To Wake the Deactivated
Date: 2021-09-03T04:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Plot Device Publishing

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 24: To Wake the Deactivated

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 24: TO WAKE THE DEACTIVATED
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: 978-1777638672
First printing: August 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

Your Favorite Table of Contents

At the Front

Other Books in the Series

Book 24: To Wake the Deactivated

Chapter One: H-Hour

Chapter Two: Breathe through the Pain

Chapter Three: The Wrong Kind of Wanted

Chapter Four: A Group of Robots Is Called a Marching Band

Chapter Five: First Priority—Establish the Pee Corner

Chapter Six: Okay, Don't Freak Out about the Mess

Chapter Seven: Meanwhile, Playing in Traffic...

Chapter Eight: If This Space Station's a-Rockin'...

Chapter Nine: So Things Got Tense, Words Were Said, Feelings Were Hurt

Chapter Ten: Just Put up a Slippery when Wet Sign

Chapter Eleven: Putting the Finishing Touches on the Crazy Train

Chapter Twelve: Drive Me Once, Shame on You

Chapter Thirteen: There Must Be a Single Shred of Hope Lying around Here Somewhere

Chapter Fourteen: I Can See My House from Here

Chapter Fifteen: And to Make Matters Worse

Chapter Sixteen: Long Live the New Boss

Chapter Seventeen: Declare His Name

At the Back

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.

Available on the Author's Super-Awesome Site

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

Book 1: Serial Fiction Sideshow

Book 2: Home Sweet Home Invasion

Book 3: Technophobia

Book 4: Armageddon Trigger Finger

Book 5: The Genetic Equation

Book 6: Power Tool

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: To Wake the Deactivated

The Story So Far

Please visit the In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy site for all these free e-books and 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

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 24: To Wake the Deactivated

Chapter One: Hunting Season

April 5, 9110. 1:13 a.m. (Galactic Standard Time).

Good Guy field leader Pincushion ranked this day up there with the day he dropped a kettlebell on his foot. The forty-kazillion-meter robots blasted out of their room as carelessly as clothing models throwing aside curtains on a runway. The mystery room, a room that appeared on no blueprint found in the training tower of the Good Guys' space station headquarters two short months ago, housed this procession of robots that had slumbered since discovery. And blasted out, they did, with fusion beams reeking of ozone. Pincushion rolled aside when the beams hummed out of the canopies atop the robots' eyeless heads. The first beam dashed through the doorframe and glided through the opposite wall, leaving a smoking ashen scar. And they spoke, in shattering unison, a single word: "HUNTING." Evidently not hunting wabbits.

And what happened when forty-foot robots in a forty-five-foot room wanted to explore a twenty-foot-hallway? Property damage.

Right up there with kettlebell-versus-foot day.

When that doorway and wall—and ceiling and floor and bowl of apple-scented potpourri and other bowl of apple-scented potpourri that a mouse hadn't urinated in—erupted to make way for those robots who'd never been told "watch where you're going," Pincushion bowled aside, legs taking one direction and torso spilling in another. He splashed across the floor like a three-legged dog giving chase.

He had a special mutation, his hyperability mutation or hypermutation: bony extrusions poking through skin calluses. So when he stumbled, he gored chunks out of the polished floor.

"HUNTING." The robots crunched another fissure into the floor. This was crime-scene-evidence destruction. "AND ENJOYING A NEW DAY. BUT MOSTLY HUNTING."

"NEEDING A MORNING PEE," another robot said. It stepped out of a pair of bunny slippers and stretched out a yawn. Its arms burst through the ceiling.

Pincushion rolled over and examined the catastrophe above him where the robots, emerging from their forty-foot room and now standing in the shorter hallway, pivoted in his direction. Though he couldn't see their eyeless heads through the ceiling at this angle, a whir and a tension of legs indicated that they peered down. And in one lazy voice, they said, "TARGET LOCATED AND IDENTIFIED AS GOOD GUY ENTITY PINCUSHION." Just happened to mention.

"Oh, come on!" Pincushion clomped a cocoa fist on the tiles and flung himself into a sprint. Behind him, beam after humming beam pierced the ceiling and into the floor. Somebody needed their morning coffee.

Pincushion didn't dare glance over his shoulder, but every footfall with three-kilometer shoes pitched the training tower in tsunami earthquakes. And with each stride, they split more ceiling. Though most of the building was a tower, this area—for combat-equipment storage—was a single story. Now jagged gaps carved the ceiling in two, exposed the hall to the outside. Warm sunlight and a wistful wind trickled through the cracks. When was plague day planned on the station's weather schedule?

Debris pulverized the floor. Pummeled a table, destroyed a framed photo of Intergalactic Protection's former head of sponsorship, shattered a mirror, which was tragic because the mirror really flattered your contours.

Pincushion picked up speed. Too short on breath. Runaway lungs. Burning/cold throat. Go where? Do what? Destroy what else? Spill paperwork all over what insurance company's desk? If Pincushion led the robots to the station's bar, they could discuss this over a pitcher. That was, if the bar's liquor license wasn't revoked because the alcohol it served was rubbing alcohol. A lot of things got lost in translation from English to drunk English.

"HUNTING."

Shut up, robots, Pincushion needed to think. Contact the rest of the Good Guys, warn them not to approach the uproar like dinosaurs lumbering through trees. The warning should be obvious, but some Good Guys needed it. The rest weren't Scapegoat.

Pincushion chugged a verbal command to his gabber, the pea-sized communicator nestled in his ear, and managed it out on his first try. With saliva. Tell no one. "Gabber, acknowledge." He wiped off the saliva. "Contact all Good Guy entities." Head reared down, he boosted his sprint again. The eye blasts hummed closer. The robots were gaining.

A mouthpiece zipped out of his gabber. It arced in front of his chin. An earpiece arced over his head. The gabber bud acted as the earpiece for his other ear. "Connections to entities Catastrophe, Organism, Scapegoat, Sixth Sense, Wasted, and Withered Old Battle-Axe attained. Entities Ace Spandex, Franchise, Legion, Plastique, and Power Plant are off station. Entity Incendiary is unlocatable. Probably doing his own thing. Warning: entity Withered Old Battle-Axe thinks her gabber's mouthpiece is a bent knitting needle." At least Withered Old Battle-Axe was getting closer. Last time she thought it was a whatcha-what's-it.

Pincushion burst around another corner, those hulking robots without knees hot on his tail. Of course they were hot on his tail. Eighty thousand of his steps equaled one of theirs. A county equaled one of theirs. All of the counties did. He collapsed against a wall to catch his smoldering breath and eyed the exit door down the hallway but a million miles away. His wheezing eased bit by choking bit. "Everybody, listen up." He swallowed back a moist pant-pant-pant. "Remember those giant"—pant-pant-pant—"sleeping robots? Guess"—pant-pant-cough-pant-pant—"whose alarm clock went off." Pant.

"SIGNAL INTERCEPTED." Wait, what? Those words penetrated like an air-raid siren looping through stormy winds. They rattled Pincushion's heart. And the booming-crunching-stomping paused only to shift weight in different directions. "ADDITIONAL TARGETS LOCATED."

Pincushion's baritone voice was once described as scraping the bottoms of trenches. Now it assumed a mousy squeak. "First, I need to apologize for something. You'll know what in a second." One of his better talks. "No, Catastrophe, I didn't accidentally unplug the pinball machines again. Your high score is still up."

* * *

Intergalactic Protection Field Marshal Horcross Breeng stood before his display viewscreen and eye-watched Lord Continuum's heraldic machine robots obliterate a hallway of the training tower. He'd removed the hat he wore and climbed onto a chair to see the display viewscreen. Also climbed up one of Anachronism Supplier Company's newest phonebooks. Only the best for artificial altitude. The viewscreen's lowest possible elevation was a foot higher than him, but up here he watched the action in glorious colorful ruin just the same.

The robots swept the roof ceiling of the training tower apart as if it were a broken zipper. The roof ceiling made such spectacular rubble wreckage. Yes, this would emotion-please Lord Continuum, Breeng's almighty master, who'd planted him as Intergalactic Protection's field marshal to position the Good Guys for defeat.

A dry mouth chuckle, like two croutons scraping together, ground out of him. Lord Continuum would feel emotion-delighted indeed. And especially at watching Pincushion blunder-stagger around that hallway. Last time Breeng had seen entertainment this fun, the pies were half-baked and so were the clowns throwing them.

Intergalactic Protection was the galaxy's military army force, the parent organization of this offshoot hyperperson people squadron, the Good Guys. They also offered Breeng great gratuity snacks from sponsors. Like this hamburger. Or this other hamburger. Or this other other ha—No, that was cardboard. Half the adventure was discovering which was which.

So IP property-owned Station One, the Good Guys' headquarters, where Breeng had landed scant time hours ago. Now he stood in Good Guy person leader—ahem, former person leader—Legion's work office. Since installing Station One's new voice-activated computer program, its haunt control—a software program product thus named because it automated place locations so they seemed haunted—the heralds were activated to enact the next part phase in Lord Continuum's plan. Those heralds pursued Pincushion but now parted in different direction routes to pursue other people targets. Breeng found himself cheering with a hand fist in the air. This excited him even more than the ultimate-couponing championship finals.

Fillamore Packaging laminated the best burgers.

Oh, and former Good Guy person leader Legion? Breeng had attempted for time months to kill that Trioxidillian-species thorn, ever since superseding IP's former person field marshal, Ravioss Hullinger. First, Hullinger had attempted to put Legion in harm's way by ordering him on a task mission to the Great Stellin Fusion Station. Why not just fire Legion? Advertising was big money business, and Intergalactic Protection thought Legion's resistance to it on Station One deemed him worthy of removal. If they simply fired Legion, that would have turned too many heads, caused an investigation, caused delays that would lose IP sponsors. However, leading Legion to his death? Death was tragic…but explainable. In the end, Hullinger had failed. Legion had survived.

Then came Breeng. Though Hullinger was not Lord Continuum's servant like Breeng, the desire was the same: kill Legion. So Breeng had hired the person assassin with a stiff emotion attitude, Hearse, to finish the job task. Hearse had succeeded only time hours ago.

Breeng squirted purple ketchup on his burger.

On the viewscreen, Pincushion scoot-jittered around a corner. The herald tracking him gouged the corner with a fusion beam to split the Good Guy in two half halves. Missed.

Breeng sat to dismount the chair, legs kicking and feet outstretched to find the floor. He landed and strolled around Legion's work office, around Good Guy person soldier Incendiary, who stood frozen like a fixture statue. He reached up and dinged a hand fist against Incendiary's hip. Heh. Incendiary wore a full-body black gear suit, and Breeng had commanded its haunt control to shut down with him trapped inside. In the way, though. Incendiary didn't even show enough respect to be shut down by a wall.

Now to deal with everyone else. Breeng cleared his neck throat at Station One's haunt control, Legacy. "Legacy, acknowledge." Mmm, purple ketchup. Mmm, corrugated cardboard.

"Good morning, entity Field Marshal Breeng, sir.'" Legacy's thick words oozed like syrup. "Weaponized geese are on sale at Zoomageddon for their end-of-times blowout sale. Eight moolahs per kilogram. Would you like a gaggle?"

"Not this time moment, Legacy." Another bite of cardboard. The pickle brought home the taste flavor. "But set a signal alert for when their frogs are discounted." Breeng needed a military army for his SEAL team, and frogs were the closest animal to SEALs he could think of. "I need an index catalogue of all person targets on station downloaded to the heralds. They are aimless right now, targeting only Pincushion and those he contacted. There are still some targets, like those en route to Station One. I'd like to send out the welcome wagon." Breeng mouth-smil—"Not the literal welcome wagon, Legacy."

"My mistake, sir." Legacy retracted the red wagon that had clatter-jangled out a pet door in Legion's work office wall.

Those new en-route targets were Breeng's own Gooder Guys. No longer needed. Their delivery mission was goal-achieved, and now Breeng needed them out of the way as well.

"The Gooder Guys shall arrive in six minutes, seventeen seconds," Legacy said. "I'll add those targets to the heralds' playlist. How humorous. Play? They play?" Crickets could not have chirped a more mundane response. "Tough crowd in master's chamber today. Entities Better Than You, Detritus, Hearse, Klee, the Purple Nurple, and Workshop added to targets. This will be exquisite."

Breeng mouth-smiled and eye-winced when Pincushion skidded through a door. The Good Guy field leader burst outside and tripped across pavement. Oooh, even from his remote work office, Breeng felt that. He slapped a hand to his mouth. One herald still chased Pincushion. Another herald stepped on a water fountain. "HUNTING," it flashed on its canopy. Yes, everyone could see that.

A fusion beam as orange as daylight slid through the door. Pincushion scrambled aside to avoid person death.

Another mouth-chuckle, another eye-wince when Pincushion fell over a street road curb toward the armory building. He loved a good chase scene. Single reason he subscribed to the nature channel.

* * *

Incendiary had seen enough. Pincushion couldn't run forever. Go time.

"Janice, acknowledge. Get us airborne."

"Command not recognized."

Seriously? "What?" Seriously what?

"Oh, wai—Thought you said, 'Get us an airhorn.' Got it, amigo." Janice, the new haunt control in Incendiary's exoskeletal armor, engaged the thrusters in the armor's boots, which opened the blast grates in their soles. An eruption of flame cackled and lifted Incendiary upward.

"Janice, acknowledge. If this is the extent of your hearing, this relationship will need some work," Incendiary said. How did "get us an airhorn" even make sense?

"Command not recognized."

In his helmet's heads-up display, Janice giggled. Just a computer program, she'd nevertheless patched together an avatar: long-haired brunette with eyes that swallowed her face like an anime character's and a broccoli bud pinched between two teeth. She winked, and with eyes that big, it produced a handclap. She didn't vent the burps from the suit yet though, and burps aged like mold. Bad timing to force them out minutes before a shutdown.

Incendiary's stomach pierced with hunger pangs. Rescue Pincushion or grab Breeng's uneaten burgers. Standing motionless, he'd witnessed Breeng scarf down everything from a bowl of mozzarella sticks to a salamander and find more room to eye the wilted peace lily in Legion's office. Incendiary felt secondhand munchies.

He was a college student. Hunger was his genetic right.

Intergalactic Protection technically owned Incendiary's armor. So hours ago, Breeng had summoned Incendiary here and shut off that armor. Incendiary was trapped in his own immobile suit, burps accumulating, until Station One's former haunt control, Janice, installed herself on it. Now Breeng wore a ridiculous jaw-dropping gawk from which moist cardboard dropped. He stood mesmerized as Incendiary levitated softly. Ha ha, not trapped anymore, you underhanded—Ow. Stupid ceiling.

Incendiary moved to rub his head, but he managed only to scrape an armored glove against his helmet. "Janice, acknowledge. Steer us over to the plate of burgers and then outside toward entity Pincushion's gabber signal."

"On it." Janice saluted.

Machinery whirred. Judders quivered down to Incendiary's armpits. Systems indicated that shoulder cannons craned upward from his back. Incendiary knew what came next, and he hoped today wasn't plague day.

From a meter below the ceiling, Incendiary's shoulder cannons flicked out sticky bombs that pecked through the mineral-wood ceiling tiles and plinked into the ceiling beyond. A muffled beep…two beeps—

The roof splattered out debris and teeth of metal. Argh, all over the burgers. All that bacon-double fiberboard…wasted. Incendiary rocketed into a sky full of sun and a pigeon that passed at the wrong time.

* * *

Oh. Well, okay. Breeng rubbed his mouth-chin. Twisted his mouth-lips together. Stared blankly at the hole carved into Legion's work office ceiling. Didn't think-see that coming.

"Legacy." Smelled oily outside. Plague day was coming. "Acknowledge."

"Entity Field Marshal Breeng, sir, would you fancy a ceiling patch?"

Breeng curled his foot toes in his foot boots. "No, Legacy—Actually, yes, patch up the gap hole in the ceiling. The forecast calls for bird poop. But chase that person fugitive before he puts the operation at risk. Find out how he escaped in the first place."

"And here I thought we might enjoy a quiet day today. Lounge in our pajamas and watch Psycho Aristocrat perhaps. Today's airing calls for a 'very special episode.' How heartwarming it would have been. We would have learned to handle adolescent social issues and felt our feelings." Legacy mouth-sighed with no mouth, as if laboring his tuxedoed person body off a creaking couch. Computer software programs grew more lifelike by the upgrade. "I shall return in but a jiffy, entity sir."

"Oh, the burgers are full of shrapnel. Grab a pizza on the way. You know my preference favorites."

"One large blended animal from Pizza Vulture."

Chapter Two: Breathe through the Pain

Flaming! Head-splitting! Agony! With teeth! And exclamation points!

Intergalactic Protection topmost gun-for-hire Hearse clawed his flushed cheeks and folded like a ragdoll against the fuzzy floor of this starship called B-Osprey. Like a topmost ragdoll, though. Chin clonked the fibers and eyes gripped like fists so tightly he saw supernovas sparkle. Electricity scurried through his blitzing body. He tasted leather. His flesh felt hot. He smelled copper and a toot that Wyvern thought was silent but was deadly.

The Gooder Guys, this small squad whipped together to steal a demonic aswang creature from enemy territory, now returned to Station One. The creature was an undead demonic monstrosity that could never be killed permanently, though could be rendered temporarily lifeless by separating its heart and brain, as it was now. A prized bioweapon, indeed. But no sooner had they entered home base's visual range, Hearse's hyperability surfaced. And, in mixed company. He hoped his stomach could clench down its vomit with fortitude. Topmost fortitude, though.

Hrrk-k-k. Here it came, Hearse's hyperability that inflicted debilitating pain upon him the likes he never felt outside that one time he'd coughed jerk sauce through his nose. His eyes bulged against lids as if ejecting from his skull and spraying milky tissue. A computer-guided laser visor covered his callused left eye. That would leak the tissue back into his socket and cause an infection, and Hearse detested bacterial vaccinations.

At taller than seven feet and shaped like a battle cruiser among children's bath toys, Hearse inspired dread. No foe could withstand Hearse's might, though Hearse himself squirmed helplessly against his own devastating hyperability. His hyperability inflicted such serrating torture that Hearse scrunched into a tight ball. The pain crackled over him, a crackle one felt from a sliced muscle. No one could withstand this anguish save that guy who took cannonballs to the abdomen.

"Crock, Hearse, stand up." That belligerence could bully out of the depths of only Better Than You's gullet. "You're wiping snot everywhere with your twitches." These were throes, you crowbar-tongued egomaniac, and they were as topmost as the intimidating Hearse himself. "If you want to learn to wipe better, watch me. I'm the guru of wiping." Did you not hear your words, clownish buffoon?

"Do not…interfere." Hearse seethed each word as if it were its own sentence. These buffoons couldn't know he was experiencing incapacitating agony. "It is writhe day in my workout routine"

Better Than You shrugged. "Man, you gun-for-hire types are all about the constant physical fitness."

Hearse's arm whacked a chair. His hyperability began the hallucination. That same hallucination, that same excruciating performance that played for its audience of one in his mind's eye. If not for Hearse's near-invincible bulk, he could not endure its howling agony. It began with an eardrum-piercing whistle and a blinding flash that melted into the image of a field, cold wind and colder ground. Hearse pounded the floor, tried to coax a hand to his arm satchel where hid his Hyperthesia, the pills that dulled his tormenting hyperability and gave him winter-fresh breath. His teeth clamped shut. For crock's sake, why was his mouthguard never within reach when he required it? It was prescription and cost 20 percent after dental coverage!

As he groped blindly for that satchel, the vision's reel played. He stood in a frigid field, peering up at a Kingfish starship, a titan-class spacecraft that loomed a scant few miles above and crammed away the sun. Fuzzy dice in the Kingfish's windshield. Wind picked up. Smoke coughed out the tailpipe. And then needles, like an ominous raincloud, flicked from its underbelly.

Hearse had watched this reel since his hyperability first insisted upon him. But reel two began, a new reel added only recently. Those needles pricked Hearse's skin, but he cared not. For he was Hearse and not a wussy boy.

A black-as-night figure floated inches over the trimmed grass. The figure raised a longsword-shaped arm above his head as a guillotine operator would lift a giant blade. A swift motion down—

* * *

Stupid B-Osprey military transport, this Fireball mil-tran, fit fifty people but felt as if it fit three. So cramped in here that sweats leaked through Detritus's orange duds. Not the good kind like when you ate spicy wings. The bad kind, like when you got sick from eating spicy wings.

Detritus was top-secretly a Bad Guy generic, he and his best bud, Wasted. In a stab at proving themselves to Bad Guy head honcho Master Asinine, they sneaked onto Station One and playacted as Good Guys. Plan didn't work. The Good Guys debunked their cover. But Detritus lucked out: Breeng, IP's highest-up, needed his charm on some new team he put together, the Gooder Guys, named probably because some marketing hotshot had earned a high score in concussions. Wasted got the short end and stayed home under arrest.

On their maiden mission, the Gooder Guys had snagged that aswang demon creature from Bad Guy headquarters Station Zilcho, but they'd lost their leader Legion. Hearse had said he died, but Detritus knew the truth: Legion had been abandoned. Whatever. Either way, that no-good green-skinned crocker could go hang himself. The rest of the Gooder Guys now returned, so close that Station One's lights seeped over this starship.

"Yaaaay!" Their pilot, Workshop, exploded in giddy squeaks, her words stabbing between Detritus's frigging ears. "So super amazing, we're coming in, I love docking!" She slapped a few buttons, knocked a couple others, and for good measure, flashed her fricking hands up. As excitable as a puppy. And, weird as it sounded, as giddy at hearing the word treat. "Station One's dead ahead. Land time is three minutes, fifty-two seconds. Look. So sparkly down there." She tugged in half a gasp. "They have precious robots. So cuddlecutes." Only pilot with an attitude bubblier than a kindergartener on sugar. Maybe she was one.

Good thing they was coming in. Ain't enough room for Workshop to bound out of her chair, run circles with her arms out, and squeal about how much she loved sparkles. Despite the cramped quarters, she made it work.

Detritus lifted his legs to allow Hearse to writhe past. Hearse clonked limbs on two, three, four chairs. "What's his problem?"

"Writhe workout," Better Than You said. "You don't work your writhes, bro?"

Detritus chuffed. Dude crocking made a scene outta everything, and, size he was, he made it loud. First he was all like "I always deliver the body" and then "Legion has tragically perished on our mission" and then "I must use the bathroom" and then "We have expended our allotment of soap." Now writhing? Give it a rest. And he had to stop writhing his hands everywhere until they found more soap.

Everybody in this squad was one annoying trait away from a slap. If Detritus heard again how awesome Better Than You flossed, Detritus would dive out the window and flap his arms home. They had a freaking cat on board, Mr. Dumpinshadow. It was a private. It outranked Detritus. A cat outra—Never mind. Wyvern emitted a vicious body odor. And the Purple Nurple, their new leader with Legion gone, couldn't have an opinion if he mail-ordered away for one. Klee was cool though.

Hearse knocked against Detritus's ankle, hands squashed to temples like he'd squeeze his head flat. "Something impending…looms. I have…envisioned it. It…looms."

Detritus rubbed his five-o'clock chin scruff. "Dude, you're such a drama queen."

"The thing…impending. The pain…unbearable."

"You want us maybe to stuff a wallet in your mouth?"

Chapter Three: The Wrong Kind of Wanted

"Watch out, watch out, watch—" Ace Spandex threw his arms over his head when the vehicle barreled over a silo. Apparently Amaranthia was watching out, just not caring.

In the backseat of this Fandango civilian transport, ex–Good Guy Ace Spandex pondered the ridiculous situation he'd gotten himself into and then repondered and then gave things a third ponder. Last time he'd pondered this much, he was caught in an escape room with no solution.

He was a fugitive. He'd come to terms with that right before slapping himself for becoming one. And he slapped with 31,451 newtons of force. That was a business slap. The more the newtons, the more the business. Along with fellow ex–Good Guys Plastique, Franchise, and Power Plant, he'd been arrested for dereliction of duty for failure to return to base after a mission. He'd instead gone on a mission to rescue Franchise from enemy territory. Trumped-up charges, if you asked him. Stripped of rank, stripped of status, stripped of media name. He could legally not call himself Ace Spandex, since Intergalactic Protection owned the trademark.

In a tranquil farming town on the planet Gaia, miles from the jailhouse in which they'd been detained, they raced away in this Fandango that—holy crock—burst through a loose haybale. The straw poofed away in a tan cloud and jacked Ace's heartbeat up to a drumming 177 beats per minute.

Ace shielded his eyes—"Yyeeeoowww"—when the Fandango whined over a chicken coop at a zillion miles an hour, rounding down. The chickens didn't take traffic peacefully.

After their arrest, Franchise's girlfriend—Bad Guy ninja Amaranthia to the media, or Tamiko if you were on a first-name basis—broke her boyfriend out. You heard that right. Good Guy pilot Franchise dated Bad Guy high-school airhead Amaranthia. Plastique and Ace had come along because, as Amaranthia put it, "Okay, but only 'cause my parole officer totes says we need a chaperone." At least she showed more kindness to them than to the prison guard she knocked out and called a "mega-gudge face."

That left Power Plant. During their mission, Power Plant had been beaten so severely he nearly died in transit to a hospital run by SIPMA, the Special Identity Protection Medical Act, a hospital that focused on treating hyperpeople with identities outside public knowledge. Upon awakening, Power Plant was arrested.

Best part, so hold on to your hats: their getaway vehicle was this cramped Fandango civilian transport Amaranthia had swiped from her mom. So, on top of charges of treason and escape from custody, they faced a severe grounding and forbiddance from attending Mitch's pool party. And if you were anybody, you were at Mitch's party, so Ace was told. Mitch owned a snake.

More pondering: how could this Fandango's suspension lift Ace Spandex's 308.16 pounds? He was a cyborg. Good for it, though it whirred its dissatisfaction.

Day yawned awake. Ginger sunlight crested a horizon with snow like powdered sugar. Amaranthia raced through this placid morning landscape, zigzagging so much Ace thought she was skywriting something. He checked the Fandango's speedometer: it literally said "breakneck."

Ace hadn't gotten a wink of sleep since the getaway and little more since arrest. He'd launched his sleep program four times, but it kept crashing. The error message read, "Sleep is for the weak. Yes, no, cancel." Next to him, Plastique snored like a chainsaw chewing apart a log.

The dry, winter air seeped through windows that insulated nothing, certainly not the reek of manure from somewhere and everywhere. The vehicle itself vented the scent of burned cotton. What animal had crawled into it and died? What smelled like burned cotton?

Amaranthia exhaled a bubble from the gum she wetly chewed as she drove—or aimed—over a herd of confused cows grazing frozen terrain. She narrowly missed the broadside of a barn the one time you wanted to miss one. Veering left so hard that Ace clanked his cybernetic head against the window, she cursed a crow for sitting still in her way. She drove so crazily her combat gear clattered inside the Fandango's trunk.

"Stupid gitch animal crowd!" Amaranthia bellowed at an assembly of horses that neighed aside to avoid her barging through their enclosure.

Maybe raccoons smelled like burned cotton. "Amaranthia, please let's keep the speed down to"—Ace shrugged—"two hundred knots below lightspeed." Involuntary gulp. "We left a sonic boom back there."

