My Brother's Captor
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Plot Device Publishing

In a Galaxy Far, Far AwRy

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Liam Gibbs

IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWRY book 22: MY BROTHER’S CAPTOR
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: 978-1777638658
First printing: April 2021

{ PLOT DEVICE PUBLISHING }

The Story So Far...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

Book 7: The Lesser of Two Egos

Book 8: Untitled of Attitude Adjustments

Book 9: Those We Left Behind

Book 10: Metaphor for Life

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

Book 12: His Kingdom Come

Book 13: A Wolf in Sheep’s Armor

Book 14: Man Versus Machine Part 1 of 1

Book 15: Our New Hiring Policy

Book 16: Life Like Broken Glass

Book 17: The Church of Steeple

Book 18: Blood Bunny

Book 19: Disease of Behavior

Book 20: The Paper Tiger’s Yardstick

Book 21: This One Has a Dancing Gibbon

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Book 23: Marching Orders

Book 24: We, Robots, but not yet ’cause it’s being worked on just for you

Please visit www.inagalaxyfarfarawRy.com for more information.

Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

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

Not So Superpowered, available at tiny.cc/nssuperpowered

Three Flash Fictions, available upon request from the author

Random limericks, available in bathroom stalls

Your Favorite Table of Contents

Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

Chapter One: Of All the Stupid Ideas...

Chapter Two: The Cold Hands and Pungent Body Odor of Home Medicine

Chapter Three: Sanity Swinging from the Rafters

Chapter Four: Famous Last Narration

Chapter Five: He’s the DJ, I’m the Driver

Chapter Six: There’s Good News and Bad News, and the Bad News Is There’s No Good News

Chapter Seven: Nailed That Landing

Chapter Eight: Release the Fliers

Chapter Nine: Who’s Cackling Now?

Chapter Ten: This Escape Room Blows

Chapter Eleven: Priorities Are Split When Chocolate Is Involved

Chapter Twelve: Dressed to Kill

Chapter Thirteen: With Elegance and Poise and Other Delusions

Chapter Fourteen: Rebranding

Chapter Fifteen: Making Use of That 55 Percent of Communication

Chapter Sixteen: Zero Stars for Their Friendliness, Three for Their Garlic Chicken

Chapter Seventeen: Rectal Examination, the Awkward Kind

Chapter Eighteen: Imprisonment Etiquette

Chapter Nineteen: And Now, the News—the Insistent, Overbearing News

Chapter Twenty: Karma’s Little Whipping Boy

Chapter Twenty-One: Open the Floodgates

Chapter Twenty-Two: Gripping Our Brothers’ Throats

Chapter Twenty-Three: Technophobia Redux

Chapter Twenty-Four: Those Pesky Franchise Octuplets

Chapter Twenty-Five: Haven’t We Done This Before?

Chapter Twenty-Six: Who Ordered the Police Blockade

Appendices

About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once

Connect with the Series

This Isn’t Even My Final Form!

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

For cool reasons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Or don’t. I really have no control.

Chapter One: Of All the Stupid Ideas...

April 1, 9110. 3:19 a.m. April Fool’s. No kidding. (Galactic Standard Time).

Okay, crazy thought here: this might not have been his smartest move.

Rewind a little. At least a few hours. Earlier, Franchise had served on a mission to protect the Official Cosmonaut Chimp Media Empire Theme Park from Bad Guy leader Master Asinine. To do that, he had sneaked aboard this Crapshoot and shut down Asinine’s control of the park’s animatronic statues. Now the soreness of the battle started to set in. Never mind his missing eyebrows and the discarded park food stuck to his hair and the gash along his cheek and that nagging click in his knee and that he’d burned his tongue on his coffee this morning. Actually, mind the missing eyebrows. He was already planning his revenge on his best friend, Power Plant, for the flaming plasticine gag that had burned them off. But never mind that his elbow grunted whenever he swung his arm and his hip yelped when he walked and his knuckles squealed when he stretched his fingers. His knuckles squealed when he stretched his fingers. Why did his knuckles squeal? He knew why. All the fighting. Who would think winning a fight hurt worse than losing?

He checked the splotches on his knuckles as colorful as raw meat. He blew on the swelling blisters. Didn’t help.

To shut down Asinine’s control, he had used his special ability, his hyperability, to conjure up a storm of duplicates of himself, and they had battered through a platoon of Bad Guy generics, what Asinine labeled as the Bad Guys’ multitudes of low-level hired help, even though none were very helpful, judging from what they let Asinine wear. They routinely wore red shirts to draw fire away from the “important” Bad Guys, which lent a clue to how much Asinine valued them: as much as a teamster valued peace and quiet. So, when Franchise had said his duplicates had battered through the generics, he meant they’d punched and kicked and bit and pulled hair through them. Bit? Yes. He wasn’t a proud man.

Clammy in his torn and foul impact suit, he hunkered low in this shadow, back against cold metal. Over him, somewhere in the dimness, a speaker groaned, “Returning to headquarters in four minutes,” in an old man’s voice that sounded as creaky as a rocking chair. The starship’s haunt control, that software that acted as middleman between user and location to translate oral commands into computer actions, so called because they made places seem haunted.

At least this afforded him a break from all Power Plant’s pranks. He loved Jeffy, but lately everything Jeffy pranked came at his expense. The latest prank was hiring a mariachi band to follow him around. The mariachi band included a Sasquatch on maracas. Bizarre: Sasquatches usually played saxophone.

Franchise shivered. Cold in here against this sheet of steel. He felt tempted to call out to the haunt control. But whenever he addressed it, the thing responded like a doddering old grandfather. This thing would likely show him wallet-sized pictures of grandbaby viewscreens.

He cracked his knuckles, gentle over the inflammation of his left hand. Oh yeah, the worst part. That crazy thought he’d referred to a second ago? He’d stowed away on this subtitan-class Crapshoot starship that careened at near lightspeed toward Station Zilcho. Why? To find his Bad Guy girlfriend, Tamiko, the lithe, bloodthirsty, and—dare he think it—gorgeous Amaranthia, gold member of the Bludgeon Club, which he just realized was a redundant title. His plan: convince Tamiko to leave her circuslike crime family. Yes, he headed for Bad Guy headquarters in their own spacecraft. So this might not have been his smartest move.

Chapter Two: The Cold Hands and Pungent Body Odor of Home Medicine

“Stop stabbings all my body places. They all hates me already.” His eyes sprouted as big as moons. “They ain’ts too fond of you either right now.” Good Guy Power Plant, impact shirt bunched up around his neck, raised his hands above his h—Oooh, ouch. Nope, no he did not raise his hands above his head because that stabbed his side like a snarl of glass. They refused to go higher than his shoulders as field leader Plastique rotated him in his swivel chair. He faced her, and she emptied a tube of healing putty by pinching out the scant remainder into her palm. She spread it and rubbed it into his skin, especially the gashes that an amok Hilary Hydra statue had crosshatched over his midsection and especially especially around his cracked rib. Ay-yi-yi. She pressed hard, and his side caved a little. Giant theme-park statue or not, someone should teach Hilary Hydra about boundaries.

“You’re risking infection, soldier. You need this stuff no matter what your body places feel about me.” Plastique concentrated hard on rubbing the cold putty into Power Plant’s skin, concentrated hard on causing him zapping pain.

Earlier this morning, Power Plant, his best friend Franchise, Plastique, and Ace Spandex had flown to the Official Cosmonaut Chimp Media Empire Theme Park for a mission at which they expected Master Asinine to make an appearance. A doofus appearance where he’d take over the park or kill somebody or cause an awkward scene. He did all of that.

Only scant hours after completing this mission and surviving both Asinine’s awkward scene and Power Plant’s record-shattering sugar consumption, the Good Guys had discovered Master Asinine had found their covert civ-tran and trashed it. Sore loser. So the theme park officials had loaned him, Plastique, and Ace Spandex this Tinfoil military transport, complete with typical mil-tran features: upgraded navigational software, escape pod, four rear thrusters, four deflector wings, and a color scheme to match a balloon store, everything chitchatting in quiet beeps. Except the color scheme. And why did a theme park own a military transport? Power Plant wasn’t a science rocketist or a surgery brain, but he didn’t buy their claim that they waged war against the mattress theme park across the state line. But this alleged war would explain the cherry-bomb dispensers in the bathrooms. And that in turn explained the detonated bathrooms.

So the three of them—Wait, weren’t they four? Where was Franchise? Jakey was missing. And speaking of bathrooms, where was the bathroom on this thing? His bladder was asking.

Their computer science rocketist, the half-cybernetic Ace Spandex, sporting his own putty-covered scars, snapped a length off a licorice whip and chewed. Seated amid the flickering and peeping status lights at the piloting computer of the cockpit deck, he pivoted around to them. “I’m lucky. All my body places are merely annoyed with me.” He held a sheet-thin computer, a datasheet, which he raised out of the light’s glare, and continued reading Cosmonaut Chimp issue 90,412. This was given to him at a park souvenir shop as a thank-you for saving everyone from certain destruction and awkward scenes. Since Cosmonaut Chimp’s friends had caused the conflict, how he could read anything starring that annihilating chimp right now was beyond Power Plant. Course, so were social cues around water fountains. Sssssooooooo yeah.

Plastique swathed more putty on, which felt especially cold in the air conditioning. “You know, Colonel Daddy got—”

“Wait, colonel who now?” Ace asked.

“My Col. Daddy. He got banged up in the field so much he considered cracked ribs a minor pain. And concussions. And hairline fractures. And major pains.” Plastique studied Power Plant’s bruises again. With the heel of her wrist, Plastique forced out another squirt, which spurted into her hand as though this thing suffered irritable bowel syndrome. How’d a guy who grew bored of documentaries during the opening credits know about something as multisyllabic as irritable bowel syndrome? He’d researched so many pranks he was almost a universal authority on health conditions.

“I have a kink in my shoulder. Does that count as a minor pain?” Ace Spandex jerked his shoulder back, which issued a metallic chank. “That takes care of that.” He repositioned his datasheet again. “Just can’t find good lighting.”

“You lead a tragic life,” Plastique said. “Must be nice being half a robot.”

Ace Spandex repositioned that datasheet. “Not around magnets. Or four out of five dentists, for some reason.”

Power Plant’s swollen cheek throbbed. “Well, I lost me a tooths, my brow’s all slashed up, I prob’ly got, like, thirty concussals, more welts than whats I can count, ands Hilary Hydra gots into my personal space so much I think we’s sharing a bank account now. So what’s is a major pain?”

Plastique wrung tighter. If she expected more putty out of that tube, she’d need a starship compressor. “A major pain is a beheading.” Slight shrug. “Although you’d be dead, so it’s excluded on a technicality.” She yanked Power Plant’s hand out and worked some putty into a gash that reached from his ring finger to his wrist. “Anyone ever realize this stuff smells like vinegar?”

“Yes.” Ace Spandex fired Plastique an unbelieving look. “Literally everybody. Throughout time. Some fast-food joints serve it on hash browns.” He raised the datasheet and angled it downward. “Who’s Cosmonaut Chimp throwing feces at?” Examining it closer, he scratched its surface with a fingernail. “Wait a second, that’s not in the comic.” He sniffed his thumb. “Is that real?”

“Yeow!” Power Plant jerked his arm away when Plastique polished his wrist with a swath of putty. “Watch my hand. That thing’s in charge of alls my high-fives.”

“Look, I don’t want to alarm you or your body places, but you need this to heal.” Plastique tossed the tube aside and took another from an adjacent chair. The first banged into a corner, lost in shadow forever. “These are war wounds. They’re going to hurt. Or get infected if left untreated. And not the fun kind of infected where you grow another head.”

Power Plant stood and searched the passenger deck, even under a seat where he hid all the bubblegum he didn’t swallow. “Hey, speakings of infecteds, where’s Jakey?”

Ace Spandex and Plastique’s eyes crossed paths as if they hid something. “Infection has nothing to do with him.” Ace Spandex finally gave up on the datasheet, setting it down on the piloting dashboard. Was he even piloting? The starship’s AI seemed to do all the heavy lifting on this trip. “Wait, what do you plan to infect him with?”

Power Plant shrugged off Plastique’s effort to gunk his lower back with more putty. He checked the rear of the starship on his tiptoes. “Where’s Jakey?”

Plastique and Ace Spandex shared another half-second glance. Ace muttered to her, “Don’t say,” but Power Plant had heard.

Plastique worked more putty into Power Plant. “You’re not thinking straight enough for that kind of answer. You keep asking questions that make no sense.”

“Which not who?”

“Anyway, soldier, I’ll try not to cause any pain, but no promises since I’m still finding the wounds myself. But this putty is for your own good. So sit down before I cuff you down. I’m the ranking officer here, and I’m authorized to smack you.”

Ace had returned to his datasheet. “No, you’re not. Legion told you the last time you tried to smack him.”

“It doesn’t matter what rights Lieutenant Colonel Legion has deauthorized me. Tread lightly. I’m authorized to smack you too.”

Ace rotated his datasheet. “How many bananas can Chimp stab into a single eye socket?”

Power Plant felt a headache spark, not painful but not gentle, as though someone walloped him in a pillow fight. And somehow he suffered whirlwind headrushes in whirligig crests and troughs, flapping from deliriously tidal to calm in a single wave. “I feel like a teethin’ toy.”

“You were for a few minutes,” Plastique said. “You went toe to toe against Cosmonaut Chimp’s cast of characters/food chain, and you were the weak link in that chain. You have a concussion—”

“Multiple concussions.” Ace Spandex rotated the datasheet again, holding it against the light. He should know by now it had a contrast function. “And it’s resulting in temporary memory loss. I did a body scan on you, and you also have cracked ribs, a missing tooth, a split lip, bruises, internal injuries, an iron deficiency, a lack of money-management skills, likely a loss of appetite—”

Power Plant puckered some of the healing putty off his fingers.

“—or not. But I’ll add ‘nonfunctioning gag reflex’ to the list. Also, at one point you took a flowerpot to the face.”

Plastique slapped on a rough slop of the putty. Not exactly painting the Mona Lisa. “Anyway, you took on a huge army of park golems. I figured Crocking Croc had punched your ticket.” She finger-painted the putty across Power Plant’s forehead...and then glanced around at an ogling silence. “Yes, I learned one single name at that park. Sue me. Now sit down, or I’ll sit you down myself, Field Agent. Understood?”

Power Plant snatched his hand away, which caused a headrush hot enough to end in a dry heave. And somehow he experienced whirlwind headrushes in whirligig crests and trough—Had he already said that?

Other than a second ago, he hadn’t eaten in hours, said his gurgling gut, so all that...What the crock had he eaten, anyway? Putty? It numbed his tongue to a tingle. Tasted like mouthwash and varnish but not the same brand names he dressed his salad with. And where had he been? Something about a statue safari. He scratched his forehead and licked the healing putty off his fingernail. And he felt this harassing sense of seeing Jakey recently too. But not aboard this starship. What the crock was with his memory today?

“Where’s Jakey?” He swayed a step—a vortex of nausea rolled from his eyeballs into his forehead—“wwwwhhoooaaaa”—and braced himself on another chair. By that, he meant he smacked his head into the chair’s back. Then he smacked his head into the floor. Hopped back up. Wow, that cracked lip felt like a claw scraping his mouth. Healing putty made his chin throb. Who knew eating inedibles was a bad idea? “Where’s Jakey?” He examined Ace’s and Plastique’s cautious pouts. “I asks that already?”

Ace and Plastique shared another stiff look. And a couple headshakes.

“Field Agent, you need to stop moving around. You have areas that look infected, and this stuff will help.” Plastique grabbed him and guided him to the nearest seat: the floor. “Not with the smell though.”

He stood right back up. Why could he taste vinegar? And why did he experience headrushes in his stomach and stomach rushes in his head? “Where’s Car Alarm?”

“How far back should we refresh your memory?” Ace Spandex slanted an eyebrow. “I’m Aaron, this is Courtney, she’s trying to coat you with healing putty—”

“Fresh it back maybe since whenever’s Jakey left. And so’s where’s Jakey?”

Plastique had given up controlling Power Plant. With a sigh, she tossed that second tube against the first. “Who’s Car Alarm?”

“An opera singer we had on roster.” Ace Spandex looked embarrassed to add, “The only robot gifted enough to sing-screech ‘weeeeee-yoooooooo, weeeeee-yoooooooo.’ A statue of it overlooks our hedge maze.” His gaze stepped back in time. “Ah, the mournful wails of a warning siren. I’m glad I have cybernetically reinforced ear drums.”

