, if you ask Reef, but it’s a sliding scale.” Kamikaze balanced himself on legs like unreleased springs. He delayed, primed to jump. They’d blast him if he leaped now. He couldn’t risk that. He’d just batter into the ceiling and suffer a measly broken neck, which, believe it or not, grew old after the hundredth time. The glass paneling wasn’t an option. Well, maybe if he added a shark tank upstairs. For now, he couldn’t risk these IP apple polishers taking him away to his own personal Hell.

“Stay away!” Kamikaze shook his gun out of its holster—caught it with his feet—Agent Adamson’s gun was out so he aimed at her—fired with his toe because he was that good—Adamson fired—the bullets raced toward each other—a colliding path—they—

...passed each other. Crock. Colliding bullets would have looked awesome.

Adamson deflected back, a flower of blood from beneath her suit piercing her shoulder. She cried a tortured yelp, then a curse that mixed a four-letter word with “crock-demented crackpot.” How kind. They bothered to learn his nickname.

Kamikaze dropped the gun, picked it up in his mouth, jumped, curved backward. At midflip, his feet became rockets. His l-tech boots splattered away with the release of energy propelling him down the hallway. He careened into an infirmary treatment room that smelled of alcoholic and peroxide. That ceiling access had seemed like a wise option, but he couldn’t linger anymore. Nicholson would have blasted out his brains.

Not that that would be half bad.

No no no! They’d haul him off to the insanity ward. As strange as it sounded, dying was not an option.

But he should remove the rail from his abdomen.

* * *

Nicholson snatched up Adamson’s pistol. Reef ducked and plugged his ears to shield them from Nicholson blasting off four-five-six light-bullets with raging hands. Reef’s ears rang, but when Nicholson’s pistol emptied to a click-click, he unfolded.

“He escaped. Agent Nicholson, he escaped. Stop dry-firing. He escaped. And now I’ll need your address so I know where to send the bill for my hearing implants.” He wrung a finger in his ear. “Thanks for making me deaf. I said thank—Oh, you didn’t say, ‘Pardon.’”

Nicholson dived to Adamson’s side. He dropped the pistol. It clattered away, but he favored his attention to his partner. He pulled out a tube of healing putty and, with his other hand, propped Adamson up on the sea-green wall at an angle. He squirted a glob of the vinegar-scented putty onto Adamson’s shoulder, then dropped the tube and spread the stuff around. Adamson nearly snapped her teeth over her tongue.

“Good Guy leader Reef.” Nicholson stood and blazed Reef with a stare that a Terminator could use as a pictorial. “If you’re unable to control your agents, we’re going to sit down for a little talk at Intergalactic Protection headquarters.” He tapped a finger over his gabber’s ear bud. Out sprouted an earpiece and mouthpiece. “Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Intergalactic Protection Headquarters.”

“Don’t worry about me controlling my agents. I stopped worrying about that a year and a half ago because, no matter what, they’ll act however they please. The least taxing policy is to just let it happen and keep popcorn around for when it really hits the fan. And hang up the gabber. No need to call.” Reef reached for the gabber, but Nicholson slapped away his hand. “Ow. Testy.” Reef fixed him with a stare. “I’m not inviting you over for poker night.”

Nicholson breathed in sharply when his gabber call connected. “Intergalactic Protection? I need the tracker/hunter department.”

What? The tracker/hunter department? Intergalactic Protection dedicated a department solely to trackers and hunters? Reef couldn’t remember such a department when he served there. Whatever happened to the sweet old warmongering Intergalactic Protection that Reef knew and warily loved?

“Hello, tracker/hunter department?” A smile popped onto Nicholson. “Hi, Agent Nicholson here at the Good Guy outpost, Station One. How are you? Good, good. Did you get the muffins? Excellent.” A shadowy frown bullied out the smile and cast Nicholson’s face downward. He leered at the door through which Kamikaze had vanished. His smile returned, now with a madman’s twinkle. “Yes. We need one of your heavy hitters. Thirty minutes. Have him pick up quesadillas on the way.”

Chapter Seven: Take Charge

Pincushion rolled on his spikes, lunged to grab Power Plant before the youth gushed forth from the Fireball. Mabel hadn’t even yet landed on the Cambridge Spend-a-Lot Mall’s roof. Rather, the transport’s AI-pilot hadn’t, since Mabel had slept through the whole trip. Well, he’d give her this: her flying hadn’t stripped off the starship’s hull like a rotten orange peel. Had done that to a few others, but this transport at least had arrived in one piece, albeit mangled. And her cats had peed in the starship’s detainment deck.

“Power Plant, wait for us to proceed as a unit. There’s no performance judge to rate your concrete swan dive a ten.”

“S’ cool. You guys stays on dis thing. I’m-a beat up dem Bad Guys an’ stops a ice-cream truck for double-scoop ham-an’-ice-cream sammich. Skadoosh!” Power Plant spewed forward as if the transport’s access port belched him out like unwanted gas. Pincushion dived for his legs, but he’d acted half a second too late...or had he?

Power Plant smacked face-first into an invisible barrier, sounding a reverberating thud that celebrated his abrupt halt. His limbs splayed across the barricade where he remained suctioned in place. Good thing, because the Fireball’s access port hung sixty feet off the ground, but—actually, a sixty-foot plunge would knock some sense into him.

“Thanks.” Pincushion cut a wave to Sixth Sense, who had conjured the invisible barrier with his telekinetic hyperability, which sprouted from a pore in his forehead via a thin stem. The kids at the sick ward where the telepath volunteered enjoyed the barriers as skateboarding half pipes, but sometimes his ability had sane uses.

Sixth Sense cut a social salute, the sleeve of his too-large impact suit bagging off his fingers. He drew the barrier in until Power Plant poured into the Fireball, suffering a nosebleed, and landed in cat vomit. Power Plant looked otherwise a-okay. At least physically. Mentally, gaps in his logic were as cavernous as the reasons for hiring him in the first place.

Franchise hunched over Power Plant and tapped the metal floor with a foot. “Nice try, but your follow-through was as graceful as an elephant’s cannonball into a marsh.” He chuckled and began cracking his knuckles.

With lumbering limbs, Power Plant grunted to his feet. “Hey, least I ain’ts came to work in my jammies like somes peoples.” That shut Franchise’s chuckle up.

Now, about their mission. “Everybody, listen.” Pincushion lifted his metal knee with a squeak and shook a cat off his ankle. “Not you, Mousy Tongue. Please clean between your legs elsewhere.

“Anyway, before we arrived, I received an update from mall security. Ninjandroids have cornered the Bad Guys in a toy store and people are panicking. The panic has nothing to do with the Bad Guys and everything to do with them blocking off the doll department during the grand release of Get-Your-Freak-On Party Patty. Seems too much to ask that Asinine hide in a store that won’t make Power Plant waggle his tongue and behave absolutely ape-crock—Power Plant, reel your tongue back in—but what’s done is done. The ninjandroids are holding the Bad Guys at bay, but they’re programmed not to enter until we’ve got things under control. So our mission is this: Sixth Sense, when we enter the toy store, we’ll need another barrier for cover. Jeff, what did I tell you about your tongue?”

Under an exhaust vent that hissed smoke, Ed cleared his throat and whipped out a datasheet. He asked Power Plant, “Sir, shall I order your regular from the Cambridge Spend-a-Lot Mall’s food court or would you rather experiment with other foreign substances today?” His finger was ready to scrawl on the datasheet.

“No foreign substances until after we ruin Asinine’s plans.” Pincushion checked Sixth Sense and Power Plant. “Okay, three field agents, three attack directions. We’ll fork out in a triple-pronged spread.”

Power Plant was waving frantically. When he caught Pincushion’s attention, he motioned his head toward his intern. After a second of Pincushion’s unresponsive stare, Power Plant waved again and perked his eyebrows indicatively. Sheesh. “Jeff, your intern can stay aboard and sweep the thicket of cat dander off Mabel. She hasn’t rolled over in a half hour, so it’s building up. In fact, check if she’s still breathing.”

“Aw, man. Interns gets no respec’.”

The starship had settled onto the mall’s roof, so Pincushion hobbled toward the access port. “Everyone ready?” Pincushion checked. Sixth Sense nodded, his glasses slipping around his nose. He steeled himself despite the nervous grit of his teeth and the way his hands hung in sleeves that reached his fingertips. Power Plant was picking gunk from under his fingernails, but he was good to go since he’d nearly hurled headlong into a solo mission that would either kill him or inflict enough collateral damage that Pincushion would kill him. “Move out!”

Pincushion swung around onto the transport’s access ramp and—dong.

* * *

Power Plant leaned over Pincushion, whose sprawled body’s forehead blushed as pink as uncooked beef where he’d rammed into that low-hanging exhaust pipe. He hunched to lift the unconscious Pincushion but—urk—those spiky extensions of his bones had knifed through that ramp. In fact, all three maintenancebots at Station One, those that still operated after Power Plant and Franchise had played maintenance bowling, would be macked off. Big daddy macked off, as the old saying went.

At least those robots supported his theory: anything could be a bowling ball.

“Well, he can’ts complain snone. He getting sleeps.” Power Plant gave up lifting the field leader. “Okay, so’s, on account of the pipes thing, he’s ain’t movin’.” He swatted the pipe, but it only squeaked and jostled in place. It wouldn’t have gotten shoved down if Mabel had avoided that meteor. Still, Mabel wouldn’t otherwise be Mabel.

“So who’s thats make the leading guy?” Power Plant analyzed Sixth Sense, Franchise, and Ed in turn. “I’s voting Jakey Jake.”

Franchise trembled back a step and tripped over a cat whose bad side he was already on since he threw out its chew toy: his sneaker. “N-no way. Not m-me.” He pointed backward with a hyperextended arm. He stopped cracking his knuckles. “My j-job is to stay aboard, prep the starship for t-takeoff, and sometimes m-make your toast.”

“Yeah. Plus you’s a total chickens and you wets your bed.”

“I don’t wet my bed. You pour scalding water on me when I’m asl—”

“Maybes we should makes Sick Sense the lead-it. You can lead stuff, ’cause yous read minds.” He tapped his temple. “Read minds...in the head.”

Sixth Sense didn’t shrink away like fraidy Franchise, but, just the same, the refusal was scrawled over his expression. “Uhm. Wait. Okay. I’ve served on a total of two missions before this. I’m the least qualified leader of us all, I’m afraid. And now you’ve helped me realize how urgently I ought to change my media name.”

Angrily, the access port beeped, incapable of closing.

Power Plant tapped his toe against Pincushion, which probably didn’t help but what the heck. “Man, if’n Null was here, he’d knows whats t’ do.” Null was in a coma. “Ed?”

“I’m the intern, Mr. President. It wouldn’t be proper for me to lead. By the way, the lunch specials in the MaxSport MaxCafe don’t include hypoallergenics like you thought. Your choices today are turkey on rye and an eight-ounce steak with a refreshing hollandaise sauce. What shall I put you down for?” He readied his finger over his gabber’s ear bud.

“Okay, so’s that’s settle it. I’s the lead-it. And steaks it is.” Power Plant trumpeted a fanfare through puckered lips and threw up a finger. “Okay, we moves out! Jakey, unstuck Pincushion and brings him wit’ us. Sick Sensical, grab us a bowling cat.”

Chapter Eight: Ice Cream Is at Stake

“Entity Kamikaze is unreachable,” Reef’s gabber said. Reef ripped the gabber from his ear and whipped it across the small boardroom. It clicked against a chair and bounced underneath the oak table that squeezed out most of the elbow room.

He retrieved his gabber. He needed to reach Kamikaze to warn him: Kamikaze now had to avoid not only Nicholson and Adamson—who weren’t the sharpest tools if they couldn’t figure out why their names were so hilarious—but also a “heavy hitter” summoned to capture and kill Kamikaze. Heavy hitters Reef had dealt with before. After all, Power Plant sometimes rubbed gigantism moisturizer on his hands. But, unlike the heavy hitters IP contracted, Power Plant possessed less self-control than a puppy and a shorter attention span than a goldfish. The whole animal kingdom couldn’t get the drop on IP’s contractors.

Kamikaze wasn’t answering. Was he even wearing his gabber? All three of Reef’s attempts to connect had failed, which meant either Kamikaze had forgotten his gabber or he’d swallowed it and activated it inside his stomach. Either was plausible, but only one simultaneously gave Kamikaze a stomachache and a sense of accomplishment.

Reef tilted his head back for a clumsy swig, then capped his whiskey flask. One hand slithered it into his inside pocket and the other wiped the toast-flavored liquor from his chin. He swayed drunkenly and tripped out of the boardroom, knocking his hip on the sliding door before it retracted fully. A flare of pain burned his side and another griped in his head when the haunt control blabbered an unsolicited spiel—“Visit your doctor today for a new grape-flavored hip replacement. Tasty!”—but he paid no atte—Grape-flavored hip replacement? Oh, come on! The marketing geniuses must have switched coffee sugar with their stash the day they popped that one through their mental assembly line.

Invard and the “Children of IP” waited down the chilly hall in the training gym’s operator’s balcony. Adamson hunkered in a chair, nursing her damaged shoulder that probably vented a vanilla fragrance. The haunt control kept pushing its grape-flavored hip replacements with a silent commercial displayed on a wall in which a purple substance frothed into a hip-shaped frosted glass and hardened as a bone.

“Where have you been, Good Guy leader Reef?” Invard judged him with a stare.

Reef pondered over something to say, some cover story to offer. He couldn’t just spill that he’d tried to warn Kamikaze about this heavy-hitting interloper who, any second now, would arrive to shoot to kill or, in Kamikaze’s worst nightmares, shoot to let live. “Uhm...bathroom.” Almost true.

An abrupt voice bashed the conversational volume of the room. “And now, to your utter astonishment, to your stupefied shock, the slayer with the debonair dare for flair”—the haunt control was pulling out all the stops—“the man who always delivers the body...Hearse!” Like a passionate jet engine, fanatic applause ruptured from a public address speaker.

“His name is Hearse?” Reef’s neck extended forward. “With the name Hearse, you won’t have to hunt down Kamikaze. He’ll come to you!”

A rumble echoed into the balcony even through the closed door. Was that a cannon? Reef hoped, “prayed” though he wasn’t a believer, that that wasn’t a footstep. If so, they hadn’t contracted a tracker or a hunter. They’d contracted Leviathan.

Another rumble. Reef rushed to a window that overlooked the gray visitors’ parking area. An unfamiliar transport sat in the distance. This modified transport stretched taller to fit a monster. Maybe one with a periscope for a neck. It certainly wasn’t a civilian transport. No civ-tran carried a person whose height was measured in kilometers.

Another rumble to mark this...thing...that thunder-crushed closer. In baking waves, fury pulsated off this tower monster.

Then the last elephantine clomp. It didn’t cause an earthquake, but it came close. A datasheet curled and fluttered off the computer bank. The light panel struck the ceiling and carved a small line across its length. Dust unsettled from the deepest corners of the room in which people usually lost fruit that soon started life anew. Such as that surly orange with the moss mullet.

Leviathan had reached the door. The door slid away and, couched in shadow, the thing outside shifted its weight and huffed out a dragon’s puff of air. This heavy hitter—a goliath, really—gracelessly crammed through the seven-foot doorway.

Reef’s aortas gushed in a panic. If he were prone to aneurisms, he would have suffered one now. The muscle-gorged, eight-foot-tall goliath stared into Reef with a targeting visor wrapped over his left eye and around his ear, planted firmly somewhere behind his brain. A cataract fogged the iris of the eye behind the targeting visor. Easily correctable or replaceable, but Hearse probably kept it to add to the roar of intimidation already at his command. He wore an ammo belt as a regular belt, but his granite abs did a fine job hitching up those pants.

Invard hurried forward, as if he wanted to grab a basketful of rose pedals and sprinkle them wherever this marble-statue man bulldozed through. He hand-ironed his suit. “And you must be the hunter/tracker, Hearse, you better believe that.”

“You have to ask?” Reef slumped forward with an astonished gawk. “Who else can level this tower by clearing his throat?”

Hearse had been staring straight ahead, not shifting his eyes or reacting. Now, in a purposeful action, he angled his face down, as if, underneath his skin, circuitry measured this movement. “Yes, I am the tracker.” His voice boomed like almighty Zeus’s. “I hunt Intergalactic Protection renegade agents, exterminate them, and return their bodies. This hunt, however, is a delivery. I am to transport Good Guy agent Kamikaze to the In Sanity Manor wing at Stavehill Hyperability Penitentiary. But since his hyperability is autoresurrection, my kill assignment stands.”

Reef choked on his spit. “Hyperability? As in singular ability? You’re aware he has more than one, right? He flies, too, usually under heavy machinery.”

“Some hyperpeople do develop twin hyperglands, yes. But it is rare.” With a computed expression, Hearse faced him. “Good Guy agent Kamikaze has but one. Most hyperpeople have but one, thus one root hyperability, though it can function in many ways. Good Guy agent Kamikaze’s flight comes not from his original mutation, but as a result of jumping into an irradiated jet engine. Experts surmise he houses in excess of one thousand unknown hyperabilities, and I aim to remove those hyperabilities from society before he discovers them. I will kill Good Guy agent Kamikaze and deliver his body, much like Mother delivered me by the ear to confess to those I had wronged.”

“You’re an assassin?” Reef angled his head away but kept scrutinizing. “So IP sent an assassin to find Kamikaze. Isn’t that just a tad overblown?”

“I am not an assassin, Good Guy leader Reef.” Hearse spoke as if he practiced from a phonetics guide. “I am a tracker who kills.”

Reef gawked up at this titan. “So you’re an assassin. You track people down and kill them.”

Hearse’s mouth, a straight line, tightened. “Assassins do not complete their own taxes. Therefore, I believe I am not an assassin.”

“That’s not really even an argument.”

“I’m very glad you chose to come.” Invard crammed past Reef but paused to stuff a palm over Reef’s mouth to keep him away. He extended a hand, his suit cuff precisely buttoned though he had to adjust the sleeve. “You look like just the”—his eyes skittered up and down over Hearse’s immensity—“bulk for the job.”

“I am. The average success rate for a tracker stands at little more than ninety-two percent. Mine”—his eyebrow lifted—“is near perfect.” Reef tasted malice in those words like a disgustingly sour apple.

Reef batted Invard away. “Near perfect? How near?”