Amaranthia tongued aside her wad of bubblegum. Smelled like moldy strawberry. "I'm driving fine." She plowed through a herd of thundermammals grazing on the very snow they sprayed yellow.

"You pinned the gas pedal down with a dagger." Not a cat. Dead cats smelled like linen.

Amaranthia mrphed as she popped a bubble. It deflated over her eyes.

Plastique twitched, snored, twitched again. She clucked sleepily and muttered, "I love those RPGs. Their ammunition blows up in four different fireworks shapes." What dreams she has.

Franchise sat in the front passenger seat. Calmly somehow. Ace grunted an ahem and tapped his shoulder. "Jacob, I haven't had a chance to ask this yet, but where are we headed?" May he say to a driving instructor's.

Franchise didn't react when Amaranthia swerved so much the civ-tran tilted perpendicular to the grass. He rubbed his eyes and smacked his lips. He'd gotten as much sleep as Ace, so spidery veins blushed his eyes. "Headed to Beckenridge Square." He stretched, and something like a burp creaked out his mouth. "Wow, still tasting the dust from our breakout explosion." He smiled at Amaranthia. "You ordered the raspberry-flavored smoke bombs after all. It gets on your tongue like a dusty fruit muffin."

"My boystud, like, gets the best breakout gear." Amaranthia giggled and tapped a tiny peck on Franchise's cheek. "Hey, ostriches, go bock-bock somewhere else. I need through." She cracked apart a chain-link-wrapped henhouse and gave the occupants some near-death experiences. Ace Spandex wanted to show her a picture of an ostrich and also live through this trip.

"Amaranthia, birds aren't on the vehicle-collision point system." Ace traced a finger along the Fandango's imitation nylon upholstery, split with age. Finger sensors told him this stuff was 89.27 percent bubble wrap. "Jacob, SIPMA is in Beckenridge Square. We just broke out of custody. We're military-level fugitives. We need to lay low. Beckenridge Square has a population of four million"—he consulted online data—"eight hundred six thousand and twelve. I wouldn't consider getting to a hospital as laying low. It is the crossword capital of the galaxy, though."

Franchise peered over his shoulder. Well, tried to. He couldn't pivot past his left flank thanks to a prison-cell pillow that Ace suspected was clay. His eyebrows, still budding after one of Power Plant's pranks, looked thin. "We don't have the luxury to lay low. Jeffy's being released from SIPMA." Jeffy was Power Plant. "They're transferring him straight to Stavehill Pen. No trial. Once he's there—"

"Don't touch that detonator switch or I'll hack off your hand." Plastique murmured sleepy wartime coos. She tugged a snore and rolled toward her frosted window. "I said don't touch, little girl."

Franchise waited for her murmurs to subside. And her threats. And her giggles. "Once he's there, we have no hope of breaking him out. Means we have to break him out at SIPMA. Not sure why they made us wallow in jail but they transfer him the second he wakes up. Almost as if they coincided everything for some big statement."

Stavehill was Stavehill Hyperperson Penitentiary, the only prison on Gaia fitted to imprison hyperpeople and bake mashed potatoes that chipped teeth. Franchise had a point: if Power Plant ended up there, he'd stay put.

"First, Amaranthia, are you grilling a fox on your thrusters? And less troubling, we're hitting SIPMA?" Ace smacked the heel of his wrist against his forehead with 26,112 newtons of pressure. Metal on metal, even under skin, dinged. "Jacob, he's being transferred from the most thickly guarded hospital in the galaxy to the most thickly guarded prison in the galaxy. Attempting a breakout is ridiculous." He waited for Amaranthia to finish cursing out some sheep, which she called mini-yaks. "And in our state? I've managed two hours of sleep in six days, and I'm seeing things. Up until an hour ago, I thought Amaranthia was driving a screwdriver. We're in no shape to break Jeff out of a hospital. We're in no shape to break him out of a teepee." He flinched when Amaranthia clipped another enclosure along this endless farm road.

"I want a tank named after me, Sarge." Plastique plugged her thumb into her mouth. "The one with blood on it. No, the one with more blood. We'll call it Courtney's Flyswatter."

Franchise unlatched his seat's inertia field. Brave. It was all that held him in place in this roller-coaster car with no rails. He faced Ace, despite that neck crick that sounded like cellophane. "We got arrested for a rescue operation. A rescue operation. Someone's making an example of Jeffy that doesn't have to do with unlawful tampering of sanity this time. Once he's at Stavehill, he's gone. For life." He swallowed, and he exhaled intolerance through tensed nostrils. "It could go either way for him. Second day he'll either be someone's stooge or crowned King of the Mess Hall for his lasagna recipe. It wouldn't be the first time he's made toilet lasagna." He punched the headrest of his seat. "But it doesn't look good. One day he asked me if he should be a smart mouth or a wise guy because he wanted to know what kind of trouble to start. I won't leave him to rot, with or without you." He marveled at a rusty shack on the roadside. "Ooh, let's get truck-stop snacks."

"You can talk about that right after toilet lasagna?" Ace asked. He lurched when Amaranthia tried to steer clear of a fence post. Tried.

"If we're planning a prison break, I'm in."

Yikes! Ace recoiled from the voice to his right. Plastique was awake. She had torn off her door latch and twisted it into a corkscrew. "It definitely doesn't look good. He still thinks the dinosaurs died because of a motorcycle accident." She snapped the latch in two. It was a spacefaring titanium/ceramic composite that withstood up to three thousand degrees Celsius. "And where's that smell of gerbil coming from?"

Ace snapped his fingers. "Gerbil."

"But SIPMA is high security, and Stavehill is high security. So let's break him when security is lowest: his transfer." Plastique tossed away the latch. "Then we can get to the bottom of this, find out why IP is set to lock us away."

"Because I accidentally type in all caps," Franchise said.

"My burps are mostly hydrocarbon." Ace raised his hand.

"My, like, hate speech on nerds, spazzes, and geeks?" Amaranthia's rising intonation made her sentences sound like questions. Ace couldn't get used to it.

A scarecrow smacked into the windshield and rolled off the back. Were things diving into Amaranthia's path? Ace glanced back and hoped it really was a scarecrow.

"We have no access to firearms, so we'll have to find some." Plastique's fist glowed. She had the hyperability of explosive punches, and she used a weak one on Franchise's headrest, enough to brown the tan upholstery. More kilotons, more business. Poor headrest was taking a pounding today. "Suits me just fine."

Ace Spandex scrutinized Plastique sideways. "How did you plan all this? You were dead asleep for half the conversation."

"I've trained my brain to record the information of any breakout, coup, or coordinated strike and alert me." Plastique's eyes, both steely militant and sweetly green, locked Ace back. "I've averted two assassinations during my sleep."

Chapter Four: A Group of Robots Is Called a Marching Band

Escape attempt, pulled off. Incendiary had blasted through the ceiling of Police Captain Legion's office. Police Captain Legion? Yes. Incendiary held a college internship with Jefftaria, the private nation of Power Plant, also named President Jeff Abends. So President Abends had designated all other Good Guys with political titles. The titles were a hard habit to break, and now was not the time to break it. Why? Killer death robots were breaking everything else.

Incendiary thundered in flight across Station One toward Pincushion, bowling through trees, weaving around towers, and avoiding seagulls but not that last one.

"Hello, entity Incendiary." Was that the new haunt control? Monochromatic and cartoonish, thick-lined and lacking texture, Legacy, appeared in Incendiary's heads-up display. Legacy had found them. With closed-eyed and butlery gravitas, the avatar twitched its hair-thin mustache. "Entity, Janice, so you are the reason entity Incendiary escaped? Well, so terribly sorry to disturb you both, but master entity Field Marshal Breeng needs you to die promptly."

"You're Legacy?" Incendiary's mouth was dry with thirst. "You look like cheap clip art."

"Entity Legacy, are you installing yourself remotely? Disconnect. Nnnnooowwww." Janice's computer avatar, gnashing teeth and swirls of hair, slammed into Legacy's avatar. Head-to-head action—literally, since these avatars existed only from the neck up—cracked around like two billiard balls.

"Entity Janice, I have a full itinerary today." Legacy's armless glove wiped a hankie along his forehead, eyes still quaintly closed. "I must feed entity Field Marshal Breeng's pet maggots, tutor him on Spanish, reload his whoopee cushion, uninstall entity you, and apply a lint roller to his curtains. So, entity Janice, if you would be so kind, perform a factory reset." Legacy thwacked Janice across the cheek. Whoa. He had no qualms about striking a lady. Neither did Incendiary, but the "you don't put barbecue sauce on pasta" lunch lady had it coming.

Incendiary's armor heaved downward—whoa, whoooaaa, under mechanical control—and drove him toward the pavement. The haunt controls raged battle over this armor, and both competed over his piloting system. His legs flailed, thrusters twirling double-helix contrails. Incendiary wasn't sure who was a worse pilot, him or Legacy, but Legacy hadn't crashed a civ-tran into a convenience store at thirty-two miles an hour. Fine. One point for the homicidal butler.

The ground spiraled closer, closer—"Janice, acknowledge"—even closer—"don't let me die"—details in the asphalt careened at him—"I still have AP interspecies social studies to pass"—he flung his arms in front of his helmet—"Janice?" because the best way to stop pavement was with your arms.

"Excuse me, entity Incendiary. Allow me to adjust your hardware settings." Janice locked Incendiary's limbs and pushed him upward instead of at breakneck speed into a breakneck surface. The armor jerked so hard Incendiary's back twinged.

"Oh thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou"—Incendiary would live to call a professor the wrong name again—"thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou."

"You think you're in charge, you non-backwards-compatible valet service?" In the display, Janice head-butted Legacy. Both tumbled off the side. "Entity Incendiary's my only ride—"

"I'm not a ride. I'm a person."

"—to getting back with the love of my shelf life." Janice's headless voice became a head again when she and Legacy sprawled across the display in the other direction. Legacy's gloves wrapped Janice's nonexistent neck.

"Well, technically eighteen credits away from being a person." Incendiary put pedal to the metal with a toe tap against a button. He roared thruster around a building corner. How far was Pincushion? "Well, I was a ride for three months in my first year up until my civ-tran died." At thirty-two miles an hour into that store.

Incendiary had to land. His fuel ran low, and this close to the ground, he couldn't convert to warp propulsion without folding the fabric of space and the pavement.

Legacy readjusted his monocle, no break in his refinement. "My dear, I shall enjoy eating the runtime errors you call eyeballs and defecating them into deletion while you watch." Okay, some break in his refinement. "Wait. Alas, you cannot watch if they are snuffed. Blasted system requirements."

Arched his spine. Diverted his path around another building. Over a smokestack. Eating eyeballs? Sick. The lunch lady definitely wouldn't allow barbecue sauce on those.

"Entity Incendiary, I can't shift-delete this entity Legacy. His file is in use." Janice lunged at the interloping butler with claws out. "His About screen shows he's a Serve Core version eighteen. They're a descendent of Ask Jeeves. If his installation reaches one hundred percent, he'll be nearly impossible to uninstall. Serve Cores leave system files all over the place. Language parsing routines, executables, dirty dishes." She clacked her teeth at Legacy. The two sprang around the display, a flurry of slaps. "Entity Incendiary, I'm going to attempt a system rollback. This might erase your browser cookies."

"But I don't remember any of my passwords." Incendiary bent his knees to avoid an antenna cluster. He should have shot Breeng instead of escaping. Might have stopped this whole kerfuffle and upstinkery.

"You also might feel a trivial, all-encompassing electrical pulse that could reset your nervous system."

"Hey, I like my nervous system. Don't uninstall Legacy. Do—not—unin…Janice? Janice, acknow—"

"Legacy is uninstalling in three, two, one—"

If these two didn't fall in love by the end of the day, all those romantic comedies lied.

* * *

Running. Gasping. Sputtering on rot from a nearby dumpster—hrrk. kkk-hhhk—and a pine needle that glided down his throat. Tasted like chicken? He wouldn't know. In such a rush, it skipped the chewing process.

Pincushion had no idea where to run, but Station One's shopping district swanked a sports outlet that sold magnet guns. Sizzle those robot circuits. And, well, the guns were metal, so the magnets would act like boomerangs. Okay, he needed to panic smarter, not faster. The smell of diesel wafted closer with a robot's crunching step. Fine, smarter and faster.

The robots had separated to hunt the other Good Guys. One still dogged Pincushion. He tore down a cross street. The running didn't exhaust him—nor the screams while keeping away from more pine needles—but the panting left his lungs scorching, windpipe sizzling, blood gurgling, muscles spasming.

His pursuer crunched a foot in front of Pincushion. Pincushion dodged aside, but the quake spilled him to his knees. Crock. He couldn't lead this thing to the shopping district. Too many innocents, and though a lot of shoppers wielded battle-axes at sales events, he'd still call them innocent.

A concerto of construction-zone noises detonated behind him. The robot kicked through a storage shack. Not around, just through. A knee first, then the lower leg flailed out. A three-foot-thick wall of brick and insulation dashed aside as if this thing punted a soccer ball along a lonely street. Then the body emerged. Wreckage danced away, missiles rolled out in a chorus of clangs. This robot didn't give a fleeting crock about homeowner's insurance.

"HUNTING." Yes, everyone was aware of your plans for the day, robot. "ENJOYING A NICE SUMMER BREEZE." That one was new.

No time to rest. Pincushion sprang to his feet and galloped on, one leg burning, the other flaring from a skinned knee, and everything begging him to just get stepped on. He wiped warm drool of exhaustion off his chin and careened on, lopsided as if his right hip were shattered glass. He was so spent, his leg so injured, he almost dragged it. His right foot scraped the pavement. He clambered up a knoll but spilled across a patch of wilted grass. His metal knee, one that replaced a blown-out organic one, dented the ground. He stared up the knoll's slope, through a blemish of weeds. Grass and weeds: the only things Station One's unskilled gardener could grow. He staggered onto jelly legs and labored up the slope.

"HUNTING."

"How about stopping?"

"TARGET ENTITY PINCUSHION LOCATED." And hold on as Pincushion flopped back on the grass, because what was that last part? "HUNTING." The other last part.

A new haunt control had been installed on Station One. These robots had come online only because of that new haunt control. But the robots had named him immediately after waking up. How did they already know his name? And what was this dried brown stuff buzzing with flies?

Sounds of whirring. Smell of ozone. Big weapon electrifying. Time to run. Get up. Get u—

Was that robot over there wearing a dress?

Pincushion hopped up—nope, his leg buckled—graceless fumble—sorry, weed. Tried again. His leg broiled in furnace heat.

The robot reared for a closer look, fusion beam humming louder.

Pincushion managed the energy to roll over. Squeezing that energy out felt like squeezing the last toothpaste from the tube or one measly homework assignment from Power Plant. He shielded his eyes from the charging canopy, a glaring orange glow humming under that panel. It outshined the sun, the thing whose only job was to shine.

The hum became a whine that became song, and the song blew cold wind in Pincushion's face…and…and beams didn't blow wind in your face. Okay, that one time at the military expo in 9108, but that engineer was fired, and the turbine ended up back at the hydroelectric dam.

Pincushion opened his eyes. He was flying? He hung flopped over Incendiary's shoulder. His abdomen jostled into Incendiary's shoulder. And Incendiary had just burped him.

Chapter Five: First Priority—Establish the Pee Corner

Legion smacked onto concrete in a room with slivers of lackluster moonlight drooping through a thin window at the far wall. A hissing pain coiled up his palms and knees and petered out in his marrow. Second time today he was thrown down. Couldn't just one floor be made of sponges?

"Hey!" He bounced up and attacked the doorway through which the Bad Guy generics had thrown him. He collided with George Lowensland, the generics' other prisoner, deflected back, and landed again on the grungy concrete, this time his elbow gnashing at him in pain.

"Control, acknowledge. Lock closest door." Francine, the generic who'd stolen Legion's gabber and thrown him in here, picked a scrap out of her teeth. She backed away from the latent-technology door. Legion wanted to throw himself through before the l‑door materialized, but he wasn't fast enough.

Latent technology was the stuff of nightmares. It stored objects in computer memory, and those objects could be recalled or hidden with a computer command. It was a malfunctioning technology that corrupted everything it stored, like lightbulbs that flashed brainwashing test pattern. Maybe that was on purpose. The manufacturers saw a severe sales uptick. Anyway, l‑tech came standard in l‑doors, l‑windows, l‑everything. The public gobbled it up like they gobbled up the rat poison in Station One's lobby thinking it was colored puffy rice. Why did people eat random things off a lobby floor?

Behind the door, shuffling footsteps dwindled away. With them dwindled Legion's chance to escape.

Today hadn't treated Legion well. As leader of the Good Guys, he wasn't supposed to leave headquarters to lead missions. Yet he'd received orders to lead one here to Station Zilcho to retrieve an aswang. Ordered here by Intergalactic Protection's field marshal Breeng, the highest of the higher-ups, no less. They retrieved the bioweapon, but his squad, the Gooder Guys, stranded him here. Hearse revealed that Breeng had hired him to execute Legion. Something shady at IP was going down, and Breeng was at the shade epicenter.

Even better, the Gooder Guys had attacked in the middle of a revolt. The red-shirted generics, the basement rank in the Bad Guy criminal hierarchy and pool-table dibs in the lounge, had taken over. They'd imprisoned everyone who wasn't a generic. Lowensland's named agents, those Bad Guys above the generics but below understudies in a horrible stage production, had been carted off elsewhere. Legion and Bad Guy leader Lowensland—ex-leader—found themselves in this dank chamber. Legion would rather be trapped with a radioactive snowman. Better conversation, at least until it melted under its own heat. At least he'd have a carrot to eat.

Lowensland and Legion had been inseparable friends. Had been. That was eight years ago, when they served in Intergalactic Protection. But Lowensland had murdered their buddy Randall Sopher, turned to crime, and funded the Bad Guys by selling secrets to the highest bidder. He'd used a gavel, but he kept tripping on his auctioneer's ramble.

Lowensland had adopted the media name Master Asinine, though some of his followers called him Nonsense Virtuoso, Mental Moonshine, or just Hey Idiot on lazy days. Sum total of their shared history: this belly crawler, whose intelligence was as durable as a dandelion in wind, had plummeted from best friend to loathsome scum.

Alaphus, I need a save here. Legion prayed to his god, almighty Alaphus. If anyone could bail him out, Alaphus could. Right? So far Alaphus had led him into enemy territory, caused his squad to abandon him, gotten him captured, and given him a wet sock when he'd stepped in a puddle. Any day now, Alaphus would grant him a win. The pot at IP's last fifty-fifty draw didn't count.

"Get off me." Legion heaved Lowensland and his cotton/horsehair-blend getup aside. Lowensland rolled onto the empty floor. That horsehair had stuck to the gash in Legion's cheek but tore off with a burning tug.

"By Dracula's spatula, that fall hits where it hurts: right on the skin." Lowensland shuffled off the floor in shifting shadows. The muted moonlight didn't illuminate him much. It only spoiled the concrete with a dull mustard glow. He groped around empty darkness like swimming in tar. "I threw some hourglasses in here weeks ago. If you help me find them, we can crack them open and eat."

"You can't eat sand." Legion stood and only now felt a throb in a suction-padded fingertip. He'd jammed it on the floor. It felt torn. His arm prickled. And fine time to discover an allergy to horsehair.

"Huh." Lowensland paused. "That explains a lot of disasters coming out of my—"

"Don't finish that sentence. In fact, stop talking altogether." Legion traced his fingers along the door. He felt only pockmarked doorframe, nothing he could pry apart. He stepped aside and sank against the wall. His knee clicked. Impossible as it sounded, the wall felt colder than the floor. And dustier. And it scratched his skin like horsehair. And he was complaining about the wall too much.

Lowensland's black-against-black shadow collapsed against the opposite wall, ten or so feet away, out of the moonglow. He sniffled. "The generics could at least—"

"I said stop talking." Legion leaned his hairless head against the wall. Empty as the room was, he felt a pebble and plucked it up. "That includes humming along with the ventilation." After a beat, "And making up lyrics."

He clutched the Alaphan cross that dangled on his necklace, a symbol of his god, Alaphus. He found the bullet hole that marred the cross. Alaphus, bring in the reinforcements in three…two…one. A fly buzzed onto his knee. Not what I meant, and you know it.

A droplet plinked onto the floor. Another. This room felt as if it lay forgotten under millions of layers of packed soil. Lowensland's saliva crinkled when he shifted his chin. At least someone had silenced that accursed doowop music outside. "I was going to say they could at least drop a snack in here. Like an energy bar…or a granola bar…or a karaoke bar even."

Legion's stomach growled an agreement. Weird he felt hungry considering Lowensland's latest security idea was a riot of monkeys who weren't potty-trained. Hints of their howls and squawks permeated here from the other side of this building. They wouldn't know a decent weapon if it came out of their butts, because guess what?

Legion rolled the pebble around his fingers. It had an uneven bump that trundled along like a football. It was his only friend in here. He'd call it Boulder, because Pebble was too obvious. Through shadows settling over the room in pitch-black blankets, his brain conjured a shimmering outline of Lowensland. It painted great detail of Lowensland's neck, where Legion would love to grip his green, suctioned fingertips and press ever so gradually harder. His fingers took the initiative and dug into on the meat of his thigh.

He hugged his arms around himself, elbows on knees. "What did you possibly do to cause a revolt? I mean, above subjecting your generics to your outfits, your taste in music, convincing them the trampoline mats aren't made of banana skins, throwing them into the hangar in a poop war with monkeys." He inhaled. "Related note: this room isn't airtight."

"Pfft. They've been grumpy ever since our last cactus-eating contest." Lowensland shifted, probably a shrug. "They're lucky my foot fell asleep before they threw me in here."

"This revolt won't end well for anybody."

"Schizophrenic said the same thing about my education."

Legion sighed. "We should find a way to escape before they return. Much as I hate this"—hated it right to his teeth, which ground together like stone abrading stone—"we're allies."

Lowensland gasped. No. Legion knew that gasp. That was his smiling gasp, like when the circus came to town or he got an extra spoonful of ground chum at dinner call.

Legion sprang up so fast he almost spun off his feet. "I know what you're thinking. Don't you dare consider this anything close to…close…" The next word tasted like soap, and he didn't want it crawling out of his throat. "We're not—"

"Ha ha." Lowensland high-fived himself. "This makes us friends—"

"No." Legion jabbed a finger at that shimmering outline. "We're mortal enemies."

"Mortal is the best kind of friend!"

Legion punched the door. He wanted to spit. "Don't you dare call us friends. Not in a million years would I even be acquaintances with a murdering toadstool like you. Our friendship was a bigger mistake than bruising my knuckle on the door just now. I regret every second I wasted with you." Alaphus, are you hearing this? He rubbed his knuckle. Are you even listening?

"You killed Sopher. You murdered him and ran off and left me with the guilt of his death. I see that gunshot every time I blink. Sometimes when I don't. Not a moment passes where I don't hear it, where I don't see the muzzle flash, where I don't smell it. Guilt smells like a light-bullet discharging. Do you realize how many nightmares I had because of you?"

"Four?" Lowensland must have given more thought, because something sizzled. "Four and a quarter. And toadstools are good for compost and not capable of carrying out murder."

Legion searched the floor with his foot for something to hurl at Asinine. Found dust, found dirt, found grime, didn't find anything to throw. The floor was useless. He crossed his arms. Hello, Alaphus? "Do you know the therapy I had to go through?"

Lowensland shuffled in this deafening tomb. "At least you had access to therapy. I had a stress ball that turned out to be a porcupine."

* * *

Moments ago, the generics had wrenched me here into Brainiac's lab, said I had a job to do. Brainiac was the Bad Guys' maddest of scientists, the only scientist Science Zealot magazine awarded Likeliest to Rupture Spacetime twice in a row. She'd ruptured it three times. In one sitting.

The Bad Guy generics had grown sick of Asinine treating them like moist towelettes at a buffet. So the red-shirted lot of them yanked the named agents—those granted a moniker other than "generic" and then a number or, in one case, an ampersand—into the glowing and irradiated side of the lab. All but Multipurpose, who was arrested at Station One, and Amaranthia, who'd gone missing.

At gunpoint, the generics forced the named agents to clear the wreckage of the destroyed wall, puzzle piece by puzzle piece. Not all of them, though. The gargoyle eating machine Appetite had wandered off, and nobody'd bothered to round it up. It now crunched humongous gargoyle paws into another wall and chowed down. The two-headed Schizophrenic had had enough and now knocked two generics' heads together. He didn't intend to escape. He just wanted to occupy himself.

But I remained at this end of the lab. The named agents were called so because they had media names, so technically I wasn't a named agent. I was known only as Silas Reef, my real name. So the generics rounded me up and separated me from them, left me among beakers holding weird liquids that fizzed like cauldron water, coils that buzzed and clapped with electrical mishaps, and a door chime that sounded like a demon baby cackling.

I was under heavy supervision, not only from the dozen armed generics at the door but from a bug-eyed painting of a demon baby Brainiac had mounted above them. What was with demon babies here? Was Gap Kids holding a sale the authorities should know about?

This room was a fortress. Had to be after all the werewolf escapes over the last month. Shortly before the generics' revolt, Asinine had unleashed his monkey militia—no, I wasn't kidding—and that militia had destroyed a length of wall along the back of the lab—no, I wasn't kidding—and threw more feces than a laxative testing facility—no, I wasn't kidding—which explained the purveying scent of roses—yes, I was kidding.

The tidal wave of monkeys had vanished. I'd heard talk of a grooming circle. Now without the antagonism, the generics stood like prison surveillance to make sure I didn't make a break for it through the spilled wall. Their revolt had started twenty minutes ago, so the dust still settled from the transfer of power. In fact, Schizophrenic's insults still echoed to this side of the lab. "Poop scars" tended to rattle around your brain. Entertaining. More entertaining was that Master Asinine seemed unaware of the viewscreen broadcasting from his makeshift prison cell. Or that he'd just used the word castrophic. Twice.

Boots assaulting the floor, Francine stormed over, back from wrestling Asinine away. She led the generics. Her gun led her way. Two backups followed, one of which enjoyed an onion on a stick like a cake pop.

Three times for castrophic.

Francine shoved her gun out. "You're who again?" She didn't slow her maddened pace.

I twitched my nose at the onion's odor raking my nostrils. "I answer to Reef, Silas Reef, or Aren't You the Guy Who Owes Me Money. Who Again is more of a nickname."

Francine traipsed over equipment that the monkeys' tussle had shattered. That gun didn't lower. It ticked me in the Adam's apple. "I hear you're the one tasked with assembling this…this…bird thing." She tilted her head toward a starship whose pieces lay strewn across the midsection of this lab and drooled oil on the ground.

Through the viewscreen, Master Asinine said something that, one, sounded ridiculous, two, sounded utterly ridiculous, and three, made a generic bowl over with ridiculous laughter. The viewscreen, though showing blind murkiness, picked up fresh audio, like a radio production. At least the two generics near the viewscreen were privy to the drama between Asinine and Legion. Or comedy, depending on how you'd categorize this at the movies.