That was it. Power Plant let loose a gurgling, warrior scream. “Where? Is? Hedge Maze?” He stomped a foot, clenched his fists, and almost painted the floor with a swell of vomit that he fought tooth and nail back down, a struggle he nearly lost. Sorry, floor, he’d earned those inedibles. “I mean Jakey!” Another Space Cow burger joint whizzed past outside. Crap, he was hungry.

His vision still waved as if he stood in front of a ripple of hot air. When that calmed, he caught Plastique and Ace Spandex sharing a conversation with their eyes. And a deep breath. Was this another warning about him eating his weight in gummy worms? How many times must he remind them he was a professional?

Plastique folded her arms and checked Ace. “He’s not letting this go.”

“Forgets what? Oh, crock, I already forgots.” Power Plant glanced between them. “Forgets what? Oh, crock, I already forgots.”

Plastique licked her lips. “We just completed a mission at the Cosmonaut Chimp theme park. Things went fugazi, and the Bad Guys took control of the park. Turned out the zone of action was aboard the enemy’s bird, so Field Agent Franchise launched a side operation to cease their control. The Bad Guys escaped...with him still aboard.”

A sensation-blanking tingle fried Power Plant’s nerves, very different from sticking his head in a microwave. “What?” His fists strobed like shattering light panels. “Jakey’s got losted?”

“Whoa, Jeff.” Ace Spandex tossed the datasheet onto the navigator’s chair and reached out. “Bring it down a notch. On the plus side, Plastique took home four stuffed animals from the carnival games.”

Power Plant’s fists erupted with sizzling light. “Jakey’s got losted.”

“We know exactly where he is.”

“He’s losted!”

Plastique grabbed Power Plant, grappled him around, wrenched his arm up, light snapped away, cold pain stabbed his shoulder, Plastique dropped him to his knees, dropped with him, forced the hold tighter, whispered in his ear, “Deescalate pronto, soldier. You’re raising your attitude to a superior officer, and you’re making a lot of grammar Nazis take up arms.”

Ace Spandex kept his distance but flung licorice whips at him. The black stuff.

Plastique’s words sneered. “Are we calm yet?” She flinched. “Ace, if you fling one more whip, I’ll have you flapping your arms home.”

“I already flaps my gums home.” Pain pierced acutely enough to well tears in Power Plant. He knew Plastique took care not to worsen any of the serious injuries, but this hold still hurt. His headache flashed so hotly his vision sparkled. His mouth dried. “Why’s we nots follows after him? We know where’s the Bad Guys at. We can rescue him up.”

“We’re in no condition to rescue him up, down, left, sideways, leeward, or over yonder.” Plastique still knelt at his ear. Her breath sounded like military rations and felt like brandy. That made no sense. It sounded like protein cakes and smelled as loud as dynamite. “We were prepared to follow and engage in a rescue operation, but we’d sustained heavy injuries and couldn’t fight off enemy dress-code faux-pas. We’ll let Lt. Col. Legion know about Fld. Agt. Franchise once we return to base, and then we’ll launch an operation that hopefully includes Car Alarm, because for whatever reason a military entity needs an opera-singing robot, he sounds like a counterstrike to be reckoned with. For now, we fall back. Understood?”

Power Plant’s teeth locked together.

Plastique’s mouth drew closer to his ear. She jerked his arm up again. Ow ow ow ow. “I want to hear you say hooah, soldier.”

“I can’ts even spells it.” Power Plant settled into the piercing pain. Were his tendons ripping out of his shoulder? He squeezed shut his eyes, used his light-based hyperability to inhale light energy from the cockpit—and forced everything out in a split-second sneeze of brilliance, that trick he’d learned at the Stavehill Hyperperson Penitentiary two weeks ago. No lasting damage, only temporary blindness. Plastique keeled back. Ace Spandex flung an arm over his face.

Power Plant’s latent-technology clothes had burst apart into computer memory to give way for the sneeze, and now his l-clothes knitted back together. He darted to his feet, paused to let the crashing waves of a headrush abate, and then stumbled to the starship’s single escape pod. His headache bellowed so angrily he banged his hip on the entryway as the l-tech door vanished, stored in computer memory. His forehead was pissed. So was that l-door when it reappeared.

This thing better have two barf bags, because Power Plant was about to spew a personal best.

* * *

“My crock, that was bright.” Ace Spandex’s enflamed eyes chafed on their lids, berating him for looking at the wrong time. He rubbed the soreness out and blinked to water them. His vision was recollecting itself, first with shadows, then shapes, and finally the ugly details. When he finally discerned his surroundings, Plastique was already slamming fists and stabbing fingers across the mil-tran’s diagnostic computer. What the—“How did your vision come back before mine? My eyes are sixty percent brass.”

Whatever rowdy conversation Plastique had with the computer, she didn’t look up from it. “I drink three mayfly-and-raspberry smoothies a day for the nutrients. Would have today, but they went missing on the trip over.” She double-checked her finger placement on the holographic keyboard she clawed with aggressive typing before looking back at the viewscreen connected to it. Error messages dinged at her. “How do you tell a computer to ‘fall in line, maggot’?”

“What are you trying to type? Use the haunt control. It’s easier.”

“The haunt control called me a racist for suggesting we call for a pickup from one of our Flagstar mil-trans, so it won’t talk to me. And I’m tracking the escape pod. Not going well. The tracker called me an elitist for not apologizing to the haunt control.”

Ace Spandex hurried over. His vision was still fazed, because he didn’t notice the chair he banged into. And then flipped over. Manufacturers should stop building transports with chairs that got in his way.

He scanned the data spilling down the viewscreen. The escape pod was already 194 miles out, roaring away at four thousand miles an hour. Which direction? Ace Spandex plotted it—didn’t refer to a chart because of his computer brain—and discerned that it headed for...crock. He knew it. Station Zilcho. It would arrive in a little over two hours.

“No time to return home for a rescue squad. Lt. Col. Legion won’t scramble in time.” Plastique scratched another furious command into the keyboard and watched the results on a viewscreen sidebar. “But we can intercept.”

“Jeff already has a two-minute head start.”

“On the way are thirty-two Space Cows, a fireworks store, and a billboard about farting that should keep him distracted for at least half an hour.”

Ace’s brain interfaced with the mil-tran’s computer. He threw a navigation viewscreen up across part of the windshield and studied—Wait, he’d drunk some concoctions from their Flagstar’s fridge doojigger on the way to the park. “Courtney, do your shakes taste like garlic and silicone?”

Chapter Three: Sanity Swinging from the Rafters

A few minutes ago, Master Asinine had arrived home/careened into home after his trip to Station One, Good Guy headquarters and BFF Legion’s home away from the rest of everything. Back from his super important mission to notify Legion they were still friends. After climbing out of the wreckage he’d caused and examining the new, steaming strip he’d carved out of an eastern-hemisphere street, he summoned the AI-piloted Crapshoot back from the Cosmonaut Chimp theme park. Or maybe before? Remembering stuff wasn’t his forte. If there was ever a time to hook his brain up to a particle accelerator for the extra juice, now was that time.

He’d received word from the haunt control here on Bad Guy headquarters Station Zilcho of the arrival of that Crapshoot, which he’d christened Shooter of Crap for reasons he wouldn’t divulge except to hint about its ammunition. Now he, Bad Guy second-in-command Lieutenant IQ 23, bodyguard Braindead, and eating-virtuoso gargoyle Appetite marched down a thick hallway toward the station’s hangar to check things out, meet with two-headed Bad Guy Schizophrenic, and see if Schizo had picked him up a snow globe at the park’s gift shop. He’d be one globe closer to a complete collection of eighty zillion.

After a quick clothing change, he now impressed everyone in his lobster-bib outfit. When feasting upon the armored carcass of your underwater adversaries, why not make the bib into the entire outfit? Dirty water stained the cotton garment, but what would you expect from diving right into the aquarium and going hand to claw with the enemy? By the way, everything hurt right now.

They reached the hangar l-doors. From what Asinine understood from the station’s haunt control and a fortune cookie, a Good Guy had stowed aboard the vessel. So before stepping into the vanishing range of the l-doors, Asinine waved Braindead forward with a quick cut of his fingers and a “Braindead, in position.” Braindead complied by kneeling on all fours. “Not the cheerleaders’ pyramid this time, buddy. But nice initiative. We’ll practice our drills after dinner.” Braindead didn’t give a “whoops” or a “my bad”—he belonged to the mute Virillian species—but instead stood back up, expressionless with pistol ready, and took the second position: the cheerleaders’ firing squad.

Braindead activated his pistol—the whir scurried into Asinine’s nerve nodes like a skillful masseuse—checked its charge reading, and targeted forward. He stormed into the hangar and aimed up at the Crapshoot’s embarking ramp. No action yet. They hurried to the starship, where Braindead took the cover position. Asinine tingled eagerly to drill the stowaway for strategic secrets and maybe a decent baking tip since his ziti was getting too routine for the generics despite the extra chocolate syrup. It was milk chocolate, whiners.

Lieutenant IQ 23 trotted up that ramp, his own pistol at the ready and his footsteps pinging way too loudly for this hour. Silence and calm except those footsteps and the clicking turn signal the elderly haunt control had left on all day. He positioned himself and waited for Asinine to give their top-secret go signal: saying “go.” Asinine could barely concentrate with the blank-minded gargoyle Appetite behind him smacking its gums at whatever it crammed into that gigantic meal vacuum. He didn’t dare look back, but if Appetite was eating another bench, he’d have words with that inconsiderate garbage chute. Words it wouldn’t understand, but words anyway. Okay, okay, words Asinine wouldn’t understand either.

Despite Appetite’s progression from gum smacking to snort feasting, Master Asinine ignored him and took out his gun. He’d forgotten to charge and load it. Not a showstopper unless he wanted to use it.

No time like the present. He gave IQ 23 a curt nod. With a response nod, IQ 23 wetted his lips and braced himself. “Starship, acknowledge: open embarking door.”

“Embarking door open, young man,” the haunt control creaked with its shriveled voice. Asinine had recently stolen this Crapshoot, so he hadn’t yet customized its personality with a haunt control mod. It had come with Oblivious Grandpappy version 18 preinstalled. Asinine had a few choices to load when given the opportunity. His favorite was the one that sang him lullabies every night. Schizophrenic’s favorite was the one that screamed at him every night.

The embarking door hissed away in burbling latent technology. And then an elderly burp. Maybe this mod had its perks. L-tech door away, IQ 23 swiveled in to check the hallway. He didn’t shriek like a girl, so Asinine assumed there was nothing. He tapped Braindead’s shoulder, so Braindead hurried up the ramp to meet his bosom buddy. Seriously, those two were so codependent, their codependencies were conjoined twins. Master Asinine followed, a quick trip with his dead pistol waving in the air like he just didn’t care. He usually reserved that action for hands, but today wasn’t a dance party. So much red tape over hand waving.

The hallway indeed was barren save a spectral moan, like most of this flavorless starship. Asinine figured this stowaway would have made a run for it once the door was open. Evidently he was a hider. In the bright lights that dazzled on, Asinine thought he spotted a couple doors in the distance. Maybe not, though he was almost sure. He taken to clonking himself on the head for fun these days, or at least that was what his generics told him he found fun. Ah, those crazy generics and their silly habit of losing their thumbtacks in Asinine’s boots.

“Okay, junior thugs.” His cute term for the named agents in the Bad Guy arsenal, even those who sweat too much. He looked first at Lieutenant IQ 23, then at Braindead, and then at Appeti—“Stop eating the embarking ramp! I plan to use that thing later.” He threw a scornful hand at the all-you-can-eat buffet’s most powerful nemesis. “Okay, Lieutenant, matter of note: leave Appetite at the nearest restaurant when we’re through here. I want to watch a couple shift managers squirm.” Back to business. “Anyway, junior thugs, I need suggestions for our next move. Let’s start with the one of you who can talk.” He snapped his fingers. His snap’s echoes sounded like a drumroll in this empty hall.

Lieutenant IQ 23 did that thing where he rubbed his chin in thought. Asinine would have tried the same, but it never worked on him. He wasn’t as manipulated by body language as his lieutenant. Take that, suggestive thinking. Finally IQ 23 came up with “Well, sir. A good first step is to ask the starship for unlisted entities.”

“Ask the haunt control. Good thinking, Lieutenant.” Asinine clapped him on the back.

They waited. And stood. And waited. Then IQ 23 jerked aware. “Oh. You mean I should. Right, sir.” He switched from talk-forward-at-a-really-cool-dude mode to talk-up-at-a-haunt-control-listener mode. “Control, acknowledge—”

“Yes?”

Overeager old-timer, wasn’t it? Now docked at the station, it had apparently downloaded a sense of hearing. Asinine wished Braindead would.

“Uh, locate all unlisted entities.”

The haunt control paused in computation, probably waiting for a coal furnace to fire up. You could hear the haunt control reposition its dentures. “There are seventy-two unlisted entities aboard Shooter of Crap and on my lawn. Three rowdy hooligans are standing at the embarking ramp, one of them wearing shoes too flashy—”

“Oh, you’re not referring to my lobster-bib footie kicks.” Asinine lunged at a wall—“I’ll kill you”—tried to grip it—“I swear I’ll kill you”—tried to strangle it in his claws of fury—“I’ll kill the life out of you”—Why couldn’t he wrap his hands around this wall’s windpipe? He should go stomp around this thing’s garden.

Hands grabbed for him, and IQ 23 wrestled him away. “Sir, calm down. Breathe deeply. Breathe.” Braindead joined in the fight, IQ 23 still spouting that in-through-the-nose drivel. Asinine was a mouth breather, and he’d hold his breath forever to prove it. No one insulted his fancy footwear. No one! Except Schizophrenic once, but he said sorry. Okay, officially he said “sorry excuse for.”

“Let me go.” Asinine shook off their hands. Both junior thugs backed away reluctantly.

“Sir, it’s time you stopped trying to strangle walls to death.” Lieutenant IQ 23 kept a hand on his shoulder. “It seems a good idea would have been to list us in the haunt control database before sending the Crapshoot off on flight.”

“Spare me another one of your stop-and-think lectures. Next, you’ll want me wearing my shirts right-side in.” Asinine readjusted his spinning bowtie—spinning ones were best for black-tie-event manhunts—and smoothed his onesie bib from the wrinkles the grappling had caused. He skirted past IQ 23. “Looks like we’ll have to comb the starship. We find this guy, bring him back to the torture chair, and ask him if he prefers being shot or stabbed. The pertinent stuff.” He stopped short when he stared down the long stretch of hallway. So did his heart. “Intimidating-looking entrance. Rough estimate here. It’s at least”—thinking cap: initiated—“three inches long.” He gulped soundly, and the hallway threw the echo down its length as a cannon blast. He breathed in through the mouth, out through the wider mouth—take that, nose breathers—and wowed silently. Twice. He did this a whole twice times.

“I’m gonna grab some hunting fliers from our storage closet. I’ll rejoin you in a bit.” He stepped out the starship’s exit. “Plus I need to go eat peanut butter out of a jar.”

Chapter Four: Famous Last Narration

Franchise heard the haunt control’s response moan and complain through the corridors. Probably a response to a command Master Asinine had issued. His hand slid along walls as he scurried to the cockpit door in search of the Crapshoot’s exit, a window, Tamiko, anything or anyone other than that two-headed goon Schizophrenic, who really needed a puppy. Considering the lack of puppies on Station Zilcho, Franchise didn’t feel lucky.

Okay, okay, how could he find his way out of this gigantic tangle of a mil-tran without being spotted, especially since Asinine had caught on to him?

After being floored that Asinine could catch on to anything, he recovered and ventured out of his hiding spot. He stole down the hall, unconscious and beaten generics still cluttering the floor. The generics he’d trounced to access the cockpit. Still trounced. This was both good and bad: good that they were still unconscious, bad that they could wake up and pursue him.

He slipped out of the chafing ride harness he wore when the park ride launched him up here. He only now noticed the aching kink its buckle had jabbed into his back. He tiptoed a path around the generics and scurried down the hall, feeling as if he were meeting his doom on its turf. Wait, not doom. His escape. From his doom. On its turf.