Hearse pinned Reef with a half-organic, half-laser stare. That cataract really freaked Reef out. “I missed one.”

“How did you miss just one?”

“He”—Hearse hushed his voice—“sucker-punched me.”

“Sucker-punched you?” Reef craned his neck at Hearse. “Was he a bullet train?”

“If I return Good Guy agent Kamikaze, I will boast the highest number of successful captures this month. I will earn a two-week vacation at the Highbrow five-star hotel I will also veto that loudmouth Brock of bragging rights.” He gripped air in a coal-to-diamond fist. “Bragging rights that are justly mine.”

As if feeling the arrival of a migraine, Hearse clutched his head and grunted. His fist drifted open and shut when the migraine plunged deeper with pain. He retrieved a cylinder from a pocket, opened the cylinder, plucked out a pill, and slipped it into his mouth. He unclenched.

After his panting receded, he said, “You have nothing to fear. I give this renegade agent one hour before he begs for death.” His voice was breathy with exhaustion.

Reef raised a hand. “That last one is a likely bet. In fact, Kamikaze spends most evenings begging for death.”

“One hour.” Invard almost swung a celebratory fist, but he reined it in. Too much happy, not enough bureaucrat for this data pusher. “Excellent, you can believe that.”

Hearse’s eye followed the ceiling to the haunt control listener. “Control, acknowledge. Lights to zero percent. Initiate individual room lockdown and station lockdown. Ignore entity Good Guy agent Kamikaze’s commands.”

The yellow lights in the room blew out in sharp death. Not even the emergency lights, a subtle red, activated. Reef pressed himself against a chair’s back, feeling as if the surrounding objects watched him, waited to attack.

“No lights? You can’t be serious.” Reef found the courage to bumble forward, but he slammed into a computer bank. “For crock’s sake, I hate the dark.”

The pinprick night vision sight of Hearse’s targeting visor was all that penetrated the tar of pitch blackness. “I am deadly serious. Let us discover how Good Guy agent Kamikaze fares without light and under a stationwide lockdown. This renegade will wish he were already dead.”

“Again, one of his favorite activities. Right under Scattergories.”

* * *

Maybe Kamikaze shouldn’t have swallowed his gabber. Oh, well.

Here in the infirmary’s disinfectant-fragranced treatment room, Kamikaze gave the rail in his abdomen another squishy jerk...when the lights dimmed until nothing existed in his world except blinding squares of sunbeams in the windows. What the piss? What was next, a strobe flash and a hip-hop tempo? Because Kamikaze was sick of that “I Gotta Feeling” song, so next door to his personal Hell was a dance party. He wished he could duck into that three-man guillotine he’d bought for his medieval costume parties.

Moments earlier, Kamikaze had clasped his gun in his mouth, this time pointing it outward. With the chain of his handcuffs stretched across the barrel of the gun, he wrapped his tongue around the trigger and blasted the chain in two. The cases released his hands. The job had taken three shots, drying out his ammunition. Now, seconds after running out of light-bullets, he couldn’t see. Worse was that, after he blindly located the door, it wouldn’t slide away. He was locked in! Normally, this situation would call for massive amounts of brain-bashing all over the door, but this wasn’t a normal situation. And given who had thought that, this situation was probably pissing insane.

“Control, acknowledge. Lights to normal capacity.” C’mon, c’mon. How else could he find something to batter through those agents, to freedom, and into his liver?

“Access denied. You cannot supersede an Intergalactic Protection agent’s order.”

What? Access denied? Supersede an IP order? What was that supposed to mean? What the crock was that supposed to mean?

The windows rumbled, clattered. Kamikaze scuttled to the egg-yolk sunlight where—Shutters slammed over every window—almost chopped his fingers—light couldn’t even slice through at the edges. Blackness swallowed the room, and the neon that Kamikaze had mixed into his breakfast had worn off. A lockdown? Was he in a lockdown? What to do, what to do? The parking lot. Yes! He could flee to the parking lot, leave the station. Escape!

He banged into a piece of knee-high furniture—probably that three-shelf medical cabinet. He flipped over a bench onto the ceramic tiles. Too bad he couldn’t reach his living quarters or he’d hide in his lucky iron maiden, autographed by the clone of Bruce Dickinson.

He needed a weapon. What could he use? The scant medication strewn about the cabinets. They’d help him hallucinate. But no. He needed to escape, not hallucinate about an escape. Besides, that medication tasted like rotten tomatoes.

To reach the parking lot, he needed to break through this door, sneak around the station to the lobby building, and exit the front. Not a long trek, but in this lockdown, the door was locked. Down. He’d have to use the underground tunnels.

He hand-crawled along the wall to locate that weak spot he’d battered in here during his last visit. His shoulder had inflicted irreparable damage to the wall. And vice versa. Ah, the memories.

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze,” a voice said. It spoke through the haunt control from the mantle of dark, and not even a status message had announced it. The bass voice rattled furniture enough that Kamikaze could navigate by sound. “My media name is Hearse. I am under contract with Intergalactic Protection’s tracker/hunter department. Are you aware you have violated several of Intergalactic Protection’s mandates, including mandate nineteen dash three paragraph C, Regulations Against Behaving Like an Absurd Nut Job?”

Aha! Kamikaze had found the soft spot. He tested it, felt it yield. He applied pressure—something snapped inside, but not in his shoulder like he’d preferred, nay, fantasized about. Nevertheless, this would hurt sooo good. He ventured back and kicked aside whatever might trip him up. Then he barreled his chest and angled his shoulder forward, anticipating a ligament-splintering snap.

He charged. The wall burst and Kamikaze spilled through into a recovery room. His chin slammed against puzzle pieces of plaster. He opened his eyes. Crock! Everything was pitched in blackness here, too. Yup, a lockdown.

“Why are you doing this?” Kamikaze sprang to his feet, tripped over a chunk of wall, and righted himself. No injury. Oh, why deny the urge? He pounced forward and gouged a shoulder against jagged wreckage. After all, the little things were what made life bearable.

Hearse said, “I am simply performing my duty. By doing this, I will acquire vacation privileges. You will not deny me my rightful place at the Highbrow. They offer a nightly sundae bar. A sundae bar, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. If that is not worth the effort, I know not what is. Maybe the shuffleboard tournament. Sudden death.”

Kamikaze squeezed his hands around the abdomen rail and tttuuuugggeeed, c’mon, c’mon, jjjjjjjerked it out. Phew. He rubbed his duct-taped chin. Now, how could he get in on that sundae bar? Not by skewering himself on jagged rails. He’d skip the shuffleboard, though. He’d finally learned the real meaning of “sudden death.”

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze, be reasonable. You need to turn yourself in.”

Kamikaze tossed aside the rail, which clanked into the blind abyss. “On one condition: I get to gorge myself on the sundae bar until I throw up my stomach, my insides freeze, and my skin turns blue.” He cringed. “That probably isn’t helping me shake those nut-job charges.”

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze, I shall again suggest you to turn yourself in. It is the best choice for everyone, especially with my time off hanging precariously in the balance. You see, Brock has taken the lead five consecutive months by sheer volume even though I rule by percentage. He needs to be brought down a notch, and it is I who will bring him down. Plus the Highbrow holds weekly conga-themed parties. I have waited eons to, as they say, ‘bust out my conga.’”

“Who says that?” Reef’s voice barged in over the connection.

“They. The kids. The kids say it.”

“Yeah.” Reef’s single word prodded like a fire poker. “You of all people have your finger on the pulse of today’s youth.”

A rustle shushed over the connection. “So, Good Guy agent Kamikaze, I will help you receive much needed isolation. You help me receive congas and ice cream. And Shiatsu massages. Oh, my. We cannot neglect the Shiatsu. What do you say?”

Kamikaze swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed along his throat, the throat he could right now be slicing if he weren’t fair game. He clamped shut his eyes. He had to reach the parking lot, escape this station. “A tiny white room? No social contact? No. I can’t go anywhere with you. Not there.”

“Then, Good Guy agent Kamikaze, I must seize and assassinate you by force.”

Reef again: “Told you you were an assassin. An assassin named Nate.”

“Not in front of the quarry, Good Guy leader Reef.”

* * *

The quarry’s response was not to Hearse’s satisfaction. He bit his lower lip. That Shiatsu massage would be Hearse’s. At all costs. “Fine, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. We shall have it your way. Your lack of cooperation will not forfeit me my vacation plans.” With his infrared sight, he scanned the ceiling for the haunt control listener he had used to contact Kamikaze. In the corner, clouded in cobwebs. “Control, acknowledge. Give me the status and location of entity Good Guy agent Kamikaze.”

“Entity Kamikaze is one floor below in sick bay recovery room four trying to hoard medication to overdose later. Hope you find what you’re looking for there but, if not, search your soul at the Life and Sun Healing Through Spiritual Stuff Compound. Enjoy your killings.”

“I will.” Excellent. This mission was progressing pleasingly. “Good Guy agent Kamikaze, remain still. I will capture and kill you in fewer than twenty minutes.”

“Goody! I mean, ‘over my dead body.’ I mean...Crock, there’s no right answer.”

Chapter Nine: All Aboard the Derailed Train of Thought

“Welcome to the Cambridge Spend-a-Lot Mall, shoppers,” the mall’s haunt control said with such a singsong allure that Master Asinine smelled roses and thought he might fall in love. Alas, it was but a voice and, therefore, not capable of love since it would learn to talk back and call him names. “Please be advised that the Good Guys have arrived to handle the Bad Guys currently located in Toynomics’s new Bad Guy section, right across from the loading dock. Have a good shopping experience.”

“Ah, advertising money. Best five moolahs I ever spent aside from the five on that edible metronome.” A braggart’s smile budded on Master Asinine’s lips. He nodded to Master Asinine Sucks who, despite the disgraceful choice of media names that kept him from a subpar country music career, acted as his second-in-command during Lieutenant IQ 23’s stay in the Brick sick bay with color-washed vision, a charred-up cheek, and a voiding loss of appetite. Who knew SIPMA would refuse their hospital to patch him up? Braindead, the universe’s most fanatical bosom buddy, had stayed behind to mutely read him bedtime stories.

Asinine hid in the back room of Toynomics behind the hot-off-the-press placards that advertised the Bad Guys. They didn’t even advertise Bad Guy action figures, just the Bad Guys themselves, as if the store manager expected fewer than fifty moolahs for Schizophrenic himself. Toynomics’s higher-ups liked to capitalize on celebrity appearances.

Asinine had to think through this situation. They needed to plan. Fortification. Cover. High ground. Scratch ticket. All words related to winning. Asinine looked left: a shelf of board games. Right: Schizophrenic swatting Multipurpose with a shelf of board games. Barely passable as shields. The board games, not Multipurpose, since he could block the sun.

“No high ground or cover. Okay, since we haven’t yet crafted a plan, Mr. Sucks, suggest something.”

“You know, there’s a whole point to th’ other parts o’ my media name.” Master Asinine Sucks clacked together the spurs on his cowboy boots.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that. I hate listening to insults.”

“Whatever. Anyway, pardner, since the stockroom is behind us—”

“And behind us is...” Asinine rotated, rotated again. Rotations were hard.

“That way.” Master Asinine Sucks pointed. “You’re really provin’ my media name, ain’tcha?”

Asinine studied the direction in which that sucky name stealer pointed. He slurped from his hat’s Chugz Cola straw—because someone had to drink that sandpaper-flavored gasoline—stepping toward the stockroom and...He stopped...short...and...mother of wowzers.

Boxes! An unruly mess of discarded boxes as expansive as the stockroom: little ones, big ones, crushed ones, useful ones. Boxes for books, boxes for dolls, boxes for boxes. Boxes...for triumph! A grin as sly as any impish creature’s erased Asinine’s battle concerns. He tapped a box with his boot. “I think I’ve got our plan. Let’s move.”

Master Asinine Sucks already stood at a door marked by an exit sign. “Really? ’Cause instead I figure we should just hightail it outta here since all your plans are crap.”

* * *

Power Plant and his crew arrived at the color-splotched entrance to Toynomics. Yup. His crew. He called the shots, though, as far as he knew, Hell’s snowball didn’t stand a—How did that expression go? Well, whatever Reef kept saying would happen before Power Plant took charge hadn’t happened. Pigs could be flying, though. He’d have to check the news.

He dodged through a crowd of toy buyers. The Bad Guys’ attack hadn’t deterred any resolute shoppers. Geez. The allure of a half-off sale was crazy awesome.

“Hhheeeyyy, Good Guys,” game-show-hosted the store’s haunt control, but Power Plant was in no mood for its jibber jabber, “The Bad Guys are in the outdoor sporting department where you can take advantage of Toynomics’s low, low, scandalously low prices on all our bicycles, tricycles, or, if you have a lot of pedaling to do but nowhere to go, tandem octodecycles!” No. Power Plant didn’t want to ride anything with more wheels than he could count. He already had trouble coordinating both feet.

He sneaked into the rubber-scented squeeze-toy department and held up a hand, a finger pointed forward like a gun barrel. Behind him, Sixth Sense levitated inches off the ground to either eliminate his footsteps or look freaky cool. The fact that his sleeves drooped over his knuckles and his pants reached his heels was a touch less cool. Ed brought up the rear, jotting down the lyrics to the Jefftaria national anthem Power Plant dictated. Also to the Jefftaria theme song for their long-running hit show that was all in Power Plant’s head. Franchise probably still dragged Pincushion’s inert body past Pottery Barn, but he’d catch up in one or two hours. End of day, tops.

“Keep quiets. We still gots the element of surprises and alsos elements o’ fire, wind, an’ air.” Power Plant said this to Sixth Sense, who responded with an element of what-are-you-talking-about.

Ed tapped a finger on his ubiquitous datasheet. “Which element of surprise would you like to partake in today, President Abends? We have an array of choices.”

Power Plant reached the end of the aisle. He peered down the cross-aisle at the outdoor sporting department where some wayward dolls hung harpooned to the shelves perhaps as a warning to other departments not to mess with sporting goods.

Sixth Sense drew his fingers from his temple. He pushed his glasses up his nose, but they slipped back down. “Wait. Wow. Okay. I sense the Bad Guys. Umm, they’re at the end of the aisle. There’s a display clearing there.” His mind had probably eidetically memorized the map when he’d studied it during that thirty-second downtime earlier. Apparently he remembered everything to exacting detail.

Power Plant nodded. “Gotcha. We’s gonna takes care o’ these stupid-heads, then Toynomics prob’ly gives us a savings on cycles wit’ a whole mess o’ wheels.” He nodded again. He’d spotted military guys doing it so he nodded a third time. One day, he’d figure out why nodding worked. Not today. Tomorrow looked good.

He stretched his mouth wide for a commanding yell. “Okay, Bad—”

Sixth Sense convulsed in a shock dance and stepped on a squeeze toy that complained under his foot. “Uh. Whoa. Hey. Silence is key. If we want to take them by surprise, uhm, we’ll need to keep the surprise.”

“Nah, man. See, they’s surprise we callings them out.” He cleared his throat, which sent Sixth Sense jittering backward down the aisle, his eyes skirting across the squeeze toys in jolts.

Time to scream bloody murder. Power Plant trooped recklessly into the cross-aisle and peered toward the display clearing. “Bad Guys, it mes, yer freaking awesome Good Guys total insaniac, so listen up—What fierceness be that’s?”

Power Plant stopped short. His mouth hung open in an insignificant squeak. Among pushed-aside tents and toppled baby strollers, in the middle of the high-ceilinged clearing and underneath display lights that cast a heavenly yellow aura, standing at least forty feet tall and built like a steel fortress made of cardboard, towered a box fort.

“Good Guys!” someone bellowed near the roof. Power Plant spotted the bellower, Master Asinine with his neck craned out a window, holding a cardboard sword. Atop his head sat a cardboard, makeshift helmet with scribbled marker portraying a jeweled crest over the brow. A replica of his real one, the helmet came complete with a spike sprouting from its top. “Flee in terror from the majestic might of my box citadel, the most impenetrable of all cardboard domiciles. Hyah!” With confident might, he thrust his cardboard sword into the air, but it bent in the thwack-thwacking blades of a ceiling fan. He sipped on a straw that drooped from a hat he’d strapped over his cardboard helmet. The hat sat tilted on the helmet’s spike.

His helmet’s nose guard shifted into his sight, so he shifted it back. “Also, be careful about who’s with you. We may not allow some of your army past the drawbridge for our blood-saturated hijinks.” With his impotent sword, he tapped a scribbled sign near the window that read, “No Girls Allowed.” “Sorry. House rules. Amaranthia’s lucky she didn’t come with us. So is Mother Nature.”

“Wow. Geez. What is it?” Sixth Sense emerged into the clearing.

“Nothin’ but awesomes.” Power Plant spoke mushy words because he couldn’t gain control over his gaping mouth.

“Can we still swing by children’s fashions?” Franchise had appeared. He stretched forward his pajama top in two hands to inspect it. “I’m a little underdressed.”

Chapter Ten: Still Life

No sooner had Burnout entered the catacomblike cellblock had the lights extinguished. What genius had issued the lockdown command? He’d remembered, ten minutes ago, some announcement about a body wagon showing up. He’d ignored the announcement, though, because a rhyming proclamation flourished it as if someone had won a multimillion-moolah jackpot. Burnout usually ignored the haunt control’s announcements since meatloaf Sunday had become rancid beef cube potluck. Haunt control programmers needed to realize that impressionable younger brothers took these lunch schedules seriously.

“Control, acknowledge. Lights to normal capacity,” he said.

An atrocious jingle about Centrifuge Light Bulbs barraged the silence, but the lights relit. Good. Whoever had ordered the lights to die hadn’t limited Burnout’s access over their command set.

When Burnout could again see in incandescent blue, he approached Scapegoat, who remained locked in his cell. His food sat untouched, no crumb out of place. More boogers than earlier decorated the cell, but that didn’t constitute food except on days the haunt control designated as orifice harvest jamborees. Another baking suggestion.

“Control, acknowledge. Unlock cell one.”

“Warning: entity Hearse has issued a stationwide lockdown.” The haunt control dissolved the shield screen that secured Scapegoat or, as Burnout liked to think, that quarantined him from the rest of the station. Seriously. Burnout would feel safer wearing a hazmat suit.