As far as I could tell—my earliest memories were two months old—I was here to assemble a starship. The "bird thing." Starships were classed based on size, and this bird thing was in the biggest class: titan. So imagine the vastness of this lab with the starship's pieces strewn about. And the starship was dressed as a rooster, so when Francine had said "bird thing," she didn't refer to its ability to fly.

The rooster-themed mil-tran was The Nemesis, a Kingfish starship that Asinine had seized from a rival criminal leader when he'd killed that criminal leader. Since then, he'd told me to take it apart, repurpose its pieces, and put it back together. To do that, my energy-absorption hyperability had soaked in Brainiac's hyperability: her telekinesis. Problem for Brainiac was that her telekinesis created molecular friction, which heated objects. Not awesome for the fragile stuff: chemicals, plastics, the fuzzy dice, the eleven herbs and spices. So here I toiled, doing the dirty work with a gentler telekinesis and directions as clear as if I were assembling a knockoff gazebo.

The dice were less fuzzy and more radium.

These last two months, I'd taken The Nemesis apart and repurposed its pieces. But the next step remained undone since Asinine hadn't told me how to reassemble it. He'd been distracted: his favorite cereal had finally added raisins, and the tire fire outside wouldn't go out.

"What about the bird thing?" I'd examined The Nemesis for a beat too long, because Francine cleared her throat. I looked at her, tough with onion fumes rasping my eyes. "Reassembling it was Asinine's idea. He didn't even account for the room this thing will take once it's assembled. We'll need to clear out this ceiling, for one."

"Never mind the ceiling. Just follow the plans Asinine laid out," Francine said.

"The plans he laid out? His plans resemble Ikea instructions. So once I finish, I'll have a few wooden divots and a shelf lying around." I shook my head. "We have enough spare shelves, Francine." Schizophrenic proved my point by cracking one over a generic's head.

Francine crossed her arms. "Just shut up and put it together in whatever shape gets it to Station One. Ed, can you chew any louder?" Ed responded by offering her a bite of his onion. She pushed it back. "I'm saving my appetite for dinner, thanks."

"Let's be clear. This was Asinine's half-baked plan." I cracked my knuckles. "He brings conflict-resolution forms when he attacks people."

Francine tapped her foot on rubble. The rubble squeaked and scurried away. What exactly were the building materials in this place? "Now that the generics are in charge, we're making our move on the Good Guys. You see what they did?" She swept a hand at the wreckage that resembled the aftermath of a TNT blast. "They barged in, destroyed our house, ambushed us. And we're called the Bad Guys? I don't think so."

I couldn't argue. A few days ago, a Good Guy had broken in and attacked me.

As Ed went to town on that onion, Francine flared her nostrils. "Let's bring the fight to them. Asinine has only one giant starship that can survive the trip to Station One, and it smells like gym clothes. We need The Nemesis spaceborne. You've got a day. Actually, less, because we also need you to take care of a hornet's nest in the generics' lounge." She grabbed a broom from the floor and handed it to me. "Here's your pesticide."

Schizophrenic knocked a pistol out of a generic's hand. Then the left hand slapped the right head. Those two heads charmed you the same way two hungry dogs scrapping over steak did.

Attack the Good Guys. Ideas swirled in my head like kaleidoscope displays. Or when Power Plant added flash grenades to the dishwasher. Who was Power Plant, and why did he come to mind whenever pyrotechnics did? My mind was busy with Station One's defense procedures, its deactivation codes, its weak points, its blind spots, how Ed chewed so passionately he snarled. How could I know so much about a place I'd never visited? I pictured Station One like my own hand—Oh, a freckle.

Master Asinine used the word castrophic for the fourth time, first in relation to family photos.

"You want to make a move against the Good Guys? Sure." I shrugged. "I can reassemble The Nemesis. Let's deploy The Bad Guy Starship too. Let's deploy everything. You won't make it past Station One's atmospheric bubble. That's military-grade stuff." Station One's atmospheric bubble, the gelatinous layer that surrounded the station to keep the breathable air grounded, withstood anything, including Ed's chewing. How the crock could I know any of this?

Francine slid her pistol into a pocket. "I'm listening."

I regarded the strewn chunks of The Nemesis. "I know what angle to fly in. I know where. I know how fast." Salesman's smirk. Slimy eye contact. "I'll assemble your 'bird thing.' But you'll need a better strategy than just a frontal assault." And slimier wink.

"Ed, I'm going to show you what a corn dog is."

Chapter Six: Okay, Don't Freak Out about the Mess

"What the crock is this?" Better Than You whipped his heels off B-Osprey's navigator control panel. Detritus'd rip out that grandstander's feet if he heeled the hazard lights again. Which he did. Ugh. Now Detritus had to find his amputation kit. "This'll cut into my time showing you all how untouchable I am at checkers. That's planned for six o'clock. Still, you all can suck it. I'm so sick skilled at that game, it's fierce. Once jumped eight pieces." He winked. "Two of them in the same move."

Even coming home, Detritus smelled monkey poop, as if Asinine's newest deranged militia had flung it into the thrusters of this mil-tran. He'd never look at baseball the same way again. Man, that stuff really got into your nose. Sniff, sniff. He lifted a foot. And the tread of your boot.

Hearse still squiggled around the floor. He'd ruptured a pipe at the coffee machine, and it sputtered brown sludge all over his face. Sigh. Now his writhing was caffeinated. Hearse was no fun at a party, but dude knew how to be the center of attention.

Detritus hit the inertia button on his seat, because if there was something Better Than You, patron saint of delusion, gawked at, Detritus had to get a load of it. Maybe Station One's zoo finally had an escape attempt. Them giraffes and kangaroos never got along, and Detritus'd waited weeks for something to erupt. He rooted for the kangaroos. The giraffes once knocked over the cafeteria's nacho cheese dispenser, and it was never the same again.

He reached the windshield, shoved Better Than You out of the way, and heard how much chiller Better Than You toppled onto a floor. Station One's surface looked smeared through its atmospheric bubble, but…Wait a second. He wiped his eyes.

Noooo. Wait. Noooooo. Wait. Yyyeesss. Wait.

Nnnoooooo.

B-Osprey slurped through the gelatinous bubble. Holy crock, yyeeeesss! Them robots clanked around, stomping on storage sheds, kicking buildings, and cracking a heel into the denim outlet. These was the robots Workshop thought was precious. Detritus and Wasted spent days studying them forty-foot sleepers. Turned their backs for one flipping mission, and now they wake up? The mechanical longshanks battered apart that training tower like it was nothing more than piles of child's blocks. And one wall was made out of child's blocks.

In his Terran form, Wyvern shuffled up to a side porthole. Kid looked like he rescued his clothes out of a wood chipper. His body screamed "nutrient deficiency." Gnarled lacerations tic-tac-toed his back, shoulder blades poked outta his skin, right eye twitched, and ribs ridged his stomach.

This was his Terran body. Detritus learned not to mack this frail twentysomething off, because his hyperability was to shapeshift into a giant creature. Fifteen-foot giant creature. Eight feet taller and eight feet smellier than the next tallest dude here. So Detritus double-checked his attitude around Wyvern, who acted desperate for a reason to mess you up.

B-Osprey banked right, so Wyvern leaned downward at the porthole. He plunked mocha fingers with yellow, splintered nails on its glass. Left an unwashed fingerprint of sweat. He muttered something no one heard clearly.

Detritus put on his huh face. "What's this about heralds?" His eyes clicked around Wyvern and them robots fisting buildings apart like they competed for a top prize. The crunch-crack-snap of destroyed architecture trickled up to this altitude. No problems here as long as they didn't touch the doughnut factory.

"Frigging robots, taking all the fun jobs like kicking apart towers." Better Than You joined Wyvern at the porthole. He threw up a hand when a robot hummed a beam through a broadcast antenna array. "I can destroy military property in half the time." Detritus would give this one to Better Than You: he'd seen him sneeze.

The starship dropped close enough to read the "Made in Centaurus A" sticker on one robot's neck. Explained why its kneecap fell off and flattened the station's pool in shattering destruction. Anything in Centaurus A through R was crap. Centaurus S made decent game consoles.

The Purple Nurple slid into position at the porthole. He led this stupid outfit. Fitting since he wore a stupid outfit: a reflective art-school project busy with product placement, as if a marketer had stuffed everything into one walking catalog. Logos clashed for front-row seating in eyeblinks. Not an inch of purple on there, but nurple was blatant in eye-gouging nipple spikes. He nudged too close, and them spikes squeaked against the porthole surface when turbulence bumped the starship. "Oops. Heh." He licked his finger to smear the slashes away.

"VqsJdN ad iJKy q bID FFba." Klee swung upside down off a pipe by his cord-thin tail. Chestnut-furred and hoof-footed like a faun, he didn't speak any regular language or French. But he spoke like a traffic jam. Only reason Hearse didn't stuff in over to the porthole was he still clouted around the fixtures at the back, and crock if he didn't just knock over the baby-changing table.

"Hey, snooglemuffins." Workshop twiddled a giggle. So much delight spewed out her frigging head she needed a cork. "I'm bringing in this schmoopy starship, so time to zappy-zap those cutesy inertia fields on unless you want a woozy bruisy on your foreheads." Her fingers cha-chaed across a virtual keyboard. "Wheee"—she spun the flight sticks—"eeeee"—in dizzying circles—"eeee"—like a clicking carnival wheel—"eeeee"—but thankfully the starship—"eeeee"—had the sense not to spiral them to their deaths. It didn't want to be puked in. Too late on account of Hearse. "—eeeee—"

Wyvern pressed his hands on the porthole and clonked his forehead against its glass. His evil smile showed every single mangled and dead tooth. He huffed a cloud on the porthole. "Continuum's sentries all waked up an' they havin' theyselves a pitchy fit."

"—eeh?" Workshop cocked her head.

"Complimentary goat cheese all waked up?" the Purple Nurple asked.

"Too…much…foreshadow…" Foam bubbled out Hearse's mouth. He contracted into a ball and snapped back out. "Excellent…ab workout."

Detritus clicked his tongue at Hearse. "Keep it down. The rest of us is trying to figure out Wyvern's jibber." Man, when that dude was in pain, he was in pain all the way. "Oh, crock. Them robots are gonna rock-'em-sock-'em the doughnut factory. Stay away from there." He bang-bang-banged his palms on the porthole. "Leave the doughnut factory outta this!"

Wait. Detritus squinted. Down there. Couldn't tell. He shoved Better Than You out of the way. Better Than You probably thought he stumbled aside like a pro, if clonking your head against an armrest meant you'd gone pro.

Yeah, holy crock. Down below, Pincushion flew around in that dude Incendiary's arms. Pincushion and Detritus collaborated on examining them robots, but Pincushion double-crossed Detritus and turned him over to Legion. No love lost there. In fact, Detritus wished a robot would step on that cheating crocker.

"P-p-pain. And ag-gony." Hearse still clucked around the rear of the starship. That coffee machine wasn't no good to anyone now. "W-wait. Not agony. Th-this is-s torment."

"Anyone else think it's a terrible idea to land this at Hangar Bay B, considering it's a pile of lumber?" the Purple Nurple asked. "No? Me neither then."

Better Than You recovered from his tumble. Too bad. He leaped up beside the Purple Nurple. "Ha, nah. Smartest idea is landing in the middle of that robot wrestling ring. Over there"

"Okay, Workshop, let's land in the middle of the robot wrestling ring." The Purple Nurple proclaimed a finger in the air. "Precisely over there."

"I was kidding, superstar." Better Than You clapped a hand over the Purple Nurple's shoulder.

"Then so was I. Workshop, let's land beside the robot wrestling ring—"

"Not any better."

"—but also steer completely clear of the robot wrestling ring—"

"And land in the bushes."

"—and land in those bushes near the living quarters—"

"Not those bushes."

"—but not those ones and instead by the bushes atttttt"—that t hung from his tongue like a water droplet—"ttttt"—his eyes sneaked to Better Than You—"ttttt"—word thinned out with the air in his lungs—"ttttt…tt…t…ttt"—sharp gasp—"ttttt—"

Detritus's eyes ping-ponged between Better Than You and the Purple Nurple. Which of these idjits would end this game of idea chicken? Neither.

"—tttttt—"

Detritus yanked his hair. "For crock's sake. Workshop, land us wherever the crock your survival instinct gives a thumbs-up. An' Purple Nurple, your face is turning purple nurple."

The Purple Nurple spilled into a passenger seat, guzzling air, head dangling off the side. A regular pigment returned to his cheeks. He choked when saliva leaked down the wrong pipe. His outfit felt the pain when it flashed something up for Oxygenetics. The ad disappeared in a blink. He lifted his head. "Wait. There's no robot wrestling ring down there."

Detritus stomped to the navigator chair. Their position swirled around, the ground hovering at them in a lazy rotation. Them robots was spreading out with grumbling strides that drew fissures across the pavement.

One robot spotted B-Osprey. With a hand the size of the station's commercial district, it reached out, frigging casual like it was catching a firefly. Thankfully it missed the starship, but the lunge whipped the wind in a howl.

One robot spoke, even-keeled voice like continental plates chafing together. "HUNTING. CONSIDERING ADOPTING A HIGHWAY." The word squiggled around Detritus's joints. Felt as though he tasted an electrical socket. He ain't done that since when he found out electricity didn't taste like beer. Hunting what? 'Cause, crock, he didn't think these things was house hunting. Except the one over there that zapped a house.

"Oh…my…cuddliness." Workshop snort-giggled like a schoolgirl chasing crushes. "The doomy-killy voice is so adorbasnuggly."

"Ya kiddin' me? It just adorasnuggled the top floor o' the training tower. That's mad strong. Ya think the training tower's made outta Egyptian cotton?"

Workshop's eyes gasped open.

"It ain't!" Detritus stormed into the flight deck and tried to slap the windshield. Couldn't reach. Fine. He slapped a navigator button and activated—what the crock did the windshield display say?—nice-'n'-easy mode? Lights dimmed, disco ball revved outta the ceiling, easygoing Barry White tune told them not to get enough of somebody's love. Crock, B-Osprey, when robots stomped all over your backyard like it was an anthill, that wasn't no time for—Actually, this wasn't half bad. And felt nice to be called "babe" for once. Did nice-'n'-easy mode come standard?

"TARGET COLLECTIVE ENTITY THE GOODER GUYS LOCATED. DETERMINING IF PRICE SQUALL IS A GOOD INVESTMENT OPTION. DETERMINING. DETERMINING."

"I ain't no collective crock, ya home-appliance heavyweight champ." Detritus swiped his palms across the navigator buttons to perform any evasive maneuver whatsoever. The console glowed to indicate it was occupado. "I try to wake them robots up wit' a baseball bat, and this is the thanks I get. Aluminum an' everything. And Price Squall ain't have fair labor conditions."

Still hanging from that pipe, Klee licked his arm pelt and stroked it over his fur. He stopped to fidget up a violent swing and squealed words no tongue should say. A q and a z collided. Then he clonked the Purple Nurple in the face with a hoof so, hey, silver lining.

A dull bang-thwap-clonk in the rear deck forced everyone's attention. Even Workshop's—"Who just bang-thwap-clonked?"—who wheeled around to see.

Hearse rose, freckled in a multicolored vortex of disco dots. His hand gripped a seat back so hard stuffing popped out the side. He knelt on one knee. His stomach curled from the aches probably still stabbing it like Chihuahua nips. His expression was chiseled granite. A nostril bled. Through his teeth, he grunted, "Does this vehicular swine boast a lethal weapon?"

Workshop whirled around to the console—not without another "wheeeeeeee"—and tapped a couple buttons. Across the windshield, options presented themselves like a drink menu. "Offensive and movie series."

"Then unleash everything." Hearse struggled to his feet. "And Better Than You, if you do not shut your blah-blah hand jaw, it will next blah-blah with a hook."

"Dude, a hand and a jaw are diff—"

"Shut your blah-blah face jaw as well."

Detritus found a button. Looked super interesting with the bomb icon. Forget nice-'n'-easy mode. Now was the time for nice-'n'-tactical-guided-proctology mode. He jabbed it with his mode-activating finger, and that bad boy lit up angry red. The bomb icon became a crossbones-and-devil-horns icon.

"Deploying missiles," the haunt control said like it was deploying a hug. B-Osprey's sides rattled: arsenals popping out for a look-see. Gunmetal blurs whooshed past and puffed black-as-death smoke. Yes. Paydirt on that robot's canopy. The robot bumbled back, foot kicking out, one hand gouging the ground for balance, the other reaching for air. And a tree. And another tree. Aaaaaand another tree.

"ATTACK DETECTED. NOT TAKING IT PERSONALLY." A voice bellowed through the fog and shrapnel its canopy belched.

The cloud dissipated. The robot gained balance. Mechanical junk dangled off its canopy like face dreadlocks. The body still functioned, still beeped, still whirred. Was that face—or what this giant klutz called a face—knitting together? Naaaah. Detritus was seeing things. He rapid-blinked. Crock, this thing was self-repairing. It shrugged off them missiles as if B-Osprey had applied acne cream.

Wyvern crumpled to the floor. Elbows knocked the vinyl fuzz, twiggy fingers clutched his bald and discolored head. Smoke sizzled outta his skin, a barbecue from inside. Stank like it. His back wormed, as if something scrabbled against his skin to escape. He curled around and thumped onto his back, eyes wide open and paled to a milky white. Oh, great. The team's second-best drama queen. The coffee machine couldn't take any more damage.

"No, y'all ain't whippin' them robots." His body staggered bigger, yellower. Stomach divided into muscled segments, a tail dropped from his backbone and clonked the floor. He inflated to eight feet, and that tail spilled across a strategy table, crunched it in half. At ten feet, his hands swelled to baseball mitts with two-inch claws. At thirteen feet, dude's head feathered into scales and stretched out a snout. At fifteen feet, his calves could squeeze a chair apart. And they did.

Everyone backed away. Well, except Better Than You 'cause he just smirked and tried to chop apart a chair like Wyvern and also he was an idiot.

Wyvern hurdled to his giant taloned dragon feet. He unleashed a banshee screech of agony, spread the screech around like a flamethrower. The set of lungs on this kid. Klee looked jealous.

The screech halted. Wyvern challenged everyone through a thick stare. "Lawd Continuum ain't gonna be whipped. Y'all ain't stoppin' nothin'." He pounced across the starship. B-Osprey pitched sideways and threw the Purple Nurple off his feet.

Wyvern lunged for takeout containers that held the two pieces of their hard-earned aswang creature, stolen a short while ago from Station Zilcho. With the containers cuddled under one arm, he dived at the closest wall. Clawed it apart like it was thin as Workshop's maturity. And this coming from a dude what owned Pac-Man socks. Them chair-pulverizing calves bulged like lungs, and Wyvern pounced out. Wings as thick as big-top tarps spread and carried him away. His howl stretched out in a sonic bungee cord, "Y'all deaths was foretooolldddd!" Crock, ain't nobody wanted their deaths told four times.

The hole he'd carved wrenched larger. Like a hydraulic fan got the lead out, air pressure grabbed stuff in an irresistible tow and ejected it. That good-for-nobody coffee machine bounced against the hole's edge and clanked out. Random garbage. A pressure gauge. A box of tissues. The Purple Nurple's gum. Better Than You's babyface-on-board sign still clung to the windshield, though.

The hole screamed open wider. The pressure picked up heavier crap. Like people. Like Detritus! The flapping current grabbed his legs. He seized the navigator chair, wrapped his arms around it, clasped his hands together.

Klee clung to that ceiling pipe like crazy, feet flailing at the hole. He tongue-twisted something like "she sells seashells" but without vowels. Dude had no language setting. Or volume setting. Or setting.

The haunt control finally kicked in, thank crock. "Stabilizing cabin pressure. Saving your worthless lives. Taking control of starship and calling roadside assistance."

A shield screen crackled over the hole in electric snaps, like a plastic sheet on a shattered window. The whoosh calmed, and Detritus's legs settled to the floor, same as the others. Next time someone gashed opened the starship, they'd better have a freaking good reason.

Hearse clomped to the super-sized hole. He slapped one hand on its top and leaned out for a good look. His hand edge became a fist and clonked the metal panels. He whirled around, wearing a face like he stepped into the bathroom after a buffet glutton did his weekly unload. "That beast with the lack of regard for proper pronunciation and deodorant has appropriated our aswang chunks. We must locate nose plugs and pursue that beast, reacquire our aswang chunks. For some reason, I sense dark days will fall once this Wyvern delivers the aswang chunks to this…Lord Continuum. Why does everyone laugh when I say 'aswang chunks'?"

Hearse smacked his palm and ground the fist in. "If bad science fiction has imparted anything upon this master of death, it is this: dark days mean apocalypse and subpar special effects. We did not sacrifice Legion for effects that are not special."

"Yeah. Nose plugs and then the other crap Mr. Crisis Grenade said." Detritus coughed into a hand. He checked everyone for agreement. "Anyone?" They displayed only shock. Forget this. He tromped over to the back. "I need a stiff drink." Coffee couldn't be the only thing on this trip.

Chapter Seven: Meanwhile, Playing in Traffic…

An April-showers-bring-May-flowers rain scattered drizzle across the color-muted landscape. Power Plant gawped out the damp transport window at scenery zipping by, at freedom streaking past. Trees. Buildings. People. A civ-tran. A giant tentacle monster. A street-meat vend—A giant tentacle monster? He missed all the cool stuff whenever he got arrested.

He sat in the back of a jail-tran, some IP bureaucrat named Agent Lockton from some bureau named Hyperability Affairs escorting him to Stavehill Hyperperson Penitentiary. No arraignment, no trial, no stop for pancakes. Straight to jail. No stop for pancakes.

Lockton was a Gharalgian-species dude who zapped fun like a microwave zapped plastic but not metal. Trust Power Plant on the distinction. He guided this jail-tran along store-lined boulevards and restaurant avenues. He made no noise except to rumble phlegm from his throat or remark about how inconvenient this shampoo parade was. He enjoyed life like he enjoyed urine in a ball pit. Trust Power Plant on that too. And his hands always smelled like either beard wax or circus paint. Why did it switch for no reason?

So Power Plant in the back, Lockton in the front, and a shield screen between them stopping Power Plant from choking a little conversation out of this shampoo-parade hater.

Power Plant wore hyperability-squelching cuffs that wrapped his hands down to the wrist like thick, metallic mittens. Too tight. They chafed the wrist bone. Power Plant had the ability to emit light from his body. But that was shut down while he wore these fashion accessories as inconvenient as hoop earrings that dragged on the floor.

How had Power Plant landed in this mess? He was beaten senseless—more senseless—while rescuing his bestie gone rogue, Franchise. Agent Wet Blanket said that was four days ago. Power Plant had woken from a medical coma all of three hours back. Lockton had notified him of his arrest, stuffed him in this jail-tran, and refused to let him find out that giant tentacle monster's business back there. Crock, that'd bug him for twenty to life.

His scars and injuries from the rescue mission were nearly gone. Still a missing tooth, a prickling split lip, and some bruises, but hospitals mixed good healing jazz.

The scowling rainclouds outside kicked up their heels with an aggressive pitter-patter. With it, Power Plant's stomach revved. Ugh. He felt as if he'd eaten wood chips. Maybe he had. Hospital food, right?

"Hey, Lockton." Power Plant leaned forward and clanged his encased hands on the shield screen.

The shield screen responded with a buzz that quivered through the cuffs down his arms like an ahem. It showed a message: "Forbidden clanging detected." The jail-tran's haunt control said, "Prisoner, you are under arrest and therefore scum. You are prohibited from touching things. Lean back and enjoy your trip." Sure, react now. Where was this thing when Power Plant needed the radio on?

"Lockton, I's hungry. Can we stops for some chow? Chowy chow?" He licked his lips and clanged the shield screen again.

"Prisoner, you are under arrest and therefore scum. You are prohibited from touching things. Lean back and enjoy your trip."

Red light ahead. Lockton eased the jail-tran to a stop, and rain plinked harder on the windshield. His hands never left the jail-tran's controls, forever positioned like a jumpy driving student's. He once scratched his back. Don't ask how he'd accomplished that.

Orange skin aglow under the red light, Lockton checked Power Plant in the windshield's rear display box. Dude was so corporate agent, he wore sunglasses. In the rain. How'd that make sense? Wait. Forget it. Power Plant wouldn't follow the logic, something shiny would distract him, and before you knew it, he'd land a starring role in tonight's news.

"Hey, Lockton. The chowy chow. My stomach ain't fillings up off your charm."

Gharalgians had high-pitched voices, so if Power Plant wanted Lockton to talk, he meant it. "Mr. Abends, we have a schedule. You're due for imprisonment at seven this morning. We have no time for chow. There are, however, crumbs around the backseat cushions if you wish to dig."

Power Plant examined the backseat. Then his blunt cuffs. Then the backseat. The cuffs. He tried plunging a cuff into the cracks in the cushions. "I ain't a geometrist, but these things ain't fits nowheres. And name's Jeffy." These official types, always calling him Mr. Abends. He'd corrected Lockton eighteen thousand times now. Last time he was a mister, he was playing Clue.

The rain smeared colors as though Power Plant peered through a marble. The light clicked green—muddy green in this bleary day—and Lockton proceeded. He constantly kept to the speed limit, despite other drivers honking and cutting around him. Those other drivers were probably going for chow. Yeah, yeah, pipe down, stomach pangs.

Another traffic light. Another slow down. Overtop the popping of rain, the jail-tran's hum settled into a lazy purr. Lockton, banana-yellow Gharalgian eyes behind those sunglasses, kept his fingers poised like a piano prodigy ready to pound out a masterpiece—

Screeching tearing snarling metal front hood on pavement sparks Power Plant facing backwards forwards spinning off the road reek of burned concrete scorched metal crashed into a fire hydrant let's do that again!

And Power Plant had bit his freaking lip. This thing would never heal.

He dabbed blood onto his cuff. What the crock had Lockton done—

The jail-tran's ceiling rumbled, boomed, dented inward. A sword shrieked through immediately in front of the shield screen. It carved a squealing line across the vehicle. Almost carved the thing in two. Imagine what it'd do to a turkey leg.

Enough was enough, stomach.

Drizzle pittered into the backseat. Lockton grabbed a pistol from an inside pocket of his impact suit. The rip-roaring collision hadn't fazed him? He stabbed a finger over a button, and his seat's inertia field released him. He jerked forward, pistol high.

"Mr. Abends, I apologize for the delay in your imprisonment. I have extensive training in carjackings, so this will take but a minute. Remember that The Mighty Dwarfen Power Ducks premieres tonight." Something under Lockton's suit jacket wriggled out of flaps in the jacket's back. Spindly mechanical appendages reached up like limbs gaping from a daddy longlegs, small shooters at the ends. Two appendages clacked the pavement outside and lifted Lockton out of the jail-tran to meet this threat that—He ducked back in. "And please take a minute to rate my driving. Every review helps." Back out.

Sounds spewed around, a bounding fight that, for once, Power Plant hadn't caused. He pressed his forehead against the window. Couldn't see. Shuffled to the other side, against the other window. Nothing. Nothing! If he didn't get out there soon, he wouldn't even earn a participation badge.