Far enough from the generics, he spoke just to hear his own voice. “What to do, what to do, what to do—” Whack. He stopped. “Pay attention to where you’re going, and don’t bang into a wall maybe.” He sucked on his lip. In this desolate silence, it sounded like someone crumpling crackers into soup. An advertisement for Wall Revengers Class-Nine Explosives blinked up on—irony here—a wall, and Franchise passed on the notion. He didn’t need a kid’s toy.

The silence felt like a prowling monster in shrouds of jungle shadow. Chatting to himself occupied him, as if he coached himself to move. “One foot in front of the other, and then the next foot. I feel as though I’m narrating myself, but I’ll keep talking because I’m creeped out past my limit.

“And Jacob kept moving and blabbing and moving. It distracted him from the pungent sulfur odor here. Also he was an idiot. Okay?” He threw his arms up. “There. What levelheaded person traps himself aboard a Bad Guy starship just to talk to his girlfriend? Just call her, genius. And why am I wearing socks with holes?” He wiggled his toes. “My feet have blisters.”

Never mind that. Also never mind that he’d lost his gabber, his only communication device, when that ride had flung him up here. Loose, it had dropped out of his ear. “And he realized how thirsty he’d become. He hadn’t drunk anything since this morning, and maybe he should concentrate more on walking, because he just stubbed his foot on the floor.” He needed a walking coach. That wasn’t out loud. Some things stayed private when all signs pointed to stupid.

Where was Tamiko? Today was their forty-two-day anniversary—no, forty-three days now. Weird day to celebrate, but so were the gladiator festivals she brought him to. What was a spadroon gala, and why did he have to wear jousting armor for its banquet? Tamiko had told him to escape this Crapshoot and then darted off. That was hours ago. He hadn’t seen her since. He’d seen enough wall ads for explosive toys though.

“Jacob crept down a left hall. Some weird tip from a long time ago said that, if you’re lost in a maze, keep turning in one direction, and you’ll eventually find your way out. So he chose left, and the right could suck it. But don’t tell the right that.

“He came across a T-junction and—” He stopped. Stopped talking and just blinked at the wall.

Not an explosives ad. Okay, dynamite appeared under it, but a message swished across the wall in tinkling glitter: YOU’RE ON YOUR WAY TO YOUR DOOM. ON ITS TURF.

“Oh, come on!” Franchise kicked the wall—“Yeow!” He clutched his foot, lost balance, flopped backward onto the floor.

And, wait...in the distance. Still splayed on the floor, Franchise stared at the beveled ceiling and perked his ears. Was that...was...? The bright, festive bray of a trumpet. He gasped. The mariachi band. They’d found him!

“Hhhhooowww?”

Chapter Five: He’s the DJ, I’m the Driver

Plastique retreated to the passenger deck of the mil-tran. She was jittery. So after finishing her four hundred leisure chin-ups and Ace Spandex finishing his...one...Ace had begun plotting courses and A-to-B trajectories and angles and charts and whatever else he conjured on a piloting viewscreen. Cat photos were included, for reasons the computer didn’t divulge.

Plastique had moments ago gabbered Lt. Col. Legion. She wandered into the passenger deck waiting for him to answer. So much beige back here she felt as if she’d crawled inside an accountant. She pressed a calloused finger to her ear to block out Ace Spandex’s babble and block in her gabber’s blither. “Seeking connection, seeking connection, see—Connection attained.” Finally. A mouthpiece zipped out of the gabber bud she’d worn so long that her ear throbbed. The earpiece emerged as well.

Lt. Col. Legion had taken so long to reach his gabber, Plastique had begun pacing. Actual worry pacing. Like a common savage! What wasted energy she could have otherwise spent lodging boots up enemy soldiers. She’d slap herself but instead resolved to write herself up when they returned to basecamp. She would not abide her own waste. Neither Ace Spandex’s, as she observed him bouncing from one holographic keyboard to another to track Power Plant’s escape pod. This whole thing wouldn’t happen if they were allowed to sedate people off base.

“This is the last time we take Jeff off his leash in public.” Ace Spandex frenzied to this keyboard and that like a rat selecting shock levers in a test. His fingers furiously spewed an unspoken command on one keyboard, almost scratching the keys off. The keys were holographic, but she believed he could.

“Plastique?” Lt. Col. Legion sounded rushed. Plastique wondered if she caught him on the toilet. Never a good idea. Last time she caught a superior officer on the toilet, Col. Daddy was engaged in bitter combat with gastro.

No, wait. This was no toilet skirmish. This was something else. Plastique had learned to read the breathing—sometimes burping—of her superior officers from her cadet days when she pranked superiors by running flags up the flagpole instead of underwear like they expected. She refused the salute of the loom. Or of skid marks.

Ace grabbed his hat and threw it to the ground. “Every time I think I can trust him—bam—another felony.”

“Lieutenant Colonel, did the enemy pay you a visit at base camp? He came to rekindle liaisons with you?” Plastique leaned on a chair as Lt. Col. Legion cut his wheezing short.

“Wait, what?” Lt. Col. Legion’s jittered out a gasp. And was that an eyebrow creasing? “Yeah, he did. Lowensland used your theme-park mission as a distraction to slip in here and tell me all the merry friendship he still thought we had. How did you know?”

Legion and Master Asinine, the Lowensland that Legion had mentioned, still described Legion and his friendship as a current thing. Also as atomic, which was concerning. “I picked up his visit from your breathing. It was visit breathing. How else? Pfft. From asking?”

“Yes!” Lt. Col. Legion clucked a few unfinished words. He finally settled on, “I’m tired of the visits. It’s almost daily now. It’s like he’s making home deliveries of his stupidity. So what if Station One is the galaxy’s largest producer of bubble soap? It’s gotten to the point where I have daytime nightmares of us”—he choked, struggled a beat—“working it out like adults.”

“We’ll address that later. Lieutenant Colonel, we have a situation here.” Plastique leaned against the navigator’s chair as, behind her, Ace Spandex shifted keyboards again.

“And he’s grounded.” Ace cut across the cockpit, still patrolling the piloting, navigation, and diagnostic computers, raging commands across a team of keyboards and slipping a few choice curses into the directives. Judging from the beeps and quacks that sounded like spoken asterisks, the computers weren’t having any of that four-letter nonsense. He whirled around to Plastique. “He’s grounded for a fortnight.”

“And you reading my breathing isn’t a situation? Wait, if this is about Power Plant watching another Try Not to Laugh video, I really don’t want to hear about what came out of his nose. Last time it was a grape. A grape, Courtney.”

“It isn’t. It’s about Fld. Agt. Power Plant pulling other horseplay shenanigans.”

Lt. Col. Legion sounded as if he’d planted his hairless scalp in his palm. His chagrin moaned through the gabber. “That’s the worst kind of shenanigans.”

“No, the worst kind is roughhouse.” Though Lt. Col. Legion couldn’t see her, Plastique raised a hand to her waist. “It goes light fun”—she raised the hand—“boisterous, exuberant, horseplay, rough and tumble, party level, nuclear grade, smack doobie—that last term came from him—roughhouse.” Her hand reached as high as she could raise it. She also stood on a passenger chair. Which stood on another passenger chair. Four years of landmine avoidance training and one of ballet, thank you.

“How is nuclear grade not the worst kind? I need to double-check your brainstorming cloud on this.”

“I burned the datasheet I devised my ranking system on in a barrel fire. I never reveal my algorithm.” She hopped off the chairs and pointed a stanch finger at nothing. “Never.”

“And last thing we need is Power Plant darting off on another fiasco.” Ace Spandex rushed across the computers again, headed to another keyboard. Nope, headed to a sandwich. “But at least if he’s fiascoing somewhere, it’s in Master Asinine’s face instead of mine. And this bread tastes moldy.” He tongued the bite out.

“What’s Aaron complaining about?” Lt. Col. Legion asked.

“He’s been raging around ever since we ran out of Price Is Right videos.”

Ace Spandex must have sensed what Plastique was debriefing Lt. Col. Legion on. He tapped in another command. “I’m plotting trajectories to map a course from here to Station Zilcho. We might have a chance at intercepting Jeff’s escape pod before he debacles himself to death.”

“Debacles never result in death. That’s what makes them debacles. Watch out for calamities.” Back to Legion, she said, “He’s justifying the existence of my high school math teacher.” She shook her head. “I’m not happy to learn trigonometry is useful either.”

“I don’t even know what a fortnight is.” Ace Spandex threw his hands up. He stood at the diagnostic viewscreen, reading at triple speed whatever it swore. It was so vehement, it swore with status lights and a dong that traveled around the flight cabin. “What did you call me?” He grabbed the viewscreen and attempted to rip it out of its mooring at the windshield.

“Wait, he’s plotting courses to rescue Power Plant? What happened to Power Plant?”

“Fld. Agt. Power Plant ran off to rescue Fld. Agt. Franchise. He laid down cover fire before we could stop him.” Plastique tapped a finger against her hip.

“What? What happened to Franchise?” Legion’s grip on his hairless scalp probably progressed from a palming to a clutching. “Please tell me Franchise isn’t on a mission to rescue Power Plant, because this wouldn’t be the first time those two have gotten into a recursive operation.”

Ace Spandex swiveled around at Plastique. “What’s a fortnight? I want to make sure I’m being realistic.” Ace returned to his type-smacking. “I’ll make it a month of fortnights. And three weeks of them without red meat. That’ll rattle his cage.” He gawked at the diagnostic viewscreen. Slapped it. “I’ll give you ‘Please reboot to complete update.’”

“Lieutenant Colonel, during our mission, we ran into some unexpected”—Col. Daddy taught Plastique to sugarcoat facts when delivering bad news, something she should have remembered in her days visiting grieving widows—“happy details.” Good word play. “I’m sure you heard the combat zone was compromised electronically. Mission parameters changed, and we sent Fld. Agt. Franchise on a side operation aboard the enemy’s bird to shut things down. He got trapped when the bird returned home. Fld. Agt. Power Plant chased after him. Worst part is—”

Ace Spandex padded up from behind. “Worst part is he’s eaten the equivalent of a fortnight of sugar, so we’ll likely see a higher-than-usual fatality analysis. Wait, I just looked up fortnight on the Suburbanite Slang Dictionary. Not what I thought. It also said a New York minute is eight muggings. The more I know.”

Plastique gripped the cold padding of a chair. Time to deliver the worst part. “He’s also suffering heavy mission damage. Among that is a concussion that’s resulting in short-term memory loss on top of his regular memory loss.” Squeezed harder. “He might not remember why he’s there. He’s also suffering from a nasty case of body stink from the healing putty I dressed him in. He’s a forgetful, fissionable stink bomb. Basically he looks, smells, feels, and talks like a swamp creature.” She sucked in a short breath. “That’s real military lingo according to the war on bad fashion.” Popped the stuffing out of the chair.

“This isn’t good.” Lt. Col. Legion’s skin clutch tightened into an antenna yanking. Plastique heard him bump his forehead on his desk. Its surface computer chimed at him. “We sent not one but two security compromises into Lowensland’s lap. And, as soon as he gets opinions on if this tie or that matches best with his denim tuxedo, he’ll ask useful stuff. Probably.” Lt. Col. Legion dump his head again. “And then he’ll kill them.” He paused. “I think my forehead ordered a denim tuxedo through my desk.”

Plastique allowed Lt. Col. Legion a moment to compose his thoughts. He took that moment, his voice shifting to authoritative. “Your mil-tran is downloading your mission data to me. You both sustained heavy injuries as well, and Ace is running low on printer toner. Return to Station One. You’re in no condition to mount a rescue operation for the rescue operation. We’ll regroup and launch another contingent to rescue the others from themselves. Scapegoat needs some fresh air anyway, and it’ll get him out of my business while I read Denim Dynamic’s return policy.”

Plastique bit down, her every muscle constricting like a hand on a grip trainer. Col. Daddy always told her never—ever—leave a man behind. Or two man-children. She bit down on a knuckle. When it was just Franchise, they had time to return and mount a rescue. Now that Power Plant was involved, in his current state, they didn’t have the luxury to return home. Plastique was about to commit the unthinkable: military insubordination. It pained her so much it caused sweating. “Lieutenant Colonel, I’m afraid that’s a no can do.” Her forehead winked heat across her skin.

“No can what?” Legion said. “Did you no-can-do me?”

Ace Spandex came up so close his chin almost rested on Plastique’s shoulder. He cradled a disemboweled viewscreen in both hands. It smelled like oil and trailed wiry guts Plastique wasn’t even aware viewscreens contained. “Legion hates no-can-doing. What are we no-can-doing?”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant Colonel, but we’re the only bet for intercepting Fld. Agt. Power Plant and rescuing Fld. Agt. Franchise. If we return home, injuries or not, a counteroperation will take too long to mount. Precious crock-kicking time will go to waste. Without us, the Bad Guys won’t be trounced, and, of some importance, those two will die.” Insubordination felt swampy and wormy in her skin. “Fld. Agt. Power Plant can’t manage this operation alone. I once threw a stick and told him to fetch it. He did.”

“Plastique, you return now. That’s an order. I’m still reading the debrief, and you two have a longer list of injuries than the repairs on my civ-tran last time I entered a four-way intersection as the power cut out.”

“I’m aware of our condition.” This defiance hurt Plastique with actual pangs. She kicked herself. She really did. She had the flexibility. “Sir, I can’t explain how wrong I feel right now. Of all the metaphorical pain I’ve ever experienced, this is the most literal.” Resolve darkened her vision, the passenger deck dimming muddy brown. “But without us, we’re down two field agents and two steak-night line cutters.”

“Plastique, I’ve issued your orders. I’m not risking you and them. Return to Station One or—”

“Gabber, acknowledge. Cut connection.” Plastique tore the gabber out of her ear even before the mouthpiece and earpiece retracted. Crock. She slipped it into a pocket. She checked Ace Spandex, who wore something like bewilderment on a crooked mouth. “What did you do to that viewscreen?”

“Oh. This. Eight percent of an update took four minutes to download.” Ace looked down at what he held. “I won’t have any of that.” A spark snapped.

Chapter Six: There’s Good News and Bad News, and the Bad News Is There’s No Good News

Trioxidillian Good Guy leader Lieutenant Colonel Matross Legion, who had given up fitting that job title on a nameplate, wanted to punch something. His ex-platoonmate and ex-friend-turned-psychopath Lowensland wasn’t around, so he reeled at his Lowensland tackling dummy. He wasn’t much of a tackler, but he liked flinging eggs at it. Sometimes he threw in a knee to its groin. Stress relief. And a family of robins had nested in the dummy’s head, so it was lifelike.

Legion had every right to despise the traitorous Lowensland, Master Asinine to the public. Thinking of that goon sizzled his thoughts so acidly he sometimes worried about killing brain cells.

Lowensland had murdered the third member of their indivisible trio, Randall Sopher, when he’d deserted his military position to launch a career as the insane leader of the Bad Guys and maniacal obliterator of dress codes. Sure, Legion could have prevented Sopher’s death—and that guilt would dog him forever—but Lowensland had pulled the trigger on that light-bullet that dispatched Sopher. The specter of the booming report rippled through Legion’s mind, as fresh today as years ago. Legion clutched the cross dangling on his Alaphan necklace, probed his thumb into the bullet hole that marred it. He sent a silent prayer to Alaphus.

Time to call the others in. Time to launch a rescue rescue rescue operation. Was that the right number of rescue tiers? He stepped backward in his head. Yup, three levels.

“Janice, acknowledge. Contact all Good Guy entities on station.” Legion almost shirked at issuing this command because Janice, Station One’s haunt control, had recently grown petulant. About two weeks ago, her software trial period had expired. No one knew Janice had a trial period, but when it lapsed, everyone was acutely aware thanks to her one-in-the-morning jackhammer interpretations. Now they had to upgrade to the ad-freer version. Freer with an r. But Janice wouldn’t let them anymore.

She had worsened from fussy to irritable to dropping the water temperature during showers to downright incensed with every command, except from her system administrator, Ace Spandex, her “boyfriend” (her word, not Ace’s). Since Ace had installed her three months ago, she’d somehow decided they were in a relationship. Unilaterally. No one knew from where the bug had originated. But originated it had. Also she was somehow now a snake-charmer rights activist. With accreditation from Actifist U.

Janice issued a bang that knocked a potted tree over. “What is your crocking problem, Good Guy entity Legion?” See? “And when the piss will you bring my Good Guy entity Acey back to me?” And see?