Scapegoat didn’t react. He never even scratched his head any time someone posed him a difficult question. Or an easy one. Or asked him his name.

“Hey.” With a nasty poke, Burnout prodded Scapegoat. “Prisoner.”

Scapegoat didn’t budge from the edge of the cot, but slowly his face angled up. He sat silently, only breathing. A new tear lingered in his eye, and a previous one had broken and leaked down his cheek.

Burnout eyed the...ahem...meal...in Scapegoat’s dirty tray. “You haven’t touched your slop. The haunt control says it’s loaded with the vitamins and stones necessary for a healthful, balanced lifestyle of mechanical servitude.”

Scapegoat’s eyes slunk down to the tray of malnourishment with which Burnout had presented, no, saddled him earlier. A lethargic hand smacked the tray. The fork clattered to the stone floor as he grabbed a fistful of gruel. Most of the gruel seeped between his fingers, but he smacked the rest into his mouth and slurped it back. Another heavy flop onto the tray. He sucked up the next glob. A dribble cascaded down his chin in a chunky, grayish mass like unhardened concrete.

“Food good almost, yes yes,” Scapegoat said. “Gray slop watery is gray.”

“Yeah.” Burnout observed Scapegoat whacking the tray again for another sloppy handful. He got some on his cheek. “Gray slop watery is certainly gray.”

Huh. Burnout stepped back to watch Scapegoat again drop his hand into the tray and bring the sludge and whatever it contained to his mouth for another palm vacuuming. That was the final helping: Scapegoat pushed the tray away and it tipped onto the floor, spilling the leftovers. He hadn’t even tried the slop dessert: frosted slop.

“Food want longer no, yes yes. No no.”

Huh? Burnout hadn’t understood a word inside that clipped grammar. In some respects, Scapegoat and Power Plant acted alike. Though Jeff was thinner and stood upright unlike this plump knuckle-dragger, both needed guidance, both spoke in garbled speech patterns, and both ate slop with their hands. Jeff also liked to wear those prison outfits, though he thought they were parachute jumpsuits.

And, just like Jeff, Scapegoat would eventually lick the shield screen.

Burnout hobbled toward a supply desk and pulled out a small cartridge. He opened the cartridge’s flap and popped out a few playing cards. All there. He slid the cards back in and closed the cartridge. “Hey.”

Scapegoat didn’t react.

“Prisoner, hey!”

Scapegoat’s zombie expression trudged up at Burnout, his hands still painted in meal slop.

“There’s a lockdown. Those usually last a few hours, so we might be stuck in here awhile. In case you’re interested, I have a deck of cards. I can program them for regular games—euchre, old maid—or you can use them as mirrors in case you can’t quite reach the backs of your nostrils.” He flung the box into the cell. It pinged off the wall and splattered into the slop on the floor.

Scapegoat nudged it with his foot.

“Fine. Just sit there. If you need to use the bathroom, let me know. That is...if you even use a bathroom.” Burnout lurched out of the cell toward the stool behind the windowed riot control booth. “Control, acknowledge. Lock all cells.” The materializing shield screen plucked at his clothes with static.

Chapter Eleven: A Solid Defense

“You can’t just haul Kamikaze away. He has rights, even if he doesn’t think one of them is the right to a fair trial before his daily hanging.” Reef grabbed one of Hearse’s monolithic arms. He yanked back but, instead, spilled forward with Hearse’s booming stride. There he hung like an orangutan swinging off a branch. Definition of hopelessness: anything Reef attempted against the behemoth who heaved down their hallway. Definition of stupidity: what Reef would attempt next.

He winced. Regret was also probably due for a redefining. He probed into his inner pocket and produced his flask. Wringing it in one hand, he readied it, steeled his wrist—

—swung up. The flask cracked into Hearse’s laser sight and splintered it apart with a crunch akin to stepping on a cockroach. “Hope that severs some of your strings, you military puppet.” He ground the flask’s neck deeper. Hopefully, he punctured Hearse’s eye as badly as Hearse might soon wrench out Reef’s lung and puncture it.

Hearse stopped. Reef dropped from his monkey swing and doddered backward on all fours. His flask remained embedded in Hearse.

Reef brushed his own eye. “You have a little something there. In your eye.”

Hearse slapped Reef’s flask away. It skated down the hall, bounced into a potted plant, and spun to rest. His flat-fingered hand bulldozed into Reef’s neck and lifted him to the ceiling. Reef clawed at Hearse’s wrist.

His mouth a pursed rectangle, Hearse seethed, his rage contained in his good eye. His hue deepened from peach to burning terra cotta. He gingerly disconnected his targeting visor from the brain plug in the back and removed it. He inspected it, his cataract contrasting with the functioning eye. Split. Unusable. Take that, impossibly huge brute.

Hearse dropped it and ground it under a heel. He fished into a shoulder pocket to produce another that he fitted over his eye and plugged into his brain. It activated with a sharp beep. Not fair! How many spares must Reef work through?

Hearse nailed a stare at Reef with a single red laser dot that needled into the heart. “Do...not...interfere with this mission, Good Guy leader Reef. I have come to kill a top-class loose cannon and put right a very egregious wrong. I must also rub my victory in Brock’s face. If you spoil this in any way, I will mail your head to your next of kin when I finish with it.”

“Finish with it? What exactly do you need it for?” Reef asked. His vision whirled, his stomach looped like a Ferris wheel that lemmings operated during suicide season. Clutching at Hearse’s wrist grew harder each second. In the miasma of his vision, even identifying it was nearly impossible.

Hearse released Reef and thundered off down the hall. Reef dropped hard onto the floor, his vision coloring to clarity. He massaged the kink from his neck and his starved lungs gulped asthmatically for cool oxygen. When he stopped choking, he scrambled after his flask and dashed to his feet.

He caught up to Hearse. Uh, uhm, uh, time for a distraction. “Hey, Hearse. Hey!” Reef dogged Hearse’s heels. He’d annoy this beast with a rap, but fitting his name into a rhyme would probably not bring them closer together. New tactic: don’t mack off the hunter/assassin. Then again, Reef was a glutton. “There once was a yeti named Hearse.”

Much like he had the confines of normal growth, Hearse ignored Reef.

“Hey, Hearse, I’m talking to you. You can’t just barge in here and cart Kamikaze off to some asylum. He has rights. He might exercise those rights in violent ways—usually all over the windows—but still...you could consider him an artist.”

“He has forfeited his rights.” Hearse swept past a painting that fell because of his rumbling step.

“Look. We’re talking about someone’s life here. Shunting him away in an asylum, drugging him into a zombie until the day he dies—which, by the way, will be never. He once survived the brunt of an atomic bomb, except replace ‘atomic’ with ‘piranha’ and add ‘detonated inside his kidney.’ A rather fascinating character study.

“Hearse? Listen to me. I’ll get through to him, make him stop. Just give me time. He deserves another chance.” Reef stopped trailing Hearse. How could this heartless interloper ignore this? How could he act so apathetically?

Reef punched the wall. “Hearse, crock it, stop!” He whipped out a pistol and leveled it at Hearse’s head. A steep angle. “I won’t let you take away Kamikaze. I can reach him.”

Hearse stopped. An old-fashioned clock down the hall ticked away. Hearse turned and calculated Reef. Folded his arms. Fixed his targeting visor straight into Reef’s eye. “He is unreachable. If you fire that weapon, Good Guy leader Reef, I will twist your vocal cords into guitar strings. Remember: I always deliver the body.”

“I’m not afraid to kill you.” Reef upheld his aim. “Don’t hurt my vocal cords.”

Hearse heaved forward. The gap between him and Reef disappeared in two wide strides. Reef squashed the trigger twice. One shot burrowed into Hearse’s shoulder, the other went wide and pecked a hole into the ceiling.

Hearse smacked the pistol away. It spiraled into the ceiling next to the bullet hole, where it hung embedded. His next backhand cracked into Reef’s cheek. Reef’s world flashed hot white. In a split second, he found himself sprawled on the floor a few meters away, his mind paddling a backstroke down conscious thought to how-the-piss-could-he-have-been-that-stupid territory.

And Hearse had elephant-stomped away, leaving Reef to scrounge together the remnants of his consciousness. Better than scrounging together the remnants of his teeth. Reef checked the hallway. No sign of Hearse. “Yeah, you walk away. You think about that pummeling I just gave you the next time you threaten to turn me into a string instrument.” He shambled away. “I’m a woodwind.”

* * *

Hearse tromped out of the stairwell. Behind him, the door sighed shut. That door was as archaic as the stairwell. Good Guy leader Legion was a fool to fear l-tech.

This search-and-destroy mission had better finish soon. Hearse grew sick of uncooperative prey that would rather flee than submit to a gut-corkscrewing, bone-twisting arrest. His previous victim had even tried to convince him that he should live. What garbage. Every quarry required a good pummeling to educate them, and if that pummeling included a headshot, well...sometimes blood and brain needed to spill in order to educate. Hearse also liked to treat himself to cake after a good killing. À la mode if the occasion involved a double homicide. Nothing beat chocolate swirl on cheesecake.

Hearse searched the database in his brain attachment and downloaded Station One’s layout into his long-term memory amid bleeps and buzzes. If Kamikaze remained in the sick bay, Hearse would kill the cockalorum in time for the one o’clock news on the communal viewscreen at home. If things drew out longer, he could probably make the news at one thirty, but he would be crocked to wait for two o’clock. The anchor-wench on Today at Two might as well be a screeching weasel, and the weatherman exhibited the personality of a library.

He bent around the corner and buffeted a command over the air conditioner’s hiss. “Control, acknowledge. Download to my memory port all information on entity Kamikaze.”

“Downloading all information on entity Kamikaze. And, as a free gift to you, you’ll receive all one hundred sixty-three hours of uninterrupted Letchtech advertising, including three four-hour Happy Unclogged Intestines infomercials.”

“Control, acknowledge. Leave out the advertising and locate entity Kamik—”

An agonized bellow tore off the end of his sentence. Like a rubber sheet slicing open, his mouth spread at the pain he felt when he upended and his head struck a door. Electric sensations—the pungency of copper like baked blood—the taste of leather—thoughts bulged as if they expanded his skull—hot flesh.

The vision. It began as always with a faint but ear-puncturing screech, like a dog whistle brought an octave lower. A flash—Hearse felt the vision’s zap explode into his mind’s eye, sounding a whinny.

The vision: a behemoth loomed overhead, a starship that repainted the sky with shadow, so wide that even the fringes of the vision revealed no stars. Fuzzy rumbles. Smoke choked from the starship’s tailpipe. A hailstorm of needles from its underbelly. Furry dice in its windshield.

Finally a bright blue light flickered life away.

Extreme effort—knives stabbed every pore—fought Hearse, who uncurled a fist as tight as a black hole. His clawed fingers—excruciating, salty pain—reached into an arm satchel the size of a coin purse and—a steamroller squashed his ribcage—fished out a cylinder, which he almost crushed. He managed off the top with a plastic pop—bones locked together in a taut posture—and probed out a hyperstasis pill, Hyperthesia, that he slipped between his teeth. Something to dull his hyperability.

He exhaled. Everything faded, the visions rendered invisible, muted. No more white pain. No more snorting in air so hard his nostrils smoldered. No more anything. He flattened his back, shook to his feet.

He knew no way to prevent what he kept foretelling. He clutched his head. The spastic headache had ebbed away. He slipped the cylinder back into his satchel. Fine. For now, the vision had ended. Before that Good Guy fool Reef caught up, he thundered onward but teetered into a wall.

“Control, acknowledge. Do not breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“Then I think we have a deal to make. Now...how about those advertisements?” Though sponsor-bought programming dictated it, that insipid haunt control would do well to stop peddling its wares. “I also don’t breathe.” Good point.

Chapter Twelve: Welcome to the Neighborhood

Power Plant slapped his datasheet onto the plastic table he used as a strategy desk. He’d drawn a map of Toynomics’s layout in crayon over the datasheet’s clear surface, but the stupid thing kept cleaning itself. He would have torn the datasheet into itsy bitsy squares if it didn’t resist like freaking steel. He’d just as soon be able to bend a shoehorn by furrowing his eyebrows. And not even a hole-punch in sight. What toy store neglected to arm its pencil-pushing employees with hole-punches?

Inside the newly erected Good Guy box fort, what Power Plant dubbed Station Deuce because deuce came after one, Power Plant circled around the plastic Playmart table. His feet shifted over the interlocking foam mats of removable letters and numbers. He’d already peeled out the number seven and tapped his skull with it to induce his brain’s ever-out-of-order thinking mode.

He peered through the curtained window he had sawed out of the cardboard wall—a linked arrangement of trampoline boxes—and sneered at the shelf-littered landscape where Station Zilcho: Box Fort Edition towered. Box fort nothin’. It couldn’t hold a candle to the four-floor cardboard justice machine that was Station Deuce, the justice machine whose assembly had taken two hours and on which he was contractually obligated to print the Bad Guy logo in six-by-six-meter glory. Why? He wouldn’t elaborate except to say he should never get contract-signing privileges again. And Station Deuce was fully furnished, though Lego blocks made a bumpy couch even if you followed the instructions.

Sixth Sense and Ed peered over Power Plant’s shoulder at the crudely drawn plan on the datasheet. Ed almost spilled the juice he’d grabbed from the store’s cafeteria, so he set it on the Etch A Sketch they used as a viewscreen/dinner table.

“Plannin’ times, guys. This hows we fights up the Bad Guys, ’kay?” Power Plant shifted the tart lollipop around his tongue, grape-stained drool flicking out with every s he pronounced. He tapped a finger on the datasheet. “Here’s wheres we is.” Tap-tap-tap on Station Deuce’s depiction on the datasheet that now bore foggy potato chip fingerprints. “What we’s gonna do is we’s circles ’round the sport section, overs to these inflaterable swimmings pools, hits the pogo stick area an’ do a jumpings contest, then to the bubblegums machine and ’rounds the back. Then we’s hits them like smack-fists.” He punched the surface of the plastic table. One leg buckled. “Sick Sense, you uses a slingshots ta mess up them Bad Guys’ faces. Ed, you’s swing paints cans at ’em. And me...I hits ’em with remotes cars that trips ’em down them boxes fort stairs.”

Ed leaned closer. “Mr. President, this sounds like a collection of random gags from Home Alone. May I advise a different strategy?”

“Gags from Home Alone Two?” Power Plant searched Ed’s and Sixth Sense’s expressions. They both wore hints of distrust. “We ain’t zactly losts in New York.”

Sixth Sense’s glasses slid down his nose, so he pushed them up. He pulled out a plastic chair—this one bore a fight scene of Cosmonaut Chimp cramming a banana up Guerilla Gorilla’s unmentionable area—and parked his reed-thin form. So low did the chair squat that his knees reached his chest. “Uhm, okay. I’m with Ed on this. Let’s see. First. Uh, maybe using a children’s movie for a playbook isn’t a great idea. But, moving past that, second, where can we find paint cans in a toy store?”

“From the hardwares section.”

“Right. Okay. Wrong store.” Sixth Sense drummed his fingers on the datasheet, which caused it to complain in beeps. He sat straighter. “Uhm. Also. Jeff, we’re launching an attack from a box fort. Those things are not known for their structural merit. And scribbling ‘waterproof’ over the fort’s door doesn’t actually make it waterproof. Even if you write it in all capitals.”

Ed raised a finger. “Perhaps try italics, President Abends.”

“Yeah, it work. Plus it also’s hippo proof.” Power Plant pointed at another scribble he’d jotted underneath the bay window. The window was dressed in drapes stitched out of dolls’ more dated fashion failures: the polka dot crap he wouldn’t be caught dead in. “I’s payings you guys well to listenings to my plans, okay?”

“But I can pick up my own Monopoly money in aisle sev—”

“This mission, anyways, gonnas be dangerous ’cause that Asinine? He always gots some plan up him sleeve. He’s gonna killerize ya if you macks him off. So watch out.” Power Plant tossed a call over his shoulder at the kitchen area. “Hey, Jakey!”

“What’s up?” Franchise had stooped behind a cardboard countertop. He jerked up and stepped around it, his face ashen and his eyes glassy. He wore a navy blue racecar T-shirt two sizes too small that outlined perfectly the scrawny upper body hidden underneath. It wouldn’t have looked so goofy except it exposed his wrists and half his forearms. It bear-hugged him too tightly for him to bend his elbows. Woozy and most likely hallucinating, he could gasp air only in short, inadequate gulps or else risk tearing the racecars a new one. With his exposed ankles, the Junior Tykes overalls he wore looked downright absurd. He’d managed to stuff his feet into roller shoes, but he couldn’t use them since they required him to bend his limbs. His battle jammies had nothing on boys’ fashions, ages six to ten.

His pajamas lay mounded in the plastic laundry machine against the wall. They still wouldn’t come out clean no matter how much bubble soap Power Plant dumped in there. Too bad for Franchise. He’d have to wear racecars for the entire day.

Power Plant sniffed the air. “Somethings smell goods.”

Franchise wore a pair of red winter gloves as hot mitts. “Battle snacks. I mean, ‘war rations.’ They should be ready. On a side note, the schemes you rope me into cause less pain when I’m lightheaded. Why are you shimmering?” He waddled toward the Easy-Bake Oven next to the kitchenette playset. He swung the oven door down, his elbowless arms forcing him to hunch comically. He extracted a tray of cookies, which he set on the kitchenette. The tinfoil—metal sheets stripped off a shelf in the kite aisle—clattered. “Ahh, the rations are ready and still gooey moist.” He waved a hand over the steaming cookies, and the aroma of baked goodness spread into the corrugated cardboard strategy room. “You know, I could get used to living in a box fort. Legion won’t let me use the appliances in my living quarters.”

“That’s ’cause ya always burns the food.”

“That’s because you keep sneaking in and cranking the oven up to nine hundred.” As if whacking the air with a cane, Franchise’s hand swiveled up unbent.

Chapter Thirteen: Morning, Sunshine

He woke with such a blooming start that he choked on his own spit, but he didn’t bolt upright as characters did in the movies. His eyes screamed at the sudden light, so he mashed them shut and flung an arm that felt like a rubber turkey across them. Strange. His arm wasn’t a rubber turkey when last he checked. And it still wasn’t, so his more daft teammates had obviously not gained access to this room.

Memories flooded. Right. Surfacing from his daze, he remembered himself. He was Good Guy field leader Harrier, with the hypermutation of feathery wings and talons, a Terran but also avian.