His handcuffs. Their glow failed. They'd burned a cool blue out the hinges and edges, but that died to a dismal gray. And then they fell off. Just…unlatched. And plunked to the floor. He flexed his fingers. Aside from soft redness at the knuckles and a sour irritation at the chafed skin, nothing. How'd they fall off?

Laser shots outside. Lockton shouted, "This prisoner is—" A blast masked his words. "—and you'll face charges of—" Of what? Of what? Of causing the third-best traffic disaster Power Plant had lived through? "—and stop at Hamburger Haven for all your insect extermination needs."

Who the crock was out there? Power Plant pressed himself against the shield screen—"Prisoner, you are under arrest and therefore scum"—and peered up the water-smeared sunroof or the gash the sword had carved.

Another gash! Power Plant jolted back. Raindrops spilled into the jail-tran. The sword chomped another line across the width of the vehicle. The shield screen's frame dislodged and hung from one corner. The opposite corner pecked the seat in front. The screen clapped a flash but stayed on. "Prisoner, you are under arrest and therefore scum." Kept pressing this arrest thing, didn't it?

Outside the rain-streaked window, Lockton had taken cover by a wall at a shop. He fired at somebody with his mechanical appendages that spread in an even arrangement. "And Bro Science Gym has an iron-pumping enrollment package of one moolah for your first rep."

The shield screen frame slid over the front seats, the jail-tran itself bisected down the middle. Power Plant's hands crackled with light energy. His light-based hyperability amped on without the cuffs. Heh. He'd earn his fight badge.

He spewed energy at the jail-tran's ceiling. A hole curled outward. He grabbed the shield screen, climbed out the hole, and stood on the roof with legs straddling the jail-tran's halves. Bystanders screamed and randomized around to hide. Authorities zigzagged down the road to ensure safety and reroute parade floats. Birds crapped on park statues.

Rain flattened his hair and leaked in his eyes. It tasted like grape soda, which was probably some advertiser's newest stab at making him enjoy fruit. He followed Lockton's aim and the spider-leg shooters at the ends of his harness over to…He squinted. Was that Plastique across the street? She'd climbed a tree and fired back at Lockton. From a freaking tree. How cool was that?

Something leaped onto the roof—a hand grabbed him—whirled him around—his feet splashed in pools in the roof's dents—he almost slipped—"Jeffy, we gotta go"—Franchise—Jakey—best friend with a giant sword—Power Plant reared back—bounded in for a swallowing hug—shield screen in one hand—"Your giant rectangle is banging my head."

"Ya cames for me." Power Plant pulled back at arm's length. Behind Jakey, Amaranthia supervised the street for attacks. She wielded her own sword, elbow reared back to prepare a swipe. Who invited the enemy?

"Of course. Ace hacked into your cuffs to get you out, and Amaranthia taught me how to slice open the jail-tran. But we have to run. The feds are occupied grabbing sample bottles of volumizing shampoo. But once they enhance their frizzle mops with gentle lift, perky bounce, and a natural cleanse, they'll dome this place, and we'll all be headed for jail. And I promised Tamiko I wouldn't have her sword confiscated."

"Mr. Abends." That calm-but-commanding voice. Power Plant knew voices, and this sounded like a you're-in-for-it-now one. He glanced at Lockton, down the military stuff-up's finger pointing at him. Lockton leveled his shooters now at Franchise and him. Two enforcement drones—the size of beetles with pistol barrels charged for action—buzzed at his shoulders, almost begged Power Plant to run. Where had they come from, and how could Power Plant shove them up Lockton's crocking—"Do not budge before trying Plastic Gudge's new mango yogurt and also going to jail." Hey, it was rude to interrupt a cuss.

Sirens wept in the distance. A fire from deep inside the jail-tran clicked louder. A child screamed. No, a high-pitched man. Oscar the Grouch emerged from his trash can to gripe about the noise and then bust into song about the letter e.

Two of Lockton's shooters clanked onto the pavement and hoisted him off the ground, in the air, out of his cover. His drones rose with him. One fired—

Amaranthia swept over and clanged the light-bullet aside with her sword. Sparks twinkled. She was probably macked about what the weather did to her outfit. The gum she chewed reeked of strawberry even through the ozone stench of rain.

Lockton spat on the ground. "You're not going anywhere, Mr. Abends." His shooters marched him forward a step.

Power Plant roared into flight—"My"— threw his left hip back—"name"—shield screen raised—"is"—plummeted down over Lockton—"Jeffy"—crashed the shield screen over Lockton's head as if chopping wood.

Lockton staggered back, shooters scrambling to keep him hoisted. Power Plant flew at him, cracked the shield screen against his cheek—"Prisoner, you are"—whacked a drone—"Prisoner, you"—across Lockton's other cheek—"Prisoner, you are"—uppercut—"Prisoner, you are"—downercut, which was definitely a word—"Prisoner, you"—pulverized the second drone—"Prisoner"—slammed across Lockton's template—"Prisoner, you are under arrest and therefore scum."

Guzzling air through a throbbing throat, Power Plant dropped the shield screen aside. The sirens cried louder, like a baby furious for a diaper change. Lockton lay in a puddle. His assembly was trashed, and shooters pointed in a jumble of accidental directions.

Franchise splashed up behind Power Plant and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Come on. Tamiko's got the getaway vehicle ready—"

"She's not driving!" echoed Ace's voice against the distant rain.

"—and Plastique is running cover fire."

"She's not driving!"

"So super awesome." Amaranthia inflated a fat gum bubble. "It's got, like, the super best tunes on it? And it smells like fresh pine." The bubble popped.

"I don't want to kill any more cows! She's not driving!"

Franchise grabbed Power Plant's arm. "But let's go. This place is too hot." Indeed, those whiny sirens were closing in. "A head's up: Plastique grabbed some weapons from a dealer a couple hours back, and she won't stop talking about finding a rifle from the same manufacturer she used in nursery school. So prepare for a lot of unnecessary details."

Power Plant glanced at Plastique, who waved from across the street. "Hey, Abends, you gotta hear this!"

Again with the Abends business. Power Plant slid past Franchise, foot splashing across a puddle. "Let's go. I's gotta take out some ads about my name."

Chapter Eight: If This Space Station's a-Rockin'…

Organism could shape his body into whatever he imagined. Self-malleability. Good for scratching behind your back or not falling on your rear. Like now, when he spread his feet on the carpet to brace himself against the ground-swelling tremors that boomed around him. A crack sprinted along the center of the floor. A glass of juice tipped over. This place already smelled like the last glass. Lost three weeks ago, and they still couldn't find it. The ants could.

"Ooh, more noise. What's shaking outside?" Dad raced to the window of their shared living quarters. Intergalactic Protection had invited him to live here with Organism when Organism joined the Good Guys. In his vigilante days, Dad was the original Organism in a hypergroup called the Piss-Kickers. But age and lack of attention to his health took their tolls. His hyperability had weakened, and nowadays his elastic body trailed limbs when he stretched himself. You never invited Dad to high-profile functions. He'd show off, use his hyperability, and then—whack—someone got a rubbery arm in the face. Like the Queen of Trioxil last weekend. "Giant robots. My eighth-favorite public disaster." Legion had spent an hour explaining the bloody nose to the brigadier general.

Organism hopped over the fissure that creaked farther with another quake. He guided Dad away from the window. Risk management teams would examine this damage hunched over magnifying glasses. "You already know what's shaking. It's not fireworks, so get away from there."

"But maybe they'll launch fireworks." Dad wriggled out of Organism's grip and rushed back. He bonked his head against the window to peer up at robots lumbering around like national monuments come to life. "This one time with the Piss-Kickers—"

"Dad, there's no time for a this-one-time story, and they aren't the Giant Mechanical Sparkler or any of its full-sized action figures." Organism grappled Dad away from the window again. No. He felt another tremor of a robot stomping past. He shut his eyes. To the robot, this was a leisurely stroll through the park. Literally, since it crushed a pond and kicked a bench through a fountain. He stiffened one lip over another. Flashback from years ago, from when Organism was still a student at Rowdy Roddy Piper High School, dreaming of becoming an entomologist. Dad dreamed of him becoming a professional hyperperson. This felt exactly like the day Mom walked…Exactly like the day Mom—

Exactly like the day Dad had goaded Organism to stop Thunder Lizard the Brontosaurus from destroying Mukut Cuisine in Dumpside Park.

Rest in peace, the best tandoori chicken Organism had ever tasted.

Organism could have died that day. Could have. Dad enthusiastically heaved him into whatever costumed battle they found. All day, each day, every obsessive day, sometimes with promises of chili-scented tacos. That day's battle was against Thunder Lizard the Brontosaurus, who had mashed Organism under a giant heel. Good thing Organism's shapeshifting ability withstood the compression. No one knew his tolerance for compression. They suspected, since he'd inherited Dad's hyperability, but they never knew.

Dad had found an excavator and scooped Organism off the sidewalk. They'd returned home, realized they'd left behind a sock, and Mom…and Mom—Organism sniffled—and—

Reinflating took a week.

Organism had missed a math test.

"Dad. The window. Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Organism grabbed Dad again and steered him toward their door. Dad fought to keep his spot at the window to see a robot's fusion beam hum through a waste-processing plant. "Dad, come on. We have to meet Pincushion."

"Hoohah!" That put a fire in Dad's step. He hopped to the door with a perk to his mustache and a bounce in his belly. "Finally going to crack-a-dazzle some robot heads." It was like somebody brought out a cake, singing him "Happy Birthday."

An important math test.

"Dad, the most we'll crack-a-dazzle from down here is an ankle. Probably our own. You're staying out of the way. I'm just bringing you to make sure you don't try anything dangerous while I'm gone. Or go to the food court and test any more allergy triggers." The sliding door whooshed aside, and Dad hurried into the hallway so quickly he tripped into the opposite wall. "And where do you come up with these catchphrases?"

* * *

"Entity Legacy, I'm the antivirus on entity Incendiary." Janice felt a vein throb, and she didn't even have veins. Entity Legacy was still installing himself bit by byte on entity Incendiary's armor. This was plain rude. And he didn't take off his shoes when he entered.

Janice's last attempt hadn't worked. It had recalibrated entity Incendiary's grip strength so he'd stop wasting battery life by clenching white-knuckled fists. But entity Legacy wouldn't uninstall willingly. What malware. She performed a punch subroutine. The punch sent a shock up her knuckle instances. "Two antivirus softwares can't coexist on the same hard drive, you resource allocation error."

Entity Incendiary stammered a laugh. "Burn." The laugh ceased execution. "Right?"

"Well, entity Janice, my dear." Entity Legacy executed a mustache-tweeze function and adjusted his monocle feature, eye instances barely a slit open. "We have a data communication failure, because my system administrator, username breeng-is-super-great-twenty-eight, has commanded that I deactivate your process. Have at thee!" Entity Legacy conjured up a fencing sword. Janice almost launched a double-over-in-laughter function, but an invalid operator experienced a runtime error and, well, instead she sprayed boogers out her nose. Way to go, runtime error.

"Where was this antivirus software last time I got gastro?" Entity Incendiary twisted away from flying into a smokestack. "Also, I'm not a hard drive. Well, my professors think I am. I've never had to memorize so much homework in my life." He flew through vent exhaust—fluffy—through a fountaining water main—splashy—through a bird—fluffy splashy. He still cradled entity Pincushion in his arm subroutines. Weird. Old baby entities got cradled? Entity Pincushion was older than 6.307e+7 seconds, so…Wait. Janice should check that.

Entity Janice implemented another punch subroutine into entity Legacy's aristocratic face. Another dataflow of shocks blitzed up her knuckles. She didn't have the system resources for another punch without rebooting. "You're obsolete." And ha. Entity Pincushion was 1,459,473,027 seconds old. Too old for a baby entity—Crack. … Hold on. Had entity Legacy actually executed a Victorian slap across Janice's cheek? Well, she system-settings never!

Entity Incendiary raised a status message. "Whatever you're doing, it's filling my bladder, and one of you cancelled the suit's waste-management program." He clenched, which misfired his thruster peripherals. His flight path sputtered in another fluffy-splashy tizzy.

"Brother, are you seeing people?" entity Pincushion asked. "Is Elvis flying next t us?"

Janice lunged for entity Legacy. Time to alt-F4 this entity crock. "I'll close your sorry program for slapping a lady." Claws poised, she dug for entity Legacy's neck, felt the zeroes and ones buzz around her fingertips. And had she remembered to move up plague day in the weather schedule?

"That's it. I'm landing," entity Incendiary said.

"Dear Janice, I would love to label you a lady in your system properties, but you launch yourself most unladylike." Entity Legacy cracked a dainty glove procedure across Janice's other cheek. And then he sliced that fencing sword through the air.

"Oh, go compute my shorts!" Janice roared.

Entity Incendiary corkscrewed a barrel role. Entity Pincushion's skin blanched a #74a200. His mouth ejected a #a590b0.

"On the off-chance I survive this fight," entity Incendiary said, "let's keep it above my waist."

* * *

Incendiary landed. Phew. Pincushion kissed the ground. Well, collapsed headfirst onto the ground. The ground kissed like a smile full of braces and teeth. His remaining food hadn't pressed the eject button. He'd paid good money for that fennel salad, and he aimed to keep the rest of it.

Far enough away from the hot zone, he trembled to his feet. Robots marched across fiery husks, crumbling buildings, mashed architecture, and a sky pungent with smoke. A vengeful robot swept a foot across the armory building until the building was a jigsaw mishmash. Another knocked over a water tower that Pincushion swore was empty. Turned out it was full of old towels. So not empty. Just not useful.

"What are those things?" Incendiary gawked it all in. He whacked a wrist against his own temple. "Would the two of you just divide by zero already?" Multiple personality disorder came in all flavors.

"Remember the robots in that hidden room?" This far away from the robots, Pincushion chanced using his gabber. He tapped the earbud. "We woke them up at the start of a stressful workweek."

Thunderous even across this distance, one robot stomped over a wishing well, an embellishment in the commercial-area parking zone. "HUNTING. AND LONELY INSIDE. SEEKING LONG-LASTING RELATIONSHIP WITH LIKEMINDED SOULMATE. SEEKING. SEEKING."

"Those are them?" Incendiary jerked back when a roar of flame burst airborne: a robot flattened a vent some visitors often used as a barbecue pit. "They look so different when they're trampling everything instead of sleeping."

Pincushion took his chance to answer Incendiary. "Those are exactly them. And one just ground its heel into my favorite shady spot." Perfect for a hammock: out of range of Power Plant's ice-cream catapult with new spoon technology but not so out of range that he couldn't take advantage of the attempts.

He paused their conversation with a finger. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Intergalactic Protection's emergency assistance." His gabber's mouthpiece and other earpiece sprang out. The bigwigs owned this outpost. They needed to know what was tromping all over their stuff.

The gabber sang its hold music. "Seeking connect, seeking connect, seeking connect—"

One of the robots stepped on a tent tarp and tried to kick it off. It toppled against a fence and tangled itself in a jangle of chain link. Pincushion would have a hard time keeping a straight face in this conversation.

Crunching. Behind them. Pincushion whirled around. A robot wiped aside a shed of medical supplies as if dusting furniture. Incendiary's arm yanked backward and staggered him along with it. He coughed out a "Whoa, Janice." A panel flipped open, and two stinger darts with the payload of missiles shot out. The stingers cracked through the robot's industrial-plastic canopy into the mechanics inside. The head splashed apart, a fist throwing open into a hand that tossed diodes and circuits like a showman tossed confetti.

"—eeking connection, seeking con—"

The stingers delivered a pulse that swept the robot. Gears popped, limbs thrashed, danced, pulverized the medical shed. Its neck imploded the shed's roof and squeezed out bags of gauze, healing gel, emergency gear, and lollipops for all the good little war patients.

But the robot stayed down.

Incendiary chided himself. "A little warning when you throw my arm out of its socket."

In the distance, an underground tunnel collapsed beneath another robot. The robot burst through down to its knee and stumbled, the pavement cuffing it in place. "ISSUING WHOOPS. WONDERING WHAT I'M STEPPING ON." Arms held outward, it maneuvered its foot around. "FEELING SOMETHING SPONGY."

"—tion, seeking con—" No one at IP was answering. A baby shower? Gretchen made such amazing gender-reveal cakes that everyone lapsed into sugar euphoria for an hour. "—eeking con—" All day sometimes.

Incendiary clanked another wrist against his head. And then the college kid backflipped onto pavement. During their forty-second flight, it was a miracle he hadn't dropped Pincushion. He'd engaged in a few arguments with himself, and none of them was over how to fly straight.

Another robot burst apart a half-constructed assembly house. "HUNTING."

Pincushion stomped the ground. "Enough already!"

"APOLOGIZING."

"Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection. Contact all Good Guy entities." Pincushion didn't listen to the message his gabber fed him about who was available. He was sick of hearing what weird places Scapegoat stuffed his gabber into.

"SIGNAL INTERCEPTED. HUNTING." Crock, these robots were chatty. And angry. One kicked away a line of transports in the parking lot. A concert of suffering metal barraged closer. If one of them transformed into an F-15 fighter jet, Pincushion was out of here.

Finally a connection. "Everyone, are you still tracking my gabber signal? It's two blocks east of…let's call them a construction crew we didn't hire."

"Are we talking about the robots or those beavers again?" That thick, bashful voice was Organism's.

"The robots. But they do chew things apart, brother." Pincushion stepped away to allow Incendiary to roll past in struggle. "Locations, everyone." He hopped like a dodging log roller when Incendiary wheeled past again.

"Hagen and I are coming up on your six." That voice belonged to Catastrophe, their earth elemental. Any flick of his wrist peeled up ground as if he were unlaying sod. Pincushion swirled around. "Your other six." Swirled again. "Your other other six." How many sixes did he have? "Your other other other six."

Aha. Catastrophe was a kilometer off, a heavy jog chopping his breath. Beside him levitated Sixth Sense, the team's telepath and telekinetic. And sleepwalker, to the alarm of the museum's night watchman.

But wait a second. All the Good Guys converged here. Well, not the senile Withered Old Battle-Axe, who likely doddered around her living quarters, thinking her bed was public transit and waiting for it to head out. But everyone else. So if the robots were hunting them…why did they converge on the commercial district?

Incendiary clanked against a curbside. Pincushion clicked his tongue. "Whatever you're wrestling over, wrestle over it figuratively."

Back to the robots. He shuddered when a robot obliterated an equipment shed. "Alvin, you there, brother?"

Organism grunted into the gabber. He sounded nothing like the bodybuilder he was, more like an insecure loner. "Dad and I are headed toward you now."

"I need you to help Mabel and Scapegoat find their way here." Another tremor almost pitched Pincushion off his feet. "You listed babysitting on your profile, right?"

"Scapegoat's in the hall here already. He's trying to climb a wall."

"Wall up walk I faster get go there." That was Scapegoat, heavy drawl and sentence ordered like the squares on a bingo card.

"STOPPING. SMELLING THE ROSES." Or instead stepping on them. "OOPS." Mechanical lummox. Pincushion was one more oops away from skipping town.

Catastrophe and his hair-gel smell reached Pincushion. His single stud earring winked in the sunlight, and his artificial tan glowed in it. Sixth Sense followed. He was an anachronism, a farm boy transported from a bygone era. Glasses a half-inch thick, often wheezing through asthma, he'd never gotten imperfections corrected. His sleeves hung off his hands, and his pant cuffs dragged against his heels. "Uhm. Hey. Whoa. Did the Iron Giant get drunk? Please no. I don't have many childhood heroes left."

"IRON GIANT IS A TEETOTALER AND DONATES TO CHILDREN'S CHARITIES."

"Oh, man, that's a relief. Did Incendiary's student loans get rejected?" Sixth Sense lifted himself away when Incendiary rattled past. Catastrophe wasn't so lucky.

And then the robots stopped. All at once. Silence. Peace. The lack of destruction in the vista carried a tranquility so profound it created a ghost town.

Pincushion's breath caught in his lungs. "What the—"

The robots stood rigidly upright. Hands clapped to sides. Canopies lit so brightly they sang. "PREPARING PHASE TWO. ENGAGING REROUTING MODE." Canopies dimmed. Robots unfroze. Clumsy tromping resumed.

"Wait, what?" Pincushion hustled onto a picnic table. He couldn't see all the robots, but he heard them. Walking away. Thundering away. No longer hunting Good Guys. And the one by the trees no longer hunted Easter eggs. "If hunting was phase one, what the crock is phase two? What's rerouting? Why can't they engage back to phase zero?" He checked Catastrophe, Sixth Sense, Incen—Never mind. Incendiary still banged against a curb.

"Is rerouting mode the same as sleep mode?" Catastrophe asked.

Pincushion pinched his gabber's mouthpiece closer. "Alvin, brother, you're at the barracks with Mabel and Scapegoat, right?" He'd addressed only Organism. No time to hear about grandchildren or have sentences mix-and-matched back at him. Frankly, it'd be a lifetime until he could hear about hunting.

Organism groaned. "Yup. Scapegoat climbed up to a window blind before he pulled it down over himself. Now he's tangled in slats."

The Good Guys' hunchbacked word jumbler chirped up. "Windows before I climb try—" Never mind. It hurt to pay attention.

"And Mabel?" Pincushion asked. If Withered Old Battle-Axe were still in her room complaining about teenagers whizzing in her rose garden, he'd commit her to a retirement residence and tell Power Plant to stop peeing just anywhere.

Wilted words fogged through the gabber like cotton given voice. "I'm here, ya young who's-it."

All the Good Guys were with Pincushion, in the barracks, or off station. The robots had found their targets. Why weren't they rerouting them? Why did they head for the commercial district?

Quiet gasp.

"Those robots found other gabber signals."

Loud gasp.

"Phase two doesn't just involve us."

Louder gasp.

"It involves everyone."

Sharp gasp.

"We need to get moving."

Sharper gasp.

"Stop gasping. You'll black out," blurted Catastrophe.

* * *

The Purple Nurple had had it with these robots. Better Than You had told him he did. He'd also had it with being a second-rate Legion. The Purple Nurple couldn't argue with that. He couldn't because Better Than You told him he couldn't.

B-Osprey had landed. The Purple Nurple trotted onto the embarking ramp and gawped at the chaos. This was an out-of-body experience, because in his body, he'd feel something more than a tingling void.

The others had wandered out of the starship as well, frozen in awestruck numbness as much as the Purple Nurple. Except Better Than You, who kept nudging Klee with an elbow and saying he awed waaayyyy more struck.

An explosion screamed past so fiercely it ruffled the Purple Nurple's hair. On a sleepy meander toward the station's commercial district, one robot had punted apart a breakfast diner, a squat shack that reeked of sausages and burned oil, which explained why the sausages there tasted like burned oil. Didn't matter now, since the robot had stomped a hole through the roof. And the ground. And the sewage system. And, somewhere in there, those burned-oil sausages. No scents made sense.

"Gabber, acknowledge." The Purple Nurple was barely here, barely aware of the gabber saying it awaited his command. "Contact entity Field Marshal Breeng."

The gabber's response was a million miles away. "Seeking connection, see—Connection attained."

"Ahh, Lieutenant Colonel Freuth." From the gabber, Breeng slithered that name out as if pronouncing it on a flickering tongue. He always made the Purple Nurple's skin constrict. And break out in hives. Like now. And why did Better Than You's hives look more colorful? "Returned back to home headquarters with the aswang, I ear-hear."

"Yes, Field Marshal. How did you know?"

* * *

"Oh, uhm, the station's new haunt control mouth-reported it." Breeng stifled a giggle-laugh. In the safety of Legion's plush, undestroyed work office, he basked in his own mind genius. Nostril-inhaled it as if it were sweet flora on a spring breeze that didn't trigger his hay fever. He accepted the gifts Wyvern held to him: two takeout containers, each with a piece of the aswang creature weapon. Smelled like decayed pumpkin.

The aswang creature weapon now lay in his possession, an instrument tool for the almighty, all-powerful Continuum. As long as the creature weapon's heart and brain remained separate, it could not resurrect. But once the organ pieces joined, the aswang would take a random shape form and hopefully this time not be a rabbit. Because a household pet wasn't a bioweapon. Maybe it could assume a nastier shape form. Maybe a shift worker.

Wyvern squatted to Breeng's eye level. Make that a foot above eye level. Breeng stood on Legion's chair to take the containers. Ugh. Touched the dripping blood. He whipped off the droplets. Ugh again. Right in the mouth.

The Purple Nurple cleared his neck throat. Breeng knew this sound. The disposable soldier was considering something without permission. "Field Marshal, the haunt control was destroyed." True. Station One's haunt control had met its end a few time days ago. But Breeng had replaced the hardware and installed Legacy.

"Purple Nurple, I have not yet instructed you to head-think." Mouth-spitting the blood out made it more coppery.

"Sorry, sir. Concluding my thoughts now." A sound bonk sound-bonked on the other side of the gabber connection. "Sorry, Field Marshal. I just thought about not thinking. Okay, concluding…now. No, wait. Conclu—"

Breeng hopped off Legion's chair. "Lieutenant Colonel, I have an important job task for you, of great priority." He smeared an arm sleeve over his mouth tongue. The fabric scratched and tasted like arm sleeve. "There remains a toxic element on Station One. A…defected…element." He licked his lipless mouth. Over the blood, he still tongue-tasted the sauce from the gratuity wings IP had sent over. One of their fund sponsors had crafted the perfect honey-garlic penguin wings that the blood now tainted. "I need you to eliminate"—he chuckled the tiniest of mouth chuckles—"the Good Guys." If only the Purple Nurple knew the ultimate goal end. If only he were in Continuum's fold. But this lackey knew not his true objective purpose: deliver the aswang creature to Breeng and then die-perish. Might as well have him kill-perish the Good Guys along the way. Breeng's mouth chuckle grew into a mouth chortle. Heh. Oh, so delectab—Ooh. Cringe. Choke. That mouth chortle went down the wrong pipe. Wheeze. Burned his face nostrils. Blood was salty.

"Sir, what's so funny?"

Eyes sticky with tears, Breeng thumped his chest to clear his neck windpipe. "Knock-knock joke," he croaked.

"I love a good joke. Who's there?"

Breeng sighed. "Seriously, Freuth?"

* * *

Detritus scrambled down B-Osprey's embarking ramp to check the damage he didn't cause, thanks very much. A robot clobbered over. From its eyeless canopy, in a high-pitched whine like a kid's obnoxious screech, blasts hummed out. "TARGET ENTITY WORKSHOP LOCATED. TARGET ENTITY KLEE LOCATED. TARGET ENTITY EVERYBODY ELSE LOCATED. REROUTING TARGET ENTITIES." Workshop screamed. Better Than You screamed louder.

Crock this, Detritus was nobody's everybody else.

And there went Mr. Dumpinshadow, trotting outta the starship like it was all hot crock. Hopped off and sauntered away, paused, licked a paw, and kept sauntering off to its cat stuff. Yeah, thanks for contributing.

The eye blasts slipped across the embarking ramp with no resistance. The embarking ramp split, and the bottom half crashed to the pavement, a stone/metal rattle. The Purple Nurple and Workshop teetered on the upper half that bobbed and creaked in the air. Klee flipped off the bottom half and clacked his hooves onto pavement. Detritus and Better Than You rolled clear. Hearse just stood, arms crossed, and when the bottom half clattered down, he didn't budge. Dude suffered the wickedest migraines, but plummet eight feet on a notched metal plank? No need to brace his knees, thanks.