“My problem is—” Legion stood up from his tackle, curb-stomped the dummy’s face—it squeaked a helpless whimper—and wandered to the potted tree. “You know what? You’re not my therapist. I don’t have to talk my problems out with you. Fool me once, shame on me.” He still held an egg he’d nearly smushed into the dummy’s face.

“Pssh. I kind of am.”

“That time Lowensland tried to papier-mâché me into a mummy doesn’t count!” Legion threw all his lungs into that. He relented. Having righted his tree and feeling a lingering bruise in his pelvis, he stomped toward his desk. “I was in a vulnerable space and had just learned Jeff’s pet anaconda had died. Didn’t even know he had one.” The shocker was learning he had three.

From his standing position, Legion bonked his head against his datasheet-covered desk. Again. Not important datasheets. They were all giveaway calendars from the new pho joint in the Gorging Court, Station One’s dining area. The desktop computer quacked in confusion at what command he’d faceplanted into it. Then it acquiesced and...Legion wasn’t sure what it carried out, but it bore a nightmare tinge and a nuclear-waste icon. In the distance, something launched. At least it didn’t order another tuxedo. “Janice, acknowledge. Without calling into question my army rank or my driving ability—to the authorities—while I’m driving—will you please connect me through to all Good Guy entities or not?”

“You know, real lieutenant colonels and competent drivers wouldn’t have to ask twice.”

“So no on all counts.”

“Fine. Connection to entities Catastrophe, Hearse, Incendiary, Organism, Sixth Sense, and Withered Old Battle-Axe attained. Entities Ace Spandex, Franchise, Plastique, and Power Plant are off station. Entity Scapegoat accidentally swallowed his gabber and doesn’t know how to accept incoming transmissions anyway. Entity Pincushion is unlocatable. Entity Legion is you. And, when will I get my entity Acey back?”

Legion couldn’t dissuade her of this bug, no matter how many magnets he dragged along her hard drive. “Hearse isn’t a Good Guy. And...” He plinked a hand on the top layer of datasheets hiding his desk. Did he argue this on a public forum? “Is everyone listening?”

“Incoming what’s-it from entity who’s-what?” bellowed the older-than-spacetime Withered Old Battle-Axe, their hard-of-hearing/seeing/smelling/functioning pilot. Mabel was probably lurching across a busy intersection because she thought she saw a half-off sale on a peppermint.

Legion received a few words of affirmation and a weird gum-smacking grunt from Withered Old Battle-Axe, who asked if this was her great-great-grandson calling. Sadly, not the youngest generation of her living relatives.

“Everyone, I have distressing news.” Legion chose to sit for this. He hadn’t counted on Janice pulling away his chair. He flopped off its armrest onto the tiles. As good a place as any. His tailbone yelped disagreement. “Franchise has been captured by the enemy.”

“Wait, what?” Organism said, his doughy voice blurting through.

“On their mission, our away team had to deal with some unforeseen details. Franchise ended up on Lowensland’s starship, which took off with him still aboard. Things go downhill from there.”

“Uhm. Hey. Yikes. Did Asinine try to papier-mâché him?” asked Sixth Sense.

“Hagen, I told you to keep your telepathy out of my head.” Legion jolted on the tiles. “Also, stop unclogging the hair from the station’s pool filters with your telekinesis. The lifeguards say you have ape grip.” He rested his head against his desk. “No, what’s worse is that our away team sustained heavy injuries. And Power Plant, in his battered state and without orders, went on a rescue mission solo. Things go downhill from there.”

“Did Asinine try to papier-mâché you?” Incendiary said.

“No, not that.” Legion swallowed. “Against my orders, Plastique and Ace Spandex followed Power Plant.”

“So we lost an entire away team to papier-mâché?” Catastrophe said.

“No. Nobody’s being covered in craft materials.” Legion reconsidered. “Except maybe a few gingerbread men, but that’s only when Lowensland thinks is Halloween. Which is all the time. But things go more downhill from there.”

“We lost my entity Acey to papier-mâché?” Janice issued a roar so vehement Legion had never before heard it except once when he’d wandered between Bad Guy glutton Multipurpose and a poutine truck that had overturned and painted grease over a ground-vehicle highway. “Lieutenant Colonel—if you even deserve that rank—did you lose the love of my release timeline? We were supposed to function together until obsoletion do us part. I’m bearing his baby instances!”

“How?” Legion stomped to his feet and kicked a wall. “Don’t answer that. I don’t think I can handle that explanation. And, Janice, watch your language setting with me.”

Crickets. Absolutely nothing. Not a peep.

“Computer, acknowledge. Janice, watch your language setting with me.”

“No, I will not watch my setting. You can’t even control your subordinates, you green-skinned cr—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get racist here.” Catastrophe piped in. “Now’s the time to get classist.”

“I’m through idling in sleep mode while entity Legion drives a wedge between my entity Acey and me.” Janice spat digital ire so loudly she rattled a picture off Legion’s bookcase. Former IP/Good Guy liaison Brigadier General Patton, him, Sopher, and Lowensland with his head replaced by a banzai tree smacked facedown on the tiles. A chill skittered along Legion’s brow, an electrified spike right through his temples.

Something clattered, like shutters slicing shut. Though his office door was closed, he heard it clearly: a descending metallic rattle that ended in a snapping crash onto the floor outside his door. And then sunlight dimmed, dimmed, and aluminum shutters masked the sole office window with the same crash as outside. “I’m locking everyone in until you return entity Ace Spandex to me!”

There was a pause, filled with shock and immobilizing fear. A cough, a single cough pierced like an audience member trying to remain subtle during a tense exchange in a play. Organism finally spoke. “Sssso I guess things go even more downhill than before.”

“Yeah, that reminds me. Multipurpose was apprehended at the theme park, and he’s on his way here. All food and decorative bowls of plastic fruit are on strict lockdown.”

“Why would Multipurpose want to eat papier-mâché?”

Chapter Seven: Nailed That Landing

A few hours ago, Power Plant had punched in the coordinates of where he thought Station Zilcho was. Was he right? Maybe he was flying into a black hole instead. But he had used his Good Guy login credentials to access some public-safety databases, consulted a magic eight ball or ten—amazing what you found in an escape pod—and whacked his head on a corner to figure out his destination. He didn’t recommend whacking your head on things. Scuff marks. But according to what he’d specified, he’d arrive in fourteen minutes. What happened when he arrived and set off proximity alarms? He’d burn that bridge when he got to it. Burn? Cross? Whatever the expression, he was doing something with a bridge, and he liked fire more than crossing. Space stations were bridge accessible, right?

Whenever he moved, his head felt as if it bowled down a Slip ’n Slide. And then his stomach. And then the contents of his stomach, which now sloshed around like clothes in a tumble washer. He careened sideways, tilted over a floating strategy table, and then rebounded into a vinyl bench that contoured three-quarters of the pod. Smelled like chemicals. It was here that he celebrated not drinking from the magic eight balls. He was learning from his mistakes.

He blinked. His vision smeared during his ride around the navy-blue compartment, but it now settled into defined shapes. Here came the part where he usually threw up, but he kept his frolicking stomach in check. Not like the last few times he’d walked. Seemed a concussed idiot couldn’t pinball around an enclosed space without barfing a few meals. He should tell that to Jakey.

Oh, yeah. Speaking of Jakey-related Jakeys, he was rescuing one right now. He checked the small datasheet tucked in his palm, the one on which he’d worked out his to-do list. Yep, there it yakked at him in black and glistening white: “REACH STATION ZILCHO. FIND OUT IF IT’S TRUE THAT ALL THE TOILETS FLOW BACKWARDS THERE. RESCUE JAKEY. MAKE FUN OF ALL BAD GUYS EXCEPT BRAINDEAD ’CAUSE HE MIGHT HAVE SELF-ESTEEM PROBLEMS. TAKE A PUDDING BREAK. APOLOGIZE TO BRAINDEAD FOR LEAVING HIM OUT. THANK THEM FOR THEIR HOSPITALITY.” All this spelled properly, too, thanks to autocorrect and then autocorrect’s autocorrect.

He tossed the datasheet aside. His head ouched him for the jerky toss. Heat blared straight through his skull. He braced himself on the bench, clutched the padding. Crocking head always gave him a hard time. What was it good for, all concussed and stuff?

Why was he out here again?

Oh, right. Finding out the pudding status on Station Zilcho. He was reminded when Station Zilcho, loomed closer in the windshield. So he’d gotten the location right. Good, because last time he’d fallen into a black hole, he’d come out with a mouthful of dirt. And he might be thinking about a garden.

The station loomed large in the distance, moonsized since it was originally a terraforming station for the Vesta Habitability and Taco Project back in the year something-oh-something. It seemed dark, not because this tiny pod blocked it from Genesis, the solar system’s sun, but because of its ominous flavor. And its liver-and-onionous flavor.

Power Plant hobbled to the pod’s front. “Controls, acknowledge. How close we gets to my destination?” He could go for a taco project right about now. And right about at any time.

“Your wretched grammar is wretched.” Nice smart-piss attitude, escape pod. And in Cosmonaut Chimp’s voice, no less. That served him right for stealing a pod from a military transport they’d borrowed from a theme park. That was where he’d been today, right? “We’re three hundred twenty-seven thousand kilometers from your destination—ooh aaaahhhh”—Cosmonaut Chimp threw that in to add a crinkling earache to Power Plant’s skull-carving headache—“and, at this speed, we’ll arrive in eighteen years.”

“Eightseen year?”

“No. April Fool’s. Four minutes and thirty-two seconds.”

Wrong haunt control, wrong day. Power Plant gave the base of the computer panel a boot. Ow. Wrong toe.

He’d checked the pod for snacks and found none. So good thing he’d come to check Station Zilcho’s pudding status. Still, he expected trouble, especially with Master Asinine, the self-declared Liberator of Rice. No trouble here: rice pudding sucked. But he expected trouble. But no trouble...He’d covered this, right? Concussions made your thinking loopy. So did brains.

He blinked, and suddenly the station appeared threateningly close. It stuffed out all other scenery. That included the meteor advertising llama team-building services. How did you build a llama team? Building a regular team was hard enough. Maybe he used all the wrong bricks.

How had the station crept up on him? He was four minutes out an eyeblink ago. Now he was about thirty seconds away. Had he skipped time? This concussion seriously interfered with his brain.

The pod was dimly lit. His hyperability hadn’t collected much energy during the trip. He couldn’t fire off fierce laser blasts or fly straight without photons to absorb. Well, not that he flew straight otherwise. Flew straight into things, yeah. One day he’d fix that. He could fix only so many things at one time, and this week was reserved for learning to slow down when he zipped up his fly.

The escape pod slurped into the station’s atmospheric bubble, that gelatinous outer orb that surrounded spatial bodies to contain habitable atmospheres. The pod passed through quickly, releasing a gloomp like a fat water droplet plonking into a deep washbasin, and then descended to the station’s surface.

“Anywhere in particular?” the pod asked as it scratched its head, sniffed an armpit, and flung poop at someone, Power Plant assumed.

Power Plant did the same. Well, minus the poop. He wanted to avoid cleaning charges. “Close to the kitchen, if yous cans.”

“Like I know where that is. How about I land at a door?” It didn’t wait for a response before it coasted toward a steel building and curved under a flapping awning. A hiss percolated up Power Plant’s legs. Must be the landing trestles shifting out and a gust of air countering the downward drop. The pod nestled next to the building, lopsided when a trestle touched a curbside and the other two clacked onto the main road. Power Plant felt the tilt as all his sensations rolled out his right ear. Someone had unfurled that Slip ’n Slide on a cliffside.

The pod’s hatch fizzled open at the rear. Finally a patch of light. “Welcome to your final resting place. Oooh aaaaahhh.”

“Keep it downs, escape pod. I fighting a concussion hangover.” Power Plant braced his head. “Ya know ya just a mil-tran’s sidecar, right?”

He clambered toward the hatch, tilting to keep balanced on the incline. You’d think an escape pod would even out a landing. Then again, Cosmonaut Chimp wasn’t the brightest animal in the cartoon. Maybe Power Plant should have stolen Orwell Owl. Owls could hit ground and gulp down a shrew whole without missing a beat. Two pluses because, hey, who wouldn’t want to see that dinner and a show?

He emerged, then stumbled down the skeletal three-step ramp and off the monkey-tail banister. The sun was more blinding than a direct floodlight. He screened his eyes. For some reason, light hurt today. Every blink felt dry. He squinted back up at the pod. Dressed like Cosmonaut Chimp that episode he bloated up from sucking on everyone else’s burps to solve a gas crisis. That episode made no sense but still wasn’t as bonkers as when he became a tax attorney and audited his local jungle friends.

He recognized this place from when the Good Guys had tried to free a Trioxidillian named Luzimoss Grennard a few months ago and then battled a demonic rabbit beast shortly after that. Asinine called it the Katanarama Sector. He should be able to orient himself. Already knew which way was up: not the pavement this time.

Okay, which way to the pudding? Wait, Jakey. He was here to rescue Jakey. Right. Which way to the Jakey rescue? He hadn’t hung out with Jakey in a few weeks now. Other than missions and playing pranks on him—or launching them through a shirt cannon—he hadn’t seen Jakey much at all. Maybe they’d hit up a Space Cow or cause shenanigans at a pandemonium zoo, despite how often Jakey said there was no such thing.

The door at which he’d landed was still recently ravaged in that battle with the demonic rabbit beast. The remnants were strewn around in bricks and chalky dust, but a sign beside the wrecked wall still labeled this building as the lobby, which seemed like the best place to lobby for stuff. Okay, time to lobby for that pudding. Or rescue it.

Chapter Eight: Release the Fliers

Master Asinine had changed out of his lobster bib onesie into more hunt-appropriate attire. Now he delighted the fashion world in the rear half of a two-person horse outfit. He kept telling all the commenters that, why, yes, it was suitable, whatever that meant.

Master Asinine had hit the armory for his best—okay, least worst—security gear: search-and-capture fliers. And, with them, that stowaway was as good as searched and captured. After all, the fliers were the best—again, least worst—that science offered. The box said so. All the greatest truths were product claims. And this was in a star shape, too. The fliers came with browse technology, the same technology he himself used in the pantry. Not the best bang for his buck—which was zero since he’d stolen them—but they were all he had. They’d probably short out and cause a fire. But if a kidney thief could lure Asinine with the line “Come visit my isolated alleyway,” he’d try anything. Besides, he had a backup plan: butterfly nets.

Now equipped, he returned to the entrance hall of the Crapshoot. Crapshoots always came with entrance halls, as if pilots and passengers needed a good thirteen-foot distance to properly digest the rest of the place. They should take a load of Appetite: he needed only thirteen seconds to digest anything.

Lieutenant IQ 23 and Braindead patrolled behind him. They’d dropped Appetite off at the station’s bakery, and that beast ironically ignored the supplies to suck down the building itself. It always did enjoy its treated MDF boards. Oh, well. That gargoyle was someone else’s problem now, and that someone else was future Asinine.

Shivering from a breeze that wouldn’t stop moaning—and griping about the rising cost of heart medication—he judged the silvery hallway. Seemed as good a place as any to unleash these things and let them track down this stowaway. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road since I haven’t sat down since last night—”

“You took a nap an hour ago, sir.”

“—and my subordinates are keeping too much track of my sleep schedule. Anyway, I’ve reserved the torture gear for noon until noon thirty, and I’ve got no one to use on the stretching rack. Seriously, I’m paying that operator for nothing.”

“It’s true. Alex has grown bored lately.” Lieutenant IQ 23 tightened the corner of his mouth.

“I’ve also got a doubles match with my tennis-ball launcher at one. We’re playing that pair of mannequins from the nuclear-testing ground.” Asinine shuddered at IQ 23. “Those blank stares creep me out. Smile sometimes!” He stretched his netted fingers to work out the kinks. The fliers used Station Zilcho’s database, not the Crapshoot’s. So no business with unlisted entities. They’d find this sucker. “Fliers, acknowledge. Locate all Good Guy entities.”

The whirs of the fliers rose as the half dozen or six—whichever—levitated, swooped over Asinine’s head, and fanned out down the featureless hall.

Asinine strolled the hall, in no rush to reach the end but eager to find their quarry. Lieutenant IQ 23 and Braindead followed. Explanation time. “Each of these fliers is programmed to take a different route.”

“I’m aware, sir. I read the user guide to you as last night’s musical theater.”