A tingle dusted Harrier’s arm. Had he been bleeding asleep for weeks? Though every shift felt like he slogged through quicksand, he propped himself up. He blinked open his eyes and scanned the room. What? A lamp spotlighted his bed, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. A chunky orange liquid chugged through a plastic tube into his arm. Another tube...affixed to his blinking nostrils? A viewscreen displayed a dot that blipped up and down. Where...was...He was in a hospital? Who’d put him here? He’d gamble on Kamikaze, but most of his fellow Good Guys were strong contenders.

Everything here was pale green or lusterless silver and it all reeked of antibacterial cleanser. He tore the tube from his arm and the one from his twatting nose, suppressing a sneeze. Ugh, hot headache. He shouldn’t have exerted himself. He felt half blitzed. What was he recovering from? He remembered a crash landing...he dive-bombed at Legion...smacked against a floor...a plummeting engine block...and—

Rhythmic thumps spirited against a latent-technology door before the l-door faded with a bubbling noise. With effort that bristled from his ankle to his waist, Harrier lowered his legs off the side of the blooming hospital bed. Cold floor.

The nurse who entered threw a comment over her shoulder. “You know you stole it. That turkey club was mine.” The door appeared quickly behind her to block anyone outside from retaliating in this food fight. “Sorry. Lunch thefts are rampant here.

“Anyway, good moooorning”— the nurse singsonged, checking a datasheet that hummed a corporate jingle about laughing gas being the best medicine—“Harrier.” She looked up, her smile an illuminated crescent moon. A tangle of ratty brown/gray hair swung aside with a flick of her head. The hair didn’t make it over her shoulder and tumbled back down. Removing the hairnet would help.

“Yes, I am Harrier.” Harrier moved to stand but his legs disputed with an icy blue scream. So he agreed. “Nurse”—he read the unfortunate name embroidered on her breast label—“Grimnoose. Where...where am I?” He searched the room as if the wilted flowers or the chipped windowsill revealed any sodding answers.

“You’re in the Gregarious Gangrene wing of the Special Identity Protection Medical Act hospital.” Grimnoose stepped into the cone of light under the lamp. Her skin showed the signs of weathered crags, a woman in her fiftieth age cycle. Her cheeks drooped from unchecked age. With vehemence, she whipped her glazed gaze to the side. “Is that so? Well, I’m buying a whole week’s worth of turkey clubs, and I’m not sharing any with you.”

Harrier’s eyes shifted around. Wwwwwwow. She talked to thin air? Right barmy. He’d gotten Nurse Split Personality. Four hundred people working at this SIPMA hospital, and Harrier had ended up with one he’d rather exchange for the Good Guys’ clattering robot, Car Alarm. Or with anybody who didn’t hurl accusations at the voices in her head.

Harrier checked the room for a defensive tool. His talons had regrown. Perhaps he could use them. “The Gregarious Gangrene wing. I thus far remained unaware gangrene is so sociable.”

“It’s not. Most of our wings have alliterative devices for names, and we ran out of medical g words. It was either gregarious or ghoulish.” She whipped her chin to her side again. “I told you, ‘gastric’ went to the wing with stomach-problem sufferers. And, now that you mention it, my name was written on that turkey club when I put it in the fridge doojigger. I don’t care if we share the same name. Or the same stomach.” Then a slap that would have connected had the nurse aimed it at a real person. Her face ticked back to Harrier and her voice regained its music. “Sorry. My head-mate’s not known for tact. Oh, and I’m legally obliged to inform you I’m not conflicted at all.” She tipped her head and her smile split to show teeth. “Don’t know why.”

“Clearly not.” Harrier jabbed his thumb over the call button by his bedside.

“Be thankful you’re far from the hyperbole wing, cutie. For some reason, a lot of our patients’ news gets taken the wrong way there.”

As if to treat a booboo with a bleeding ice pop, Grimnoose pouted at Harrier’s datasheet. “Anyway, you were admitted nine days ago for a number of reasons, including a concussion and excess amounts of starship chemicals in your system. Ammonium perchlorate, arsenic pentafluoride, phosphine. And root beer. We flushed out a lot of root beer.” Her face jolted up from the datasheet to meet Harrier’s eyes. Her smile flashed back. “Filtered out the sugar and used it as rat poison.” Her ham-acted pout switched back on. She flicked between bipolar Greek tragedy masks like a light switch. “Poor rats.”

“Nurse Grimnoose, what happened to me?” Harrier felt cold, drained, munted.

Grimnoose sat across from Harrier on a stool that looked oddly squat. “Mr. Feathers, you and the rest of the Good Guys survived a starship crash at the Great Stellin Fusion Station. Quite a nasty one, too. Your leader, Legion, is here, though who knows why since he doesn’t use a special identity.”

Harrier tried again to stand, but surfs of queasiness unsettled him. He felt as if he’d lost a row with a bunch of hooligans. The room’s cleanser worsened the surfs. To stop from tipping onto the floor, he leaned back. The surfs cleared, and Harrier inched closer on the bed. “Nurse Grimnoose, I fail to see why I’ve remained in this hospital for nine days on the diagnosis that I ingested too many toxic chemicals.”

Grimnoose’s eyebrow shifted. She angled her face closer. “Mr. Feathers, sweetie, you weren’t kept here for chemical poisoning.” She exhaled but withheld additional words as if to impregnate the moment with tension. Her head rebounded to the side and she sneered. “That’s right. You steal my lunch once more, and I’ll take away your entertainment privileges.”

Harrier edged away. He wondered if he should ask, lest he lose his entertainment privileges, but he risked it: “Why have I remained comatose for nine days?”

Grimnoose’s bubbly smile flicked back on. “In the crash, you lost a wing.”

Alarm turned to fright and gushed through Harrier’s system. He flexed his shoulders. Something felt blinking wrong. He checked one wing, checked the other—the other...the other ended in a stump.

A stump. A rutted stump.

If a tube didn’t sprout from Harrier’s leg and picked into his bladder, he’d have leaked his lizard in his hospital gown.

Grimnoose’s head snarled to the left. “Try it again, and I’ll cut that turkey club out of our cold, dead stomach, you buzzard.”

Chapter Fourteen: Labor Dispute

Master Asinine pressed his hands against the plastic wrap Schizophrenic had stretched over an opening in the cardboard wall. Their box fort’s north-facing window. He checked the direction in which the Good Guys had set up shop and shifted his vantage because of the glare from Multipurpose’s shoe buffer. Why he needed a shoe buffer, Asinine hadn’t the foggiest, but—Oh. He was using it to polish a samosa with barbecue sauce. The samosa already gleamed enough, but man, it reeked of shellacked honey garlic.

Master Asinine leaned closer to the window and pressed his face onto the glass...er...plastic. It smothered his breathing and tipped the beer hat askew. “What are those Good Guys up to? I’m hankering for a sucker-punch festival, and they know I hate to wait. The only one I can sucker-punch around here is Schizophrenic.”

Schizophrenic tromped past and nailgunned a fist into Asinine’s kidney. “Not unless you enjoy digging your balls out of your skull, you festering brain.” He snorted.

Asinine buckled, grunted, and recovered. The fireworks in his side still crinkled when he righted the beer hat. “That’s no way to treat your landlord!”

Schizophrenic batted away an inflatable dinosaur that squeaked in pain. “Do you even remember why we came here in the first place, Sgt. Housewife?”

“No, and don’t bother to tell me because I’ll just forget again.” Master Asinine stepped to the activated portable viewscreen that hung above the sink. He grabbed a dirty bowl and deposited it into the instant dishwasher. “Anyway, Braindead”—he stabbed a nod at Braindead, who stood in the viewscreen, a green hall in the Bad Guys’ sick bay as the silent Virillian’s backdrop—“if the Good Guys refuse to attack, what should our plan be?”

Braindead blinked and sighed, sighing and blinking. Another blink. Another sigh.

Asinine rolled his eyes. “Great. Thanks for the input, Deaf, Mute, and Dumb. Glad I called. Viewscreen, acknowledge. Get outta my face.” He averted his mighty gaze from the portable viewscreen that shrank away. “So, a moseying recon mission it is.” He snapped his fingers. “Mr. Sucks, my chief of moseying.” He refused to use Mr. Sucks’s full title because it hurt his feelings.

“What’s up, pardner? Tired o’ livin’ up to my media name?” Mr. Sucks strolled to Master Asinine, the spurs on his cattleskin boots jangling with each bowlegged strut he took toward the window.

“No. Aren’t you tired of living up to it?” Heh. Perfect comeback. “Anyway, I have a mission for you. I need you to mosey on over”—he sipped on one of his six cola straws—“to the Good Guys’ box fort and snoop around. I want to know what they’re doing, why they’re waiting so long to do it, and what they’re doing.”

“Oh, give me the crocking mission.” Multipurpose slit the air with a sai and almost hit the window, which would expose everyone to the harsh winter elements: the frosty wind from that overbearing air conditioner. “I’ll crock those crockers up so hard, they’ll wish I knew how to hold back.”

“You’re going to overeat and let them punch you repeatedly in the stomach?” Schizophrenic marched past again, scraping a life-sized advertisement stand-up of Master Asinine along the floor. He set it down and squeaked a marker over it to blacken a tooth and draw a mustache. Lefty’s toothpick bobbled around. “Finding something to do, finding something to do, bored as all crock, finding something to do.”

Master Asinine stepped over the inflatable dinosaur. “And Schizo, your total lack of respect for all things morbid and obese reminds me, I’ll need you to savagely water and then mow the lawn in that order. It’s too scruffy.”

Schizophrenic plowed aside a table and strolled across the room toward the plastic-wrapped window. “What lawn? You laid down green construction paper and slopped on some of that Lil Chia SuperSeed cra—Oh, would you look at that?” At the window, he shifted his teeth together, scraping them with the sound of a knife against a sharpening stone. “Fine. You win this round, you gene-pool chlorinator.” With a snort, he clomped toward the super soakers in the box fort’s munitions room.

Master Asinine tossed over his shoulder, “You’ll need to gas up the mower. It’s out of bubble soap.”

“Snoop ’round?” Master Asinine Sucks rubbed his chin. “I can handle that.” He spread his legs and swivel-stepped to the cardboard door in an exaggerated saunter, his stirrups rattling. Master Asinine would have to dock him points, though: a saunter did not a mosey make.

“Oh, and pick me up a fake eye patch from the costume department,” Master Asinine said. “Talk Like a Pirate Day is in September, and I want to look the part.”

Chapter Fifteen: Crapshot in the Dark

“Lights to normal capacity.” Reef threw himself through the armory door and into the lead-scented chamber.

He needed to stop this Hearse. Burst onto Station One and hunt down one of his Good Guys? Kill that Good Guy and drag him into the loneliest pits of an asylum to rot? Deny him the chance to speak his side of the story, the chance at an evenhanded trial though he’d probably murder the judge as an early birthday gift to himself? Deny him the chance to cut out his own liver? Reef could live without that last one, especially the cascade of blood that erupted out during the amputation, but the rest of the—Okay, no one wanted to hear Kamikaze’s side of the story either, because that usually denigrated into talk about cutting out his own liver.

Reef hopped over the coffee-ringed sign-out counter, rammed past the deactivated service robot, and snatched up a pistol. Was it too small to puncture through that loathsome Hearse’s stonewall hide? Reef shrugged. Couldn’t hurt to try. He could test it on Kamikaze if that loon started to talk about his liver. Or started to talk about anything.

He lifted his impact shirt and tucked the pistol under his belt. He snatched up a seven-inch combat knife and tucked that under his belt, too, but avoided the crotch. Things usually got messy otherwise. He grabbed an assault blaster because he wanted something with a good caliber. Stormed back toward the armory’s exit. Threw his body forward. Hopped over the counter. Landed on the floor. Stumbled forward. Banged against the door. Still drunk. Smooth as sandpaper.

“Control, acknowledge. Rescind order to withhold command access to Good Guy entity Kamikaze.” Wait. On second thought: “Actually, you might want to pass on any command that gives him access to toxic chemicals. People are tired of the bloody handprints on the walls.”

“Command not rescinded. You cannot supersede an Intergalactic Protection agent’s order. If people are tired of bloody handprints, why not use smeared monkey feces? Available now at your local retailer or zoo.”

Not rescinded? Reef kicked the door. He had to take care of things himself.

Reef thundered through the door, ramming his palm against its surface before it slid aside. He grabbed his flask, gulped down a generous mouthful along with some of Hearse’s eye juice from earlier, and...stopped. Vision swam. Throat tugged. Whoa. His feet felt uneven and his side banged into a wall. Dropped his blaster when whiskey churned back up in a reverse waterfall. Swallowed it. Phew. Unlike when he watched The Adventures of Caramel-Covered Spam, he kept things down.

With an alcoholic swab of blunt flavor, he shoved the flask back into a pocket. Using that same hand, he unzipped an arm pouch for a sobriety lozenge, which he swallowed. Good. His thoughts cleared.

He stepped forward, tested his footing. Test passed, but he’d earned an A minus for stubbing his toe against a radiator. He grabbed the blaster and ventured onward after Hearse. Hearse needed to be stopped for making Reef sick of hearing about his vacation. Oh, and for chasing Kamikaze, too.

Wait. Reef could remove Hearse’s access to the haunt control. He had authority to do that. After all, he acted as the temporary chief in charge of fouling stuff up. “Control, acknowledge—”

No. He leaned against a panel window. If he removed Hearse’s access, that would tip off Hearse to Reef’s duplicity. And, as Kamikaze often said before he blinded enemies with the spray of his sliced-open jugular, surprise was the best weapon. Actually, Good Guy demolitions expert Smith’s pineapple-flavored pineapple grenades were probably the best weapon.

“Awaiting command,” the haunt control said and offered an advertisement of a bench called the Wait King. “Perfect for those long delays between mass-trans or for homeless people who need a place to sleep. Some assembly required.”

Who was Hearse, anyway? He was an unknown factor aside from his vacation fanaticism. “Control, acknowledge. Tell me everything you know about Hearse.”

After the happy-tune jingle of Deathbarge’s latest line of hearses, the haunt control tooted a bugle-accompanied biography. Reef didn’t need to hear about Hearse’s persistent bedwetting until the age of six, but a nice twist was his career as a baritone in stage-production musicals. By evening, Reef would beat him into a soprano and a eunuch at the same time.

But what came next—Reef gasped, awash with such a numb tingle that he braced himself against the radiator—what the haunt control divulged next...

Reef gasped. No ammunition could defuse this situation faster than the dirt the haunt control was blundering out with frequent commercial breaks. “That pissing fiend. Control, acknowledge. The next time Hearse asks you to lock a door, slide it through him.” Oh, yes, the last laugh would be Reef’s.

* * *

The wall vomited apart in tempestuous debris. Kamikaze sprang back from the pummeling chunks. Jumping away from stuff was not his strong suit, but he put business before pleasure today. He discerned nothing except more pitch darkness, which meant the lights had died everywhere. Oh, great. Just freaking great. So he was unable to see anything. Anything! He ducked back into the recovery room and grabbed a scatter of needles from the cabinet. Untainted ones, despite his better judgment. He also grabbed what felt like an inertiabed, threw it down with a crashing clatter, and ducked behind it.

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze.” There spoke that high-flying, soul-squelching, headhunting soul squelcher/headhunter, and if Kamikaze thought of any more insults, he’d throw those into the mix, too. “This is Agent Hearse. Come peacefully. Please. You do not know what is at stake. The sundae bar. Also, live percussion ensembles. I love kettledrums.”

So did Kamikaze—crock, everybody loved kettledrums—but no kettledrum symphony was worth solitary incarceration for the rest of his life, which, if he ran things, would consist of a series of explosive twenty-second miniature lives. His hands shook, struggling to hold the needles. His arm hairs standing at attention, he held his breathing and hunched behind the inertiabed so low his elbow hardly propped him up.

“Be reasonable, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. Come with me. Get the help you need, and the help you need is complete isolation with no chance of getting any help. I will dedicate my next karaoke jam to you.” Hearse crooned a cracked, stony melody, “Celebra-ate my dance mo-oo-oves, ooga ooga.”

Hearse’s attempt at pop rock told Kamikaze he really needed to reach that parking lot. He shifted his weight, moved into a crouch, scuffled toward the wall and into a mirror that jangled. He assumed it was a mirror, but if a blue-backed gnawl waited behind him to swallow him up, he’d be okay with that, too.

He couldn’t hear Hearse’s footsteps. He tested his voice. In this darkness, maybe Hearse couldn’t find him. “I don’t want your help. Not even if you came to run me through with a sword. Well, maybe if you came to run me through with a sword, but you’ll have to sweet-talk me. I’m not that easy.” Who was he kidding? He’d give up even if Hearse had come to run him through with a dirk.

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze, much like Mother never sweet-talked me, I need not sweet-talk you to prove how much of a hazard you are, not only to yourself, not only to your friends, not only to my vacation, but to everyone. This concerns the lives of thousands. Consider that your entire life is merely a hodgepodge of death scenarios. From hurtling that Fireball starship into the Great Stellin Fusion Station—”

“I thought you weren’t going to sweet-talk me.”

“—to that debacle at the zoo’s gorilla cage, even you must see you are a danger to society.”

“But the sign didn’t say, ‘Do not feed the animals.’”

“And yet I believe ‘Do not feed the animals your arm’ is implied. Good Guy agent Kamikaze, your impulses are as healthful as your daily glutinous intake of sodium. To kill yourself is your only goal. Your life is spent dead.” The voice drew closer.

Footsteps wandered into the recovery room. Kamikaze bit his lower lip, drawing blood but this time not intentionally. He suppressed a staggering shiver.

A laser sight zipped across the room and swept a fine, red line along a sink, medical supplies, a cockroach that scurried into a hole. Oh, and Kamikaze’s napalm-spraying hose head. That was where Legion had confiscated it to.

Hearse’s heavy boots banged closer, so Kamikaze ducked behind the inertiabed. One boot clanged against the inertiabed and caused a rattle that coincided with Kamikaze’s strangled yelp. Hearse didn’t notice the yelp over the sound of his ego grinding the gears in his head. But that laser sight. Could Hearse see in the dark?