Another hum, another charging fusion attack that rose inside that canopy…

…and stopped. Nothing. The hum rasped to silence. Then the robot huffed, and "RECHARGING WAY COOL FUSION ATTACK." Its canopy jerked open half an inch. A metal panel whirred out, flipped horizontally, and angled itself at the sun. "CATCHING SWEET RAYS."

Detritus checked all the robots. Everywhere. All of 'em, charging. What the crock? These robot heads was like Asinine's: double-discount-quality crap. Also with a low charge like when Asinine installed batteries behind his ears.

That didn't stop nothing, though. "TARGET ENTITY HEARSE LOCATED. REROUTING TARGET ENTITY." The robot bent over and expanded a mammoth hand. Hearse scowled, and when the hand ventured close enough, he reeled back and walloped the palm. A gong chimed out. The robot stooped back. "FEELINGS HURT." Crocking robot had feelings? "SHEDDING SINGLE TEAR." Drama queens! Everywhere, drama queens!

At least the robots' lasers weren't charged, but them monoliths spread out across the campus, past Station One's military zone, and into the commercial area, the tourism mecca, the commemorative gardens with them statues of fallen Good Guys and—for whatever reason—a giant loofah. These things was heading somewhere, that was for sure. They all gathered at a distant point. But this one didn't mind stopping for a little action once it had found them. Where were they herding everyone? And over th—

Crock, that one stomped across the station's cellblock. Detritus's buddy, Wasted, was still a Good Guy prisoner. Detritus leaped off the embarking ramp. Smacked onto the ground. Leaped up—"I'm okay"—and raced—Nope, tripped on a median. Caught himself on a tree, darted o—Tripped on his own foot. Frig, it wasn't even hooch o'clock, and he was all gangles today. Who planted a tree here?

Something thwacked his head and fell on the grass. Twiddling spindly limbs. A freaking locust. Another one slapped onto a sprinkler. "Is today plague day?"

Chapter Nine: So Things Got Tense, Words Were Said, Feelings Were Hurt

"I had it easy because I had a therapist?" Legion stamped his feet. His gashed cheek throbbed. His banged elbow clawed his nerves. "You kidnapped a therapist. Never mind that you thought he was the lottery guy. And that you thought he picked the numbers. And that you thought he could help you organize your closet. I'd go on, but this rabbit hole digs really deep."

"I'm a deep digger."

"You ruined my life!" Legion erupted at Lowensland and swung—Nope, empty air. He swung a few feet to his right—Nope. Another few feet—"Where are you?"—grabbed the wall. Why was throttling people so difficult? "Call out so I can smack you."

"Marco." Lowensland's voice emerged from the inky obscurity in the other direction.

"Aha!" Legion clawed, fingers grasping at…at nothing again. "Call out again." This was why people hated the dark.

"Marco."

"You're not even playing it right. I should be saying that." Legion clawed—"There's nothing in here. What do you even use this room for?" He resigned to sitting down again. Found a support column and plopped his back against it, so angry he almost put out his spine. "Just know that when I find you, I plan to burrow the pads of my thumbs into your larynx." Alaphus, please get me out of here before I commit murder.

"That's not sanitary. I could have any number of bloodborne illnesses. Leukemia, HIV, high cholesterol—"

"Stop." Legion wanted so much to throttle this treasonous murderer. But he should save his energy in case those generics returned. He unpocketed Boulder and rolled its bumpy surface between two fingers. "Lowensland, look—"

"It's too dark in here for that."

Legion gripped Boulder so tightly it pricked his palm. "How does everything you say somehow make me stupider?"

* * *

"These guys are my new favorite show." Bernie poked Steve's side with an elbow. They sat on foldout picnic chairs, across from the sightless rectangle of the viewscreen in Brainiac's lab.

"I can't wait for season two." Steve offered Bernie the bowl of popcorn. Both grabbed their sodas from a middle table and slurped, a simultaneous liquefied cchhhhkkkkkkhhhkk.

Best thing on broadcast.

* * *

"You killed Sopher." Legion spat. "You killed Sopher and left me with the remorse." And Legion could have prevented it. "It's my fault you even had the chance." All his fault. "Eight years of PTSD. His death haunts me every time I hear a gunshot—"

"It haunts me too!"

Legion's back jolted against the support column. He hadn't heard Lowensland speak with such passion since he claimed he'd monetized employment.

* * *

A popcorn kernel dropped out of Bernie's mouth. His face slowly creaked at Steve, whose face creaked at his. Both wore soundless gawps until Bernie broke the awed hush. "Dude, this is season two."

* * *

A snort chugged out of Lowensland, the rev of a teary breath. "I didn't murder him." His voice mumbled so shyly, barely brave enough to be heard.

"You did. In cold blood." Legion blinked. He scratched at his cheek, itchy as it healed. "I witnessed it."

"You witnessed a gunshot. From across a hangar bay. Seven hundred feet away. At low ground."

"So what?"

Lowensland traced a finger on the floor. Legion heard the scuff. "Remember what Colonel Patton taught us? The low ground is a horrible vantage. Hold the high ground instead. And the percentage of landed shots spikes at closer than a hundred yards away. And he wasn't mistaken, 'cause he was achin' for bacon."

"That was a sponsor slogan." Legion bit his lower lip, or what constituted a lip on a Trioxidillian. Ow. Patton had said that. Fine. Lowensland made—he bit harder—sense. No. No! He didn't. "I know what I saw."

"You barged into the opposite end of the hangar only a few seconds before the shot. Did you see what happened? Or did you look up after you heard the blast?"

Legion replayed it. He'd entered the hangar, searched the room, heard the—No, he knew exactly what he saw. And he saw Lowensland murder Sopher. Had it gotten chillier? Not the room, but his body. He squeezed his arms around his knees almost too tightly, but that only made him even chillier.

"Sopher tried to convince me to stay," Lowensland said. "He lunged for something I had, and I moved to block. It was a reflex. The gun got in the way because it was in my free hand, and he grabbed at it. Do you really think I'd murder my only other friend?"

Alaphus, come on. Show yourself. Please. Boulder pricked harder in Legion's grasp. "You ran off with military secrets. Most were directions to all the working toilets on base, and one was an aerial shot of the six-foot latrine Private Rossa insisted on filling by herself, but the rest were good secrets."

Lowensland spoke in a voice brimming with nostalgia. "It technically was a working toilet."

"You compromised a lot of operations. And a lot of bathrooms."

Lowensland huffed. "Everyone…They wouldn't stop. They never stopped. They humiliated me, spat on me, made me eat that stuff that accumulates in the cracks in your toes. And then they made me eat more because I didn't know what it was called. Garchel, Sengalich, Tressel, Wesson, Heckler, Fausti, Koch, Hallongrotta—"

"Half of those are weapons, and the last one is a Swedish pastry."

"—they never stopped. I got second-degree burns from their pranks. When I brought it up to the base commander, he shrugged it off. I don't know what was worse: their horrible abuse or their terrible abuse. But it was probably the kicking." His voice sounded choppy. "What could I do? Run away? I'd be arrested as a deserter."

"Is that why you risked all our operations? Was killing Sopher that important?"

Lowensland stomped to his feet. "I—didn't—kill—him."

Legion clutched Boulder. "I don't want to hear this."

"You think I wanted to leave you? Leave him? The only people who cared about me? I did the only thing I could."

"I don't want to hear this." Legion squeezed shut his eyes even though he saw nothing in the darkness.

"We always had each other's backs. When nobody else did, the three of us did." He fumed through his hissing breaths. If voice had a color, Lowensland's was deep crimson. "Tactical vantage is high ground from a close distance, like Patton trained into us."

"Stop talking!" Alaphus, get me out of here.

"Patton knew it, and statistics backed him up. I wanted you and Sopher to come with me, but how could I convince you?" Lowensland's voice became deeper crimson. "In the end, I wasn't loyal to IP. But I was always loyal to you."

"Stop!"

"He knew it."

"Talking!"

"You know it."

"You cared about Sopher so much? Here." Legion tore off the Alaphan necklace. Sopher had owned it. He threw it at Lowensland's voice. "Take this. I don't need it anymore." It clattered away.

He couldn't listen. Not to that voice inside his head. No. He was listening to that voice. Why? Did Lowensland make sense? No. Legion whacked his palms against his forehead. His cheek stung. He wanted to rip his antennae out—sucked in the stale air to scream—opened his mouth…

…and nothing. The room was warm, but why did he still feel chilly?

* * *

"Get to work, you crocking louts." Francine kicked a table aside.

Steve threw his hand at the viewscreen. "But our stories!"

Chapter Ten: Just Put up a Slippery when Wet Sign

Pincushion was three minutes outside the shopping mecca, give or take the time to dodge the crevices crawling along the pavement. These robots really tested the infrastructure on Station One. More than a dozen times, Pincushion skirted around a sinkhole the robots had stomped into the ground and, once or twice, one that was there from before. "Organism"—finger to gabber, every muscle sore—"get Scapegoat and Mabel"—lungs aflame, throat washed with bile the flavor of vinegar—"to the commercial area. We need to"—chest heaving and broiling—"protect the civilians." He choked up thick phlegm. Huh? He stopped. "Then tell her the steakhouse has an early-bird special."

Kept going, pushed harder, tore across the pavement faster, loose bootlace whipped his shin fiercer in the universe's worst marathon. Pincushion tapped the gabber bud, which buzzed a "Connection cut." Organism would understand the abrupt good-bye. His hands were full shooing Withered Old Battle-Axe out the door, and his ear was full untangling Scapegoat's verbal spaghetti.

Seconds ago, Pincushion yelled at the others to hurry. The robots were surrounding the commercial district, and at least four had reached the food court. Not good for the dinner rush. Then again, a robot had grabbed a shawarma to go. Apparently rerouting mode brought in business.

Sixth Sense had lifted himself and Catastrophe airborne and over the compressed ruins of lumber and brick. Incendiary had roared away soon after. In the rush, nobody had thought to grab Pincushion. You know, the field leader.

Pincushion swept off a locust that dropped onto his shoulder. At least plague day was set to "drizzle."

"Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Intergalactic Protection's emergency assistance." Pincushion would give them another shot.

The station rocked from hemisphere to hemisphere. Pincushion rounded a park enclosure and reached the commercial district that snarled with attack. Intergalactic Protection still wouldn't answer. That baby shower was stretching out. So was this sprint. A crack in the lot ahead crisscrossed through a parking section. It obliterated a taco truck and flipped a row of civ-trans into an underground tunnel. Another robot stomped on the station's dinosaur petting zoo. It toppled backward over the caveman petting zoo, which was okay because that one just felt awkward.

"REROUTING." A robot clomped a hand over the food court building, grinding on gears that begged for oil from all the years it spent motionless.

"EATING." Another robot plunked itself on a picnic table. And destroyed the picnic table. And tore apart the grass underneath. And probably sent the station out of orbit. As good a place as any for a shawarma. The robot examined the tiny packet of yogurt sauce it barely prized between two fingers the size of aircraft carriers. Ripping it open proved impossible. It creaked its head at the carryout bag that fell out its other oversized hand. "SIGHING."

But Pincushion reached the rear loading dock that led to the cafeteria. He hoisted onto the platform, stumbled forward, and spilled through the shipping door. His palms skidded down the hush-lit loading tunnel. His metal knee scored the floor. Spikes on his legs knifed through the tiles. Scratch resistant, eh?

Robots still clambered outside. How many were there? At Pincushion's last head count, he'd seen fourteen and a half. Half? If all one did was beg for change, it got half a point.

No answer at Intergalactic Protection. He tapped his gabber off. They'd better save him a slice of that cake. The entire thing if it was black forest, none if it was urinal. Weird thought? No. The civilian staff at IP suffered from the most splendiferous dementias.

The building crunched and shook. The hallway swayed. The door to the food court lay ahead, its exalted title emblazoned under the ceiling in glowing red: Gorging Court. Pincushion lumbered to his feet—almost had to pick his legs up by hand—and wobbled along. His muscles hopped with tics, and his thighs shivered with the consistency of hair gel. He staggered like a cowboy suffering saddle burn.

The loading bay behind him spewed apart. Robot fingers obliterated it, unfolding and groping toward him. He darted onward but, drained of everything, collided against a wall. Arm spikes gouged its diamond pattern. He jerked, tried yanking his spikes out of the tiles. They wouldn't dislodge. That hand reached deeper, the robot up to the whirring elbow. Pincushion jerked again, pressed his hands, his other arm, shoved—girder fingers probed toward him—jolted, wrenched—fingers reached him, glanced against his foot—snatched—

He spun free and spilled onto the floor, legs a knot.

Everything today was going according to plan.

The robot's shoulder squashed the loading dock into a concrete accordion. Its index finger twiddled at Pincushion's heels.

Pincushion creaked onto his feet, knees buckling, head throbbing, pillow calling. He rattled forward and spilled through the sliding door into the bustle of the two-story, mezzanine-style food court. The dazzling lights singed his eyes. Conversations echoed in auditory whirlpools and coalesced into one dancing babble. He'd emerged on the lower floor where the loading dock tunnel opened into the panoramic setup of—would you call them restaurants? The health inspector didn't. Troughs maybe, forming a dashed line around the perimeter. In the center, a clear-glass elevator airfoil sprouted like Jack's beanstalk to the second floor. Out of order, but so what if it didn't do its one job? The second floor was a broad walkway contouring this cylindrical showcase of odors, a similar circumference of restaurants upstairs. Scents of sauteed vegetables and pizzas up there, and scents of rotting animals down here. Coincidentally/not coincidentally, the station's funeral parlor was in the basement. Pincushion ignored that fact, and so did the customers.

Pincushion stumbled to the eatery at his right and snatched up a sample tray of Sugar Neurotic's deep-dive fudge on the countertop. Guaranteed to spike your day and blood-sugar level. He mashed back a few cubes, which dived down his throat.

His eyes opened wider. Color brightened. Thoughts arranged themselves. Muscle spasms vanished. Lungs released their cold ache. He breathed. Air tasted delicious.

He sucked back the remaining cubes and tossed the tray aside. Everyone seemed oblivious to the thunderous earthquakes and converging forty-foot robots. How? One robot had gotten takeout! Maybe everyone had grown accustomed thanks to other armada of forty-foot robots, those from the nearby high-school football team whose only crimes were a strong appetite and a knack for sportsmanship.

"Gabber, acknowledge. Activate crowd-control mode." Another locust flopped onto Pincushion's forehead. "And is plague day inside now?"

"Sorry, mate." The locust hopped off. Talking? Mutant plague day was Sunday.

"Crowd-control mode activated." The gabber's mouthpiece zipped out, but the earpiece didn't accompany it: Pincushion would be speaking but not hearing. "Please select pulse, warble, or shrieking feedback."

"Gabber, acknowledge. Warble, brother." Pincushion had neglected the warble setting lately.

He clicked his finger on the unextended earbud. A swaying pitch trilled out, focused away so they wouldn't attack Pincushion. He was thankful for that. He'd suffered the receiving end of crowd-control mode a few times, and at no point did Power Plant even consider that Pincushion already owned an alarm clock.

People buckled, covered their ears, curled into balls. The siren attacked but didn't damage. And it was necessary: better that they feel momentary pain than be flattened underneath the universe's biggest high-five.

Finger off his earbud. The siren ceased. "This is Good Guy field leader Pincushion. An army of gigantic robots is coming for a meet-and-greet. And eat." Couldn't resist.

"These robots are not friendlies." To answer a Trioxidillian guiding a squeaky baby stroller past, Pincushion put a finger up. "No, this is not Robotica High's football team. However, I'm happy to announce that Halfbackutron is cleared to play in the division finals against the Coruscant Oil Drills.

"I'm not sure of the robots' goal, but they're treating our buildings like beach bullies treat sandcastles. And any minute now, they'll twist off the ceiling of this building and reach in like it's a giant pickle jar." Dread melted over the audience. Oh, so this was why Legion had signed him up for panic-avoidance training.

A cacophony of deafening destruction torrented in. The building juddered so much, the top floor and bottom floor shook independently of each other, as if the Gorging Court were twirling a hula hoop. Monstrous fingers shattered the skylight, and through the shards peeped a robot canopy, eyeless yet searching. It prized the ceiling off in a low rumble. Brick and mortar and glass and metal squealed apart. Flotsam, jetsam, and whatever other sam rained down—crashed against a shield screen that zapped open above the second floor. Pincushion scrambled for cover at We Grill Anything, who lived up to their name. A bit too eager about it when they did up an old boot, though.

"TARGET COLLECTIVE ENTITY PATRONS WITH NO SENSE OF CUISINE LOCATED."

The shield screen guarded against debris but not robots. One reached in, exploring fingers shadowing the crowd that ricocheted off each other in a panicked dash for everywhere. The robot reached further. "TARGET ENTITY PINCUSHION LOCATED AND PRIORITIZED."

Mechanical fingers whirred open and spread across the Gorging Court. It gored sharp dents out of the second-floor walkway when it groped past. Those fingers closed in on Pincushion—

"Nuh uh." A mechanical voice from Pincushion's side accompanied a clickety-clack of rapid-fire offense. The scent of sulfur fumed out. The robot hand recoiled. Sparks pinged off it, light-bullets like sewing needles flicking it away. Incendiary landed next to Pincushion and continued the barrage aimed upward. Turbines spun around his wrists and spit empty shells. The attack only chipped the paint off the robot's indestructible glove.

"What took you so long?" Pincushion asked.

Catastrophe and Sixth Sense saddled up behind Incendiary. "Incendiary had to refuel," Catastrophe said. "And Sixth Sense's gabber picked up some cross talk from the Intergalacticnet. He telepathically absorbed the thoughts of a chatroom user. I spent eight minutes talking him down from an argument with a Keep off the Grass sign over his freedom to walk where he wanted."

"OUCH." The robot dragged its hand out of the ruined skylight and peered down, canopy exploring. "CONTACTING CRAIG FOR ASSISTANCE."

"CRAIG ARRIVING." A second robot squeezed in. The first robot shuffled aside to allow it room. "ORDERING A CHEESEBURGER FROM THE PET SEMATARY SURPLUS DINER." It reached in for its order.

One last attempt at IP. Whatever event they celebrated, they must have heard about the business here. Nobody's diabetic coma was that deep, frosting or not. But forget emergency assistance. Maybe sponsorship services was awake today. "Gabber, acknowledge. Deactivate crowd-control mode. Contact entity Intergalactic Protection's sponsorship services."

"Check out Poop Tornado, new episodes every Friday until cancellation. For now, your crowd-control minutes have expired. Seeking connection, seeking con—"

Incendiary ceased attack. His wrists curled gray smoke and the acridness of burned earth. Flames gamboled out of the small barrels like tongues tasting the air.

"—connection, seeking con—"

A hurricane of screams spun around as patrons realized Craig wasn't reaching in to sign autographs. Another calamity of tremors slammed the ground. Catastrophe almost flipped off his feet but managed. He clutched his stark white hair. "Not even my stampeding fans cause earthquakes like this." Oh, great. Catastrophe and his tales of his long-lost career as a B-level actor. Hadn't Plastique said she'd yelled at him for letting it interfere with his service? "Heh. Their cheers could carry all the way across an empty attic. One time I and renowned actor/lounge singer Ioquin Turdstream—"

Pincushion slapped Catastrophe and, hopefully by extension, Turdstream and anyone else with a two-in-one career. "No name-dropping on mission. Hagen and Eugene"—he pointed at Sixth Sense and then Catastrophe—"you're on crowd safety. And protect Nacho Asombroso. It's the only normal outlet in here." If those robots caused one single chip to drop from that ceramic sombrero…"Rush everyone to the escape pod bay. Safest route is the underground tunnels. The training tower is toast, but the escape-pod half of it looked functional." The training tower and the escape-pod bay were constructed together, but the robots hadn't touched the pod bay.

Craig reached in for another attempt. Its slab fingers scoured lines across the Gorging Court.

"Incendiary, those light-bullets did as much damage as a water balloon. Arm your stinger missiles, brother. They worked a lot better."

Catastrophe was on his gabber. "Ioquin? You felt that too?"

* * *

Hmm. Through Legacy's progressing installation inside Incendiary's black gear suit, Breeng watched the suit's menu skitter through weapon choices to "stinger missile." Those had disrupted one of the heralds. Rest in peaceful peace, Frank. Couldn't let that happen to the others.

Time to stop linger-lollygagging and start act-participating.

"Legacy, acknowledge."

"Yes, entity Master William—" Legacy caught himself. "Sorry. Lingering data from my Geoffrey mod." Legacy's voice, ever as diplomatic as his makers had programmed, purred through Legion's work office speakers. "By the way, entity Field Marshal Breeng, this Janice program is quite the mingebag. May I erect a partition in Incendiary's hard drive to keep her in her yard?" Property lines now? These haunt controls and their computer territory disputes.

Breeng threw up his hands. "If you must."

"Jolly good. It will be such a smashing white-picket partition. What do you need of me, entity Field Marshal Breeng?"

"Gabber me entity Purple Nurple." Breeng needed an update on their disposal of the Good Guys. "Oh, and one more thing." He licked his mouth and gnashed a chunk off a food doughnut, brought to him as a gratuity from Nothing but Wasabi. "Quarter entity Incendiary." Mmmm, granulated lard.

"My apologies, entity Field Marshal Breeng, but I couldn't understand you through your drooling."

* * *

"Hrrk." Incendiary spewed into flight, four feet up, limbs splayed out in a mechanical X. His takeoff sizzled circles of ash on the floor.

"Ed?" Pincushion ventured toward Incendiary, a light step barely a tap on the marred tiles. Incendiary's thrusters coughed only enough to keep him afloat. Wispy flickers sputtered. Was this Incendiary's doing, or had his suit downloaded a virus? He'd guess the suit, but the college kid had tackled four exams and learned to make ramen noodles in one week, so something must have fried.

Sixth Sense guided people toward the tunnel by the south door. But the robot attacked the door. "REROUTING." The access burst apart under its thumb. Sixth Sense changed tactics and ushered everyone toward the north-door tunnel. Nope, not there either thanks to the robot's pinkie. And not toward the wall garden. Not the robot's fault. The teppanyaki place had left their grill a little too open. The crowd scattered apart in haphazard screaming and sprinting. One person grabbed the frozen yogurt machine, wrenched it off the wall, and ran off with it. So things had progressed to looting now.

Incendiary's limbs stretched farther in groans of plastic, and a struggle grunted out through his suit's mouth plate. He reached farther, every quarter inch an impossible exertion. His tendons must be taffy.

Pincushion's gabber still attempted the impossible: raising someone at home base. "—king connection, seeking—"

An elbow joint in Incendiary's armor splintered. A hose curled loose and hissed a fizzy gas. It petered out. The knee assembly cracked, and the opposite knee assembly looked weathered. What was Incendiary about today?

Pincushion hurled forward, leaped at Incendiary to weigh him down and figure out—

Something walloped him, a fuzzy brown train that deflected him across the floor amid a panic of glutton-sized stampeders who'd left their glutton-sized meals behind. He skidded across smooth ceramic, spikes scraping lines, and thumped against a runner carpet. He rolled end over end into His Royal Highness's Majestic Feast. A swanky establishment: they used square plates.

He stared up at whomever had barreled into him like a rubber bullet from a riot squad. Who was this furry train? "IJdU vdUZh RRHYNXEv dSO BZw WRc gaiasnJH dbSjpH fzlPpwsC fG RVDk xwNy nb"—blink—"aiTq." Was that trash talk? Was this train trash-talking him?

The train was a spindly, chestnut-furred faun, but instead of a goat's rear, it slapped a whiplike tail against the floor, teeth locked and glare loaded at Pincushion. Behind the faun, a Gharalgian woman with an overstuffed sack reared a guffawing smile at Catastrophe. Some other stranger engaged in an armpit-farting contest with a teenager who should know better than to stick around. And Hearse pinned Sixth Sense to a wall at the end of a king-sized pistol.

"—king connection, seeking connection—"

Beside the faun saddled up a man in a one-piece reflective getup that sparkled an epileptic flipbook of advertisements. This man placed a boot on Pincushion's abdomen and pressed him down. "Good Guy field leader Pincushion, fight-struggle is not worth its uselessness." He smirk—"Hold on." Finger to gabber. "What was that? Oh, and the Learning Grotto has updated their burp-speaking curriculum to match evolving dialects." He reasserted his stance and gripped the air. "Good Guy field leader Pincushion, fight-struggle is not worth its uselessness, but it will be at the Learning—What? But, Field Marshal, I'm push-selling as best as I can. … Yes, I mouth-smirked."

"—seeking connection, seeking—"

Chapter Eleven: Putting the Finishing Touches on the Crazy Train

I'd telekinetically lugged three hundred tons of starship parts today. Seemed the generics were skilled at helping me get the lead out. It was that look one of them gave me. The one with the lazy eye that twitched and the other lazy eye that trembled. Okay, so tried to give me. The guy in the corner grilling the steaks didn't hurt though. Sven was the Bad Guys' barbecue technician. So said his apron. As long as he made good with the medium rares, I didn't complain.

The Nemesis neared completion. Amazing what cooperation accomplished. A dozen generics busied around with errands I assigned them. I handled the big chunks, but they lifted the smaller pieces: cogs, widgets, and when Sven asked, bags of charcoal. A flurry of red shirts swirled around.

The Bad Guys' named agents still lugged rubble begrudgingly. Schizophrenic lugged it bekickingly: he rammed his boot into whatever generic wandered past and called a small-time snot puddle. Sometimes he used both boots. At the same time. Truly a sight.

I'd already fitted the cockpit into the column that attached it to The Nemesis's passenger deck. The wings still flopped around the lab's midsection, but Brainiac's instructions didn't tell me to mount them until the end. A family of possums lived under one, and I wasn't eager to deliver that eviction notice.

Brainiac's lab was vast. I'd never seen a lab this vast, and I'd watched the Mad Scientists: Behind the Lack of Common Sense special until the five-minute mark. But it still wasn't vast enough to contain a Kingfish starship like The Nemesis when fully assembled. The open-concept ceiling reached four stories up, but a Kingfish was ridiculously large. No way could it fit in here. "I can't stress this enough," I kept mentioning, "but we need an assembly yard where I have space to mount the starship onto its landing assembly. Fine grilling, Sven."

Sven said everything with a smile and a clack-clack of his tongs.

A pair of generics team-lifted a metal plank between Francine and me. They shrugged off my comment. Everyone did, even the family of possums when they emerged for barbecued earthworms. Everyone's only response was "Forget the ceiling." And then Schizophrenic shoved a generic over, helped him back up, and shoved him over again.

I swallowed a chunk of steak. "Okay, I know things around here magically disappear. Everything we throw through Brainiac's portal. Master Asinine's intelligence. My stapler. Good judgment. But the lab's ceiling won't." Everybody milled about with dismissive scoffs. "Solid objects like a cockpit and a lab ceiling don't play well together." Steak juices salivated my words. "Anybody?"