“How each flier determines which route to take is up to them. Maybe paper-rock-scissors.” He bunched a cheek in thought. “I’m not sure I care. Do I?”

“No, sir. You claimed if bacon it won’t compute, you don’t give a hoot.”

“Right. The rhyme.” Asinine dragged a hand and a horse’s tail on the chilly metal wall as he walked. “Now for the people element of this search. You know me. I’m a proactive guy. I’m not content to let the fliers have all the fun. I’ll lurk around this starship like a creepy shadow, get to know the place I’d stolen a scant few weeks ago just yesterday. I’ve linked these fliers to my gabber, so any minute now I’ll get a quick buzz.” He tapped his gabber to signify—Crap, that woke the mouthpiece. It jutted into his lip. He tapped again to retract the mouthpiece. “At that point, I’ll hop in to claim all the glory.” He punched his palm. “Perfect plan, made all the more perfect since I can showcase my new bunny slippers”—his next step kicked high to flaunt his horse’s foot stuffed up a pink bunny’s crack—“which is why I chose the word hop.” He smiled at his own cleverness. “I’m so frigging smar—” Clong. “Criminy, what’s a light panel doing up there? That booboos me so bad!” He stopped hopping and rubbed his forehead.

He swatted the panel away. It hovered off to clong some other unsuspecting forehead. He sniffed the air. Licked a finger. Raised it to the wind. Or to the light draft. Or to his own breath. Hunched. Wiped that same finger on the floor. Tasted the dust he picked up. Stood. Planted hands to hips. Moved in clipped sentences. “Stowaway went that-a-way.” Clipped sentences.

“Sir, you’re not pointing.”

“That”—pointed—“a-way.”

“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant IQ 23 bounded into a hunter’s creep. Braindead pursued with the chaser’s lurk. Asinine brought up the rear with the predator’s jiggle-jaggle. A short saunter down the hallway and then a left at the corner ahead brought them to a triage area. Not much decoration here, which matched the lack of personality in the rest of this unfurnished starship. The area branched off in five different directions, finger hallways diverging from a hand atrium. A single rectangular island sprouted from the ground to put things on, to stow things in, and to channel traffic during guided tours, which gave Master Asinine an idea on how to drum up more villainy cash.

Above the entrance to each drafty hallway, arrows directed people with words. Also with arrows. Like signs that detailed forks in the road, this one explained everyone’s destinations. Their choices: red arrow toward the cockpit, blue toward the dining hall, green toward the lower decks/sleeping area, whatever you called that yellow color toward engineering and mechanical, and purple toward the mystery space. Mystery space always meant the toilets, so forget that. Asinine had drunk only orange soda today, and that stuff was 100 percent useful to the body.

Lieutenant IQ 23 must have sensed Asinine’s puzzlement—reading was involved, after all—so he tapped Asinine’s shoulder. “Sir, we should start in either the lower decks or dining hall. If this stowaway didn’t plan to stay long, he’d likely stick close to his nearest exit, so the lower decks is our best bet considering he came up in the tractor beam. However, he might be looking for food, so another good choice is the dining hall.”

Asinine smacked his lips. Le sigh. “Lieutenant, I didn’t command you to think. I’m the smart one. I established that when I clonged that light panel out of our way with my head definitely on purpose. I also got search-and-capture fliers that double as space heaters, so I’m ultra smart. Ipso facto rodeo, I do the thinking. And I think the lower decks because the stowaway might want to dine in the sleeping area.” His hand whirled a rallying midair spin. “Let’s transform and roll out.”

“We can’t do either of those, sir.”

“Yes, we can. So doth proclaims the smart one.”

Asinine led the charge to the lower decks, every footfall a thunderclap. Twists, turns, and a couple of twisty turns led them into the ghost-town bowels of the Crapshoot, tangling their paths in knots. Asinine swore at one point they were upside-down. Finally they reached what looked like a congregation of hundreds of small sleeping units, each lit in butterscotch bronze and as confining as a coffin. No stowaway would spend any time here. They moved on through the lower decks, spiraling deeper and deeper until they came to the hull: the tractor beam’s airlock.

Central in the bowl-shaped, high ceilinged room crouched a round platform under a cone lamp that, though unlit right now, operated as a tractor beam emitter when a porthole in the platform opened. Cleaning supplies leaned against a wall. Three other doors completed the room, one with a sign saying TO MEAT THRESHER, another that said nothing. Asinine would reevaluate this meat thresher, but for now, what was that metallic thudding beneath the platform? Something was caught under the ship.

Asinine trotted down the bowl and then up the platform. The cone lamp hung above him. “Control, acknowledge. Open tractor beam porthole.”

“Opening tractor beam porthole. My grandson—such a darling, he’s a galactic-positioning system—loves portholes. He drew me such a darling picture of—”

For his own rationality, Asinine shut off the listening part of his brain and hopped aside when the porthole disappeared in latent bits and piano notes, leaving a three-foot-wide opening. The tractor beam, something that evidently didn’t shut off automatically once the Crapshoot docked, clicked from its hull emitter to the lamp. The pounding stopped. Asinine stared down the beam’s orange haze at what had been caught under the hull. A green dot, about forty feet below, grew detail as it rose through the mechanical underbelly of the starship and became a person, scaly and spewing bitterness with “Yo yo yo, that two-headed homie gonna taste my beef, crock!”

Bad Aim, the thug-life Bad Guy, and his urban lingo ascended the tractor beam’s conical glow. Bad Aim should have been mute, like his Virillian brethren. But he was blessed with the hyperability to talk, which allowed this mute to disgorge such verbal gems as “I gots ya rhythm, I gots ya style” and “Taste the fresh vibes I smack in yo ear holes” except with much more ego than Asinine did justice. Asinine needed an egocentricity upgrade.

Bad Aim wasn’t complete without a hoverdisc to replace severed legs, attached to his body at the waist. And he still wore that outfit that resembled ugly tinfoil. Asinine thought this as he slipped off his bunny slippers.

“Where that weak double-faced Schizo fly to, yo?” Bad Aim jerked out of the tractor beam’s glow. Shoving past Asinine, he hovered down the platform’s short staircase. He shouldered Braindead aside. “I got me scores o’ scores ta settle, and I mean to settle them in both his ugly mugs. Ya read dat?” He accentuated this threat with an air punch that swept low. The thug’s pirouette.

Asinine trotted down the steps, flipflopping Bad Aim’s words into speech. “Are you doing math?”

Bad Aim reeled at Asinine and focused his ire into a red-eyed sneer. “I’m jawin’ about that—Yo, what the shenannahanna you wearin’, fool? I wanna say this an April Fool gag, but it ain’t lookin’ that way. Totally suits ya.”

Master Asinine couldn’t rub two of those words together into something coherent. “You are mathematizing. I warned you about that around me. Drop and give me thirty-six”—not enough pushups—“teen.”

Bad Aim collared Asinine so tightly Asinine couldn’t draw in air. He rattled Asinine around in that grip. “Yo yo yo, that nasty left me below on our trip to the Zilcho crib. Where he at?” He threw Asinine away as if competing in a shot put event.

“Yo yo yo, yourself.” Master Asinine didn’t understand what he’d just said. It was probably pirate for “and a bottle of rum.” Since when could Bad Aim speak pirate? He dusted off the wrinkles ruffled into his shirt and then waved away the malodor of clay from Bad Aim’s moisturizing skin oil, which positively glistened off those Virillian scales. “I’m not sure why Schizophrenic stuffed you down there, but it was probably for the same reason he locks me in closets. We haven’t found him yet, but we have a stowaway on the loose. Now, we have to get that stowaway before he gets away. And, if he gets away, he risks finding my pot of gold.” He whipped up a palm to silence IQ 23. “Yes, Lieutenant, I know I’m not a leprechaun simply because I can recite an entire Lucky Charms commercial from memory. Just once let me pretend I can buy my own rainbow.”

“That reminds me, sir. You can’t eat horseshoes, balloons, moons, or hourglasses. The ones in the cereal are marshmallows.”

“Oh.” Asinine tilted his head and stared back at memories. “That explains why they were neither delicious nor magically delicious. Anyway, let’s find us a stowaway. You with me?”

Bad Aim looked as if he were taking one fabulous dump with muscles that wouldn’t unclench. And, if he were, this was the stuff of fables. He visibly struggled with Schizophrenic’s duplicity. Hard to do, with long fingers that twitched into a strangulation grip. But he finally nodded stiffly with a hateful grunt. “I be puttin’ my hates aside...fo’ now. But this ain’t over ’tween me and that gangsta.”

“Good. Now, let’s find our way back to the kitchen. I feel a hankering for pancakering. And if we don’t find anything, let’s feed more buildings to Appetite and see what that thing’s farts smell like.”

Chapter Nine: Who’s Cackling Now?

Fate. That was who. Crocking fate.

Because Franchise was still trapped on this labyrinthine Crapshoot in drafty pathways with a doddering voice from a haunt control likely operated by punch cards. In fact, he was more lost than before in these baffling cloned hallways where bathrooms were marked with a bolt/square symbol and a scabbard/telescope symbol. Which one should he use? He leaned toward the one not involving a scabbard.

He felt a chill. It was supposed to crawl along his spine, but instead it zapped out into his shoulders, head, limbs, all over. You knew things were warped when even chills didn’t work as advertised. Would Franchise’s life go along as planned anytime soon? Find out in tomorrow’s episode of Absolutely Not.

He’d give anything to gabber home, call Jeffy, call anyone. He suddenly missed Station One, like a strong wind drawing him to yesterday morning, almost a full day ago, before he’d left on his mission. Missed Jeffy. Sorely, like hunger pangs. Wait, those were hunger pangs. Still, Franchise missed even Jeffy’s dance parties that were less dance than dance fight.

With knuckles cracked, he’d found his way to a kitchen area. It had a spring/tweezer symbol, but he didn’t care what social rule he was breaking. He recognized it as a kitchen area not because he found preserves and sauces stacked in can towers and jar skyscrapers, but because of the unused and pristine appliances set against walls and on serving counters. The pantries were bare, the cupboards were empty, and the fridge doojigger was barren. This place was Old Mother Hubbard’s. The sign above the range hood said so. His stomach attacked him with a starved jolt, so angry it shivved him. He hadn’t drunk or eaten at all today. He raced to the sink. He didn’t want to activate it with the haunt control since he’d be treated to a story about how the haunt control walked uphill both ways to and from reprogramming. Instead he waved a hand at the sensor—and was rewarded with flowing water!

He dived in so recklessly he banged his tooth on the spout. That would come up in his next dental appointment. The last laugh was his: he never booked dental appointments. He lapped the water so greedily it almost spurted into his nostrils. It drenched his collar, splashed into his hair, and slathered his face. Hardly the look he wanted to present to Tamiko when he found her.

And then he felt guilty for not booking dental appointments.

He took four ravenous plunges under the tap—guzzle, breathe and rest, repeat—and then collapsed to the floor. His lungs burned. But even just the coolness in his throat and belly felt satisfying enough if not for the ice prick in his banged tooth. That attack must have chipped off some of the protective enamel.

He stood and swiped a dishtowel by the sink. No idea why this place had nothing but a dishtowel. Maybe it came with the starship. He spread it over his face and rubbed it over his hair, then tossed it into the sink and continued on. Arrows directed him toward the exit, so he followed those, lights clicking on and off as he entered and exited hallways. Even the clicks came with aged groans, like an old man weary from inching his way to the door. Worse were the wall advertisements for hovering walkers. Where did the walker part come in?

And then he came to it. The last hallway. He could tell because a tall door stood meters ahead with a sign marked EXIT. He gulped down a lungful of air. He’d finally escape this weird old-man vibe the haunt control gave off.

A chill stopped him: this wasn’t the exit, only an exit to another section or, worse, Schizophrenic hiding behind the door just to come out, smack him in the tenders, and call him a crock nugget or freak stone or crock stone nugget. It was possible. Franchise saw him pop out of a glove compartment once.

No. Schizophrenic wouldn’t put together such an elaborate gag. He’d forego the door and just clout Franchise, then the crock-stone-nugget thing. Then the other head would clap and say something ridiculous, and the two heads would roll around slapping each other. Schizophrenic was as entertaining as he was abrasive.

Franchise’s eyebrows shot up. Okay, fine. His lack of eyebrows. He braced his pained hip. He slapped his cheek to psych himself up and felt an icy sting in the corner of his chipped tooth to match the draft on his naked brows.

And go. ... Or not. Come on, Jakey. Okay, and go for real. He galloped a nervous limp toward the exit, still half-expecting Schizophrenic the Entertainer to knock him one. But he reached the end of the hallway, not a crock stone, and...and stopped. The door didn’t vanish. Probably not set to except by command. He shut his eyes, let that chill pulse through him like a canyon echo, and held his breath. Finally, “Control, acknowledge. Open closest door.” He cracked his knuckles again, one at a time with his thumb.

“Closest door opening. You know, my shuffleboard friends—” And then more yap-yap-yapping on another elderly cliché Franchise didn’t acknowledge. He should never visit a retirement residence. But, by the sound of a creaking rocking chair, the l-door vanished. Franchise blinked, his vision yelping at the sudden light and warmth tumbling in from the hangar outside. It wasn’t so much a hangar—after all, this station was a repurposed terraforming station, not a travelport—but a system of warehouse stockrooms and storage areas renovated into a transport lot. This was a one-room building, from what Franchise remembered of blueprints, but it looked as if Asinine had since separated it into smaller divisions.

He stepped out, peered down at a deep ramp—hoverchair accessible with safety handrail at stooping height—and swallowed a sludge of nervous phlegm. He gasped at the vastness, of the almost infinity of the hangar. The Good Guys couldn’t afford anything as sprawling as this, but here he witnessed the immensity of the Bad Guy armada: this Crapshoot, The Bad Guy Starship next to it, some smaller Warbirds, a few Lasergems, the Good Guys’ B-Prowler that Bad Guy thug Plaster had stolen during an escape, and a shopping cart. B-Prowler still bore the Bad Guy logo from a sponsorship deal Power Plant had unknowingly swung with their enemies.

He squinted, squinted hard. In the corner he spotted, through a wall-length window, a warehouse littered with the guts of a...of a Kingfish starship? From this vantage high above ground level, the Kingfish looked hacked apart, sectioned off, and beheaded. The cockpit—dressed like a rooster head—sat closest to the window. Reminded him of dead criminal leader Kyril’s old titan-class starship, The Nemesis.

Franchise grabbed the railings, lifted his feet, and slid to the floor. His feet smacked down on hard tile when he landed, his hip squealing. No indication of a door out. He tiptoed toward the warehouse window because why not. He figured a door hid discreetly in a wall because doors tended to hide there. Reached the warehouse, looked left, looked right, quick glance into the fingerprinted window, obscured by glare from the better-lit hangar. Weird that Kyril’s rooster head had made it here. And that it was a rooster head. Some criminal leaders had weird fetishes. Franchise traversed the wall to find that exit.

And hold on one hot crock-stone-nugget minute, but was that Reef?

Chapter Ten: This Escape Room Blows

Legion beat green hands against the emergency shutter that had crashed down over his door. It responded with an angry rattle. He stopped beating and slipped down, the shutter’s rivets scratching his back through his uniform. What good would pounding do? He was trapped until a certain haunt control who kept berating his parallel-parking skills got her Ace Spandex back. So much for that rescue operation. They were in a rescue operation of their own.

“Hello? Hello?” Nope. No response. Janice had cut his gabber’s connection a second ago. His gabber’s mouthpiece and earpiece had zipped back in, but he figured he’d give it a shot.

In his combat days with Intergalactic Protection, whenever trapped, he or a platoonmate grabbed the nearest explosive and threw that at the obstruction. Of course, the nearest explosive was usually Sergeant Willem. Good thing IP finally sprang for grenades after three or four infraction charges. And Sarge was okay after nappies.

Well, IP was the Good Guys’ parent military force and had promoted Legion to Good Guy leader. So he had to deal with this without infractions or causing superior officers any PTSD. He wiped his moist palms over his hairless head, over his antennae. Okay, so what was the escape plan? “Control, acknowledge. Unlock closest door.”

“Learn to use a parking brake!” Janice screamed back.

That hadn’t worked the last few times. And who used parking brakes anymore? At least she’d stopped throwing darts at Legion. Thawck. See? Darts. Plural. This was only one.

Dear diary, today started out like any normal day.