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze, I have given plenty of reasons why you should come with me: sundae bar, kettledrums, congas, and the added bonus of knocking Brock off his desperately high horse.” Hearse’s voice echoed godlike through the room. “I will send you vacation postcards for your collection.”

Now or never. With a tribal roar, Kamikaze lunged up and stabbed the four needles into Hearse’s ankle. “You”—two needle tips broke off, but the others remained lodged—“can”—Kamikaze threw himself backward—“never”—grabbed the inertiabed—“stop”—whacked one end across Hearse’s temple—“me”—swung-whacked the other end up Hearse’s chin—“from eating”—battered it against Hearse’s forehead—“poisonous”—threw it against Hearse’s face—“amounts of”—slashed at the knees—“sodium”—bashed a fist into Hearse’s mouth—“you dietician”—unpocketed a salt packet and downed the whole thing.

Hearse flinched.

“Oh, come on!” Kamikaze slapped a potted tree in bubbling frustration. “That’s the best I got. You’re just going to take it? What are you made of? Steel?” Kamikaze stamped forward and poked Hearse’s arm. “That’s just skin? You gotta be kidding. Your nose isn’t even bleeding, and I hate you for that.” He whacked himself. “Mine is, though.”

Hearse’s hand whipped up. His pistol clicked at the ready, pressed against Kamikaze’s forehead. “Good Guy agent Kamikaze, you will be doing the right thing by coming with me. I will put in a good word for you, might even persuade your case workers to allow you access to Music Montage’s broadcast of their greatest hits.”

“But nobody likes greatest hits.” Kamikaze shut his eyes, though, in the lack of light, it made no difference. “This better be slow and painful.”

“Unfortunately, light-bullets only come in one speed.” Hearse pulled the pistol away. “Hold on. Let me check. This firearm might actually offer dual speed.”

Opportunity knocked against the part of Kamikaze’s head he’d so often excised. He estimated where Hearse’s pistol would be and shot forward. But he stumbled and mashed his face into Hearse’s chest. Awwwwk-warrrrrd.

He burst airborne, maneuvered around Hearse, into the recovery room, found the opening Hearse had bashed through the wall. A shot electrified the air behind him—he looked over his shoulder—orange sparks blitzed from a new pockmark in a cabinet. He deflected off the ceiling and into the hallway, leaving behind another shot that pecked the darkness. With a two-ton, six-foot stride, Hearse lumbered out of the recovery room. The training tower shook with each portentous clomp.

Another shot and—pain gripped Kamikaze—he felt actual fingers of agony gouge his foot. He deflected again, howled for relief, cheered for torture, spiraled into the corridor’s end. Had he broken his neck? No. Limbs wiggled. Too bad, because this pain would alleviate him in a few moments. He stood. The pain crunching his foot forced his knee to buckle, and he drove his forehead into the wall. The shot had peeled right through the bone. Heh. A new weekend hobby.

No. Fight. Fight this! Get to—nnngggggGGGGGG—get to the parking lot.

Kamikaze stood and braced himself against the wall with an elbow, atilt on his foot. He gingerly lifted himself into the air. He maneuvered toward the front lobby, wavering unsteadily like a balloon sputtering around the room.

His broken foot misguided his flight and he gashed into the floor. The fall cracked a rib and wrenched a shoulder, even under his black impact suit. Crock. He couldn’t direct himself properly. And Hearse drew closer, pounding furniture aside on his stampede down the hallway.

Kamikaze limped around a corner, his ankle searing him as if he pranced across a barbecue grill. Huh. Not a bad idea for a lazy Sunday.

Chapter Sixteen: Stimulating Conversation

Burnout still sat in the cellblock, feet resting on the riot control booth’s dusty computer bank. He observed Scapegoat, who had now burrowed through the meat of the goobers in his nose and smeared whatever he’d excavated onto the wall, the floor, a bedpost, the lining of his other nostril. He had probably begun to exhume the juicy crust that lay beyond. He’d neglected to use the surfaces of the playing cards as mirrors, though, so maybe he hadn’t quite reached back far enough.

Burnout bit a chunk out of the chocolate chip cookie he’d found in the cellblock’s cabinet. It had sat in the dryer too long. Yes, the dryer. Apparently no one had programmed the cookbots with appliance differentiation. If Burnout could figure out what those cookbots had deposited into the garbage disposal, he might marshal up the courage to clean the hair out of it.

And, now that he was on the subject, maybe he wasn’t imagining the taste of household cleaner in every chocolaty bite.

With the exertion of breathing, Scapegoat inflated his marshmallow mass. He unplugged the finger from his nose. It dropped to his side where it smeared mucus onto the cot’s sheet. The same sheet the baking robot would likely stuff into the oven because, well, it resembled a square pie crust.

Burnout tenderly lifted himself off the stool and grabbed another scrubbed-and-dried cookie. He limped over to Scapegoat’s cell where he leaned against the wall, off his hurt foot, wary of the ionizing screen that threatened to snap at him with a charged pull if he even thought about grazing it. He looked down at the prisoner, the prisoner with goofy ears that stuck out like Jeff’s. Who looked as lonely and dejected as Jeff during those long nights locked in the nippy cellar that belonged to those slime creatures often referred to as parents. In fact...this cell resembled their cryptlike basement: cramped, chilly, and with a ceramic hula girl bobbling in the corner.

“Control, acknowledge. Unlock cell one.” Burnout entered the cell and settled onto the cot that felt as rigid as a shopping cart. He offered his other cookie. This was Jeff’s favorite, so the prisoner might enjoy it, too. “Prisoner, you haven’t finished your slime substance, but I’ll ask, anyway: are you hungry?”

Scapegoat considered this for a few seconds. He resembled a computer booting up rather than an actual person. Through eyes inflamed with craggy, bloodshot veins, he looked up at Burnout, then at the cookie. He guided a hand over the cookie with a languid shuffle. “Cookie thank the for you, yes yes.”

Ouch. Something stung underneath Burnout’s ear. Rearranging Scapegoat’s words destroyed Burnout’s sense of right and wrong. Melodramatic? Yes. Realistic assessment? Sure, why not?

Even when he brought the cookie to his mouth, Scapegoat budged like the undead. He shuffled the cookie into his maw and bit a chunk the size a child would, which he unenthusiastically chewed thanks to intrinsic programming.

The haunt control buzzed a short warning alarm. “Caution: cell one has remained unlocked for three minutes. Escape may ensue or, at the very least, snot flinging. You must close cell one as soon as possible. You must also try Choke Cola’s hip new flavor, sassafrass, because...hey...we’d like to sell you on stuff that tastes like chewing tobacco. Available at your local bait shop.”

“Control, acknowledge. Keep cell one open and disable all future cell-related warnings and any cell-related-warning-related warnings. And deliver some sassafrass to Kamikaze’s living quarters.” Something that tasted that toxic and yet wasn’t caustic would frustrate the crock out of that muddle-headed freak.

“You could use some company, prisoner. I mean Scapegoat.” Burnout retrieved the box of playing cards, wiped the mucky food off it, and opened it. He tapped out the cards, which activated with a ding.

Scapegoat shifted his head up with a creak. Wearing a frown that twitched into a poker face, he watched Burnout shuffle the cards. Burnout could have pressed the autoshuffle button on the box, but this was more fun.

“Let me teach you my brother’s favorite game.” Burnout arranged the cards on the cot. “It’s called solitaire. My brother keeps asking to play with me, which leads me to believe he doesn’t understand the game. His other favorite card game is sixty-seven thousand pick up, so either he owns a lot of decks or he skips a few numbers.”

Chapter Seventeen: Fancy Meeting You Here

Power Plant skulked around a shopper in Toynomics’s shaded aisle of action figures, chomping down on a gingersnap. His last battle ration. Sucked, but Franchise was back at Station Deuce, Easy-Baking a batch of caramel muffins.

Ed followed and, behind him, Sixth Sense. Power Plant motioned for them to approach—quick-quick-quick—with a twirling sweep of his arm that clattered against some packaged army dudes. Not ninja sneaky, but Power Plant had at least learned his lesson about noise from the aisle that offered the lifelike emergency vehicle toys.

Power Plant was searching for decorations. Station Deuce was super awesome—and also adult-proof according to the scribble on its door—but the brown and beige walls looked drab. Power Plant needed art. The Renovodomus Ultimate Couponing League poster in aisle six would have added a nice touch, but it contrasted with Station Deuce’s color scheme: random and clashing.

Ed clomped to Power Plant’s side—ssh. Power Plant swiped a wave at him.

“Guys, we’s gotta sounds ninja. Y’ know, silents like bats. Otherwise, these Bad Guys mebbe hears us coming ’round.”

To assess the magnitude of the Bad Guys’ box fort—and to figure out how they fertilized their front lawn—Power Plant called for silent action. And security cameras observed from the ceiling about every thirty yards, so today dignity was their watchword. Power Plant tilted his plastic headband off his eyes with the business end of his empty wrapping paper roll. Yes. Dignity.

Sixth Sense cleared his throat, which sounded like a paper shredder munching on gravel. “Wait. Uh. Bats aren’t silent. They shriek. And, since I’m reading your thoughts, if you use pterodactyls as an example of sneaky, we’d have to go extinct. Besides, I thought we were looking for eavestroughs for Station Deuce in case the sprinkler systems activated.”

“Oh, yeah. Ease trough for the box fort. So’s we cans box-fortify.” He reached up to the cross-aisle and found a shelf holding diecast cars. He grabbed some of their orange tracks. “Gots ’em.”

“Eavestroughs? Mr. President, you told me this was a bathroom break.” Ed pulled out a datasheet. “Should I register this in our activity log?”

“Argh.” Sixth Sense clutched his buzz-cut head as if thought assaulted him. It usually did. Power Plant knew how that felt: like a freak shark attack. “Uhm, okay. Wait. Jeff. Please stop playing the Batman theme song in your head. And switching to Fraggle Rock doesn’t solve anything.” He clapped twice.

“Don’t matter what’s this mission abouts. I think we’s near to them’s boxes fort.” Power Plant motioned the others to follow his leap-step down the figure-littered aisle and into the game aisle. He banged his shoulder on a stack of Nazi Roller Coaster board games that slid out and cracked onto his foot. Close call. Nazi Roller Coaster he could handle, but if that were Jenga? No way could he kick stuff after lumber supplies pulverized his toes. “And keeps on a lookouts for a bathroom hutch. Needs somes place to put my floss. Plus, I’s stills macked off that the Bad Guys cheated us outta dat trampolines mat at the street sale.”

Sixth Sense tapped his shoulder. “That wasn’t a street sale. That was the front cash. Asinine got in line first.”

“Don’ts matters none. We needs a trampolines mat for a new driveways.”

The Cosmonaut Chimp puppet behind them would make a nice centerpiece for the kitchen table. Oh, and the inflatable battle tank from aisle eight would work wonders atop Station Deuce’s keep. Mmrrrroooowww-k’pow-k’pow splat.

Power Plant bounded around the aisle—slam! He hit something and slipped back, dropping his wrapping-paper club. He mashed a hand into a Dork Hospital game box, which ejected a dweeb retractor and...that Master Asinine Is a Suck guy loomed over him with a grit of teeth. Shoppers scampered away.

“Hey, hey. Hey! Hey-hey-hey.” Power Plant sprang up and whipped a two-pronged attack of orange tracks that Master Asinine Sucks couldn’t country-twang his way out of with a dueling banjo. “Hey.”

“Don’t move!” Master Asinine Sucks grabbed a plastic guitar, tore open the box, disposed the plastic wrapping, untied the fastening wires that secured it to the cardboard—Power Plant yawned—unscrewed the battery pack’s cover with a fingernail, inserted the supplied batteries, removed and rotated one battery, refastened the pack’s cover, clicked the guitar off demo mode, and reared back. “Stay back, varmint!” If “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” was any of that thing’s preselected tunes, Power Plant would be rock outta luck.

Master Asinine Sucks sliced air with the body of the guitar. A button glanced against a shelf, which prompted the guitar to inform everyone that “a cow goes moo.” Last year’s news. Power Plant arched back and the guitar narrowly cut above his nose. If hit, he’d sneeze treated plastic for days.

Master Asinine Sucks thrust forward, ripping his hands over colorful buttons that represented guitar strings. This chugged out a bouncy version of “Runnin’ With the Devil.” Whatever happened to putting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on these things?

Power Plant tossed his arms over his head. “Hey, stops all them swingings!”

Master Asinine Sucks chopped the guitar upward to prepare a wood-splitting axe swing. Power Plant blasted brilliant laser light through the guitar’s neck. The body conked onto Master Asinine Sucks’s head, jamming out a tired chord and bleating that “the sheep goes bleeeeeech. Batteries low.”

A bubble appeared around Master Asinine Sucks and reverberated with the sound of contained air. He slashed at the bubble with the guitar neck. “Hey, what’s this thing?”

Sixth Sense and Ed scampered forward, a telekinetic line stemming from Sixth Sense’s forehead. Sixth Sense rubbed a hand over the bubble to examine the strength of his telekinetic field. The bubble whined with quiet feedback.

“Are you hurt, President Abends, Secretary Sixth Sense?” Ed asked. He yanked a toy first aid kit from a shelf. He unwrapped it and tore out a box of kiddy bandages. “If you like, I’ll call a press conference to quell the political fallout this attack caused.”

“Hold on. Wait. What am I secretary of?” Sixth Sense’s face showed disdain to the answer he scanned. “Huh. Okay. Uhh, don’t they usually hire fair carnies to slog through that stuff?”

“This punk’s gonna pays for tryings to hits me. Plus pays for that guitars he smashed up, too. Right, sucka?” Power Plant stomped to the telekinetic bubble and rapped on it. A devastating boom like an echoing door knocker in a mansion ruptured through the bubble. Master Asinine Sucks curled into a ball and covered his ears.

Master Asinine Sucks pointed up with his middle finger. “Hey, cowpoke, let me outta here. I’m havin’ trouble breathin’. The air smells like lead paint.” His voice echoed as if he wore a fishbowl over his head.

Power Plant threw an arm at Master Asinine Sucks. “What’s we does wit’ dis mudsill? Hey, let’s kills him an’ makes him our prisoner!”

Master Asinine Sucks flung his arms up, knocking over his fedora. “You don’t wanna kill me, you don’t wanna kill me, Master Asinine’s built somethin’ called the Acinator, an’ it’ll blow ya city slickers sky high, an’ I gotta live to tell y’all about it, you don’t wanna kill me.” Master Asinine Sucks tumbled against Sixth Sense’s bubble. “Yeehaw,” he deadpanned as if cursing. “This thing sucks.”

Sixth Sense shut his eyes and scrunched his forehead. He leaned against a support column but dizzied back. “Wow. Okay. Not good. Uhm, he’s definitely telling the truth about the Acinator. It’s spelled with a c, though. Asinine should change the name before someone gets the wrong idea. Anyway, I can’t figure out anything more. Gol-darn-it! Asinine apparently didn’t tell him any details of the plan. The only thing I can read from him is that Master Asinine stole the last of the pasta casserole, even though Master Asinine Sucks’s name was on it. And, until I stop reading his mind, his personality is bleeding through, and I’m very much into country music.” He said all this while square-dancing.

“What’s you thinks we do with hims?” Power Plant asked Ed, who wound a bandage with the consistency of gift tissue around Power Plant’s arm.

Ed snipped the bandage with toy scissors and used modeling clay to stick it in place. “I’m not qualified to offer advice on the subject, Mr. President, but if you like, I’ll perform another coffee run. You seem low on hyperactivity. I can pencil the coffee run in before our meeting with the Republic of Franchisia.”

“Franchise doesn’t operate a country.” Sixth Sense still watched their bubble captive. “Yes, I’m positive.”

“Maybes for torture questionings, we takes dis Bad Guy back to home. An’ bring that emergencies repairs kit. It mights got a pair of pliers so’s we can uses to rip out his nostrils. We’s gotta be quick, ’cause I meetin’ dat goon-ball what own Franchisia. I needs his gold. So long as he stops all of his illegal immigratings all overs my land.”

“Uhm. Hold on. Okay. You’re in for a disappointment.” Sixth Sense gently guided Master Asinine Sucks’s force bubble in the direction of Station Deuce. “There is no Franchisia. Franchise has told you about a dozen times. Remember? He even wrote that one-man play, Please, oh, Please Leave Me Alone, Jeffy.”

Chapter Eighteen: Slideshow of Shenanigans

“Computer, acknowledge. Lights to normal capacity in this hallway.”

Reef banged his side into the doorframe but deflected through, his assault blaster clacking against the wall. Hearse thundered onward somewhere ahead, Kamikaze a little farther than that. Armed with new knowledge, Reef wanted to drop the assault blaster but didn’t: Kamikaze could find it later and blow his brains all over Reef in a gesture of friendship. And Reef was sick of shopping for clean wardrobes because he refused to put on bloody clothes no matter how often he washed them.

He stampeded to the next doorway before it slid aside—“come on, come on.” Boom. Pounded through it, raced around the next corner.

“Control, acknowledge. How far is entity Hearse from entity Kamikaze?”

“Entity Hearse is thirty yards from entity Kamikaze’s position. Have you tried Letchtech’s new bladder disinfectant?”

To save valuable seconds, Reef skidded through the next door sideways. “Control, acknowledge. I don’t need your ridiculous bladder disinfectant.”

“Bioscans indicate you do.”

“In that case, let’s keep that between you and me.” Two more hallways to go. Reef aimed ahead and sprinted. Sweat dipped into his eye and swirled the hallway in semitransparent fizz. “Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Hearse. And, ow, sweat hurts.” He wiped his eye socket onto his shoulder.

“Connection attained. Use a facecloth.”

“Hearse, this is Reef.”

“Reef? Who is this? How did you attain this calltag?”

“Reef. It’s Reef.”

“Who?”

“Good Guy leader Reef.”

“Ah, Good Guy leader Reef. I apologize. What fruitless subterfuge will you use to try to dissuade me from attaining victory over that vacation-stealing Brock?”

“That’s just it, Hearse.” Ahead. The final door that separated Reef from that hunting beast. He tore forward with vigor surging his bones. “I know the truth.”

The haunt control, which was on Reef’s blacklist since telling him to disinfect his bladder, said, “Attention, entity Hearse. Entity Reef is onto you.”

Hearse’s long silence turned into a whispered breath. “You know about the chicken-farm incident?”