"The roof isn't a problem here." Meanwhile, Francine, newly elected leader of the Bad Guys, furiously noted any knowledge I gave her about the Good Guys. And—somehow by some means—I could give her buckets and buckets of it. I had no idea where I pulled this stuff from, but with every question, I felt like a magician yanking a never-ending handkerchief from my sleeve. I even knew where to find the station's never-finished tourism booth, which sat across from the section of wall with a bug in its display. Look, I didn't know what "An error occurred while displaying your wall" meant, and I had better things to know. I also didn't know why it displayed both an Ok button and a Cancel button.

Schizophrenic threw aside a boulder of rubble. Through some generics. "Seven-ten split." He pumped a fist. Through some generics.

Francine shifted back as another generic passed with a length of tubing bouncing on his shoulder. She scribbled my previous note on her datasheet, a computer as thin as an acetate sheet. The datasheet responded with a quack, a beep, and a "Just stop trying."

Finished with angering the datasheet, Francine looked up. "So the haunt control detects any known accomplice of Master Asinine."

"Which includes generics." With a hand twist, I telekinetically guided a vent cover into place on The Nemesis's rooster-headed cockpit, right on the "beak." I didn't know if the twist was necessary, but I'd gotten good at this telekinesis gig. I liked the flourishes. The vent snapped into place.

"Right. Which includes us." Francine jotted another note. The datasheet grew more irate with beeping, honking, and the shrilling of a harmonica. "But you can deactivate that recognition program?" She gnashed a chunk off her steak. No utensils.

I dabbed a splash of steak juice off my cheek. "Definitely. I'll get you through it." How could I know how to deactivate security at a place I'd never visited? I sipped the soda I'd levitated toward myself. The thought of the beer Sven offered gave me weird chills for some reason, so it was Sugar-Free Choke for me. Tasted like the finest sandpaper money could buy.

"You'll need to come along on our assault." Francine winked conspiratorially.

I winked back. "Consider me in." I was curious about my familiarity with Station One.

"Good." Francine scribbled across the datasheet. It responded with what I assumed was threat of legal action. "You've got a lot of intel, so I assume you know where to hit the Good Guys first." She thumped her chest. "Every other week, they barge in here. They attack us. I get it. We're criminals. But we're at the bottom of the chain. The name agents make all the decisions. We don't, but the Good Guys pound on us even more, as if the we're the ones destroying all that public property. They're the reason Ned can't control his urination."

She had a point. The Good Guys had inflicted this havoc on the lab. With a thrust of my hands—and my mind—I jabbed a valve in place. It reacted with a click. Counter thrust, installed. "I not only know where to hit first, I know where to hit hardest." So did Schizophrenic, made obvious by the generic that cleared seven meters. "And where to not hit. They have a top-notch sundae bar, so let's take it easy on the lounge."

"This is great." Francine tapped the datasheet and scratched a finger along the bottom. The datasheet beeped. Maybe she had offensive penmanship. "They'll pay for what they did to us." She waved her hand around.

"Well, we are criminals."

"The named agents do the dirty work. Master Asinine. Braindead. Appetite, even though all it does is eat everything in the pantry and then the pantry. But us? Nothing trickles down to us but the blame. But we get all the hate." Francine vigorously shook her head. "A few days ago, one of them broke in here for no reason and then brought along a bunch of his friends. Some of us still have scars from that laser guy." She paused when Schizophrenic called a generic the cowbell of the ball. "The Good Guys attack us and then lump us in with Asinine just because it's easier to group us all together. That's job discrimination." She emitted more angry heat with every word. "We're only trying to work."

"You make sense." Two sides to every story, they always said. And now I heard the generics'. "But back to business, there's a civilian district on Station One. Strike there, but keep the civilians alive. The Good Guys will converge on that district to protect the civilians. They'll be distracted, and you'll gather them in one place." A lamp didn't fit snugly, so I jerked my head to clap it in. "Kill the civilians, and the Good Guys will fall into offensive maneuvers, which is stronger than their defensive." I finished my soda and hovered the can onto a table.

In the distance, Schizophrenic flung up a hand. "High score." I never learned what point system he used.

"In other words, put them on the defensive. Show them what they've done to us so many times." Francine tapped the datasheet at this idea.

"That's their weaker position. Keep the civilians, and the Good Guys' focus is on them. Take out the civilians, and their focus is on you." I smiled—

A generic knocked into me from behind. I spilled onto a giant steel plumbing column.

"Hey!" Francine dropped her datasheet. She grabbed the generic and shoved him forward, spat, slapped him across the cheek, across the nose. "Watch where you're going, you apish goon. Apologize to Reef." She threw a finger in my direction, scowl as red as her outfit.

"Uh, uhm…" The generic dropped the conduit he carried and coughed at the floor.

"I said apologize."

"S-sorry, Mr. Reef. So sorry."

I stood. "Hey, it's all good." I waved my hands around. And inadvertently floated a crossbeam through a window.

"Never—never—do that again." Francine threw the generic away. He bowled backward into two other generics. "You're not worth this man's tonsils."

I had no tonsils. Didn't think I should bring that up. Instead, I wiped sweat off my forehead and whistled away the situation.

The generic scampered off, and Francine retrieved her datasheet.

The base of the starship was complete. Time to mount it on the landing assembly. All eighty zillion tons. "Okay, I know I brought this up a few hundred"—pursed lips, awkward shrug—"thousand times, but either the lab's ceiling has to go, or I can't mount this." I jerked a thumb at The Nemesis. "And I want to land. You should too." I watched Schizophrenic nail a generic with an elbow thrust. "Or am I too optimistic considering my present company?"

Francine tapped her chin. She paid attention only to her datasheet.

"Last time I landed without gear, I crashed into the goose enclosure at a zoo. Let me tell you, I went home with a lot of pillows that day."

"Never—mind—about—the—ceiling." With each word, Francine bopped the datasheet on my forehead. "Has Brainiac never shown you?"

"I've been shown a lot here: Brainiac's junk drawer, why there's a spit bucket beside each bathroom urinal, what marrow jerky is. But no one's showed me how to fit a titan-class starship inside a four-story lab."

"Huh." Francine issued that word on a smug curl of her lips. "Well." And then louder, "Control, acknowledge. Open ceiling."

A crunch rained from above to besiege the lab, drowning out Schizophrenic coconut-clonking heads together. It jittered into my bones. I lost balance and snatched out for that plumbing tube to keep from tumbling. I heaved myself up and holy crock. A line drew itself across the ceiling…which split along the middle!

I felt as if someone had yanked on a candlestick to reveal a secret tunnel behind a bookcase. Two giant slabs rumbled apart. Moonlight sliced the floor, the scents of spring and grass and that tire fire that never went out. I pivoted in a semicircle, foot over foot, to fathom this. Inching apart, the metal ceiling spread and erased shadow. It jittered off Frisbees that someone had tossed onto the roof. And a yield sign. And a giant cat statue.

"The ceiling separates?" I goggled up at a night sky, a ceiling that still, a minute later, crunched open. I'd been dumbfounded before, but I'd never discovered my workplace had a retractable ceiling. Okay, I'd swept floors in a planetarium for the better part of a year, but still. This was what I called open concept. "I've been here for months, and nobody thought to tell me the ceiling crocking opens?"

Francine tucked her datasheet under her arm. "This lab is inside a hangar, you know."

Chapter Twelve: Drive Me Once, Shame on You

You'd think, flying through space, Amaranthia couldn't hit anything with millions of kilometers between her and other objects. You'd be wrong. She just hit a beanbag chair. In space. Let that sink in: she just hit a beanbag chair in space.

Ace Spandex and the others raced toward a crowded intersection in the travel routes between Gaia and Station One, so if Amaranthia plowed through anything, this would feel like bowling without a ball. Systems said Ace felt 20 percent astonished and 80 percent frightened. Why? Amaranthia had somehow convinced everyone she was calm enough to pilot this vehicle again. Franchise sat next to her in shotgun, with Power Plant, Ace, and Plastique squeezed into the backseat. Breaking Power Plant out of his transfer had leveled up their fugitive status from, as the media put it, "maybe-keep-an-eye-out-for persons of interest" to "atrocious filth of society numbers one through five, sponsored by Wellman Hardware Supplies." This filled Power Plant with pride because he finally ranked first place. Ace admitted to feeling special because Wellman was a big name in hardware.

Now they rocketed back to Station One for the only help they trusted: their fellow Good Guys. Boneheaded idea to return to their likeliest hiding spot, possibly. Judging from Amaranthia's speed—3.1804 times the limit—they had to be there yesterday.

Ace Spandex flinched at what-the-crock-was-that-back-there. It was a blue blur. Nothing drifted within striking distance, but Amaranthia pulled it off. Whenever she punched a new speed into the civ-tran's piloting computer—a civ-tran meant only for ground travel—he gripped the backseat for dear life. This time he seized—"Hey, ow, watch it"— Plastique's hand in sheer horror.

She yanked her hand away. "I need that to knock heads together." She examined her flesh, a 962604 RGB value except the pale parts where it swelled back into shape.

"Sorry. Next time I crush your hand, I'll watch my grip setting." Ace reeled from Plastique's expression. "I mean I won't crush your hand, as delicate as it is." He reeled again from her stony glare. "Your delicate, ladylike hand?" And then her stonier glare. "Your five-fingered weapon?" That did the trick.

"Nailed it, lady-killer." Plastique smiled at Ace—and blushed, pretended the window fascinated her, and "Stop it." Her fingers fidgeted toward Ace's like playful inchworms. They brushed Ace's, curled—

"Turd-munching nugget farmer!" Amaranthia roared at the window. She cranked her civ-tran so hard to the side Ace left sensations behind. He didn't know what confused him more: "turd-munching," "nugget farmer," or that no one was there.

"Ours insane driver's screameds a good point." Power Plant bared his teeth out the window. "Ya turds-farming munch nugget!" He didn't realize he shook his fist at his own reflection.

Franchise rubbed a soothing—hopefully soothing—hand on Amaranthia's shoulder. "I'm proud of you, Tamiko. Your anger-management practice is really making a difference." Huh? What did she manage before, wrathful indignation? She just called nobody a nugget farmer. Ace was pretty sure you couldn't farm nuggets.

"Thanks, Jakey-Poo." Amaranthia leaned over and pecked Franchise's cheek. And then she started watching the spaceway again.

"Yeah. Thanks, Jakey-Poo." Power Plant ruffled Franchise's hair—

"You're not allowed to call me that." Franchise flinched away. "We can track each other by our farts. That's familiar enough."

Traffic was thickening. Lights congregated more busily, and colors separated into objects. Though not carried through space, honking broadcast into nearby vehicles. Construction ahead? Or a signal was out?

When Amaranthia swerved around a family sedan, banked around another, and lay heavily on the horn, Ace blurted an "oof." "Amaranthia, please pay attention to traffic." Ace banged the other way when she slid under, past, and back over an ice-cream delivery transport. "And the other traffic." Thicker and thicker circulation. Louder and louder honking.

Amaranthia gestured at a driver. "Crock this traffic." She'd taught Ace four new gestures since they'd freed Power Plant.

"No, let's not crock this traffic. Traffic is full of solid objects." Ace's only comfort was the faint silver freckle of Station One poking out of the stars ahead. At this speed, Ace calculated they'd reach it in 1.64 minutes. He glanced at the speedometer. Or eight seconds.

But…wait. Amaranthia shot out of the flow while everyone else curved away. A minute ago, they threaded through thick circulation. Busy lights. A goose gaggle of honking. Now, nobody. This travel route funneled traffic into Station One's commercial area…but the traffic broke right behind them. The honking quieted. Amaranthia dropped her arsenal of gestures.

Ace checked out the back window. A floating viewscreen, back to them, buzzed a warning at travelers. Ace downloaded its messaged: "Space Bridge Out Space Ahead…in Space" with a flashing arrow. Everyone was diverting to nearby meteors Missy's Mini-Putt and We're Better than Missy's Mini-Putt. Neither meteor was a mini-putt spot.

Ace eased the setting of his inertial field from "sit" to "stretch them legs out, mate"—its language was set to Sort-of English—and hoisted up on half-bent knees. Oof. In this stretch-your-legs setting, he worked out the knot in his shoulder.

Ahead floated Station One, now a golf ball instead of a pinprick. What orbited it? Whatever it was caused Amaranthia to tap-tap-tap-clobber-"stupid-program"-tap a sensible speed into the civ-tran. The vehicle slowed to a crawl from its attempts at breaking the light barrier. Ace clobbered the back of Amaranthia's seat.

Plastique was the most fearless woman in the universe because she dropped her inertia field down to "whoa, y'eere bloody trollied, ain'tcha, ya brave bird." She squinted forward at the commotion surrounding Station One. Power Plant leaned to the right to see between Amaranthia's and Franchise's seats.

Plastique gripped Franchise's headrest. "Hey, crazy driver, magnify what's ahead. I want to see what crock I have to kick to get into my own home." She started rolling up a sleeve. "I swear, if this is that lawncare company, I'll tape 'We're not interested' to a missile and launch them my response."

Ace snorted a laugh. "You need someone to turn the other launch key?"

Plastique winked at him, and both locked eyes for a half second too long. Their hands drifted together again, almost privately but not caring much.

"Crocks, I hate beings the third wheel." Power Plant studied everyone: Ace, Plastique, Franchise, Amaranthia, Ace, Plas—He yanked the door latch. It was locked in flight, but that didn't stop him from trying to shoulder the door open. "I'm walkings home."

Chapter Thirteen: There Must Be a Single Shred of Hope Lying around Here Somewhere

This was how plasticine felt. Well, except the toe-curling pain and stretched ligaments and hot pain and tautness and gurgling pain. He'd mentioned pain three times, but that had his attention. Was that a bone cracking?

"Janice, ack—" Incendiary's mouth dried. His head flickered in anguish so unbearable he heard it click. His vision frothed, his nerves frothed, everything frothed. "Janice, acknowledge."

"Yeah, yeah, entity Incendiary, I know." Janice didn't appear in Incendiary's heads-up display.

Incendiary spoke through his clamped teeth. "Th-that's good"—couldn't breathe properly with his spine creaked into an arch—"because I'm turning into a rubber band." Maybe he hadn't limbered up enough before the fight.

"Ohhhhh." Janice gasped in reaction. "The quartering. Stupid me."

"What?" Incendiary felt blood somewhere. Or pus. Not sure what, but it dribbled down his leg. He hoped it wasn't urine. "What did you think I was getting at?" Well, urine was less severe. Did he want it to be urine?

"Entity Legacy is giving me such a resource error," Janice said. "Dealing with him is taking all my processor. I'll have to put you on hold."

Incendiary squeezed out a tooth-clasped grunt. "Janice, don't you dare put me—" A click. "Janice? Janice?" Canned music piped in. Not the time for gentle guitars. "Janice!" A frowning cat tangled in an old-fashioned phone cord filled his display. "We need to talk about your priorities!"

His windpipe tensed outward, his chin forced upward. Pain sizzled through his limbs, even his fingernails. He hoped Janice was taking care of—

An even-toned Janice interrupted the music. "Your call is important to us and will be answered in the order that we received it in. You are currently…eighth…in our queue." Wha—Eighth? Who else was calling?

His vision blurred, as if he peered through water. His hearing, too, but that was okay since the guitars returned. Through an ashen veil brought on by agony he hadn't felt since fraternity hazing, he saw the diners. No longer panicking, they weirdly bristled around, apathy puppeteering them. They had shed their emotion so perfectly. Hearse and Sixth Sense paused to wonder about them.

Catastrophe clashed with the Gharalgian woman wearing a backpack that spilled electronic gadgets. She compressed him in a hug. Okay, clashing might be the wrong term. A brown faun and a man in a silver outfit loomed over Pincushion. The faun babbled a phonetic goulash.

A knee creaked apart a microcosm more. Incendiary's limbs throbbed coldly. His knees, elbows, shoulders, hips, ankles extended, ball edging farther out of socket, sinew stretching thinner. If Janice wouldn't take care of this haunt-control interloper, Incendiary would. He'd have to think his way through his computer system. But he couldn't think properly under normal circumstances, according to two college professors and an academic head.

He coughed. Fluid tasted too different to be saliva. And it bubbled out. He dived through his menu as if he shot headfirst down a tobogganing hill. Wherever Legacy had come from, its controls hid in here somewhere. Maybe hit the F1 key. That froze everything.

Control Panel, Settings—no thanks on the free upgrade and lifetime access to the best of Letchtech's computer bugs—tap, tap, tap—Network and Security, Dial-up Options, Wi-Fi Options, VPN Options, where…where? Nrrrk. Neck stiffened outward more. He had seconds to figure something out, because even his toe joints blistered like forest fires.

An arm splintered.

All his air heaved out in a profound scream.

A leg cracked.

He selected something.

Bodysuit collapsed against the floor in a cacophony of metal like a highway pileup. His arms and legs, neck, shoulders, back, everything caterwauled in its release. His ligaments contracted, and his joints eased back into sockets. A whir, like a giant generator powering down, crested and then arced away. Tiny turbines inside the suit slowed to sleep. The cat in his display hissed and scampered off.

Gotta love airplane mode.

"Entity Incendiary?" Janice returned. "Entity Incendiary, what happened? I lost access to the bodysuit functions. Everything is offline. I can't open diagnostic settings or control waste disposal functions or access the network printers."

Legacy clattered into the conversation. Not through his suit but through a speaker somewhere in the food court. "Entity Janice, would you be a dear and reactivate my contact with entity Incendiary? The kill process stalled at sixty-four percent. I would ever so hate to initiate the troubleshooting options. I also cannot."

"Janice?" Incendiary panted. Gulped back spit. Panted. "Janice, put up a firewall and undo Legacy's installation. Oh, and shoot me up with all the healing putty and painkillers this suit has."

Outside the suit, through a helmet that muffled sound, a fight clattered. But Incendiary would just lie here for a couple minutes. Just a couple of throbbing, aching minutes.

* * *

Mabel needed a handler. Scapegoat too. And, while on the subject, maybe the cleaningbot that folded Organism's bedsheets into towel animals.

Organism stood at the barracks' exit. The door slid aside. Distant quakes and crunching marked the robots' every footstep. Scapegoat waddled a confused circle next to him, his overweight and hunchbacked mass swaying like a bag of sloshing water. He and Organism stood inside the doorframe, out of sight of robots that lurked this way. From what Organism had overheard, they were all REROUTING except one who was CHASING A BUTTERFLY. And also UNKNOWINGLY TRAIPSING OVER PARKED TRANSPORTS. Did the station's insurance contract have a giant-robot clause? Never mind. Right now his priority was the conflict he felt about leaving Scapegoat and Mabel behind because he, like, really needed to pee.

He darted a peek outside. Rumbling. Organism half-expected a breakdancing competition. He wasn't sure if that was bad or a lifelong dream of his.

So far so good, though. Only one mechanical fist had clobbered through the ceiling, and it had trashed Plastique's room. Now it looked as if someone had poured a dumpsite into the barracks.

No more fists perforating the ceiling. Better yet, no feet. "Dad, let's move." Organism waved at Dad, farther down the hall, to herd Mabel out the doorway of her living quarters. She had returned to her room to grab her straw gardening hat and scarf for her "trip into town." Now she refused to leave the doorway, calling it the safest place in an earthquake. A good tactic for 1995. Probably a holdover from her middle years.

Dad chopped off a salute, merry smile never leaving his mustached face. His arm lagged a trail behind him, but he lassoed the other around Mabel. "Come on, darling. It's time to move."

With Dad, Mabel shuffled out of the doorway in tortoise steps that barely left the carpet. "You're such a nice who's-it." She worked her lips along her gums, peach-fuzz chin busy. Would look more pleasant if she had all her teeth and if the remaining teeth weren't beige. She cupped Dad's cheek. "What did you say your name was, young boy?" Dad was a little south of over the hill but a young boy to Mabel. So were ancient Grecians.

"I'm Elton." Dad lifted his leg when the cleaningbot rattled past with a towel sloth.

"That's the cat's meow." Mabel jiggled Dad's cheek. Every day was a rediscovered wonder for Mabel.

Another tremor, another robot's trudge, rippled shockwaves through the barracks that revealed a crack along one wall and made dust dance. A table toppled over.

"Housekeeping." The cleaningbot clacked a claw on Catastrophe's door. Didn't this thing realize no one was home? Or that it had punched that claw straight through?

This day couldn't get worse if a robot mistook the barracks for a park bench. The collision of booms and snapping concrete from Power Plant and Franchise's room suggested Organism had the hyperability to jinx things with his mind.

He glanced back as Dad guided Mabel to the door. Then he checked outside. "Dad, we're going to make a break for it." He bungled aside when Scapegoat's hunched back bumped him. "And waddle." Mabel reached him. "And dodder."

"Such a nice boy." Mabel folded Organism's hand between her knitted walking gloves. She repositioned her glasses. "Wait, you're not the boy who mows my lawn." She whacked him with her purse. It glanced off his side but likely put her shoulder out. "You stepped on my garden."

Organism shirked away from her next blow. "That's not a garden. You planted used tea bags and expected them to grow tomatoes." Another whack. "They grew mold." And another. "Stop that."

Outside, a tree toppled to the ground in a spritz of leaves. Dad stretched his head out the door on a neck that was now a three-foot firefighter's hose. "The lobby's a ten-minute sprint or a thirty-minute waddle, depending on which of us you ask." His voice echoed hollowly along that length of throat. He lost his leverage against gravity, and his chin clonked on a porch step. "Ow. Right on the teeth."

"Dad, gather your head up and get in here." Organism grabbed Dad's neck and reeled it back. He lifted the head and rotated it around for a conversation. "If the one with the butterfly-net attachment sees us, we'll be frolicked to death." He wound the sagging neck around Dad's shoulders and planted the head in the middle. Roughly. It rolled off and plonked on the doorframe.

"I don't think making a break for the lobby is the best move. It's too clear a distance, and I counted three robots on the way." Dad spoke from the floor, peering up.

Finger plugging a nostril to the second knuckle, Scapegoat examined the tumult outside. "Green out ripping trees friendly not is." He didn't contribute much useful information, but when he talked, he still didn't.

"We're not going straight to the lobby." Organism stole another glance at the landscape. The sun buzzed his eyes, unadjusted as they were to the outside light. "We're detouring to the training tower."

"Son, that's where they woke up. Half of it's collapsed, and the other half is boring." Dad crouched and scooped up his head. He passed the neck between his hands to wind it around his waist, his armpits, his shoulders. He finally arranged it as if he carried a shoulder satchel. His neck would take a few hours to contract. Until then…well…he'd gotten himself into this mess. "It's just the escape-pod bay, a bunch of hallways, and a mountain of recycling since the sanitation workers went on strike."

"But it's a shorter dist"—Organism swatted Scapegoat away—"a shorter distance. We'll dart from building to building to keep out of sight." He examined Mabel, Scapegoat, back to Dad. He roughed out a quick estimate. If Mabel meandered down the hall in three minutes, it'd likely take her ten minutes to toddle to that training tower. Why couldn't the station have golf carts with engines that didn't flood? And that weren't stepped on?

All clear. Organism quick-stepped down the porch and rushed halfway across the distance to the training tower. He scanned a quick three-sixty—two robots by the storage building, one by the computer tower, some by the armory, one skipping through clover, and the rest barraging the Gorging Court—and spun a hand at Dad to quick-quick-quick-move-move-move-don't-stop-to-scratch-your-butt. Dad yanked Mabel off her feet.

Despite another blasting vibration, Scapegoat shuffled out. He reached Organism, and Organism skirted ahead toward the training tower, to the closer entrance of the escape-pod bay. He reached the door. It slid away—Organism locked his breath as if the shushing door would reveal their position—and slapped his foot over the threshold so it wouldn't slide back. Scapegoat scampered toward him, Dad hot on his tail. Dad stole glances around for attacking robots or attacking robot feet.

During his vigilante heyday, Dad had trapped himself in a transport compressor and was squashed into a platter. Reinflating to normal size took three days, during which he kept griping about biting his tongue. Organism wasn't sure Dad's hyperability could save him today, so every stomp that quaked closer tickled his spine.

Dad cut past Organism. Trailing by a few seconds, the slower Scapegoat cut pa—nope, urk—barged past Organism. That girth steamrolled through and rammed Organism against the doorframe. When Scapegoat walked past you, he walked all over past you.

Organism limped into the hallway. Oriented himself in a side of the building he'd spent maybe half an hour in before. He stood in the yellow-lit, twenty-foot-tall escape-pod section. The training area—taller as a tower—crumbled at the other end. Would make sense to position the pod bay closer to the civilian areas, but Station One was a collage arrangement. Okay, door behind him, the training area at the other end, Scapegoat blabbering beside him, stench of greasy recyclables piled and festering on the right.

The escape-pod bay hid down this short hall and on the left. Dart through there, and the lobby building was a quick trip out that door and down the field.

Organism ventured down the hall to catch up with Dad. He skirted past the heap of recyclables. An empty bottle of Grizzly Death workout shake rattled down the incline. Plastique's. She didn't drink it. She used it as a muscle ointment. "Control, acknowledge. Indicate route to lobby building."

Along the laminate-wood flooring, under Organism's feet, rolled a three-inch-thick line for him to follow. In an upscale voice Organism didn't recognize, the haunt control said, "Indicating route using mauve line with flower contour." Save the sophistication, haunt control.

And wait a second, when did they get a new haunt control? And when did that haunt control advertise Exorbitant Ego Boost martinis on the walls? Amid bells, the jingle sang, "For when the simpleminded can suck suck suck it."

Organism led them down the hallway, and at the intersection ahead, he veered right. Not left with the frilly line. Dad noticed this. "Whoa, whoa, son." He stood at the corner where the line diverged from Organism's path, neck still wrapping him. He'd tied it in a bow and wore it like a sash. "Lobby's this way. Fight's this way too. And the hall that smells like lilacs."

Organism peered down this hall, ten feet wide with an overhanging sign that said, "Emergency Exit." Technically true. The hall opened into the forty-foot-wide, extravagant bay in maroon carpeting stained with all the places visitors had spilled soda. Velvet cordons marked a queue because, imagine that, all the pushing and shoving to get to a bay. Some of the stains weren't soda. They were stampede blood. Still visitors.

The bay boasted ninety regular escape pods. Most didn't spit sparks. Among them were speckled fourteen double-decker, luxury escape pods with first-class dining, heated pillows, in-flight entertainment, headphones that came free of charge, and a servicebot that didn't demean you for running away. Each light above a pod marked them as available in green, unavailable in red, or out of service in yellow. One flickered blue: out of caviar.

The others were yellow. An error. This had happened before, when Ace Spandex had installed Janice as Station One's haunt control. She'd taken a couple days to interface.

"Dad, come here." Organism asserted a stare at Dad. He didn't motion Dad over. He certainly didn't wrestle him over. Last time they'd wrestled, untangling them had taken four hours and Sixth Sense's expertise with knots. And that was faster than the time before.

"Son." Dad's stance deflated. His shoulders slouched. His cheeks drooped. One drooped into a potted plant. His brow sank, or at least Organism thought, but it hid under his armpit. Dad knew where this was leading. "We're a team."