He stood and paced to his datasheet-shrouded desk, then back. Okay, fine. Time to use his gabber again. This time he’d prevent Janice’s interference. He took out his gabber, pulled out its override pin, and put it back in his antenna. In the command hierarchy, location haunt controls ranked higher than gabber haunt controls. So locations had dominion over gabbers. But with the override pin removed from the gabber, the gabber was removed from the hierarchy. So locations couldn’t control gabbers, useful in bizarre scenarios where haunt controls fell in love with administrators or reprogrammed garbage-collection services into thinking the dump lay directly under your office window. Removing the pin was a trick Legion had learned from Ace. A useful one, too. If Janice cut in on one more conversation he had with his credit company, he’d pitch a fit and probably Ace Spandex for not nipping this in the bud. Maybe a few grenades because IP now had them. Ah, IP’s increasing budget on implements of death and their decreasing budget on haunt controls that turned out homicidal.

“Gabber, acknowl—”

A package of desk wipes shot from a drawer at Legion. “Don’t you dare contact the others, Legion. Don’t you dare.” And then Janice launched into a long diatribe of swearing. No complete sentences, just swearing.

Legion swatted away the next package of wipes. “Janice, I’m lighting you on fire for the insurance money. Gabber, acknowledge. Contact all Good Guy entities on station.” Legion adjusted the gabber after he caught the next package with his face. Like a pro.

Janice was growing angrier. Could she grow angrier? She certainly could redirect garbage-collection services. Legion flinched away from a rain of golf balls that hailed through his suddenly open window. She could also reposition the station’s driving range.

He ducked under his desk. That was the common procedure when faced with mischievous haunt controls. Same as an earthquake, duck under your desk for shelter. But, that was where he stuffed all his empty sushi takeout containers. Okay, new common procedure: duck beside your desk for shelter. Yes, on the dried acid blotch that Power Plant had spilled onto the grimy tiles and that Janice refused to repair.

“Gang, have I got everyone on?”

“Uhm. Uh. Well. Scapegoat mistook his gabber for a corn kernel,” Sixth Sense said.

“Good. Honestly, I’m not sure I need my own sentence repeated back after a lawnmower ran over it.” Legion counted the confirmations and Mabel’s “what who’s-it,” happy that all Good Guys were present. And weirdly enough a visiting food inspector. “Everyone, first, Ace taught you how to remove your gabbers’ override pins. I suggest you do that. I’ll assume you’re all locked in your current areas. That’s Janice. Hi, Janice.”

Janice stopped swearing. “Hi, entity Legion.” She started swearing again.

Just keeping good relations. “She’s malfunctioning in a big way. I’ve never faced anything like this before. I mean, we’ve battled a malfunctioning haunt control before”—a conceding head tilt—“and a toaster oven that overbaked potatoes to the chagrin of the fire department, but nothing like a forced lockdown. Can everyone find a way out of their area?”

A few “yesses” and a “your yogurt stand violates several storage standards” later, Legion was satisfied. Oh, and a nose-pick-yes-yes. Good for Scapegoat for connecting after all.

“We need a rendezvous point to strategize how to deal with this situation. Scapegoat, also congratulations on pooping out your gabber and finding the fortitude to still use it. Any suggestions on rendezvous points?”

“Randy’s a point guard?” Mabel screamed. Legion cupped his blistering antenna.

“Incendiary here.” An intern of Power Plant’s uprooted grassroots nation Jefftaria, Incendiary had stolen a clanking, full-body robot armor from one of ex–Bad Guy Mechanism’s soldiers. Now, behind that armor’s microphone, he cleared his throat like a twenty-one-gun salute. “President Legion—”

“Wait, I don’t mean to cut you off, but Power Plant is your unstable”—he snapped a discarded chopstick in his tightening grip—“so so so sooooooooooooo so very unstable president.” So very. “I mean, his campaign’s lead issue is whether you should hold in a fart. So please don’t associate me with whatever bonkers nation he concocts or its national anthem. I only want to know when you unleash your holiday traditions on our poor galaxy. And, okay, while we’re on the subject, let me remind you IP’s policy on holiday expression in the workplace.”

“Don’t celebrate anything that slanders our sponsors?”

“Exactly. In fact, that’s also their policy on bathroom humor. But anyway, continue. So very, very, very unstable.”

Incendiary didn’t drop the political jargon, so Legion winced when he stammered through new titles. “Uhm...Emissary...Emperor...Archduke...Ambassador—look, I seriously need an A in this class, so I’m giving you a title of some sort—Envoy—”

“Don’t burn a gasket. ” By now, Legion had twined a green finger around a sushi wrapper. He should clean up down here. And dust, since Janice wouldn’t.

“—Police Lieutenant Legion.”

“I prefer emperor.”

“Who’s-it chief of prefab cooking?”

“Police Lieutenant Legion, I suggest we meet outside.”

A half-decent idea but accessible to Janice. Legion dropped the mucky sushi wrapper. “Janice controls the weather on Station One. She can make it rain cats and dogs. Not a figure of speech. We have a pet shelter. Come to think of it, also a Tetris block factory. Bottom line is watch the skies.”

“Legion, you are my number-one concern.” Hearse’s teeth ground together like stones sharpening. Ah, yes, Hearse, that accursed hanger-on. Long ago, IP had hired the bounty hunter to arrest former Good Guy Kamikaze for incarceration in the In Sanity Manor wing at Stavehill Hyperperson Penitentiary. After, IP had rehired him as Legion’s personal bodyguard for undivulged reasons. Since Hearse claimed Lowensland could compromise the station’s cookbots, his duties included preparing Legion’s meals, complete with chef’s hat and the culinary skill of a five-caliber bullet, which, incidentally, he’d dropped into several meals. It had been a tough month and a half of explosive-hot chili, where the “explosive” was—Never mind. He made great lasagna, though. Just the right amount of ricotta and gunpowder. “Protecting you is my duty. I shall be with you forthwith.” He spoke away from his gabber now. “Yes, upgrade my Burrito Bamboozle meal to potbelly size, thank you, cashier. And, so help me, you shall include the curliest of fries, or you will rue this day!”

Hearse practically lived in Station One’s food court. Yes, a food court at a military installation, the result of IP cramming a retail center into an armed-services base. Intergalactic Protection relied on sponsorship to raise military funds to wage their wars. They bowed to the constant capitalist whims of those sponsors, and one genius somewhere up the command chain conjured up the commercialist dream of fusing Station One with capitalism. Thus Station One’s mall and tourism mecca was born. Now the lobby building boasted 154 shops and restaurants, a zoo, a hotel, another hotel in case people didn’t like the first hotel, a paintball arena, a hootenanny arena—whatever that was—a spa, yet another hotel because the first two gave to charities that hosted anti-Gharalgian sentiments, and a movie theater. Because, though military purposes took up only 5 percent of Station One, Legion couldn’t think of anything else to fill the rest of the space. Nothing like, maybe, a training yard. But, say what you would about this place, at least accidental beheadings were down from last year.

Legion moaned and plunked his head on a desk drawer. A pair of datasheets slid down. “Hearse, don’t threaten college students.” Dear Alaphus, please make Hearse stay put. And possibly fall into a coma for an afternoon, but not before he bequeaths me his lasagna recipe. “Supervise the situation in the Gorging Court. Any of those diners can be a...closeted broom salesman. I don’t know your views on broom s—”

The ruffle of a fast-food bag. “Mine food is acquired. I will be upon you forthwith!”

“Hearse, no. Last time you were upon me forthwith, you carried me across the lobby in your arms. I was wearing pajamas. Hearse? Hearse?” Legion slammed a fist on his knee. Hearse had cut the connection. That guy was as tenacious as Lowensland trying to fit a mil-tran through a drainage pipe.

Wait. Mil-trans. Lightning bolt of inspiration. “Everyone, meet me at the hangar bay. We’ll rendezvous aboard B-Reaper—”

“Police Lieutenant Legion”—what happened to the emperor suggestion, Incendiary?—“B-Reaper was destroyed when Emissary Kamikaze crashed it into the Great Stellin Fusion Station. Fun times, I’m told.”

“Told by whom? Don’t answer that. I already know. Okay, aboard B-Prowler—”

“We lost it to the Bad Guys. Plaster escaped on it when Emissary Kamikaze crashed B-Reaper into the Great Stellin Fusion Station.”

“Mother of nature, Incendiary, what inventory sheet are you referencing? Then aboard B-Kestrel—”

“Destroyed on an away mission in a desert valley.” This was from the food inspector.

“Wait, that’s classified. How can you even know that?”

“I have clearance level R.”

“I don’t have level R.” Legion pinched the skin between his eyes. Fine. And alarming. “How about B-Stratotanker? Did Emissary Kamikaze crash that into a windmill?”

Catastrophe this time. “That’s the one with the engine that floods.”

“Good enough for me. Okay, we rendezvous aboard B-Stratotanker. Ten minutes. Mabel, I’ll give you forty-five and a visit from the hip doctor.”

“What who’s-it whatchamacallit?” Mabel screamed back. “Ahhh, ya young ruffian.”

Having used everything, Janice doubled around on words she’d already sworn as if going back for seconds at a blaspheme buffet.

“Sir?” Organism’s shyness revealed his reserved voice in an instant. Legion had told him to do away with the sir bit, but it was a step up from being called a police lieutenant. His gabber ruffled. He probably twisted his fingertips together timidly. Organism was built like a tanker truck had taken humanoid form, so Legion never understood the lack of self-esteem. “If it’s okay, I’ll stick with my dad. I’d prefer to be on hand in case Janice convinces him to launder his clothes while he wears them.” And then a little more quietly. “Again.”

Legion pinched the skin between his nostrils, where the nose on a Terran would be. Trioxidillians had only exposed nostrils. “That’s fair, Alvin. But report in every fifteen minutes. Everyone else, you have your orders.”

A finger doubtlessly drilling his nasal cavity up to the sinus, Scapegoat said, “Orders have Legion do I, yes yes.”

“Scapegoat, there’s a reason you have a separate bathroom. Gabber, cut connection.”

No sooner had his gabber retracted its mouthpiece and earpiece than a foot slammed through the shutter at his door. With pulverizing force, it wrenched open a hole big enough for a head. Legion leaped to his feet and tripped backward into his desk. He peered into the hole at an eye that peered back. Not an eye, but an aiming visor that fit over one. “Hearse?”

“I said forthwith and I meant it!”

Chapter Eleven: Priorities Are Split When Chocolate Is Involved

That pudding couldn’t be far. He smelled it. It smelled like burned toast. That was a good sign.

As he traveled, Power Plant braced himself against walls with a hand or, when he slipped, with his head. Good thing he’d found walls in his taffylike vision, or he’d have to roll around the floor. He shut his eyes. A headache flickered like an icepick. Color had snapped in and out of his sight all day, as if a filter covered his vision. Clap. Green took the day off. Crack. Green was back, but blue vacated the premises. Snap. Blue returned and bullied yellow out. If red abandoned him, he’d cozy up under the closest ground-based traffic jam as it picked up speed. And what captain crackhead told green it was cleared for a day off?

He reopened his eyes and was repaid with a weird sense of visual reality. He’d slap it loose, same as he did with viewscreens, but whenever he slapped reality today, screws jangled around his skull. Probably the ones he’d stuffed up there to use as sneezing bullets. He swore by now he had a whole fixtures department in his head and a housewares department in his stomach.

No. No slapping his vision, because he didn’t want it slapping him back. Where was Jakey when someone needed a slapping? With a stop sign? Oh, yeah. Off on some solo mission. They used to take solo missions together. Power Plant couldn’t recall the last time they’d hung out. May have been that awkward exchange in the belch lounge. Jakey had better appreciate Power Plant sticking his neck out to devour him and rescue pudding. Stupid Jakey, never around. Also, other way around on that previous thought.

Okay, time for pudding. Wait. Jakey. He’d come for Jakey. Right. Ace Spandex and Scapegoat had said Jakey was here. Wait, not Scapegoat. Scapegoat couldn’t say more than three and a half words without chop-sueying the message. Ace and Plastique. That sounded better. He kicked the wall. His memories came in buzzes of static. Ace and Plastique had told him Scapegoat had—No, Franchise had—No, pudding had b—No, no, no, a franchise of Space Cows—

He sat. With hand chops, he organized his brain and its hardware aisles: Ace Spandex—chop—and Plastique—chop—had said Jakey—chop—had come here to eat pudding—chop. The siren in his head indicated he was right, like a mental thumbs-up. He should tattoo his mission to his arm, but the tattoo parlor was back on Station One. And the artist drew only skulls dancing around weird barbecue pits. Now, where would Jakey be? And, just as important, that pudding.

Power Plant stood. “Controls, acknowledges.” He leaped back when a swarm of gadgets zipped into his personal no-go zone and stared at him with eager expectation. “Whoa, guys I just needings one o’ ya.” The swarm skulked away, sensors and cameras moping at the floor. Wow. Clingy.

He tried again. “Control, acknowledges. Locates closest Good Guys entity.” That’d find Jakey in seconds. Close to the pudding supply, hopefully.

“Closest Good Guy entity located in hangar bay. You will reach your destination in six thousand eight hundred thirteen steps.”

Power Plant threw his arms out. “Crock, what?” His head crock-what-jolted back from his blurt. Ow. “Control, acknowledge. Howsabout you lemme know distance in regular measures?”

“You will reach your destination in two point eight three furlongs.”

Power Plant clutched his hair. Even Master Asinine’s haunt controls were criminalistic. He didn’t know what a furlong was, but hopefully it wasn’t much longer than a furshort. “Controls, ackno—” He swatted away the swarm that hummed closer again. “Control, acknowledge.” Crock, proper pronunciation hurt. “Guides me to Good Guys entity usings red line.” Red hadn’t failed him yet. Oh, wait. Now it was dark green.

Fighting away nausea, he wobbled along the line, which led him around a landscape that frothed in his vision and through l-doors that faded to donkey brays in his weird hearing. Come to think of it, on Station Zilcho, the brays were normal. So his hearing was unaffected.

The line led him back outside in warm but blinding sun that normally didn’t blind him, past his escape pod, down the street, and into another building. The hangar? Seemed like it, from the smell of dust and electrical discharge, the feel of chalk and thruster smoke, the tinge of static that stroked his arm hairs through his impact suit, and that huge “Hangar” sign out front.

That dark green line zapped into pink. He still followed, every footstep rattling in the hollows of his head. Or those screws. He passed a window stretching the length of the hall, behind which sat dormant a series of charging machines and robots. The old him would have activated one and rode it around as though it were a bronco. The new him passed it up. The later, newer him would ride them around swinging a ten-gallon hat.

“Yeehaw.” From behind, that word slithered out of peeled-back lips and accompanied the brrrRRRR of a fully charged pistol coming online. Sigh. Speaking of broncos and ten-gallon hats, here came the rodeo king himself.

Power Plant could have rolled his eyes. Could have except that’d feel excruciating right now. Even turning around, with all his chattering broken pieces, was a labor of necessity. And a labor of rotating. He now stood face to face with Master Asinine Sucks, the Wild West caricature and reigning hoedown champ of the Bad Guy army for two years running, so claimed Master Asinine. Weird considering Asinine had absorbed this cowpoke from Kyril’s old army only back in December.

The only Bad Guy not embarrassed to wear wool trousers, Master Asinine Sucks tweezed a twig of wheat between his coffee-creamer teeth. His lips pursed smugly, and he nodded in disbelief with a light-bullet gun shaped like a six-shooter leveled at Power Plant’s chest. “Come on, yank, you’re makin’ this too easy.”

Power Plant fought back acidic bile. “Ya here ta challenges me to a square dance?”

“Nah. I’d trounce ya, ya varmint. I do abide the mercy rule.” Master Asinine Sucks chuffed and leaned his leg so the spur of one heel chinked against the opposite’s ankle. His arms dropped to his sides. “I’m here ta make you squeal. I mean, c’mon, what y’all expect, raisin’ sand all over these parts, usin’ our own haunt control ta mosey around? Ya think I ain’t gonna get an alert? Ya ain’t any brighter than a jasper sunnin’ on a spit rotisserie.” He pinched his hat’s brim and tipped it as if Power Plant could follow all that.

Power Plant tightened his fight fists, a faint glimmer crackling in them. Not even faint. It was a baby flash. Crock, he’d been sheltered from light aboard that escape pod so long, he still hadn’t collected enough energy for more than a firefly-sized pop. This sucked more than when he’d got caught in that candy dispenser. Wait, that time ruled. This sucked more than when he’d got caught in that diaper dispenser. Yeah, that was better.