Reef stopped. Why was there always a farm incident? “No, but I’d love to never hear about that. I’ll need a psychological scouring pad to scuff that out of my brain. Anyway, I know the whole truth. About you.”

“The whole truth?” If Hearse felt any apprehension, his voice revealed nothing. “In that case...Control, acknowledge. Lock door closest to entity Reef.”

What? Reef’s eyes bulged and magnetized to the door. He stepped into a trot, then a jog, then a rocketing scramble.

Hearse’s next command: “Control, acknowledge. Ignore entity Good Guy leader Reef’s commands.”

Reef threw himself at the door and beat fists against it. “Hearse, unlock this door. You can’t do this to Kamikaze. I can reach him!”

“He is unreachable, Good Guy leader Reef. What contribution could he possibly serve society?”

“Well...he has love and limbs to spread around. Uh, blood to shower? Look, he’s really fun at a party.”

A grunt seethed through the connection, a primordial roar. What was that? Reef jumped, almost yelped at the blitz of screams, tripped on his own heels but didn’t fall. Seconds passed with heaving and choking and clacking teeth that interspersed the painful roar. It soon diminished, stopped, leaving only hoarse coughs.

“Was that a flash, Hearse?” Reef imagined Hearse curled into a ball, squirming on the floor with both hands pressed against his temples as if to contain his exploding brain.

The dry coughs continued, but Hearse managed to say, “Good Guy...leader Reef...shut your mouth.”

“I know about your episodes, Hearse. What can you see? What the piss puts you in such agony?”

The tormented breaths slowed to normal. “Good-bye, Good Guy leader Reef,” Hearse said. “I have a psychotic to capture. Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection.”

“Hearse, don’t you dare. I know your secret. I know why you want Kamikaze. And if you capture him by convincing him you’ll blend him into a strawberry/Kamikaze smoothie as thanks, that’s just cheating.” But the connection had already concluded.

Reef bellowed—“Hearse, you can’t do this to him!”—smashed his assault blaster into the door. He whipped the blaster aside. “Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door.”

“Speaker not authorized. Sucker.”

“Crock you, Hearse.” He gunned a foot into the door’s locking mechanism—

The combat knife! He lifted his shirt, grabbed the knife. Slid it along the wall and downward, jabbed it into the thin slit between the wall and the mechanism’s console. Began prying. The mechanism groaned with each pull. After a few seconds of resistance, the mechanism snapped open. A mess of wires collapsed out.

Reef grabbed the hanging cover—tore it off the wall. Snapped wires in crackling sparks. Spun the cover aside. It clattered into a corner. Grabbed his assault blaster.

“Take Kamikaze away from us, and I will beat you into a wad of tissue, you clone of Frankenstein.”

Reef wouldn’t fail Kamikaze. He would not. He might even let Kamikaze buy that pet Bengal tiger after this. He aimed the blaster at the door’s wiring and disgorged a guzzling salvo.

* * *

Kamikaze shunted against a wall in the jet-black hallway. He’d traversed the underground tunnels and had emerged in this building. The front lobby—and freedom—lay only one corridor twist away. The echo of Hearse’s voice still vibrated through the wall against his back. Or was that the gnaw of dread that skittered along his spine? This was not how he wanted to spend his monthly Colorless, Odorless Toxic Gases Night, emphasis on the gases because some people thought Kamikaze was a one-show circus.

He was two shows, sometimes three.

As intensely as a supernova, his foot flashed with pain. He lifted it off the floor, but the agony remained unabated. With a breadcrumb line of blood that dripped from the opening, bone splintering out and tearing the wound, Kamikaze couldn’t lean on it. He had to abstain from pain or Hearse would surely capture him. But who was he kidding? He was Kamikaze: every instinct urged him to dance a jig.

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze?” Hearse said from somewhere in the nether of the shadowy void. His voice echoed over the station’s public address speakers, but Kamikaze still expected those arms as thick as plumber’s pipes to yank him into the murky darkness. He’d dreamed of being yanked into a murky darkness, but a giant tongue did the yanking, and the murky darkness was really a throat. He’d also dreamed of showing up to work with no pants. Once he’d even shown up with no legs. Not a dream.

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze.” Hearse’s smile was audible through a speaker. “Are you attempting to reach the parking lot? I have already barred your access to the front doors.”

“Barred?” Kamikaze jittered with dismay. He spilled forward around the corner and into the lobby, couldn’t fly. He blundered through the darkness, crawled to the huge lobby doors and ran his fingers along them. Shutters. He gripped, pried, peeled back one shutter, levered open a corner, not enough to slither through but enough to see daylight, precious daylight. And a lonely civ-tran waited outside. Freedom, meters away! He peeled more, more, more, his fingers scraped cold metal. This psycho knew his plan. Get out, burst through that door. “Control, acknowledge. Let me the crock out!”

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze, Escape is not an option. Control, acknowledge. Initiate atmospheric lockdown.”

What? Atmospheric lockdown? Kamikaze twisted his gaze upward under the bent opening in the door’s shutters. The atmospheric bubble—that gelatinous outer boundary that contained a spatial body’s atmosphere—darkened, hardened, and not even a battleship could bust through it. The civ-tran, so close and yet...its lights deactivated. Kamikaze slapped a palm over the bent shutter, rattling it. “Let me off this station, you evil crock!”

“Never, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. You are mine.”

Kamikaze would see about that. He crawled toward a wall. He felt an electricity panel by his side, so he hovered in flight over it to give his injured foot a break. He felt for the panel’s edge, dug his fingers in, removed them, probed in with his tongue—whoa, awesome, his sight lit up—dug his fingers back in, yanked, yanked—the panel cracked open. It clapped off a spark and spewed out a fluff of wires. If his sick hobby had taught him anything, it was that everything was a weapon.

He wrenched out the wires. They traveled upward and peeled apart a line in the wall that, seconds later, gelled together. He tugged the length of wire and floated unsteadily across the lobby where he banged his head into a light panel affixed to the adjacent wall. He tied the wire against the light panel. In the darkness, he made his best guess at locating the middle of the wire that stretched across the lobby. He peeled the sheath with a fingernail. The wire looked too thin for even Hearse’s night vision to see without switching on a light. Too thin for Kamikaze to tie around his neck and launch himself out a window.

Kamikaze slapped himself. Get with it. To save himself from the hellish oblivion of a sanity ward’s subbasement, he had to shove aside his casual interests. He slapped himself again. No good reason.

“Have you been listening to me, Good Guy agent Kamikaze?” There babbled that arrogant, holiday-seeking blowhard Hearse again. “Let me explain the urgency. For one, the vacation: sundae bar, busting out my conga, no bragging rights for Brock, et cetera, et cetera. Also they serve fresh eel. However, one thing remains unmentioned.”

The lobby zapped into light. Not a bright light. Behind him, a display had activated on the wall, illustrating an image still colored mostly with grays and reds. And, on it...a dead body? What?

Armless, charred with flaking skin that resembled a mummy’s corpse. Oh, and split in half, missing the lower portion. Yup. Nothing got past Kamikaze. The body belonged to a man, but not the starship salesman who’d cheated Kamikaze on his last beast of burden, so why would this interest him?

“Do you recognize this corpse?” Hearse’s voice rumbled into the lobby like a street sweeper’s oncoming engine.

“The guy who told you that you have a face for radio?”

“No. Guess again.”

“Me after I opened my last birthday present from myself. No, wait, hyenas aren’t gorging on my remains. Congratulations. You’ve stumped me.”

The image switched to a lean man of the Trioxidillian race, one wearing sunny shorts and a sunnier smile. He lounged poolside in a beach chaise, one hand gripped around a blue drink with an umbrella sticking out. “This body belongs to Hessoss Wantion, a fusion generator supervisor at the Great Stellin Fusion Station. You caused a Fireball starship to demolish the power station two weeks ago, carving through him like a rhinoceros. You killed him. Your irresponsible crash landing served as the weapon.”

Another image replaced Wantion’s. A group of Trioxidillians. One adult, two children, and a baby who still wore the stale membranes that had hydrated him inside his birthing egg. They had yet to fall off. “Hessin Wantion was a family man, Good Guy agent Kamikaze.”

Kamikaze’s arms, which he’d braced for combat, fell. Another image flickered onto the wall. This new image appeared beside Wantion’s family. A group of workers, all wearing Great Stellin uniforms, that ugly blue, orange, and gray combination that Master Asinine would find chic and everyone else would find near the top of the fashion police’s capitol offences, immediately under culottes and magical ice-cream suits.

“These seventeen people lost their lives during that crash, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. They also lost their jobs.”

Kamikaze had caused that? His knees shivered. Had the temperature plummeted in here? The raging devastation he’d wrought on these men and women, the violent deaths, the rampant unemployment. He would have gasped, but he controlled it. Even a gasp would reveal his position, though he felt certain Hearse knew where to find him. After all, if these image stills had located him, Hearse could just ask the haunt control where he hid.

The adjacent wall lit with flickering image stills of other bodies lined up in a morbid who’s who. Like a rapid-fire line of dominoes, the wall click-clicked in four-by-seven-foot-panel succession until the lobby ignited with a showcase of death. Image stills displayed some bodies charred and blackened like Wantion’s, some headless, some with silenced screams, some wearing tutus and dance slippers. Ah, Kamikaze’s theater night.

“Good Guy agent Kamikaze, since discovering your hyperability, you have murdered, through your recklessness, eight hundred sixty-two people, including two hundred eight after joining the Good Guys.”

“Ha,” Kamikaze said though didn’t feel. “I kill more people before breakfast than most people kill all day.”

“These deaths amount to seven thousand four hundred thirty four relatives, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. Four hundred fourteen children orphaned. Two hundred ninety widows and widowers. Eleven suicides as a result of these deaths. Eight cities without key politicians. One preempted episode of Gorilla Slingshot.”

An outpour of image stills cluttered across the wall, covering and outnumbering the pictures in a gruesome mosaic. Hearse said, “That includes only those who have died. You have injured more than nine thousand others. They have suffered missing limbs, lost sight or hearing. Injuries that cost thousands of moolahs to correct. Some of your victims cannot afford the corrections.”

The image stills rounded the lobby, spread across the doors, permeated the beveled ceiling, and shot back toward Kamikaze. They ended in front of him: Car Alarm, Harrier, and Legion. Car Alarm’s mechanical body, ravaged to waste in hundreds of pieces. Harrier, on an inertiabed, one wing amputated to a revolting stub. And Legion, pale and withered, tubes feeding him, machines regulating his vital functions.

“You remember your comrades. Good Guy agent Car Alarm, now a mesh of diodes and circuits. Good Guy agent Harrier, without a wing. And Good Guy leader Legion, comatose for nine days and counting. You may not be responsible for his damage directly, but you are nevertheless responsible. You have left thousands debilitated, including your friends. This is piled on top of those you have killed.”

Kamikaze pounded his wrists against his head. Later he’d admit the reason he was beating himself, but for now he’d believe he wanted to crack open his skull and leak gray-matter goodness over the floor. “But they heal. They come back to life. They always come back.”

“Nobody comes back, Good Guy agent Kamikaze.”

“Everybody comes back! Everybody!” Kamikaze ripped out a nailed-down desk, shattering apart terrazzo. He hurled the desk into Legion’s image still, which buzzed and blackened out.

Kamikaze lurched forward with the toss. He stamped both feet against the floor and tripped onto his knees. Tears surged out, easier after he’d used scissors one day to cut open his tear ducts. He buried his face in his hands. “Everybody comes back.”

“Only you. Everyone else dies. And even if they did not, you ruined some important evening plans. A lot of these deaths occurred on holiday weekends, after all.

“All this is because of you, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. All because of your need to fulfill your sick desires. You do not live. You do not have a life. You seek only to disrupt it. You spend more time in death than in life. You cause only havoc and blistering devastation. You spend your time in a zombified mental state, seeking murderous thrills. You live only in the technical sense of the word. Good Guy agent Kamikaze, you are not life. You are only a carbon copy of life, a cheap imitation.” At this point, Hearse no longer talked through the speaker. He appeared at the lobby entrance, outlined by the lit stills to form the shadow-on-shadow profile of a resolute train-man, exactly as Kamikaze had pictured him. “You are not life. You are simply a metaphor for life.”

Hearse was right: escape was not an option. Kamikaze knew that now. Even if he managed his way through the locked atmospheric bubble, Hearse would dog him forever. And, without anything with which to slice off his arm, he was unarmed. Ironic. Still, he couldn’t swing around a meaty limb in some cockamamie scheme to further prove his derangement.

The panels of image stills unlit, sinking the hallway back into utter darkness.

Kamikaze retrieved two desk legs splintered at their ends. He stood on one ankle and gripped the table legs as if he stepped up to bat. “I resurrect. You don’t. So bring it on, pro-lifer. It’s do and die time.”

“You mean, ‘do or’—”

“I meant what I said.” Kamikaze figured sticking himself with a desk leg was enough indication of that. And painfully delectable.

In the darkness that only Hearse’s laser vision speckled, Kamikaze twitched back from a heavy clomp: Hearse strode forward. “Are you prepared?” Hearse’s voice hinted no urgency. He regarded this meeting as indifferently as he regarded a commercial break.

Kamikaze ignored his ragged foot. He leaped at the voice. He reeled a desk leg back to strike. “Bring it, you bipedal hippo.”

Chapter Nineteen: Block Party

Pincushion bolted up in wide-eyed fright. His heart felt like a toilet plunger was suctioning it out. “What the piss, what happened, where am I, what hit me, how can I stop Power Plant from destroying whatever he’s destroying?”

A throb squeezed his skull. Ugh. Swimming head. Hot scalp. He felt his temple and found a bandage. He tried to stand on a groaning cybernetic knee, but his gag reflex wrung his throat. Not a good idea.

The headache receded to its normal insomniac daze, so Pincushion lifted himself off the bed and braced himself to attack whatever situation Power Plant had dragged the group into. No dragon marauds. No insane machine holocausts. No insane dragon machine holocaust marauds. And here came the weirdest part: Pincushion hadn’t awakened in the middle of a thundermammal rodeo Power Plant had single-handedly caused.

He examined the room. Cardboard walls decorated by a perforation pattern. A child’s bookcase holding a population of stuffed animals and toy trucks. A set of colorful drapes hiding a window that wasn’t actually a window but rather a crayon drawing (the smiling sun was a warming touch). Posters of sports icons and G-rated movies. A bed fit for an infant into which someone had wedged him, which would explain the twinge crackling in his spine. Why hadn’t his police training prepared him for teammate idiocy? Hostage negotiation didn’t seem so important when compared with Power Plant negotiation.

Then Master Asinine Sucks padded by with a sopping mop. The Bad Guy whistled a somber tune, tilted his fedora at Pincushion, and stopped at a white spill that lay belched across a foam-matted floor. He wore rubber cleaning gloves.

“Excuse me, but...what exactly are you doing here, brother?” Pincushion asked.

Master Asinine Sucks slapped the floor with the mop’s woolen fingers. Suds splattered across a foamy letter h. “Just cleanin’ up some dried milk, boss.”

That clinched it. Pincushion had woken up in a Bad Guy concentration camp made to resemble a clown house.

* * *

Power Plant plopped his day-weary bones onto the smiley-face chair situated across from the broadcast viewscreen in Station Deuce’s beige den. He grabbed the remote control—since this stupid viewscreen’s voice command module was giving him the silent treatment—and zapped the viewscreen on. This started the same show as every other time he activated this one-channel bizarro contraption: Cosmonaut Chimp. The Chimp had, as always, squeezed his hands around the neck of Armadillo Grillo while fending off Awesome Possum’s attacks with his prehensile tail. Maybe if even just one of Cosmonaut Chimp’s mortal enemies didn’t use a rhyming name, the show’s ratings wouldn’t be sagging. Then again, the writers had to fill up a theme song.

Another day at the grind. Oh, boy, if straightening out tennis rackets wasn’t killing him, arranging puzzles on the high shelves was. But someone had to wear his finger to the bone for this lush estate. Station Deuce’s mortgage didn’t just pay for itself.

“President Abends.” Ed descended the stairs and sat next to Power Plant. “I have your messages here, but first Mr. Franchise would like to discuss tonight’s dinner. Would you prefer veal or leftover lasagna?”

“Ah, don’t matters. If it ain’ts mac an’ cheese, I dunno whats it is.”

Pincushion’s voice bellowed from behind a cardboard door. “Jeffrey Cooper Abends!”

“Name definitely Jeffy in that case.”

Pincushion slammed open the door that led in from the guest bedroom. He thunder-squeaked toward Power Plant in a one-legged limp, stopped in front of the viewscreen, and planted his arms on his hips. In a short-tempered pulse, he tapped his foot. “Brother, care to explain why Master Asinine Sucks is cleaning our floor? I expect this to be mesmerizing.”

A well of pride energized Power Plant. He sprang out of his chair and slapped his chest with obvious delight. “We capturized that dudes. He our maids now. We paying him in foods so he sticking ’round ’cause we givings him dinner and Asinine cooks with spackle. Sucks work on some drinks I spill up, then’s he’s finishes cleanings the oven in our kitchen.”

“Speaking of our kitchen.” Ed hovered over his datasheet. “Mr. Pincushion, for tonight’s dinner, can I put you down for lasagna or fresh veal? Mr. Franchise recommends the veal. He makes an exquisite braised fennel salad as a side dish even without the use of his elbows.”

“Veal? Dinner?” Pincushion threw up his hands, lucky not to stab himself when they dropped back against his sides. The hazard of bony spikes that stuck out of you. “We have a kitchen and a maid? Is he responsible for our laundry?” Pincushion fell into Power Plant’s smiley chair. “Why have you set up operations inside Pee-Wee’s Playhouse?”

Power Plant pomped forward with an unhidden ta-da. “You likes the new digs?”

Pincushion sleepily misjudged a step and stumbled aside, but he righted himself. “You remember we came here to stop the Bad Guys from accomplishing their goals, don’t you? Have you done anything other than hire from their maid service? Do you even know where the Bad Guys are?”

Power Plant indicated the window to his left. “They moves in rights next door.” He funneled his mouth. “Hey, Jakey, you gone talks to them ’bout thems plastic trees hangings over the fence and scrapings against our siding? Gotsa respect them properties line, man.”

“What? We’re next-door neighbors with Master Asinine?” Pincushion staggered, almost toppled backward over the plastic chair. He searched the den. “How long have I been out? Who’s president?”