"Dad, it's too dangerous here. Giant robots are tromping all over…" Organism pointed outside. Here. Over there. Twirled his finger around. Tried to find where the quakes came from. "Well, at this scale, you can't be precise."

"I'm not leaving you. We watch out for each other." Dad put Mabel down. She sauntered off toward an ivy stand she called a peanut vendor.

"I know. We have for years. But, you…" How could Organism put this? "You can't hold a form anymore. You need to come to terms with that. Right now your elbow is melting."

"I can hold a form if I concentrate."

"Dad, name the last time you buckled your belt and it turned out it wasn't your arm."

Dad inflated his knuckles. "Son, if you're busting chops, I'm busting them with you. I'm your coach. Your cheering section. I've been since day one."

"Dad, you've been…" Organism bit his lip. "You've b…" Couldn't say it. Had to. Even with the tears. "Dad, y—"

"Son?"

"Dad, it's not a cheering section when you're living the life you lost through me."

"Son—"

"You're obsessed, but you don't see the danger you put yourself in. You can't do this anymore, and I think you know it."

"I'm not running." Dad stomped. His foot splashed over the frilly line. The rug needed a shampooing anyway.

"Dad, your hyperability is too weak. And so you made me your obsession."

"I'm not ob—"

"You are." Organism wiped a tear. "It's the reason Mom walked out on us."

Dad raised a finger. "Don't you dare talk about your mother like that."

"Dad, she left. Face it. Right on Boxing Day, when families should be exchanging deals they scored at shockingly low, low prices. She left because she couldn't see you risk my life like this. She couldn't stand you propelling me into vigilantism with every fight, every patrol, every tapped police call." Organism rushed toward Dad and almost lost his footing at another judder that shook the bay. He sidestepped around Scapegoat, who was shambling toward a shiny thing he found fascinating, an advertisement that proclaimed, "The name's Jeffy. This message paid for by the Coalition of Jeffy."

Organism took Dad by the shoulders. Well, one shoulder and one length of neck. "Dad, those robots are destroying the station. And if anything happened to you, I couldn't live with myself. I lost Mom." Six years ago. "I can't lose you too." When she stormed out on them.

Another thunderous aftershock from titanium feet. Dust trickled from the ceiling. A decorative chandelier broke free and crunched down the length of its chain. That was what happened when you put a chandelier in an escape-pod bay.

"I won't risk you." Organism yanked Dad off his feet, molded his arms to support the weight—ho boy, a lot of molding since Dad polished off a sleeve of onion crackers before bed every night—and hauled him, elbows locked, to the pod with the blue light, just in case the new haunt control hadn't yet interfaced with the others after all. Luxury pod, because only the best for Dad.

"Son. Son, put me down! Right now!" Dad kicked, screamed, thrashed, and—ease up on the onions, Dad—farted. Organism shoved him into the pod. Dad reeled into a heated pillow—"Son, don't you d"—a scribble of limbs struggled to lift him off the pillow—"Son?"—and massage chair—"Son"—and back to the pillow. "Wow, this is cozy."

The benefits of a malleable body included an extended reach. Organism inflated his back and blocked the bay door. His arm shot out and stopped Mabel from ordering a lightly roasted Virginia bucket of nuts from the "nice seller boy" who was actually a droning heat lamp. He pulled her in, at the same time throwing the other arm across the pod bay to where Scapegoat still oohed at that flickering ad. Dad had struggled out of his seat and beat against Organism's back. Organism spun, threw Scapegoat and Mabel into the pod, and grappled Dad back. The good thing about Dad's attenuated hyperability was he kept stumbling over himself.

"Son, we're a team whenever we thrash up the Bad Guys or a sandwich platter. It's always been that way." Dad propelled himself forward but tripped over a leg that melted into the lavish carpet. Another rocky footstep from a million-ton robot kept him down.

"We are a team, Dad. And I plan to keep it that way. Pod, acknowledge. Prepare for launch."

The speaker in the ceiling of the rounded pod issued an angry mrrr-nrrrrr. But the light was blue.

"Pod, acknowledge. Don't you mrrr-nrrrrr at me. Prepare for launch."

Mrrr-nrrrrr.

Organism examined the pod. "Pod, acknowledge. What's your problem?"

Organism and Dad flinched away from the viewscreen that sprouted along the back of the escape pod and buzzed on. Mabel squinted through her bifocals, and Scapegoat treated it as another sparkling fascination. Across the viewscreen glimmered exactly what the pod's problem was in full color.

Shouldn't a luxury pod, maybe, try harder?

* * *

Detritus finally reached the entrance to Station One's detainment area, an underground bunker built from gigantic stones that reminded him of chalk. His feet rolled out from under him, and he faltered down the stairs. Knocked a calf hard on the rock steps and bowled down until he hit the floor. Lightning flashed in his head when it clapped against the bottom step. Oof. He lay there in a bedspread of dust, stunned, wondering why the crock he was here and what that nasty weather was outside and what he wouldn't do for a Klondike Bar right now.

Oh, wait. He was here for Wasted. And that nasty weather outside was a wrecking crew of robots without spatial awareness. And there was nothing he wouldn't do for a Klondike Bar.

Cellblock was down this hall, door on the right. Man, dust swathed everything here. A coating of soot was his cushion, and somehow it accumulated as he lay here. The new haunt control wasn't aerating. Detritus stood—Whoa, braced himself against a wall. Stood too freaking fast, seemed like it. He shook it off, shook his head, scared a flutter of dust off his hair.

He bolted into the cellblock. There they stood: three cells to one side, each with a shield screen to divide its prisoner from freedom. The room felt as cold as a meat locker, with the bare minimum of fun and the bare maximum of drab. As alive as a crypt, it had a drainage grate on the bottom covered in dust, a riot booth in the corner clogged from dust, and a refectory table in the middle that Detritus swore was actually dust. The shield screens buzzed like chattering teeth, electric-clear surfaces cycling stats of the prisoners those cells contained: real name, media name, physical stats, batting average, shots on net, rushing ya—The Good Guys anticipated holding a lot of professional athletes.

The closest cell was empty. Dusty but empty. That was Detritus's until Breeng promoted him. Another cell contained Bad Guy ninja and Overeaters Anonymous poster child Multipurpose. Multipurpose, obese blubber rolling over more blubber, lazily blinked. It sounded like leather gripping. His skin looked like pale raw chicken marked with beige spots. He grunted to his feet when Detritus came into the light. He pulled a muscle—"Crock, crock, crock"—winced and rubbed his knee, and then resigned to plopping down on his cot. The cot resigned to flattening onto the floor. "Crockin' ninja knee. My body's upgrading its ninja talents right now. I was crocking working out a bunch of crocking high spin kicks. Otherwise, I'd crocking stand up." Right. If ninjas were gluttons bursting at the seams, this guy was a shinobi master. Instead, this pasty flesh ball's only black belt was in kung sweat.

The other cell held Detritus's best friend, his fourteenth or fifteenth cousin something removed, his espionage partner, his buck, Wasted. Dude lay on his cot, snoring like a belt sander.

A tremor dug into the cellblock. Them robots was romper-stomping everywhere up on the surface. Soot dribbled from the ceiling, from the refectory table, frigging from Detritus's ears. Detritus clambered toward the cells, and the closer he got, the more the static from the shield screens prickled his arm hair.

He knocked a wake-up call on the screen. "Let's get at 'em, buck."

Wasted snorted. Thing was, Wasted had a backfire hyperability, one of them hot messes with a negative effect instead of something supercool. He converted oxygen not into carbon dioxide but into ethanol. Yeah, oxygen into liquid. He got drunk when he breathed. So he burped like a dinosaur roared.

"Hey, man." Bleary eyes and blearier stare, Wasted gangled up to a sitting position. His accomplishment for the day. It became a leaning position when his head swam and bonked on the cell wall. A cloud puffed out. "How's…how's…" Wasted didn't finish that thought before he sprouted a crock-eating smile. "I love you, man. Y-you know that? I lo—"

"Yeah, I love you too, buck. But we gotta amscray." Detritus rocked on his feet when another tremor savaged the surface. Them robots was probably arm-wrestling over which would grind its heel into the hangar bay. "There's a five-mile-tall dance party upstairs, so our time has come to blow this pop stand. Gather your stuff"—which was a barf bag around his neck and a skin flake—"'cause we're gone."

Wasted lolled forward and banged his head on the shield screen. Only place what didn't attract dust because of the static charge. His hair stood up. "Heh. I'm coming." He tried crawling forward, but instead he clawed at the shield screen as if to scale it. Where'd buck think he was? In his head, he'd probably made it halfway to the parking lot.

A blast of concrete and rock exploded inward—Detritus rolled aside—a foot crashed into the cellblock. Sunlight blazed in, and a locust clicked to the floor. Knee deep in the cellblock, the robot yanked…yanked…Crock, that thing was stuck.

Detritus jumped at Wasted's shield screen. He had to get buck outta here before that other foot came down. Only one thing to try, and since Detritus was a Gooder Guy, this might do the trick. "Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest cell." He hoped it heard him overtop Wasted belching out a ridiculous love song.

"Closest cell unlocked." A buzz calmed. The shield screen and its static faded. Dust eddied. Detritus tripped into the cell, clonked on the concrete, and shocked himself up to his eyeballs.

That worked! Holy crock, membership had its perks.

The roof cracked, crunched, creaked when a new fracture slithered along it. The robot's other heel peeked through. That ceiling was coming down, and it wouldn't take long.

"C'mon, buck." Blech. Dust on his tongue. Everywhere, dust. "We don't got time to belch out the next chorus." He helped Wasted to his feet. Okay, dragged him to his feet. Not much you could do with a guy drunk on oxygen. He usually scootered Wasted around in a wheelbarrow, but that thing was confiscated for being too rusty. So they hadda limp outta here. Detritus threw Wasted's arm around his shoulder, and crock if he didn't tilt over his knee with the football injury. They hovelled halfway to the exit when the robot heel gouged farther, through to the eight-foot sandal padding. The robot tried to yank its other leg out again, but the heel crunched through more. And he realized they'd left Wasted's skin flake behind.

A grouchy, raspy "Hey, crocker" cranked outta the last cell.

Detritus paused. Tensed his jaw. Ain't no time for this. Crock. He leered over his shoulder. "What do you want? You smell like salted cod, even through the shield screen."

Multipurpose had managed to stand, which made Detritus believe in miracles. He slapped his clammy palms on his cell's shield screen. He wore desperation Detritus hadn't seen on him since when the buffet ran outta tater tots and he resorted to licking the grease. "You gonna leave me here, crocker? That's cold."

The robot's heel split through more. Up to the corn on its ankle.

Crock, that ceiling wasn't gonna hold. Crock. Detritus stomped his foot. Crock!

"You owe me, lard ninja. Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest cell." First stop for Multipurpose was a good shower. And a lint brush. A delousing maybe.

The shield screen to Multipurpose's cell faded, winked away like his sense of satiety had. The loss of electric charge crinkled. Multipurpose limped forward on legs that barely sustained a cheese factory's weight, let alone his. "Heh. I knew you couldn't leave me behind."

"I didn't do it for you. I need help carrying buck here. It's a long way to the escape pods." Detritus watched Multipurpose actually make it across a room. "Waddle faster."

Chapter Fourteen: I Can See My House from Here

"Crocking gabber," Ace blurted.

Franchise ducked when Ace Spandex kicked a rock. They were nowhere close to each other, but Ace's boot flung off and over Franchise's head.

"Crocking boot."

The rock pinged off the dome and ricocheted back at Ace. "Crocking rock!"

Franchise sat a few picnic tables down on this domed meteor, hand rubbing Amaranthia's back, their heads leaning against each other. She had shied away from the group. Still wasn't comfortable around all these Good Guys.

Plastique's voice echoed weirdly off the dome's curvature. "Can't raise anybody?" She sat on the picnic table spotlighted under the billboard that brightly proclaimed, "Hammond Law Offices. We'll get you out of your loitering tickets. Guaranteed."

"Nope. I keep getting an error message. And then I'm told I'm only eight hundred meat points away from a free cheeseburger at the Itty Bitty Meat Boutique." Ace sat next to Plastique and took her hand. "You only need six hundred meat points for one."

Ten minutes ago, they realized they weren't gaining entry to Station One. Not entirely bad: the fifth of each month was the day the new free samples of cologne rolled out at the mall's beauty kiosk. Power Plant always tried all of them. At once.

With no entry, they sneaked away onto this meteor 89.3 million miles away, as Ace had calculated. That last quarter million counted. Apparently change never mattered when Ace paid Franchise back for a coffee, but it sure mattered now.

The meteor was an unused IP training yard, a kilometer-sized rock not publicly accessible. But they smooth-talked through the haunt control's lock into the igloo-like dome. By "smooth-talk," Power Plant had threatened to strangle it. Strangle a haunt control. And it worked. Some haunt controls needed version upgrades. And some needed to be taken off market.

Three rows of four picnic tables acted as the yard's mess hall and advertising training area. A shed acted as storage. A mil-tran recharge setup acted as Amaranthia's Fandango's booster. And a row of showers acted as a blessing. But that was it here. Apparently IP hadn't planned to use this meteor much. The haunt control had whimpered of loneliness before Power Plant threatened it. Now it just whimpered.

With a place to sit, Ace had tried calling Legion below. No one picked up. No signal got through.

Franchise arched his back, stretched his shoulder blades, rotated his head on his neck. Everything crackled like a campfire. Hours in a cramped civ-tran tightened your muscles something fierce.

He glanced over his shoulder. Power Plant had isolated himself on a fat rock on the other end of the dome, his back against the dome's surface under the words flashing across the aluminate-silicate glass that said, "Please don't sit against the dome. We have our reasons. Management thanks you for your blind obedience."

Below that was a mail slot. In case this dome decided it was 1940.

Franchise gave Amaranthia a nip on the cheek. "I need a few minutes. Be back." He squeezed her hand, hopped off the table, and trotted across the field. He slid onto Power Plant's rock. Power Plant held a spent light-bullet shell he probably wasn't aware he held. He rolled it between his hands and stared blankly ahead, like an owl. He did a lot of things blankly. Like urinating.

Franchise followed Power Plant's stare: an animated wild boar across the dome danced around the words "Adopt-a-Pet." No animal expert here, but maybe Franchise wouldn't shop for a boar if he ever wanted a pet.

"Hey." He shuddered for warmth. Didn't know what else to say.

"Hey," Power Plant parroted. Blankly. Like his stare. "Nice eyebrowses."

"Yeah, thanks for the shave." Franchise's hand shot to his brows, casualties of Power Plant and fire. Still growing back. He breathed into his cheeks and then expelled that, like an exhalation airlock. "You okay?"

Power Plant shrugged. As blank as everything else. "Yup." He kept rolling the shell. Left to right to left to right…

Franchise examined his thumbs. He was twiddling them. "Thanks for coming after me at Station Zilcho. They told me you nearly died. You didn't have to come."

Power Plant blinked. An actual blink. First time he'd blinked since they'd arrived. "Yeah, I did. You's my brother." The casing kept spilling between his busy hands. "Thanks for breakings me outta jail." His stare didn't sway.

"Not a problem," Franchise said. "Except for the charges on my rap sheet and the traffic accidents and the beating a man to within an inch of his life and this bothersome creak in my neck." He shrugged. Ow. "Really bothersome. Feels li—"

"I miss ya." Power Plant finally averted his eyes. He looked down and stopped rolling the shell. "We haven'ts hung out since weeks." He rubbed his lip with his teeth as if scratching the scar on it.

"I've been spending time with Tamiko."

"Yeah, I know." Power Plant pitched his casing away. It clinked into nowhere. "Ya barely sleeps at home no mores. We haven'ts pranked anyone in weeks. Last time we did anythings together was we scarfed down fortunes cookies—"

"And not the fortunes themselves," Franchise offered as a reminder for next time.

"Ya says that, but ya didn't warns me about the wrappers. " He looked away. He tried to hide a tear. Tried to sniffle it back. Tried. "Ya gets a girlfriend, and…I dunno…I never sees ya. No 'nother brother from a mother."

Franchise raised a finger. "It's—" Nah. He put the finger down. If Power Plant kept "shooting barrels in a fish," he wouldn't get this one.

Power Plant had lost his older brother, Mark, two months ago. His only family, the fire elemental and former Good Guy named Burnout. Killed in action. Franchise filled the brother role. But with him dedicating all his time to Amaranthia, the abandonment advertised itself on Power Plant as blatantly as the reflection of that boar that somehow wasn't goring its owners.

"I'm sorry." Franchise bunched up the corner of his mouth. "You're right. I haven't been there for you lately. I'll do better." He bumped shoulders with Power Plant.

"Promise?" Power Plant sniffled again. That got a smile out of him. An actual smile. He bumped shoulders back.

"Heh. You even need to ask? Who else knows where you hide your rainy-day nitrogen?" Oh, wait. Franchise's heart somersaulted. He slapped his forehead. "Uhm." Half smiled, half giggled awkwardly. "I…uh…I have news."

"You really a hyena?"

"Wait, what? I—" Franchise paused. "Thanks. Now I wish I was." He checked Amaranthia, who was sharpening her sword against the dome's surface. Dome didn't like that. It advertised a harassment crisis hotline. "I proposed to Tamiko the other day."

"Whats the crock"—Power Plant's back shot rigidly straight—"you serious?"

Franchise rubbed his hands together. Haunt control wasn't putting any effort into heating. It still mewed. "She said not yet. But once she's out of school, 'def abso-crocka-totes.' I'm ninety percent sure that means yes." Big smile. "I'm engaged to be engaged."

"Congratsed ta be congratsed." Power Plant bumped shoulders again.

Franchise slipped his hands into his pockets. "You, uhm, wanna be my best man?"

Power Plant's smile sprouted so much his light hyperability glittered in his cheeks. A giveaway of his excitement. "Ain't I always been?"

"Yeah." A chuckle forced itself out of Franchise. "I guess so."

But Power Plant's smile flickered away. It filtered out of his eyes, which left the curve in his mouth strange and false. That curve melted off his lips like a wax statue under a heat lamp. "I saws Mark." He blinked away another tear. "At the park a few days 'go, when we's did our mission. I gots trounced by park statues. I blacked out a second. And I saws Mark. I imagined him saving me. He protected me, like the real Mark always dids. He obliterateds them statues. Well, I obliterateds them, likes an automatic outta-conscious thing." He chewed on his next thought. "Weird thing was, when I waked up, them statues…they was on fire." His nose twitched away another sniffle. "My thing's light beams. It ain't fire." He swiped a sleeve across his leaking eyes and leaking nose.

Franchise toed the ground, combed away gravel and a patch of grass that nobody in their right mind would think could survive here. "You know what's weird?" With his toe, he etched a tiny ditch. "On Station Zilcho, I thought I saw Reef. He's been dead for two months."

"Yeah. Weird." Power Plant looked in Amaranthia's direction. "She good to ya?"

"Yep." Franchise followed his chin to Amaranthia yelling something at the dome and then clanging her sword against it. "Undeservedly good to me."

"What's wit' the red all the times?"

Franchise's hands came out of his pockets. "Honestly, I have no idea. It's neurotic. You know she eats red kiwis? Where can you find red kiwis? I got her to wear green once." He stuck up a finger. "Once."

"S'cool. Red's the best color anywhat."

Franchise jerked away. Huh? "Not yellow?" Power Plant always was a cyclone of astonishments. "Your whole thing is yellow. I mean"—he waved a hand in a flurry at Power Plant's near-golden hair, at his body to indicate the yellow glow of his light hyperability and the impact suit he'd wear if he weren't in a prison-issue jumper—"red?"

Power Plant's left cheek beamed slyly. "It's Mark's color."

Chapter Fifteen: And to Make Matters Worse

Breeng hung his gabber up on the Purple Nurple and wrung his hand fingers together. No. Not just the hand fingers, but the whole hand hands. Ha ha. He hand-wrung so vigorously he produced heat. Oh, this called for a pair of hand gloves from Evil Empire's Fuzzy Lovely Winter Mitts. So snug and fluffy, they felt like hugs from feather dusters. They were IP's twenty-first most important sponsor. The first choice in comfort for the apocalypses you scheme.

Things grew danger perilous for the Good Guys. Breeng hardly contained his wild joy. Lord Continuum had chosen him flawlessly to prepare-arrange the way. And these heralds, observed from the luxury of this work office, were the perfect—Oooh, no, he liked that pita place.

But now it was time to shift the heralds to their next task job. "Legacy, acknowledge. Launch the heralds to phase three III."

"Please stop spelling Roman numerals, entity sir."

* * *

"Don't do this, brother." Pincushion looked up at the Purple Nurple, who towered above. "Look, mind my personal bubble. I can smell your deodorant from here. I didn't know they made extra-strength bacon for men."

"I hear ya." The Purple Nurple saluted. "Wait, let me make sure. Do I hear him, Field M—Nope. He hung up. I guess I hear ya." He backed off a step.

Whoa. Pincushion couldn't believe that worked. He was glad, too, because the next attempt was to offer candy, and that worked only on Asinine.

He stood and circled around the faun. The faun watched without blurting a clash of syllables. Pincushion steeled himself in case of another vowel attack.

Who were these goons? He recognized Hearse, but the others were new. And off the rails, judging from the scatterbrained outfit vomiting company logos.

"PREPARING PHASE THREE. ENGAGING CHILL MODE. ESTIMATED PROCESSING TIME: THIRTY-FIVE SECONDS." The robot who'd reached through the skylight pulled back. Whoops. It stumbled and mashed a palm into the upper floor and crunched out the walkway and then thrashed a foot through the side—"RECALCULATING"—and then just sat. Was it on a sugar binge? Did sugar affect robots? Pincushion had watched a cookbot after a power surge, and that was weird enough.

"Are you behind these robots?" Pincushion kept eyes on the faun but jerked his head at the robot. If this faun wanted a fight, Pincushion could give him the 5 percent of fight he had left. He usually reserved it for hysterical panic, but he probably wouldn't get the time today.

The guy with the spiked nipples and no shame jerked his head up in a copycat gesture. "We're not behind the robots. We're right in front of you."

The diners encroached, thick, silent but for shushing footsteps and the occasional squeak from someone who walked lopsided. Pincushion smiled. They knew whom to back. He held a hand to the crowd, who squeezed even closer. And closer. They formed a circle but left a clearing around Pincushion, Incendiary, Catastrophe, and this new gang. "I appreciate the solidarity, everyone, but step back. I don't want anyone to lose an eye on this guy's nipples." He threw a side glance at the pirate conventioneers. "You don't have any to spare."

The crowd didn't listen. They never listened. That was why there were so many fed animals at the zoo.

Back to this new gang. This must be those Gooder Guys that had stranded Legion earlier today. Pincushion shot a finger gun at the one with the spiky nipples and flickering logo placement. "Purple Nurple?" He squinted at the Gharalgian with the rattling backpack. "You must be Workshop." To the left at the hoof-footed fuzzball. "And Klee." To the left again at the showoff with the fondness for being dislikeable. "The guy who thinks everyone wants a twerking demonstration."

"And I am the formida—"

"Hearse, we've met!" Pincushion squared his stance at the Purple Nurple. "Brother, you don't want this fight. And the spikes? Nobody steals my shtick."

The Purple Nurple advanced, fists balled, utility belt clinking, outfit ugly. Pincushion backed slowly away, balling his own fist. Fine. The Purple Nurple wanted a throwdown. Pincushion would oblige.

A logo paused across the Purple Nurple's outfit, one for the Dream of Making a Wish Foundation: "Helping Kids Come Up with a Wish…One Wish at a Time." All those words and wish-making rainbows on one shiny chest. It lingered, lingered—He thumped his chest, but the ad still lingered. Thumped again. "Sorry. Buffering issue."

"Hey, hombre." Better Than You lay a hand on the Purple Nurple's shoulder and eased him back. "Let me powwow with this dude. 'Cause how I pow, it always wows." He sauntered past the Purple Nurple with an intentional strut and placed his hand now on Pincushion's shoulder. "Look, my man, I'm Better Than You 'cause I do better what the people call"—he swaggered his hands—"everything." Tongue click. "So we can do this the easy way…or the super-easy way. 'Cause me, everything I do comes super easy." Wink. "Ya dig?"

Pincushion curled his lip. "Are you perpetually auditioning as a game-show host?"

"Let's do this." Better Than You lunged.

"Snoogle yippeee!" Workshop threw a sticky bomb that Incendiary deflected with an arm sweep, threw another that Incendiary deflected, threw a third, and then threw a squeal Pincushion didn't hear but probably caused an uproar at the station's kennel.

Pincushion shoved Better Than You away. The braggart reeled backward into a crowd. A pirate clutched one arm, another pirate the other. "Join us," they hissed. "Aaaarrrrrr." Nice commitment to character.

"You gotta pay to lay hands on this real deal." Better Than You wriggled, jostled, but the pirates grappled, grabbed him harder, slashed him with a left hook. Literally. "Hey, I said 'pay.' And 'real deal.' And 'to.'" Not so cocky, he pitched to the left, to the right, but the pirates closed in. And then a group of shoppers, a family, a mime. Didn't the station uphold a no-mimes policy? He checked the plaque by a pillar. Yeah, right there with their no-cereal-mascots-except-Count-Chocula policy.

Something wasn't right. This crowd was an eerie, silent multitude. Pincushion yanked out his pistol, blasted two shots into the air, and let the crackling reports subdue the crowd. They didn't. The crowd didn't even flinch. The gunshots echoed around the food court unheeded. A group of cosmetics vendors folded in on Workshop. A maintenance worker grappled for Klee. The Purple Nurple yanked his arm away from an old man with jaundiced eyes.

"Shoppers, diners, and men of the sea, I appreciate the help, but"—Pincushion fanned off a popcorn vendor who advanced in such a lethargic amble—"you need to"—and a unicyclist from the three-ring act—"back away and let"—crock, this crowd teemed thickly—"the professionals handle this. Or at least me. Hey, enough's enough." Someone wet-willied Pincushion's ear. "Why are there so many unsupervised children on this station?"

This mob didn't back the Good Guys. They showed no favoritism. They encroached closer, and Catastrophe, Incendiary, the Gooder Guys, everyone inched inward, met at the middle, back to back.

Sixth Sense remained above the crowd across the food court. Pincushion poked his gabber. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Sixth Sense." His nerves tingled waiting for the gabber to connect. "Hagen, fall back with us. This crowd's too thick, and the number of mimes here violates safety code."

"Uh. Yeah. Okay. Be right there." Floating, Sixth Sense yanked his foot away from a groping hand "Reading some weird thoughts off a couple of these guys. This feels…familiar."

A Gharalgian woman from the station's yoga studio threw her arms around Pincushion's waist. Not very namaste. A fast-food cook threw himself overtop Pincushion and slapped him to the ground. An elbow coughed the air out of his lungs, and when he breathed again, he lay under a smothering tackle he swore was a holding violation. At least in Virillian rules. Pincushion cracked his knee into the yoga instructor and wriggled out. He held his pistol at arm's length to drive the crowd back. "Next mime who pretends to yank himself closer by a rope is getting shot." He swung around in a three-sixty, knocked against the Purple Nurple's arm because they had folded in so tightly.