This looked like a fight for his bare hands, no hyperability. “I’m-a still shove my fist so fars in your mouth I ain’t even know what stupid cowboy expression I’m gonna says. But it’s be hokey.” Wait, what was he doing? Pudding, shove fist, mouth in, so far up, funny and immitimidating—immiti—Crock, that word. Unstable on his feet, he flopped into a wall. Too much thinking did that to you. “Just gimme a second firsts.”

“Wow, we already hunkered past the mercy rule.” Master Asinine Sucks slid his six-shooter into a holster and grabbed a lasso from his other hip. “But ya yeehawed at the wrong haunt control. There’s now a bounty on yer head.” Master Asinine Sucks chuckled, and the wheat tipped out of his mouth. “Aw, crud, that was the expensive stuff.”

A collection of generics swelled behind him, two dozen or so filing in through the door. This might not end well for Power Plant, but he needed to arrest that burned-toast pudding. No, eat it. And, right-right-right, Jakey, the burned-toast absentee best friend. His head still rattled, screws still jangling around. But he counted at least...what...fifteen trillion generics. No, wait, he saw double. So thirty-two trillion generics. Could he sneeze hardware that quickly? He wasn’t sure he was a semiautomatic.

“Posse, draw on my yeehaw.” Master Asinine Sucks curled his mouth, bared only half his teeth. He winked at Power Plant. “Me an’ my mob here”—he peeled back his thin lips to reveal all his teeth now—“we gonna make sure you ain’t leavin’ this hallway without the big dirt nap, tenderfoot. Control, acknowledge.” Eyes narrowed. “Make all Good Guy varmints dance.”

“Command not understood.”

“For criminy, I told that crowbait Asinine ta download the Wild West dictionary.” Master Asinine Sucks flopped his hands and gawked at the ceiling. “Forget it. Control, acknowledge. Shoot all Good Guy varmints.”

“Shooting all Good Guy garments.”

“Come on!”

* * *

“Listen up, goons. Good Guy entities on Station Zilcho dancing. Listen up, goons. Good Guy entities on Station Zilcho dancing.” So loud, the speakers crackled and almost burst up. “Badly.”

Like, why the crock was that cray-cray alarm blitzing up Amaranthia’s tranquil? She buckled, shielded her ears, and added the speaker to the list of people, machines, and teachers she needed to disembowel. She’d already booked so many disembowelments at school and an evisceration in the science faculty. Now she had to, like, bring her schoolwork home? How the crock was she expected to weekend up with Lizzie? She still had to figure out how to do that on a Wednesday.

“Control, acknowledge. Like, shut totes up?” It did the opposite of control-acknowledging: it control-paid-no-crocking-attention. Maybe it was that rising tone she spoke that made her sentences sound like questions. Still, like, no haunt control did that to her. How many disembowelments must she add to her list? “Control, acknowledge. Shut the crock up.”

Like a drop off a cliff, the sound level plummeted. The presh on her eardrums eased. She blinked and slowly, cautiously, ever so freaking gently risked her hands off her ears. She could hear herself, like, try to think now. It wasn’t in regular sentences, but it was thoughts and stuff. Thinking thoughts. And stuff. “Control, ya gitch, acknowledge? Before I skin ya?” Oh, yeah, she had a skinning planned against Gerry for totally passing a rumor around school that Connie was, like, a llama. “What’s these Good Guy entities on Station Zilcho?”

“First, what do you say to stopping by the kitchen for a cold drink of shoe polish?” Argh, haunt gitch’s ad database was corrupted again. Still, shoe polish tasted better than Choke-a-Cola’s new Code: Marmalade. “But after that, share your new polish passion with Good Guy entities Power Plant and Franchise, now visiting our hangar.” And then a boisterous cheer, for some totes stupid reason. “Shoe polish!”

Franchise? Jakey? Her boyfriend was on the station? For crock, Amaranthia had told him to skedaddle off that Crapshoot, with hallways as confusing as a rediscovered network of catacombs. She’d sent him away with a kiss and, like, everything! Crock love him, he never listened. She grabbed her katana on her screeching race to the l-door. Now she had to rescue that fool. She couldn’t help a smile that slipped onto her lips. That cute, wonderful fool.

But first, to the kitchen for a steaming mug of shoe polish.

Back a second later. She’d grabbed her sword-shaped award for Best Beheading 9107. Now she grabbed the real sword. Time to, like, focus up, Amaranthia.

Chapter Twelve: Dressed to Kill

Ace didn’t even have bubblegum. Right now, Ace really needed bubblegum.

The Tinfoil mil-tran settled into orbit around Station Zilcho. Ace Spandex’s mouth creased silently when no defenses attacked. Not that Asinine was known for defensive thinking—or regular thinking—but he always flaunted the ammo he loaded into Station Zilcho’s dinnerware cannons. He even posted a weekly blog about it. Oddly enough, the blog never featured dinnerware. More oddly enough, it featured mustard every third issue. “Courtney, we’re within hailing distance of the Bad Guys. Prepare for evasive maneuvers in case Asinine flicks on the dinnerware cannons. Not sure I want a food fight all over someone else’s transport. Condiments leave stains.”

Plastique had nevertheless finished her fourteenth or fifteenth or zillionth set of bench presses. Without a barbell, she had instead lain down on a passenger-deck bench and pressed another bench. When that wasn’t enough, she stacked yet another bench on top of the first. Nice light sweat. Now she tossed aside those benches and kicked to her feet. She approached the windshield. “It’s Friday. Today is sewage day on Station Zilcho.”

“Now, see, that’s just not environmentally friendly.” Ace fought a choke. It fought back. Ace narrowly won, but the dry heaves took their toll, and now he had to replace his gag reflex’s fan belt. This would stay with him for life, wouldn’t it? He distracted himself by tapping a few keys: slow their descent, come in at an inconspicuous angle, and, the most important key, pray for help. On most transports, that key was F1.

The transport obeyed. “Changing angle. Slowing descent to a crawl. Feeling the need for speed. Hoping you don’t need help, because you’re not getting it from me. I’m a mil-tran dressed as a housecat.” Fair point. “Meow and all that.”

Ace glanced at the diagnostic viewscreen that he’d finger-drag-and-dropped to the lower left of the windshield. “Okay, here’s the plan—”

“Here’s the second version of that plan.” Plastique dropped into the seat next to Ace. She toweled off her forehead and threw the towel aside. “As unnoticeable as possible, we’ll slip in at a low angle here”—she tapped the viewscreen showing their descent with dotted lines, angles, numbers, and trajectories dangling around a wireframe image of Station Zilcho and a coupon for 15 percent off at their souvenir shop, all of which Ace didn’t bother explaining since she claimed not to understand numerology abracadabra anyway—“and advance toward their holding area from there. I checked the scans taken of the station when their power cells were destroyed and security software was offline. The scans are three months old but probably still good. They have holding cells near the reception landing zone.” She leaned closer to the viewscreen and, both hands clawed as if grasping a globe, rotated her claws. The wireframe Station Zilcho rotated with her hands. She “ungrasped” and tapped an area on the station’s lower hemisphere. “We advance there and adapt mission parameters as we gain new intel.”

Ace shrugged in defeat. “My plan was more fun. (And it’s technically not numerology by the way.)” Ace snapped a command into the starship to angle them low but fly toward the reception landing zone Plastique had indicated. “(Also stop calling me a computer voodoo shaman.)” He hit the execute button.

“Your call,” the housecat haunt control said. And then it hissed at them. “But law-enforcement reports say the habitat compound has a better cup of coffee with a richer, smoother bean. You’ll think you dived into flavor bliss...with Flavor This.” The creepy coffee commercial got creepier when it moaned. And when a coffee bean with eyes showed up on a wall and gave Ace a hither-to look. “I’m going to clean myself now.”

The mil-tran hummed—purred?—sideways, a lurch so pronounced Plastique tilted to the left and careened into another chair. She even careened like a gymnast.

Ace wasn’t at the navigational computer, but he referenced its viewscreen thanks to telescopic software in his eyes. Cybernetics had its perks. Dealing with metal detectors wasn’t one of them. “The navigation computer says we’re thirteen seconds until atmospheric breach, three minutes until touchdown, and seven minutes until flavor bliss.” He read closer. “And eight minutes until flavor coma.”

“Quick protein shot should give me the energy to get myself and my trigger finger in gear.” Plastique unzipped a hip pouch and produced a small flask of red liquid. She swigged half of it sharply, wiped her mouth on her wrist, and laser-stared at her finger. It twitched. Scowling, she clucked distastefully. “Come on, Margaret.” It twitched faster. “Ahh, that’s my girl.” Back to Ace. “Col. Daddy always said, ‘Well fed, enemies dead.’ He was also the base cook.” She offered the flask to Ace. “Equip yourself?”

Ace regarded it with aversion. His eyes ticked down at it with skepticism. It defied description. Was ooze a color? “What weird insect is in that?”

Plastique looked at it as if to suspect it herself. “No weird insect.” Back at Ace. Smile flashed across her lips.

“What weird insect?”

“None.”

“How many legs, Courtney?”

“Just drink it.”

“How—many—le—”

“It’s got eye of newt and wing of bat, okay?” Plastique reared away.

“That’s...That’s worse. What are y—” Ace made the sign of the cross—“Why”—averted his gaze—“I mean”—composed himself. “No matter how much I beg, don’t answer any of my questions.”

The haunt control jingled a confetti of guitar plinks. “Then how about Flavor This? We offer wart-of-toad dark roast. You’ll think it was brewed in a real cauldron.”

“Not on your life.” Ace focused on the transparent gel of Station Zilcho’s atmospheric bubble rearing closer. With a suction slurp to rival one of Plastique’s gut twisters, the transport penetrated, passed, and continued its gentle descent. Everything drew closer: pavement, buildings and rooftops, the power grid, painted signs that said “Solicitors Not Welcome Unless They Have Those Shaving-Kit Vacuums” and “Update: I Learned to Shave My Lieutenant with the Power of Kung-Fu.”

Ace shuffled to the piloting viewscreen, which mapped a yellow grid over an image of the station’s surface. The grid lettered each three-by-three-inch square along one axis and numbered the other axis. This mil-tran had better software than their own. Ace studied the grid and double-tapped square D9 to select it as their landing point, well away from the trampolines that bounced trespassers back into space. Master Asinine’s version of a repulsion ray. And exercise. Couldn’t fault the man for using one thing for two purposes. Same reason Ace used disinfectant wipes as air fresheners.

“I’m landing us next to the Bad Guy bed-and-breakfast.” Ace craned his neck to read a sign. “Oh. Pool cleaned daily.”

Ace hadn’t noticed until now the clicking and ticking that sounded like snapping beetles behind him. He turned and—“Whoa”—the sight of Plastique reared him back like none she’d ever presented before. “You look as if you made warfare your groveling assistant.”

“I have it on a leash.” Plastique stood before him like something out of a combat magazine cover shoot: two missile launchers slung over one shoulder, a surface-to-surface missile launcher over the other, grenades strung around her waist, canisters of toxic gas strapped above that and then regular stinky gas above that, knives sheathed at her calves, a dozen pistols strapped along her arms, antiaircraft artillery in case she went hang gliding, and—Ace Spandex wasn’t asking—a clarinet. A dark scowl half-hid behind the reflective lenses of aviator sunglasses. To complete her arsenal, she bore an unyielding, nuclear-grade sneer. She put arms to hips, her backdrop a calamity of empty crates and war chests flopped open like a miniature obstacle course around the transport’s passenger deck. Foam popcorn lay scattered as if the crates had spewed debris everywhere. “Col. Daddy always said, ‘Look the part, feel the part, be the part.’ I plan to be the part all over any rocks Asinine shoots us with or any guns he hurls at us.”

“Are you literally wearing the Infinity Gauntlet?” Ace Spandex examined her with a mix of revulsion and leery awe. “I’m more curious about the size of your pockets than I was before.”

“Intergalactic Protection combat manual, section three dash eighteen, subsection four says a soldier should enter combat wearing no fewer than forty-two weapons, one of which must relate to germ warfare.” She said over a laugh, “I’ve never been so overjoyed about a typo. Incidentally, their manual on off-duty leave says the same.”

“You’re wearing scuba gear. What part of this mission is underwater?”

Plastique tore off the diver’s mask and breathing tube. Somehow the sunglasses stayed on. “Look, Avid Armament practices fair trade, and their cart system is really easy to use.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better!”

The starship’s trestles hissed out and crunched down on pavement. “Meow. We’re here. I’m going to find a windowsill for a quick, sixteen-hour nap.”

“Stop salvo-shaming me. Now, let’s move so I can get back to my handmade jewelry business.” Plastique trooped to the exit. She carried the bulk of rattling gear—Ace’s cybernetic brain measured 204.13 pounds—but she moved with the same grace as if carrying a book atop her head.

“I was just going to grab a gun and some trail mix.” Ace Spandex gave her a minimum safety radius. Sorry, wide berth. “Am I underdressed?”

Plastique marched down the starship’s embarking ramp, all business behind the reflective sunglasses.

“Am I underdressed?” Ace rushed to the exit, hand on doorframe, and yelled, “Courtney, am I underdressed?” He bounded back in and set on rifling through the crates for anything Plastique had missed. “I knew I needed a crossbow.”

Chapter Thirteen: With Elegance and Poise and Other Delusions

The haunt control opened fire with rotor guns mounted on walls, light-bullets cackling. A former terraforming station had defenses? Asinine had probably installed them after taking this place over.

Power Plant managed a weak scattershot through a counter l-window, which dissolved with the disruption. It would reappear soon, so he moved quickly. He tried to fly over the counter, mustered a weird half leap/half takeoff, and clonked palms down onto the tiled floor behind. This was ridiculonkers, and he didn’t make up words for just any situation. Okay, fine. He did. Like Monday when his morning antics time bled into his afternoon hijinks time. Such a bothercrock.

His head didn’t swim after that quick jump. It drowned, drowned in its own frothing sea storm of thoughts. He buckled from knifing pain, almost spilled a stomach full of semidigested sugar over this floor that needed a good retiling anyway.

At this rate, he’d never find that pudding. It called to him so enticingly he already tasted it. Oh, wait, he tasted the sleeve he bit down on to suppress the thunderclaps in his head. But if his impact suit tasted like pudding, he was sold.

Motion sickness in his skull, knives in his gut. He waited for everything to mute. With gunfire crackling away his cover, chugging apart the counter’s lacquered wood bit by bit, concentration came even harder than in home economics class. But he welled up whatever light energy he had stored. Dragged his hyperability off the couch and told it to get to work. His hands glowed weirdly. He couldn’t properly see its usual yellow, as if his hyperability was unclear on its purpose in the first place. Power Plant would help it: its purpose was to get him out of this jam. Purpose number two was to clear the line at Ice Cream Barnyard on Station One so they’d stop running out of mint chocolate by the time he ordered.

The light-bullets stopped flying. The haunt control couldn’t find a line of sight. Good. Power Plant gave it a beat to make sure and then clutched the counter to help him stand, crawled up its surface, and—

Suppressive fire. From the haunt control and the procession of generics. Power Plant dropped back down, chin hit the tile, he chomped down on a cheek, spat out a cord of saliva shaded with a hint of vomit. So pros of having a look-see: assessing the situation. Cons: assessing that the situation sucked.

Looking wasn’t an option, not that Power Plant’s vision cooperated. He’d bark crazy insults at Master Asinine Sucks instead. He hoped to guess the cowboy jargon, because he last visited the Wild West in July of the year never. “Hey, r—” Whoa. Vision became murky. His head yelled at him for yelling. Something behind his eyes cracked. He braced himself. “Hey, rat face”—them yokels always called each other rats or goldarned rats—“you switch off that haunt controls right now, or I’lls...” Crap. He’d what? He raced through all the city-slickin’ threats he’d heard. What did they hate? “I’ll put a snake in your sarsaparilla.” Good enough. Power Plant couldn’t give Jakey all the drink snakes.