Power Plant pointed to the taupe wall behind Pincushion. Near the ceiling, Pincushion found a clock that displayed both the time and date. He slapped his forehead, narrowly missing a small spike. “It’s eleven thirty? Are you serious? You established a new life in less than four hours? Are the Bad Guys even still out there?”

“Sure they are. We borrowed their sugar this morning to make this apple pie.” Franchise entered the den with a glassy look. He held a fragrant pie plate and wore an outfit about eighteen sizes too small. For some reason, he didn’t bend his arms or legs. And what was with the “Kiss the Cook” apron? He hotdogged a performance of sniffing the pie’s bouquet aroma. “Ahh. Just like my nana used to make but without the raging senility that convinced her to use only apple cores.”

“So you’re living out Jeff’s fantasy of moving into a toy store. Great. Wonderful.” Pincushion thundered across the den.

“Where you goings?” Power Plant watched Pincushion tear open the cardboard door.

“I’m going to have a neighborly chat with Asinine.” He slammed the door.

He burst back in and stomped toward Franchise. “First slice me off a piece of that pie, would ya, brother?”

* * *

Pincushion wriggled his ear. The response regulator behind it zapped his brain to alertness. He needed to be awake. Still, sleep and insomnia warred over his reaction time.

He stormed across the ludicrous property line and into Asinine’s turf. His bad knee squawked. He nodded a greeting to the toothpick-chomping Schizophrenic, who was more occupied with setting fire to a bubble mower rather than stopping him from marching into Asinine’s box fort and hammering the overflowing idiocy out of that fail-monger’s tiny brain.

Pincushion pounded up the front steps of Asinine’s box fort and rang the ersatz doorbell: a joy buzzer. Ouch. He forked another clump of pie into his mouth.

“Just a minute.” Footsteps from inside the box fort knocked closer to the door until the door scraped open to expose a cheery Master Asinine. He wore a cardboard helmet and a suit of armor that was really a collection of matchbox cars draped over him. The helmet bore an upward spike. A beer hat, leather-strapped to his chin, splashed orange soda from a tumbler hung off that spike. Team Group Hug’s latest album detonated out from the box fort. “Pincushion, how are you? How are the kids?” He sucked the orange soda through a straw.

“Power Plant and Franchise are fine, but I somehow doubt Power Plant has kept up with his homework. Listen, Asinine, I didn’t come here to maintain this creepy pretense that you guys have set up some sort of outlandish neighborhood.” He forked in another tart ball of pie. “I’ve come to finish a job. You arrived at this mall to terrorize the customers and employees, you killed no fewer than a dozen bystanders and placed the rest in dire peril, and you convinced my team that their living arrangement is anything less than absolutely bonkers. Also your toy robot dog defecated on our lawn.”

Master Asinine peered over Pincushion’s shoulder. “Hey, Furby, you know better than that! Schizo, whack his snout with a datasheet.”

Schizophrenic looked up from pouring another gallon of lighter fluid into the lawnmower. Lefty clenched his teeth on his toothpick and snorted. “Yeah. Right. I’ll get on that immediately, you brain pariah.” Righty sprouted that immeasurable grin of his and waved.

“Anyway”—Pincushion set his fork on the plate and, with his free hand, grabbed a tuft of Asinine’s collar to jerk him forward—“I’m here to make sure you never again endanger the public.”

“Hey!” Asinine shoved Pincushion away. Orange soda sprinkled the porch. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’m on the neighborhood watch.” He sneered and turned red. “And how’s the pie?” He spat the last word at Pincushion.

“A little too much cinnamon. Thank you for asking.” Pincushion finished the last bite and discarded the plate. He wedged the fork between two fingers and reeled back to prong Asinine.

Asinine pounded his chest like a fuming gorilla. With a snarl and a waggling tongue, he smashed forward into Pincushion. Amid the clanging of a squeaky knee and armor made from diecast cars, both rolled down the front steps that Pincushion was now thankful Asinine constructed from Duplo blocks.

* * *

“Hey Jakey.” Power Plant wore a snickering smile. He approached the window where Franchise washed dishes on the play kitchenette’s countertop. “Try a deep-knees bend.”

Franchise reeled around. “That’s it. Prepare for the punch-down of a lifetime.” Franchise managed an arm-flail instead. “Did I hit you? Holy housewife, I’ve lost all depth perception.”

A boom shook the cardboard walls. To check the source of the clamor out the window, Power Plant craned onto his tippy-toes and...holy crock. Pincushion stood on the Bad Guys’ front steps and swung a smoky bubble mower at Master Asinine. Schizophrenic stood aside with a Cuddle Me Bear nanny cam, filming the entire debacle.

Holy crows, move, run. “We’s gotsa stops this.” Power Plant darted for the front door and pitched it open. “I’s lookings everywheres for a bubble mower, and they’s gonna breaks it!”

* * *

Master Asinine shoved Pincushion back. Pincushion careened against the box fort, his fork tinkling onto the plastic porch and the bubble mower crashing away. The bony extensions that prickled from him in scattered directions gored through the fort’s cardboard insulation.

Master Asinine kicked aside a toy rake. “Should have written ‘spike-proof’ on the wall to protect it. Picked up that do-it-yourself tip off our neighbors. Also, I think I missed Cosmonaut Chimp.”

Master Asinine slammed a fist into Pincushion’s face, the only body part he could punch without getting speared. Well, Pincushion’s nose looked pretty sharp.

“Have at thee!” Master Asinine delivered another punch and sucked from a cola straw. “I’m missing my chore time. Because of you, we’ll have to suffer with dirty floors until tomorrow.” Another punch. Asinine gripped two of Pincushion’s spikes and threw him across the porch. “House chores are impossible to keep up with.”

Pincushion rolled down the steps and onto the lawn. He leaped up and jetted a knee into Asinine’s abdomen. Asinine’s armor plating soaked up the brunt, but he stumbled into the plastic garage door. With the clang of diecast on plastic sheeting, Asinine grunted. Pincushion grabbed a baseball bat. He misjudged and rattled the garage door with a swing. He slugged again, denting the garage. Asinine shoved, kicked, punched him away.

“Get off my land!” Asinine fired another punch into Pincushion’s face.

“Never!” Pincushion smeared a bloody trail off his nose with the back of a fist, then twisted to face the lawn. “Power Plant, forget the bubble mower. Just attack.”

Power Plant paid no attention. Instead, he and Schizophrenic traded blows: one swung the discarded bubble mower like a two-handed broadsword and the other screamed something about missing out on his red meat.

“Ooh, red meat.” Master Asinine drooled. “I should invite myself over for dinner.”

Pincushion broke free of Asinine’s grasp and ducked to the foot of the driveway. He scooped up the accrual in the Bad Guys’ recycling bin and whipped a soda can, a shampoo bottle, an olive jar at Asinine.

Asinine deflected the soda can. “Quit tossing around our recyclables.” He batted away the shampoo bottle. “It’s garbage day today.” The olive jar.

Pincushion whipped a spent battery at him. “Get it into your head: this is not a neighborhood. This is a toy store. There—is—no—garbage—day.”

A jangle-clang-rustle seized both Asinine’s and Pincushion’s attentions. Armed with a portable recycling refinery and a mop, a janitor upended the contents of Asinine’s recycling bin into the refinery, which chewed through the ruckus of junk.

Pincushion smacked his face with a palm. “My mistake. Still, you shouldn’t throw old batteries in with the recycling.”

“Where else would you put rechargeables?”

Power Plant shot a punch into Schizophrenic’s right head. He dived, crashing both Bad Guy and Good Guy through a plastic-wrapped window. Seconds later, Power Plant bounced out and spilled onto the grass. “Who’d’a knowns that fat ninja’d fall asleeps on the other sides of the window? Bouncy bounce.” He leaped back in.

Pincushion pounced at Asinine. Asinine lunged forward. Both smacked together, thumbs compressed around necks in a shared attempt to strangle. Asinine’s fingers probed Pincushion’s larynx. Pincushion reciprocated, but Asinine tore off one hand to pry out Pincushion’s thorny fingers.

“Let go, neighbor.” Asinine kneed Pincushion between gut spikes. He scurried up the steps and heaved open his door. He leaped through the threshold, stopped, slurped from a beer hat straw, and grinned with a diamond glint in his eye. “Wait here until I activate...the Acinator. As a personal favor to me, you should prepare to die.”

Asinine shut the door. A pounding tempo of footsteps climbed the stairs inside with a rummage of bolts and clatter of metal sheets that flinched through the store’s clearing. What was an Acinator?

A ragged-cut window swung open and Asinine ducked through the hole. He still wore his beer hat over the cardboard helmet that fell over one eye. “Behold”—with a plastic sword, he sliced the air—“the Acinator!”

A swirling buzz blended almost perfectly with the air conditioner. Something shifted on the box fort’s roof, hard to tell since its roof towered three stories above. Movement. From this angle, Pincushion spotted only a single box rumbling and...splitting? It separated into two, the halves droning toward the box fort’s eaves. A large contraption rose through the gap, something like...like...holy crock, Master Asinine’s dream weapon: a quadruple-barreled foam-dart defense turret. An arm’s length of foam darts trailed into each barrel.

A loudspeaker blared. Master Asinine’s voice dominated the store clearing, giving pause to the rumpus. Sixth Sense and Master Asinine Sucks, who had exited the fort, stopped trading blows. Ed stopped collating Power Plant’s paperwork under a preschooler’s plastic desk. Franchise staggered around, dazed.

“The Acinator is not simply a launcher of foam darts,” Master Asinine said. “I’ve treated each dart’s suction tip with pressurized corrosive acid loaded into a string of explosive cap-gun ammunition. Eat hot toy, Good Guys!”

A dart launched, and Pincushion scrambled aside. It struck the floor—boom! The reverberation quaked through a shelf, tipping it. It leaned...leaned...tilted, and crashed to the floor. Children’s books scattered away in datasheet carnage.

Shoppers and cash clerks collided. Others scampered off in countless directions amid a panic of screams. They shoved each other aside, overthrew display tables, and hurdled over toy arrangements. One kicked a Bad Guy advertising placard out of the way. Who’d pay fifty moolahs for Schizophrenic?

“Take cover!” Pincushion darted away, unsure anybody had heard him over the bombardment of gas-loaded caps that popped and sizzled.

“Take cover?” Master Asinine screamed over another rocketing explosion. “I asked you to prepare to die. Taking cover is the opposite of preparing to die.”

Pincushion leaped behind the Bad Guy placard and smacked the floor with a groaning metal knee. He squished his body against the mahogany carpet that shredded apart with each cap salvo. The placard served as a thin shield, but it didn’t offer much defense. He grabbed it, ducked, and rolled toward a fat row of stuffed animals Sixth Sense had amassed into a sandbag bulk, not dug into the ground but a trench in every other sense.

Pincushion slid behind the stuffed animals and threw away the placard. “Sixth Sense, can you destroy that Acinator?” The blasts of corrosive toy caps exploded over his sentence and melted the floor inches from a crowd of spectators too struck by terror to flee.

“Okay. Wow. Uhm. No idea, I’m afraid.” Sixth Sense chanced a glimpse above the plush toys, but he hastened back down before a cap disintegrated his face. He pushed his glasses up his nose, but they slid back down. “The distance is too great, and as far as my hyperability goes, I’m still a rookie. Anything I try would be a lucky shot, and we’ll be exposed long before I damage anything.”

Master Asinine Sucks dived through the box fort’s open window behind an explosion that ripped through the plush trench. The explosion spilled dogs, bears, butterflies, alligators, and elephants. An unlucky hyena caught fire and withered into a cloud of stuffing. A double-shot barrage erupted above Pincushion’s head with a scattering of puppets and wooden dolls.

“Our cover is burning apart, and that crowd is seconds from a physical meltdown, Sixth Sense. We have to think of something quickly, or we’ll be left with nothing but a collection of laundry information tags and also we’ll be liquefied to paste. Can you plug up their turret, misfire it, put a chink in the machinery, anything?”

“Uh. Oh, boy. Yikes. Maybe. I barely see it. The box fort is forty or forty-five feet tall, and you want a chink in the machinery. That’s...uh...I’m not that good.”

The Acinator stopped whirring. His back to the withering plush trench, Pincushion blinked away the stuffing that had fallen into his eyes. He held his breath, gripping the charred neck of a beheaded plush thundermammal. “What are they up to?”

Master Asinine’s voice missile-fired through the store. “Good Guys, Schizophrenic tells me I’m sick of wasting my time with this precision firing. So we’re proceeding to the corrosive water balloons we’d planned for tonight’s block barbecue and corn roast. Oh, and if you’re wondering how these balloons don’t dissolve, I recommend Play Tool’s new RubberDure brand. Best thing on the market.”

Pincushion wrung his hands through the thundermammal’s torso and tore off its leg. Burning plush overwhelmed his nostrils. “Crock, Sixth Sense, they’re using acid-loaded water balloons. If even one hits us, we’ll look like Fisher Price’s My First Hiroshima. We need to protect those customers and launch a counterattack. Now.”

Sixth Sense sucked in a single breath. “Now?” He blinked back a dot of sweat that had trickled into his eye. “Okay. Now. Got it.” He shook, so nervous that his asthma puffed his breathing. He took a wheeze from his inhaler. You’d think these days he’d have gotten it corrected, but he was from a farm community that frowned on genetic resets.

Pincushion pulled out the pistol that thankfully had still hung in his holster. He checked the charge reading. Low on charge and low on light-bullets. “I’m going to barrel straight for that box fort. Once the first balloon launches, you’ll need to telekinetically throw that thing back. Can you do that?”

“Whoa. Holy. I-I—Pincushion, I’ve been on the job less than three weeks. I can’t even catch the corrosive water balloons Kamikaze lobs at me, let alone one launched from forty feet above. I’ll try, but...”

“You can do this.” Pincushion cut a curt nod at Sixth Sense. “You have to.”

Sixth Sense bit his lower lip, and a nod twitched in a jittered cadence. “Okay. Sure. Yeah. I can do this. Okay.” He pumped a fist. “I have to. I can do this. I’ll kill anyone for an hour of sleep.” He slapped his forehead. “Please stop projecting. My telepathy is picking you up.”

The turret issued a throttled clang that meant only one thing: a water balloon sailed through the air, its destination the trench behind which Pincushion and Sixth Sense crouched.

“Now, brother, now!” Pincushion erupted through the plush toys and aimed just above the turret. He slipped on a stuffed lion but accelerated ahead.

The balloon cruised over—no, it coiled away, arced straight up...and backward along an invisible curvature...didn’t disintegrate...Pincushion adjusted his aim...wiggled his ear...his regulator injected him with another shot of awareness...his vision arranged itself...objects in his sight wafted into solid form...another balloon shot out...two? Could Pincushion handle two? The first balloon zipped upward, propelled toward the turret—

Pincushion blasted. Plastic snapped. Acid sizzled. The balloon exploded and sprayed the box fort in a caustic shower. The box fort’s ceiling curled in blackened, papery flakes. The turret burst with foam and springs that disappeared when the acid voraciously noshed on its remains.

Pincushion tried to stop his hobbling sprint forward, but he tripped. He threw his body weight around, slapped into the cardboard wall of the Bad Guys’ box shed, and plowed through their box mailbox, which wasn’t as redundant as it sounded. “Sixth Sense, that balloon’s going to hit the crowd!”

Sixth Sense sprang to his feet. “Oh, boy. Whoa. Got it. I got it. Okay. I can do this.” He leaped up to block the balloon from the dread-filled onlookers. Hovered. Squinted. Concentration lumped his brows. His cheek twitched...the balloon soared closer...closer...exploded inches from his face. He threw his arms in front of his face where acid squirted...but didn’t hit.

Sixth Sense blinked. He opened an eye. An invisible telekinetic sphere no larger than a volleyball contained the wash of acid. “I did it?” He smiled...breathed easy...lowered his arms...and the crowd behind him relaxed...realized their safety...and threw out a roaring cheer. “I did it!” He dissolved his telekinetic sphere. The acid rained onto the floor.

“Oh, man.” Master Asinine’s head sprang through the window. He craned his neck up at the turret that caved onto the roof’s eave. The roof’s laminated construction paper shingles slid off. The turret rolled down the sloped roof and plummeted to the floor in a menagerie of choking hazards for children aged three and younger. “No! Our weapon...our master plan...our three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom fortification...destroyed!” He whacked the window frame with the broad side of his plastic sword. “Gadzooks, look at my roof.”

He huffed. “Everyone, retreat! Schizophrenic, initiate launch procedures.” He ducked back inside, but his helmet fell off when he scraped the window frame. “Stupid spike. There goes the beer hat.”

The box fort’s base groused with a phlegm-gurgling rumble like an old man grumbling under his breath. Fire clawed from its base, exploded, dislodged the box fort’s cardboard frame from the floor. The fort rose, slanted, righted itself, and...launched like a bullet toward the store’s skylight ceiling.

Power Plant swooped out of the ground-floor window through which he’d earlier crashed. “Hey, no one’s tolds me them’s beatengs a retreats.” He landed in the pile of acid-munched plush. Ed jumbled to him and helped him to his feet.

Master Asinine’s voice disgorged from the launching box fort. “I will return, Good Guys. Oh, I will return. So keep my beer hat frosted.”

The Bad Guys’ box fort exploded through the skylight in a blaze of thruster-fire. Pincushion stared stupefied. He shielded his eyes from the baking sun outside with the flush of starship engines fading like a lost opportunity speeding away down a night road.

Power Plant peeped through plastic binoculars that he aimed at the starship. “Whoa, that thing space-proof. Written on the backs wit’ crayon.” He lowered the binoculars and—“Oh, man.” He clicked his tongue at the Bad Guys’ spot in the display clearing. “New neighbors is movings in.”

Like famished locusts in a wheat field, a tribe of elf-dressed, long-eared nerds scurried in. They scrambled to erect a neck-high wall of building blocks. One clad in a towel cape threw together a block doorframe underneath a chain-hung sign that read, “Elf Pool Party Playsets, Release Date January 25, 9110. While Supplies Last.”

“I think I used to have feeling in my toes.” Franchise waddled like a wind-up toy to the property line where a tubby dwarf with powdered cheese speckling his mouth glowered at him.