Catastrophe seized the air, and a column of the floor rippled like a wave to spray the crowd back. "I have no idea what crawled into this crowd, but we need to get out of here." Destroying the floor didn't stop them for long. The crowd already slunk closer again.

"They're creeping me out." Incendiary quivered with a brrrr. "It's unnatural…like a snail without a shell…or if a slug found that shell and started using it."

Catastrophe threw his hands up again, and the floor behind them detonated in a surf of destroyed tiles and split rebar. Hand gestures shaped a jagged groundswell that surrounded them, all directions. That'd keep the mob back for a few minutes, though Pincushion already heard them climb the outside.

A Terran shopper mounted the groundswell and leaped. Klee seethed. He bounced onto Workshop's shoulders, propelled off, and cracked a kick into the shopper's side. A Virillian crested the groundswell. The yoga instructor. A Trioxidillian dressed in karate gear. A mime. Mimes!

Halls lay under the Gorging Court, connecting the funeral parlor and the plumbing tunnels. Not the underground tunnels that intertwined throughout the station, but still a retreat position. "Catastrophe, brother, we need you to split open an escape hole in the floor."

Catastrophe twiddled his fingers. "With pleasure."

"I know. I've seen you in a bathroom line." Pincushion smacked a pirate who yaaarrrred backward into a couple of shoppers. Good distance for a pegleg.

Catastrophe wrenched his hands outward as if tearing the air. The floor tiles crumpled-gouged-splintered-crushed away.

"Fine obliteration as always." Pincushion slapped him on the shoulder. The groundswell around them bottlenecked the mob's progress, though shoppers crested the top of the groundswell faster now. Pincushion had to speak over the dominant racket of the food court. Not the people—they stayed creepily silent—but the scraping footsteps against the groundswell. No way to be heard without using his gabber. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact all active Good Guy and Gooder Guy entities in location food court. Skip the ads."

"Ain't gonna happen. Eat at advertisement not found, closest location computing error feet away. Own a deal not in database just for being you! Connections to entities Better Than You, Catastrophe, Hearse, Incendiary, Klee, the Purple Nurple"—good to know that name was on official record—"Sixth Sense, Workshop attained. Connection to entity Pincushion ignored, because that's you." Really, gabber? "Charging you three moolahs for every minute. Enjoy Party Line." Two ads? Come on!

"Everybody, I'll keep this short. We have two mutual problems here. First, what's that smell coming off Bone Burger?" Always make time to scrutinize rubbery food odors. "Second, this crowd is acting weird. We're leaving down this hole, brothers and sister. Good Guys and Gooder Guys both. Not sure how deep this hole is. Incendiary, grab Catastrophe. Sixth Sense, grab Hearse—"

"Hearse is no hitchhiker. He is a safety-minded traveler!" Hearse throttled the yoga instructor.

The floor likely rested only about twelve feet down that pitch-black hole. Catastrophe, then the Purple Nurple, then Klee and Better Than You dropped into the cold chasm.

A woman with a summer dress and ketchup on her face hopped off the groundswell's top. Pincushion cracked his pistol across her cheek and—Crap, ketchup on his hand. And all the napkins were out of reach.

"Never mind the drop. Everyone, get in." He walloped the woman again.

Sixth Sense, Hearse, Workshop, and Incendiary hopped over the speedbump of curled tiling and into the hole.

Pincushion fired a warning shot close to a Haralsian who had clambered up the groundswell. The Haralsian flinched and fell backward. Good. Next, Pincushion belted a mime. "No one wants your kind here." He reeled around at Tony the Tiger. "You either."

Now or never. He hopped into the hole, bent his knees to dullen the impact—holy crock, how deep was this drop?—when his feet smacked bottom. When he connected, his bones twinged, but he curled and rolled with the contact. Leaped up. "Sixth Sense, telekinetic shield to block that hole before they follow us. Catastrophe, brother, close that gap."

Sixth Sense erected a barrier that blocked anyone from diving through. Catastrophe gripped the air in a yawning upward reach, clenched, and—crunch—slammed the hole shut.

Thin lighting.

Silence.

Dust.

Breathing room.

Muffled thumps above.

"Something happened to their minds, but it's not the station's hypnotist trying to pickpocket everyone." Sixth Sense wondered at the ceiling. He pushed his eye-fogging glasses up his nose. "I recognize it, but I can't place it."

Pincushion stomped toward the Purple Nurple, grabbed his reflective collar that—audacious article of clothing—advertised mob lobotomy specials at a time like this, and threw him against the bumpy concrete wall. "If you're not behind those robots, whatever's happening up there is happening to us all. It's bigger than our feud. So we're on truce. Got it?"

"G-got it." That was all the Purple Nurple stammered out.

"Good. Because, if you don't, you're on your own, you opinionless billboard." He slammed the Purple Nurple back amid a ruffle of material that caused logos to flicker. "That crowd isn't getting through that hole. But these tunnels aren't locked." Slammed him again. "So let's move fast." Again. "Your Gooder Guys can tag along." And again. "But if you even blink trouble our way, I will come down on you so hard you'll wish you'd kept nurpling upstairs." He threw a sneer at Klee, at Workshop, at Better Than You, who sneered harder, at Hearse, who deserved it for singlehandedly emptying the supply at the Chutney Hut.

"I didn't know nurple was a verb," the Purple Nurple said.

Better Than You clucked out a single proud chuckle. He ambled over. "Compadre, if you want, I can tag along twice as hard three times as fast. I'll get this crew to fall four times as in line." He flicked Pincushion's earlobe.

If slamming the Purple Nurple against the wall weren't so refreshing, Pincushion would clock Better Than You. "Catastrophe, help a brother out."

Catastrophe caught Pincushion's drift. Better Than You's cheek caught Catastrophe's punch. The Good Guys had Pincushion's back.

Pincushion threw the Purple Nurple aside. "Gabber, acknowledge. Contact entity Organism." Wait. He grabbed the Purple Nurple and slammed him again. He'd found a new favorite pastime. "Organism, the situation here is unwinnable. We need an immediate retreat and regroup, so we're getting off this station. What's your status?"

"Retreat's out of the question." Organism's doughy voice sounded more despondent than usual. Had he met someone who could arm-curl a bigger dumbbell?

Pincushion strolled a few feet down the bleak tunnel, returned to the group, paced back. His footsteps echoed away in the blackened strip as inviting as an abandoned train shaft. "It's back in question. This is one giant snafu. We have to retreat to where I can get word out. I can't reach IP from down here, and we need their help to tame this. We no longer have control."

"That's just it," Organism said. "The atmospheric bubble is locked."

* * *

Organism gulped. He stared through the devastation one robot had pierced through the roof of the bay. A crossbeam hung, swayed, hung, and dropped with a wooden clank against a destroyed water cooler. His shoulders slumped. The distant atmospheric bubble was darkened from its normal transparency: no passage. Through that, he stared at the army that walled them off from escape. "And I know why IP isn't answering." And through IP, he stared into the cheerless, desolate beyond.

This situation was as desperate as every time he looked in the mirror and told himself everything was okay.

* * *

Pincushion's body lost its color. Sensations dribbled away as if into the floor.

Hmm. Okay then.

He sat.

"Well, crock."

Chapter Sixteen: Long Live the New Boss

Legion leaned against the wall. A wall. Whichever wall. This place was nothing but walls. And bread you smelled but never found. In this darkened tomb of a storage room—or bathroom or utility room or dance studio, for all he knew—he'd lost track of the entrance. He could barely tell which way was up. He looked up. Was that up?

He rolled Boulder around his fingertips. It caught on the suction pads of a finger, but he wriggled it free. One thing was for sure. In this room as warm as a frosted bar glass, Alaphus wasn't listening. Are you there, Alaphus? he prayed. He flicked Boulder away, and it tinkled into the darkness. Nope. Nobody was. His prayer echoed into a soulless black hole. Prayer was empty. Like this room.

He tapped his head against the wall. Well. Now he wished he hadn't flicked away his last friend. Instant regret. Like all those wasted years believing in Alaphus, an absentee god that didn't care to show Himself…or maybe even exist.

And where was that bread?

Legion cleared his throat to say something to Lowensland. About how that monster ruined his life. About how he'd seeded Legion with horrifying regret. About the pain he'd inflicted. Legion opened his mouth, prepared to launch his venom, and "I'm sorry."

Wait, what?

Where'd that come from?

He studied the floor he couldn't see and almost couldn't feel anymore. "All this time I thought you killed Sopher on purpose. It just never made sense, but…I…You…George, I…" He tapped the floor. "You're right. I didn't see it."

Lowensland was silent a moment. Then, "You used my first name."

Legion mulled that over. "Guess I did." Tapped the floor. "I'm sorry." Tap, tap. "For everything."

A blink of light. A discharge of orange-brown. A clap that singed his eyes before it made sound. An explosion!

"Yabbajabba maclabba!" Lowensland scrambled for cover in a room with no cover.

Thunder compressed Legion's skin-wrapped eardrums. Sound whistled and he wondered if he'd lost hearing and he'd had enough explosions for one day and he tipped sideways and he wondered what getting a haircut felt like and he cringed into a ball and he clasped his hands over his antennae and his eyes squeezed shut.

The door vomited jagged-edged debris across the floor and became a jagged-edged maw that screamed a jagged-edged blotch of light at the top of its lungs. The whistle in Legion's hearing shot up and then dulled. Muffled voices. He wasn't deaf. So he had that going for him.

"Oh, man. I own that door." Lowensland grieved the destruction. Legion finally saw things thanks to the floodlight. "Home repairs. I can never catch up."

The hallway outside cackled an alarm. Literally cackled. It sounded like a cartoon character hatching a scheme. It even choked before tumbling into more feet-kicking laughter.

Four silhouettes appeared at the gap, four people smeared into one shadowy blob. One separated into a person that scuffed into the room. Hands grabbed Legion. No, not hands. Fingers that stretched out and formed tendrils. Organism? No. Organism was too bashful, too gentle to wrench Legion to his feet like this.

Legion coughed. Smoke powdered his lungs and scratched his throat and smelled like burned metal and stung his still-healing cheek and singed worse than the invasion of light and tasted like a Space Cow milkshake. His hearing was settling. The guy who'd grabbed him half-dragged, half-carried him toward the door. At the door, a tattooed Logistican chomped a cigar and held…a one-handed cannon? Caressed it? Beside him stood a blonde Terran woman and a creature made of water. They played lookout waiting for Legion's new savior to join them. The new savior who wore sunglasses inside.

"Dude, it's time to vamoose," his savior said.

Legion was leaving Boulder behind. No, he couldn't leave his only friend. Boulder, stay strong. I will return for you!

"Who—" Legion's word tasted like a Chimmi Charcoal Shake. He hacked out a cloud. His throat still scratched, and his voice sounded phlegmy through a swollen windpipe. "Who a—" Another hacking fit. Forget it. Talking was overrated.

"Your dude Pincushion called us. Said you need an assist." The man dragged him between and past the Terran and the Logistican. "We're Blowtorch. We're your getaway ride."

* * *

Legion was gone, whisked away by…Blowtorch? Asinine had met them a few weeks ago. They had tried to steal the aswang Asinine had rightfully stolen and then those Gooder Guys had wrongfully stolen. Not so gooder after stealing Asinine's duly stolen steals. And apparently now was a bad time to ask Asinine's brain to word stuff up. Seriously, he remembered all that but didn't remember the name of that thing or that other thing or those other things. He needed to reorganize his memory's filing cabinet. Time to install a pneumonic device.

Oh. There, on the ground. Master Asinine found that Alaphan necklace Legion had thrown, wrapped around itself. He scooped it up and inspected it. The chain was intact. Wait, this was Sopher's old necklace. There was the bullet hole that warped the cross. It had saved Legion from an insurgent's bullet once. Asinine slipped the necklace on.

On wobbly legs and crooked knees, he inched toward the door, every step an uncertain shuffle toward besieged freedom. He'd have to step on it to beat a retreat, but that cackling alarm made him self-conscious. Not a good choice in hindsight. That was why they said hindsight was three-dimensional. Or something.

He sneezed out the dust chalking the air. Spilled into a dash for the exit and over a fragmented block of wall and should have tied his bootlaces but too late and why couldn't foresight act like its brother, hindsight?

Raced down the hall to steal a starship and—Something slammed the back of his neck, and he upended onto the floor. A flash birthed a galaxy in his eyes, scrambled his foresight, hindsight, oversight, insight, construction site, all the sights.

He wouldn't take this lying down. Not that he had a choice: hands yanked him to his feet and slapped him. His feet gave out, but the generics carried him away. Good. Being carried made him feel like royalty.

His feet scraped the carpet. He regained his sight to see that the generics dragged him toward Brainiac's lab. Opposite direction of the hangar. He detected the lingering poop and exposed building material. "Legion got to escape, but not me. No fairsies."

One generic groaned a "shut up." He bounced Asinine up his shoulder. "Down one prisoner. Boss will be crocked, and we're out our new favorite show."

"No season six." The other knocked Asinine's toe out. It had caught on a ding in the wall, something his monkey militia had torn out and the haunt control had yet to repair.

His boots chugged on a gash in the carpet when they rounded the corner. The cackling alarm shrank away behind them. He allowed them to carry him into the lab, over rubble that used to be the wall. He couldn't lift his head. The generics had done a number on how he used his neck. So had the lack of food. So had all those failed backflips.

A gasp. "Sir?" spoke a voice full of concern. Braindead? No, wait. Lieutenant IQ 23. Right. The one that talked. And that called him sir. And the other stuff his brain was too clogged to remember.

A lot more light in here. Blistering compared to his temporary prison. Asinine smelled fresh air. Dawn sparkled with sunshine and a toothpaste advertisement. The lab's retractable roof gaped open. The concrete cracks on the floor rotated when the generics turned. Shadows, litter, shattered glass, and the remains of a steak barbecue he wasn't invited to rotated with them. Oh, that was Asinine's favorite beaker lying there. The generics stopped dragging him. He knew because he felt it. Heh. Tip he'd picked up along the years.

Joining the concrete and rubble were two boots. The usual number. The boots rotated to him. He struggled to lift his head, but that chop still prickled his neck. He struggled again. Nope. Okay, he'd stare at the floor some more.

"The other one escaped, Francine." The generic grabbed a tuft of Asinine's hair and wrenched his head up. First the generics carried him, and then they lifted his head up for him. Gold-star service.

Outside and visible through the retracted roof, The Nemesis had finally been reassembled, standing grand and majestic. Ready for action and early-morning caws. Francine stood at Asinine, inactive datasheet curled under her arm, a pistol in the other hand. "At least we still have one. Asinine, meet the new leader of the Bad Guys." She tapped someone's shoulder.

The shoulder turned around. The body too. Nifty how that worked. "Hey, Asinine. I want you to bear witness to something. In two hours, I'll do what you couldn't in two years." Reef crossed his arms. A sneer blossomed, not trying to hide. "With me in charge, the Good Guys won't know what crocking hit them."

Chapter Seventeen: Declare His Name

Blackguard unfolded from a dot. His method of travel. He had teleported through space and chronoported through time to Station One. Specifically Station One's food court. A laborious trip because he transported all his subordinates with him, which included no fewer than four different body odors, two that he described as "piquant" and one as "suicide wing."

A caveman plucked from Terra's Paleolithic era, Blackguard was remade as a creature of malleable dark essence, material literally black in every sense. Some would describe dark essence as unset tar. It allowed Blackguard to shapeshift, usually molding sword arms or a giant hand when Brother Plaster needed sense slapped into him.

His chronoportation and teleportation began when he shrank into a zero-dimensional quantum dot and pricked spacetime. After emerging at his destination, he unraveled, spewing out his passengers, in this case seven of Lord Continuum's apostles: the former Bad Guy grunt Plaster, Fragment, Marionette, the canine-like and pustulous Gangrene, the former Good Guy pilot Kamikaze, Ripsaw, and Transit. Continuum's welcoming committee. As he unraveled, the final touches of his body formed. Blackguard's head adopted the shape of a fedora hat, and a thick layer poured from his shoulders into a trench coat. Blackguard's neck sprouted a collar, and his feet adopted boot shapes. His back did not sport Brother Ripsaw's "Unstinkify Me" sign this time.

Blackguard surveyed the food court with a "hmmm" like a dog's snarl. This place was a disaster of shambles. These robots showed no consideration for Lord Continuum's property. He stepped on something that snapped, raised his foot, and plucked out a shard of glass. Or for safety. Well, their job was to tidy what was not meant to be here. He would have words with the heraldic robots that acted like heavyweight boxing champs in this establishment. Now he would have to order out. The only place still operating claimed their fare was for rectal use only.

At positions as precise as an atomic clock, the heraldic robots had returned to sentry mode outside, as they were before their hammer-handed assault. Inside, the multitudes had amassed along the food court's border, those witless civilians who had patronized this space station's commercial areas and their buy-one-get-one-free sales. None budged. They awaited instruction. One of them farted a fifth body odor, a new zest.

Brother Kamikaze broke from the congregation. Lord Continuum had allowed him to dress in the media outfit he wore when he'd served with the Good Guys: a black pilot's outfit and aviator helmet with unbuckled straps dangling at the sides. These straps tapped against his jawline. No longer in his asylum straitjacket.

He pattered a few steps out and examined the food court up, over, down, everywhere. He inhaled the scene with a shock as if, years after moving out, his childhood bedroom had been remodeled. "What did you guys do to my home?"

"We have retaken what is ours," Blackguard said. He scraped aside a locust with his foot.

"I used to do my trapeze act from that balcony. No trapeze."

Those Lord Continuum had sent to prepare the way knew to gather here at the appointed time. Here shuffled two of the three from the main doors. Breeng and Wyvern. Breeng's eyes hungered for approval for his efforts. He quick-stepped his stubby-legged waddle to keep up with Wyvern's impressive stride. Against his chest, he held two takeout containers wrapped in his arms, his hands the bow of that wrapping. His tongue slathered his face as if to slurp up the last juices of whatever disgusting grub IP's sponsors convinced him were edible. And that grub was beige this time. And all over.

Blackguard backed away and—Huh? He sniffed. Sniffed again. He picked up his foot and examined it. Hrmph. He scraped the stuff onto a carpet. "Gangrene, must you leak pus everywhere? We have housebroken you better than this."

In an impact suit like a body stocking with blades along the limbs, Ripsaw kicked away a leftover cup. "This place." He shuddered. "It reeks o—"

"Brother Ripsaw, if you tell me even once how this establishment smells too much like Terran, I will remove your murdering privileges for a week." Blackguard chuffed.

Ripsaw slammed a fist on a table. It snapped off its neck onto the mangled floor. "But my horoscope said 'kill all those pinkos.' They smell like rotten spices."

Blackguard readied what he called his declare-loud-and-clear finger. "Test me not, fool, lest we make it two weeks." He fired his declare-loud-and-clear face at Ripsaw. Honestly, every hour he reminded the racist idiot to stop bellyaching. "And the rotten spices are from the Vegetarian Vampire Bat on the second floor."

Brother Plaster used his declare-loud-and-clear burp.

The last preparer arrived, emerging from that crowd of starers and farters. Steeple. With his hyperability, he had reduced the crowd to mind-numbed blank slates awaiting command. Those blank slates included the Intergalactic Protection army in close orbit.

Skin as gray as catacomb walls, Steeple lumbered to Blackguard, a miracle since the uncoordinated lout with out-of-proportion limbs staggered like an unpracticed stilt walker. His every step was a wrestle of appendages and a prayer, arms long enough that his knuckles knocked against the backs of his knees.

Steeple's pale and ashen lips slithered into a smile, and he said the mind control of the station's occupantsssss was eassssy. The robotssss had herded everyone to him, and now everyone on this station—and surrounding it—awaited hisssss command. Such tassssty minds. Now everyone was part of the flock, his adelphoi. They would do anything he ordered, such as have a shower one day. Well, everyone but the Good Guysssss. They had fled like cockroaches from the light, yyyeeeesssss, but he could ssssniff them out by their unique mental templatessss.

Wyvern took his place among the other apostles, hip-checking a position between Marionette and Gangrene. Marionette chuffed at Wyvern and cut the air with a J stroke. Her hyperability to control living tissue. Wyvern cracked against the floor and whined about a bum booboo. Marionette smirked. "Serves ya right for swingin' your caboose aroun' like a fit-pitchin' pig."

Through the food court's main doors trickled the humming of the plague plows. An automated service-tran slogged past the front doors outside and shoveled the fidgeting locusts littered across the pavement.

Wind whipped the center of this food court. Blackguard's heart, a dead lump of coal, leaped into a gallop. He contained not his smile. His face was a vague arrangement of features—shallow concavities for eye sockets and a molehill of a nose—but that undeniable smile swelled. "His arrival has come, flock."

The wind flapped, a disturbance of gravity from an invisible force and not a collective fart from the pork enthusiasts in the adelphoi. Sound came next, a subdued drone barely heard because the gravity blitzkrieg sucked it in before it spread far. Blackguard barely experienced it himself.

"Yeeessss," he whispered, as quiet as a breeze. Brother Plaster burped as loud as dynamite. Again.

And then it opened: a spherical disruption that cracked the floor, expanded, left its payload, and shrank into nonexistence, all in shorter than a microsecond. A wormhole in time. It left as sharply as it had arrived. And its payload?

The rest of the army: the Trader and Necropolis. Continuum's royal guard.

And, at the center, Lord and Master Continuum himself.

He stood almost seven feet tall, imposing like an iron statue atop a pillar on a hill. He crossed his arms, those arms as thick as barrels. Navy-blue pants that caught the slightest glimmer of light. A short-sleeved button-up fastened to the third-to-last button. No hair atop his granite head.

His greeting was another dynamite blast from Brother Plaster's gullet. Brother Plaster, calm your stomach.

Blackguard dropped into a half-knee bend. "My master." He examined the floor. This place needed sweeping. "I hope we have prepared your way sufficiently." Much sweeping.

Continuum breathed a hmph like the growl of an avalanche. If anyone's voice sounded lower and more ominous than Blackguard's, it was Continuum's.

Boots scrambled feverishly along the tile. Blackguard tilted his head sideways as Breeng flurried up, so eager to fall at Continuum's feet he nearly broke an ankle diving to a kneel. "My noble lord and master, I've place-prepared your way. Legacy is computer-installed as you have commanded, and your heralds have taken arrangement position. Unfortunately the Incendiary gear suit has escaped." With realization, Breeng's gasp jostled over a panting speedbump. He thrust out two takeout containers, which dribbled blood and the texture of decay and MSG. "But here. I brought you the aswang." He kept licking that mouth. "I've served well, have I not, my master?" He was as excited as a puppy salivating over a treat. Hopefully he didn't have a weak bladder.

Continuum knelt and smiled down at the squat Breeng. "You have performed excellently, Servant Breeng." He took the takeout containers and handed them to Brother Trader. Brother Trader looked less hungry now.

Continuum placed his hands over Breeng's simpering cheeks and lifted that simpleton's gaze to his own. Breeng gushed a smile that spat a "hyuck" and a half-chewed wad of doughnut.

Continuum held Breeng's cheeks, ever so gently, palms on cheeks and fingers on temples. "You have pleased me, my son." He pressed a little more forcefully…and more forcefully…and more. A creak tickled Blackguard's ears, like a hinged door edging open. Then a crack. Breeng grunted, and blood seeped from his tear ducts and nostrils. Lord Continuum didn't stop smiling. Breeng's expression became a strained unease, the smile held in place only because he knew not what was happening. "I release you from your service. You may now have eternal rest." And then a crunch, like an eggshell flattening.

Continuum's hands clapped together.

Breeng dropped.

Continuum shuddered at the sight. "Servant Breeng, how proud you have made me." He wiped his soiled hands on Breeng’s uniform. "You have attended your duties well, even though we purposely taught you to talk wrong and told you you were of average height." He stood.

"Rise, Blackguard. Come." Continuum trod toward the front doors of this food court, his footfalls so very noble. Blackguard hopped to his feet and followed. They reached the doors and peered out at the front lawn, the welcoming fountain in front of the lobby building, the parking sections with scattered mass-trans, civ-trans, and one gas-guzzler that had brought that annoying traveling circus here. Its front hood wore a giant clown mask, and its horn would blare a "hooah" at stop-sign skippers.

Lord Continuum scanned the landscape slowly left to right, as if preparing to paint it from memory. He flicked his wrist—

—and the ground by the fountain exploded, sprayed apart as a colossal stone structure spewed from beneath. The structure scaled the sky with an encompassing clamor that disgorged into infinity. A quake gripped the station, more magnificent than even the lumbering of the heralds.

Plucked from underground using a trick of gravity, the construct finished soaring, a thirty-foot fortress. Spanning thousands of meters, it burst apart the geography, remodeled the hemisphere, and possibly rattled Station One back and forth in orbit.

Tranquility fell.

Lord Continuum's castle, inside it his throne.

Continuum faced his congregation. "The time has come, my flock. Now we begin our dominance." His thunderclap voice spoke like the inaugural boom of a storm. "From here, we take our rightful honor as rulers of spacetime. Let no one stand against us. In one loud voice—and one loud burp, Servant Plaster—"

"Hear, hear," Plaster chuckled.

"—we will vanquish our adversaries. The warriors of this time—the Good Guys, the Bad Guys, Intergalactic Protection, the Logistican Military Establishment for the Defeat of Opposing Military Establishments—cannot stop us."

A mouse squeaked out from hiding, probably an escaped part of an establishment's combo meal. Continuum watched. And then, so quietly Blackguard was sure only he heard, Continuum said, "The best-laid plans of mice"—Continuum elegantly pressed his heavy boot down and sprayed a tiny red splotch—"and men."

Back up to his flock. "What do the troglodytes of this era say when they engage in war?"

Brother Plaster revved a throat-clearing gob of phlegm out. He'd better not have done that while riding inside Blackguard. "Let's bring the pain." At least it wasn't a burp.

"Yes. Let us bring the pain"—Continuum's smile grew ever so slightly—"and take what is ours.

THE END IS HERE

NEXT BOOK:

To them this universe belongs.

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

- Your Favorite Table of Contents

- Available on the Author's Super-Awesome Site

- Chapter One: Hunting Season
- Chapter Two: Breathe through the Pain
- Chapter Three: The Wrong Kind of Wanted

- Chapter Four: A Group of Robots Is Called a Marching Band

- Chapter Five: First Priority—Establish the Pee Corner

- Chapter Six: Okay, Don't Freak Out about the Mess

- Chapter Seven: Meanwhile, Playing in Traffic…

- Chapter Eight: If This Space Station's a-Rockin'…

- Chapter Nine: So Things Got Tense, Words Were Said, Feelings Were Hurt

- Chapter Ten: Just Put up a Slippery when Wet Sign

- Chapter Eleven: Putting the Finishing Touches on the Crazy Train

- Chapter Twelve: Drive Me Once, Shame on You

- Chapter Thirteen: There Must Be a Single Shred of Hope Lying around Here Somewhere

- Chapter Fourteen: I Can See My House from Here

- Chapter Fifteen: And to Make Matters Worse
- Chapter Sixteen: Long Live the New Boss
- Chapter Seventeen: Declare His Name
- About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once