Cautiously, Sixth Sense observed the campers. “You think the new neighbors will be as friendly as the old ones?”

Pincushion still gawked up at the fading twin thrusters of the Bad Guys’ box fort. “I have no idea, but how the piss is that thing flying?”

“Space-proof,” Power Plant said. “Yeah. Space-proof. Space-proof, space-proof, sp—You ain’t listenings.”

Chapter Twenty: Getting Beaten Up Hurts...Tons

“Come get me!” Kamikaze landed on his lame foot.

Hearse tromped forward—buzzing electricity. A spark clapped and a slender line of flame ignited from one wall to the other. The wire sizzled to dust, and flashes strobe-lit the lobby. Hearse stumbled backward, a blurt of voltage humming from his lips. His targeting visor shorted out. The fire dimmed. Sparkled. Died. “Good Guy agent Kamikaze, you are becoming quite the nuisance. For that, I will rend you limb from limb.”

“Sold.” Kamikaze went for a high five but...oh, yeah. They were enemies.

“Curse your insane rage, you psycho. My night vision is faulty.” Hearse rammed a fist through the wall. “Computer, acknowledge. Lights to normal capacity.”

The lights blasted on. Kamikaze shielded his eyes from the illuminated wrath. When the intense whiteness washed from his vision, he removed his arm. Speaking of removing arms, yesterday had been a good day.

Hearse stood only two yards away. “Are you ready for incarceration, Good Guy agent Kamikaze?”

“Not yet.” Kamikaze stabbed a desk leg into Hearse’s thigh—the brute stepped back without pain. Not fair, because if the same happened to Kamikaze, he’d squirt out a squeal of delight.

Hearse parried forward with a head-on collision and cracked skulls with Kamikaze like a hammer against an eggshell. A fist gunned into Kamikaze’s stomach. He dropped a desk leg and spilled backward. Cautious of his broken foot, he stood and dropped the other desk leg. “No furniture parts. I only need my fists, Pain”—he kissed the left—“and Anguish”—he kissed the righ—Ugh. He’d picked up a splotch of dirt somewhere. “You could use a bath, Anguish.”

Hearse stepped forward. A tree trunk belted Kamikaze in the face. Not a tree trunk. Hearse’s kick. Another battering ram slammed across his face. One at his chest. A rib cracked soundly? No. Kamikaze just heard what he wanted to hear.

“Give yourself in, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. Your skills do not rival mine. You remain hopelessly outmatched.”

“No. Only outwitted.” Kamikaze lunged and tore his fingers at Hearse’s throat. No penetration. He dug in, gouging at leathery flesh that wouldn’t give, wouldn’t break. “What are you wearing? Seventeen layers of skin?”

Hearse swung Kamikaze off. He grabbed the Good Guy’s waist with one hand. Hurled him into a wall. A shower of plaster dusted Kamikaze’s face. Embedded inside a hole, he clambered for freedom.

He blasted forth in flight. Split the hole wider. He grabbed a clump of dry rot, broke it against Hearse’s face. It powdered over Hearse’s eyes, into his nose, into his mouth. Hearse choked out a cloud.

Kamikaze grabbed a desk leg—sliced forward—caught Hearse’s neck—drew blood—slashed across an arm, up a cheek, down a thigh, across the chest, up the other arm. A final jab embedded the desk leg into Hearse’s thigh again.

Hearse plucked out the desk leg and pounded forward, slashed into Kamikaze’s arm, leg, kidney, stomach, shoulder. Hacked his elbow, waist. Gored out bone and cartilage. Spilled blood. Gashed inch-deep incisions. Cut across the right of Kamikaze’s chin to his left ear.

“Here is your useless weapon, you obtuse dog.” Hearse bashed the desk leg into the meat of Kamikaze’s calf. There it remained. Hearse’s calm jolted with signs of violence restrained. His mouth frothed at the corners. “Come along before you further anger me. Do not test my patience.”

Kamikaze’s body was a banshee of agony. He confined a scream only by clamping his mouth shut. He bit down, drawing blood from his lower lip. His nose, cheek, forehead...already dripped so much blood that his vision wavered. His arm hung loosely from his elbow by slivers of tissue.

A barf gurgled up his throat, but he swallowed it down. How the piss could he evade Hearse forever? He had nothing left. “H-hold on a second and I’ll...I’ll sh-show you test-s-s-sting pay-p-patien-pay-p...What was I talking about?”

Kamikaze wobbled to his feet. Whoa. Fought to stand. Thoughts drenched in fog...blitzed skull...cuts of acidic displeasure...allergies acting up. He swayed, crunching onto his ruined foot that avowed revenge or, if he tried another step, emancipation.

He yanked the desk leg from his calf, but it dropped out of his unsteady fingers. Blood dribbled from his arms down his fingertips. A bellowing bonfire raged from his foot, zigzagged up his leg. His body, his hands, his head argued with him, nail-bomb sensations dicing every organ. He leaned down to retrieve his discarded desk leg but spilled onto his knees. He couldn’t feel the carpet through the pall of pain.

“You are nothing, Good Guy agent Kamikaze.” Hearse slid a hand over his back and gripped a gun. This he placed against Kamikaze’s skull. “Know that your capture serves a greater purpose: my vacation. Good-bye, Good G—”

That sentence hung in the air unfinished. Kamikaze expected the rest, but when a strangled mumble followed, he checked Hearse. Maybe Hearse had swallowed the gun in a show of camaraderie.

What the crock? Hearse lay curled on the floor, drool seeping through rows of teeth lodged into each other. Blood poured from his nostrils as if he were pushing a baseball bat out through them. One knee shot up against his stomach and the other leg swung around, battering into the busted wall, a filing cabinet, a discarded desk leg.

Hearse clutched at a sleeve pocket, grabbed a cylinder, and shakily pried off the cap. He trembled out a pill but dropped it and the cylinder. Kamikaze picked up the pill and examined it. Pitiful. He swept everything else aside with his bad foot.

The door at the end of the lobby exploded in a barrage of light-bullets. Reef burst in, threw aside the assault blaster, and skidded to a halt at Hearse. Behind him followed Nicholson, who shoved past Reef and squatted over the convulsing IP grunt.

“How’s the pain, Hearse? Unbearable?” Reef spat a laugh. “That’s what you get for hunting down a Good Guy. I know your secret. The haunt control divulged everything. Not very secretive, but I guess I had access. I also had access to a two-minute commercial about Squabster garbage trucks.” His stare hardened. “But I know the reason behind your one failure. And I know there’s no vacation getaway.”

Nicholson’s arm glided to his holster and slipped out his pistol to Reef’s temple. “Good Guy leader Reef, stand down. No one likes a tattletale.”

“Oh, shut up, you walking joke. Dealing with you is way above my paygrade.” Reef gripped Nicholson’s wrist and burrowed his fingertips between the bones. Nicholson’s pain grunted out hoarsely and his knees buckled. The gun hung from a slackened grip, so Reef tweezed it out and tossed it to Kamikaze.

Reef threw Nicholson’s wrist away. Nicholson twisted and fell onto the carpet runner that spanned from the lobby desk to the front doors. Reef loomed over Hearse, whose fingers dug at his own scalp, whose ears and nostrils acted like burst blood dams. “You had a perfect record, Hearse, until IP ordered you to hunt your own son, who had become a very militant astro-environmental activist. I guess IP uses no distinction when it comes to family. When you captured and then released your son, you didn’t know he’d soon destroy a terraforming operation, killing hundreds of workers. The one blemish on your record. Your tactics degraded after that from mundane, even gentle, to brutal and cruel. You might think you can atone for misdeeds against your son, Hearse, but you can’t.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “If anybody knows that, it’s me.

“And you’re no longer contracted with Intergalactic Protection!”

“What?” Nicholson picked himself off the carpet and rubbed his bruised wrist, his gun belt jangling. “Is this true, Agent Hearse?” Hearse responded only with clicking throat sounds, but Nicholson stabbed the question again: “Is...this...true?”

Hot snakes of pain wilted Kamikaze’s strength. He tasted sour rage. To piss with what snapped off. He kicked the charlatan in the face. “Answer him!”

“Oh, it’s true. He’s a fraud.” Reef circled around Hearse to stand beside Kamikaze, to brace him before he slipped off his one hopping foot. “This Brock he keeps talking about? He’s not in line for any vacation. He finished Hearse’s job, hunted down his son and killed him. Meanwhile, IP decommissioned Hearse for his brutality, locked away for therapy after his son’s death to—guess where—the In Sanity Manor.”

Hearse now looked next to death. The stony pallor of his skin had washed away, now a wan green. His muscles and bones had locked, yet his entire body shuddered with what little vigor remained. Blood cascaded from his facial orifices and some from scratches he had raked into his scalp. His targeting visor had fallen onto the carpet, disconnected from its socket.

Reef looked up at Kamikaze. “It goes deeper. Hearse’s big break came in hours ago. He made a deal with IP. He walks free if he brings Kamikaze in, or he goes back to the asylum if he can’t. But the reason IP sent him isn’t altruistic. They don’t care about keeping society safe from you, Kamikaze. Their real agenda? They think, because of all the nasty things you’ve exposed yourself to, teeming inside you are about a thousand undiscovered hyperabilities.”

Kamikaze chuckled. “That’s what happens when you suffer as much toxic shock syndrome as I’ve suffered.” He sociably hung his arm over Reef’s shoulders.

“Not something to feel proud of.” Reef unwound Kamikaze’s arm. “They want to harness your hyperabilities for a new military division. They want to violate the Hyperability Injunction, reopen old wounds the Perseus War Hyperability Incident caused. Kamikaze, you’re not a patient. You’re an experiment. They’re in line to cause the next intergalactic incident.” Reef looked down at Hearse. “And Hearse is the only one who agreed to the job. Because of his painful hyperability, he’s bringing you in. The science goons at IP claim they’ll cure him of his excruciating glimpses of his own death. That’s what causes him to writhe on the ground. And those pills”—Reef eyed the pill in Kamikaze’s hand—“are Hyperthesia. They’re his meds.”

“Is that right?” Kamikaze felt too weak to bend over Hearse’s quivering form, but he loomed over. “Today’s your lucky day, phony.” He limped down onto one black-clad knee and brought the pill to Hearse’s mouth.

“Kamikaze, are you crazy...er?” Reef lunged for Kamikaze but too late. Hearse had swallowed the pill. “I know you have a death wish—crock, you hold your birthday parties in our trash compactor—but this is downright counterproductive!”

Hearse’s limbs relaxed. The chokes and grunts stopped. The convulsions died. Though shakily, Hearse stood. “Excellent. You have come to realize...Hearse always delivers the body.”

By almost two feet, Hearse towered over Kamikaze and Reef. Kamikaze handed his pistol to Hearse and placed its barrel to his forehead. “I see it now, what Hearse went through when he lost his kid. I keep killing myself, Reef. I don’t understand death. Yes, I’m crazy. Hearse is right. I’m sick, and I need help. So kill me.”

“Not that easy yet.” Nicholson grabbed Kamikaze and snapped handcuffs over his hands. They clacked into position. He snorted at Kamikaze’s broken foot, wrenching the prisoner’s hands behind his back and locking together the handcuffs. Kamikaze’s right arm still hung off his shoulder by scant tissue. “You are under arrest, Good Guy agent Kamikaze. We will remand you to the custody of Intergalactic Protection where they will strip you of your status as a Good Guy, and incarceration procedures will follow. Do not kill yourself.”

Reef grabbed Kamikaze’s good arm and snatched him away. “Kamikaze, think about this. They’ll poke you, gouge you, slice you open...I’m not helping change your mind.” His fingers latched tighter around Kamikaze’s arm. “Remember the Hyperability Injunction. You can’t let them take you.”

“I have to, Reef. I’ll make sure they don’t recover a single hyperability off me. I’m stupid that way.” Kamikaze nodded. “But a fun stupid.”

Reef relaxed his fingers, retightened as if unsure, then relaxed and let them fall. He nodded back but without Kamikaze’s resolution. “Whatever happens, don’t let them test anything up your hoohah.”

Nicholson handed Kamikaze to Hearse, who threw him forward. “You chose wisely, Good Guy agen—I mean civilian Kamikaze. Wisely indeed, even without a sundae bar and limbo contest at stake.”

“Speaking of which, let’s stop by a sundae bar on the way.” Kamikaze galloped on his good foot despite Hearse prodding him past the lobby desk toward the double doors. “And you.” Kamikaze faced Nicholson, who flanked his right. Nicholson looked up, an acerbic curl to his sneering lip. “If you promise to batter me over the skull, I’ll explain why your names are so hilarious. Half the joke is you can’t figure it out yourselves.”

“Computer, acknowledge. Rescind atmospheric lockdown and stationwide lockdown. Do not ignore entity Good Guy leader Reef’s commands.” Hearse jabbed a gun at Kamikaze’s temple, which forced Kamikaze’s head to tilt at the lobby door shutters that clattered open. “Prey, I am waiting to kill you until we arrive at my transport. I hate carrying dead weight, but I hate prattling clowns more. Do not make me regret—”

“Blah, blah, blah. I haven’t died since last night, so shut up and aerate my head. I’ve been a good boy. I deserve one stinking death. At least that way I won’t have to smell your aftershave.”

“Hey, Kamikaze,” Reef hollered from the other end of the lobby. He stood by the yawning hole in the wall.

Kamikaze turned around.

Reef tossed him a smile. “We’ll miss you.”

Kamikaze managed a halfhearted grin. “No, you won’t.” Then Hearse shoved him out the lobby doors that closed Reef from view.

* * *

The shutterless doors shushed shut behind Kamikaze, Hearse, and Nicholson. Reef sighed and trudged away. “Yes. We will.”

Reef’s gabber blurted to life, expelling its earpiece and mouthpiece. “Incoming connection from entity Hearse. Connection forced.” What the piss did that brutish liar want now?

Reef didn’t want to deal with this. “Hearse, what’s your problem?”

“Just relating some information I overheard at Intergalactic Protection headquarters, Good Guy leader Reef. The reason IP forced Good Guy leader Legion on duty at the Great Stellin Fusion Station had nothing to do with Letchtech’s president living within its power grid. And Intergalactic Protection’s decision not to pay for his medication...Letchtech pressured Intergalactic Protection to endanger him, to pull their resources in light of Legion’s refusal of their sponsorship. They want to replace him and his squad with someone more willing to deal. Lest you meet an unfortunate fate, you would be wise to accept their deal. Very wise.”

A click. “Connection terminated by other user.” The mouthpiece and earpiece retracted.

Unfortunate fate? Reef’s legs lost solidity and he fell into the gaping hole in the wall. “Crock, I have to start watching where I’m fainting.”

Chapter Twenty-One: ...There’s a Way In

Ace Spandex yanked his baseball cap off and clutched his hair. No, no, no, no. Like a user jonesing for a fix, he literally twitched—literally—from resisting Master’s programming. He paced around the main computer room, often poised over his desktop unit with a finger that hovered above it as though he were deliberating a missile launch. The monitor’s display? “Stationwide Security System: Verify Scheduled Downtime.”

Master’s programming, the thought signal that managed Ace Spandex’s marionette-strung gears, had driven him here, had forced him to download Station One’s security database. He’d fought for six hours thirty-two minutes forty-two seconds. Fighting against his preprogrammed tendency had definitely built up noticeable wear on his gears.

His finger now hovered over the desktop unit. The enter key would enable the downtime, and the escape key would skip out on it.

His gears tightened, he gritted his teeth, he choked on resistance. No! He slammed his finger down, cracked the desktop unit with 8.4 ounces of pressure more than it could handle. Downtime aborted. He swung away. As punishment for this defiance, Master’s programming dictated he wear pizza sauce on his face for the rest of the week. He...didn’t...care. Nothing would force him to betray his friends. Nothing!

Victory bounced his step and triumph welled in his heart instrumentation. He danced around the main computer room. “Ha, Master, I beat you! You can’t control me. You can invade my thoughts, you can puppet me around, you can bury my will in automated software and manage my life through coded executable files. But in the end, I beat your manipulation program. I win! Now where’s that pizza sauce? I’ll wear it like it’s clown makeup.” He grabbed a piece of bubblegum and threw it into his mouth.

Wait, what had he pressed? Why did the enter key glow?

THE END

NEXT BOOK:

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy will return after these messages.

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Liam Gibbs knew he was destined to write at age four, when he authored a breathtaking account of a cow who ate grass. The bovine saga failed to catch the public’s eye but earned the budding author parental acclaim. Since those early times, he’s gone on to write the novella Not So Superpowered and humorous articles for various magazines.

A twenty-year veteran of the brutal world of hand-to-hand comic book fandom, Gibbs cut his teenage teeth on titles such as Spider-Man, X-Men, New Warriors, and other Marvel comics.

Gibbs graduated college with a degree in professional writing, which included classes on fiction writing and story structure. He lives on the balmy shores of Ottawa, Canada, where he relaxes by watching staggeringly awful horror and science fiction movies. A health and fitness nut, he shoots lasers from his eyes, uses the word exclusive incorrectly, and once wrestled an exclusive brontosaurus. True story.

That one time I was deep in thought and—Hey, is that ketchup on the ceiling?

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Table of Contents

- The Story So Far...

- Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

- Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

- Your Favorite Table of Contents

- Book 10: Metaphor for Life

- Appendices

- Chapter One: From Whence We Came
- Chapter Two: Where There’s a Will...
- Chapter Three: Jaw-Dropping
- Chapter Four: Cattle Call

- Chapter Five: The Home Version of Let’s See if This Is Edible

- Chapter Six: Not So Friendly but Still Fire
- Chapter Seven: Take Charge
- Chapter Eight: Ice Cream Is at Stake

- Chapter Nine: All Aboard the Derailed Train of Thought

- Chapter Ten: Still Life
- Chapter Eleven: A Solid Defense
- Chapter Twelve: Welcome to the Neighborhood
- Chapter Thirteen: Morning, Sunshine
- Chapter Fourteen: Labor Dispute
- Chapter Fifteen: Crapshot in the Dark
- Chapter Sixteen: Stimulating Conversation
- Chapter Seventeen: Fancy Meeting You Here
- Chapter Eighteen: Slideshow of Shenanigans
- Chapter Nineteen: Block Party

- Chapter Twenty: Getting Beaten Up Hurts...Tons

- Chapter Twenty-One: ...There’s a Way In

- About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once