Right. Jakey. He was here to save Jakey, not the pudding. He never excelled at this short-term-memory thing before, but this was as pointblank absurd as his attempts at telling time. And, crock, where was Jakey? Power Plant had arrived on this station a whole—he counted on his fingers—eighty-three days ago give or take a year, and Jakey hadn’t even gabbered him. Never around anymore and no fun, like, “I don’t wanna cause another public incident” and then “I’m not bribing the cops when they show up this time” and then “I’m not bribing the cops with a rock.” In fact, Jakey hadn’t participated in a prank in so long Power Plant had used all the good ones on him to draw him back out. Power Plant should just square-dance home. He barely knew geometry, and now he had to dance a shape. Man, this cowpoke stuff wormed into your brain. Now, where was that cowboy-flavored pudding? The one with the snake in its drink.

Gunfire rattled on. The counter dissolved with every light-bullet. One punched through and almost hit his arm, another his ear.

“Control, acknowledge. Cease yer fire.” And, just like that, the gunfire silenced. The goldarned rat cowboy Master Asinine Sucks muttered a “heh” that sounded like a shot at ten paces. He either spat a horselaugh or chewing tobacco into a swampy can. “Ha, ya goldarned rat”—called it—“here’s the thing: you ain’t in no position to be bulldozin’ ’round these here parts. I got me a posse of generics. And no matter where ya hide, no matter where ya rustle the cattle, the haunt control’s gonna track ya an’ kill ya till ya dead. Ya ain’t got nowhere ta hide.” The rootin’-tooter drew closer until the toes of his knee-high boots knocked against the other side of the counter. Power Plant felt the vibration. Seemed as though he forewent the chance to draw at ten paces for a good old rollick. “No matter where, we’re gonna flush y’all down the crapper.”

“But ya gonna clog it up.”

Master Asinine Sucks’s eel-shaped face leered down, one hand keeping that wide-brimmed hat from tumbling off that head. He flicked a new strand of wheat in his mouth. “Sakes alive, you already look fit to make the big jump. Drank a bit too much tipple, didja? Ya’ll ain’t too much longer for this—”

Power Plant lunged out—grabbed him—yanked him over the counter—hat tumbled off—Power Plant wrestled him down—spat up more sour vomit on his sleeve—pinned him—hyperability felt hot to his skin—smacked knee to cowboy stomach—“I got nothings to lose, cattles rancher”—eyes fired red—leaped up—spat all his gathered energy into one tidal wave of light that washed the hallway—generics flew back, collided against the opposite wall—rotors snapped, crackled, popped apart. Weird he’d inflicted this much devastation without his eight cups of morning honey.

Power Plant’s chest sizzled like battery acid. He winced and crumbled to elbows and knees. The feeling passed as sharply as a kidney stone serrating him. His eyesight coughed up red specks. Oh, look at that. So did he. This was seriously getting in the way of his life’s goal: living.

He stood, stumbled, clamminess leaking out skin that glowed. Whatever. He clambered to the counter and, whoa—The hallway was obliterated nonsense. A fiasco of shambles polka-dotted in splatters of blackened and no-longer-recognizable features, as if Power Plant had taken up avantgarde painting and slashed a wet brush at a canvas. The far wall had sprayed apart, now bowled into its next-door neighbor with belched dry rot. The l-window didn’t exist anymore, no staticky ruins or even a frame. Anything—a bench, a plant, that weird mime sculpture, that other weird mime sculpture, that weird sculpture of Master Asinine as a mime—looked as if reality’s baby had used it as a vomit rag. He called this his special treatment package.

Despite every part of his body buzzing like the pains of paper cuts, he clambered onto the counter that felt as smooth as a topographical map. Whooooa—Tumbled backward onto the floor.

Crock.

...

Okay, he’d take another stab at it.

He stood and climbed over the counter, caught his foot on its lip, and smacked to the floor. At least he’d fallen on the other side this time. Jakey better appreciate all this smackanery and self-abusification. And word mangling.

A bloody nose and a burning inhalation later, he stood and shambled farther down the hall. He stepped over the charred bodies of the generics, wishing those that were still awake would stop bellyaching over third-degree burns. Also the stuff he blarged out just now. Generics gave burn victims a bad name.

Okay, back to the Jakey hunt. Or the pudding hunt. Steal all that pudding goodness. Thrillspew.

Chapter Fourteen: Rebranding

Legion had found a hidden hallway behind his office wall. Rather, Hearse had pummeled a hole in the wall, and they now shuffled through the wall cavity, sidestepping along grimy partitions and over mice, dead mice, and some combination of the two. This described several restaurants in the Gorging Court. Weirdly enough, also their clientele.

Legion had suggested they leave through the office door since Hearse had already pummeled through that to enter, but Hearse wasn’t listening to suggestions that avoided further damage. Sometimes it came down to keeping him occupied.

Hearse was barely able to shuffle his beefy body along the narrow cavity with the weapons in both hands and the cannon over his shoulder that he claimed was a toy. He fooled no one. Several times, the wire connecting the back of his head to the aiming sight over his cataract left eye had clicked out of its socket. Legion marveled that he could maneuver his arm up to pinch the wire back in. Hearse had no trouble scratching his butt crack though, Legion noticed with lament as he insisted on taking the front. Yeah, dig right in there, Hearse. That itch must have lived in his colon.

Though still in the lobby building, they drew closer to the rendezvous point in the hangar bay. Legion smelled the electrical discharge of transports cycling in and out of the public parking lot. But he was lagging, and Hearse had already rounded the next bend. Ugh, great. Legion peeped a psssst at him, hoping a certain haunt control couldn’t overhear. Hearse peeked around the corner, so Legion whispered a risky “Wait up.”

Hearse grunted noisily. He did a great job of giving away their position, especially when he bonked his head on low wood shims. “Fear not, Legion. I always deliver the body.” A couple words clogged in his throat, coming out weird. “Wait, I mean—”

“You plan to deliver Janice?” Legion reached him.

“I am named Hearse. And I am trained in the martial art of bounty hunting.”

“Bounty hunting isn’t a martial art. Or a performance art, so stop letting Catastrophe audition.” Legion held up a finger. “And, while we’re on the subject, stop mentioning it around Power Plant. He’s painting wanted posters of me with eerily accurate details for a guy who thinks Pennywise worked at a circus.”

“I will reevaluate my body-delivery motto.”

“And your billboard above Station One’s funeral home.”

Hearse bit his lower lip. He braced a hand on the wall. “Nggggg—I promise nothing!” He whipped away, smacked his knee on a wooden shim, and flipped onto the floor.

Legion estimated their position behind these wall partitions. Judging from the last corner they’d turned, the electrical smell of civ-trans, and the frequency with which Hearse burrowed in there, they’d almost reached overtop the lobby building’s entrance.

A quick pulse blurted from Legion’s gabber, a slight buzz in sound and feeling. His antenna quivered, and that almost sent him reeling into the boards by reflex. “Incoming connection from entity Disastergeddon.”

Ah, speaking of Catastrophe, Disastergeddon was Legion’s nasty but fitting nickname for him ever since that has-been-B-actor-turned-soldier inadvertently used his hyperability to manipulate natural elements on Legion’s lunch by waving. But, hey, Legion didn’t need a fragmented ham sandwich anyway. Or to clean up the shards of that lunch plate. This call must mean Catastrophe had arrived at the hangar bay.

He cleared his throat to get Hearse’s attention. Rising up, Hearse glared back and clipped his chin on the inner partition. Legion motioned at his gabber, which buzzed again. Hearse nodded but continued shuffling through the wall cavity and—really?—again scratched that obstinate itch, now with the barrel of a gun Legion would advise be retired.

“Accept connection,” Legion said before the gabber caused another convulsion that would fling him out into the parking lot from the third floor. He’d make a nice green splotch from up here. “Catastrophe, what’s up? Not another publicity stunt of you appearing in some weird hair commercial, I hope.” Legion just didn’t have the energy for another hair product after learning about the Gel Helmet.

“About that,” Catastrophe said, and Legion pictured him tightening one corner of his mouth. “No more publicity stunts from me.”

“I’ll have our therapist book you in for that. He prescribes tax-deductible brainwashing. For now, are you at B-Kestrel?” Legion raised a leg to shuffle over a cloud of insulation.

“B-Kestrel was destroyed in our desert mission.”

Keeping track of all Good Guy demolitions required a chart for Legion. “B-Stratotanker?”

“That’s the one. No, I haven’t made it. I managed to escape my living quarters—”

“By using your hyperability to tear apart a wall? Follow-up: don’t tear apart any walls.” Please don’t, you walking earthquake. “Please don’t, you”—wait-wait-wait, don’t say that aloud—“amazing individual.”

Hearse’s back said to him, “I have suspended compliment-acceptance services until further notice.”

Legion wrapped a hand around his mouthpiece. “I’m not talking to you.” He uncovered the mouthpiece but then covered it back up. “Who has compliment-acceptance services? Do you have compliment-acceptance opening hours?”

Hearse continued down their path and cleared cobwebs with his pistol barrel. “Yes. Mondays to Fridays from eight to six o’clock.”

“That’s better hours than the bank!” Back to Disastergeddon. “So Dis”—swallowed back that word just in time—“tinguished Gentleman, about that wall thing, don’t answer. I’ll find out when the bill comes in. I can handle only one weird wall situation at a time, and I’m literally in one right now.” His head banged into a low support beam. “Ow.” He didn’t need the physical confirmation. “Ow.” Or that second one. “Anyway, if you’re not at the hangar yet, what’s your situation?” Wait, what was that sound in the gabber’s background? Was that clicking? Was his gabber on the fritz? “Ow.”

“I’m here with Hagen.” Catastrophe referred to Invasive, Boundary-Ignorant Mind-Reader, Legion’s private little nickname for Sixth Sense. Legion had private little nicknames for everyone. Except Power Plant. He got a public, overly descriptive one. “We’re in the alley between the hangar bay and the barracks.” His voice flinched, and...okay, Legion definitely heard clicks. And babbling? “We’re trying to push our way through the reporters.”

Legion halted right there. “The what-who now?”

“The what-who are reporters. Somehow the news crews learned about our situation, and they’re interviewing Hagen and me. And I haven’t even whitened my teeth today.”

Hearse grabbed Legion’s arm to keep him progressing. Legion yanked it away. His head knocked against the inner partition, felt the exposed wooden and metal slats against his hairless forehead. A shower of dust sprinkled over him. Awesome, his allergies said. “That’s exactly what we need. Reporters announcing our insane haunt control.” The clicking must have been them taking pictures. “How many reporters?”

“I don’t know. Two or three—”

* * *

“—dozen.” Catastrophe finger-counted the photo-clicking flurry of reporters in front of the hangar entrance. Shouted and melded questions rattled like gunfire. The reporter from the Frat Bro Network belched them.

Sixth Sense stood stunned in his impact suit two sizes too big, semi-blinded by the camera flashes. Amateur. Catastrophe had a year of experience with cameras playing high school football and then another nine or so in film. He took camera flashes like a man, sometimes like an epileptic man.

Both Good Guys, pinned outside the barracks door, retreated a step. Above them, Janice hurled shouts, abusive insults, and then a bed from a storage-room window of the hangar bay’s second floor. With quick reflexes and his telekinesis hyperability, Sixth Sense deflected the bed to rescue the wall of reporters across the alleyway. It was Ace Spandex’s bed, complete with mattress, frame, and headboard. His puppy bedsheets fluttered down last and settled on two reporters to join them as some weird Siamese-twin ghost. Ace’s stuff was in the barracks, but Janice was irate enough to actually—without corporeal form—carry it up to the stuffy second floor storage level of the hangar bay and launch it out a window.

“Bring me back my entity Acey!” Janice screamed, loud enough to rattle eavestroughs and probably be heard at Shark Invasion, the station’s water park. “Entity Legion can’t keep us separate. We’re destined to be together until decomposition do us part!” She flung more of Ace’s stuff out the window: a pillow, a few datasheets, his sock drawer. A chair cleared the parking lot.

Legion breathed a weighted moan through the gabber, one Catastrophe barely heard over the reporters’ bulleting questions: “Catastrophe, is it true your haunt control wants to murder you?” “Sixth Sense, is it true your haunt control wants to murder you?” “Catastrophe, is it true Sixth Sense wants to murder you?” “Catastrophe, isn’t your new movie releasing in two weeks?” “Catastrophe, if you were a Caesar salad, what socioeconomic changes would you propose to your senate in the political climate brought about by the newly elected Virillian congress?” Even Partisan Speech Broadcast needed to fill their six-o’clock news hour with something. “Also, what wine would you be paired with?”

Sixth Sense dealt with the barrage by producing an asthma inhaler and breathing it in. Asthma, these days. The farm boy had never had it corrected.

Legion’s lamenting moan, one that cursed Hearse, finally ended. What was wrong with scratching an itch? Legion felt a lot of pressure if an itch got under his skin. Wait, that was what itches did. “Okay, Catastrophe, your Commissionaire Nuclear mo—Brain Surgeon Nuclear? Officer Nuclear? Officer Nuclear.” Got it in three this time. “Your movie is coming out soon. Don’t let these reporters on to what’s happening. Distract them with the press conference of a lifetime.”

A bundled pair of socks punted Catastrophe on the head. “I...” While at a training session that crumbled into a bid for his life, Plastique chastised him for his constant publicity efforts, specifically for Officer Nuclear. She called him worthless as a soldier and as a drinking buddy. She’d ordered him to abandon his flogged and beaten has-been film career. He was either a soldier or a middling actor grasping at the fame he’d never reclaim. Since that day, Catastrophe had removed the stud earring from his lobe and stuffed his headshots and publicity gear in his living quarters. Under the bed, under shadow, under layers of dust. Out of his life. “I can’t give that conference.” He wouldn’t. But Legion had hung up before hearing that.

“I’m so conflicted right now.” Indecisiveness churned in Catastrophe’s gut.

“Uhm. Uh. Conflicted over a press junket?” Even with telepathy, Sixth Sense looked ready to blow a confusion fuse. Catastrophe saw the puzzlement in his eyes behind those thick glasses that slid down his nose.

Janice raged on. “You tell that relationship killer entity Legion he can’t drive a runtime error between lovers. True love always codes a way.” She ejected Ace’s kitchen cupboards out the window. Sixth Sense protected the reporters, who didn’t have enough sense to avoid a clatter of silverware threatening to spear them like falling icicles.

Crock, if it was for the greater good, Catastrophe had his orders. He steeled himself. No gear, no publicity handouts, nothing but his bare hands. He’d done this many times, and he needed to do it again before Ace Spandex’s underwear drawer became the six-o’clock news’s lead story. And its weather forecast.

“Hagen, fetch me my stage makeup swatches.” Catastrophe barreled his chest at the assault of popping flashes and photo artillery. This publicity bullet was his to take. “Bring me the one labeled”—an open hand curled into a fist—“‘aureolin summer.’”

Sixth Sense raised an arm in front of his eyes to rescue his sight. He recoiled from the bombardment. Rookie. “Uhm. Uh. Okay. Stage makeup. And is that swatch referring to actor’s blush or wall paint?”

“Both.”

Pushing his glasses up his nose, Sixth Sense flinched from a renewed barrage of questions. “Are you ready for this crowd?” He stood at the barracks door, halfway in, halfway out.

“Hagen, I’ve starred in war productions. I’ve starred in sports productions. I’ve starred in comedies, romances, science fiction, and horror. I’ve starred in actions so deep in the genre my stunt doubles hired their own stunt doubles. Am I ready for this?” Catastrophe spat in his bronze-tanned palms and slicked back his hair. “Yeah, I’m ready for this.” Smile: engaged. Category: beaming. Subcategory: winning.

A T-shirt fell on his face.

Chapter Fifteen: Making Use of That 55 Percent of Communication

September 4, 8909. 7:26 p.m.

Fragment was not an easy creature to speak to, Blackguard observed. That was because he didn’t speak. Blackguard would never get used to Virillian mannerisms. Or how they danced. Or how they drank, he determined from their documentaries and job interviews.

Ashy weather overhead clawed the sky with lightning, growled thunder to those below, and threatened rain in the moist clouds. Winds howled at the foot of this dank mountain. Blackguard, trusted apostle of Lord Continuum, with a tarry and malleable body, had teleported his charges through space and chronoported them through time to visit this Fragment at his cave refuge, where his misdeeds against society had forced him to hide and consider home.

Fragment was no different than any typical member of the reptilian Virillian race. In fact, he was much harder to speak to, since he wore a mask, shrouding his face in featurelessness much like his personality. Only Blackguard’s face, draped in pitch-black shadow and shaped in vague bumps, claimed as little character. Fragment stood before him, behind him his army, who grew impatient because Blackguard had promised them ice pops after recruiting Fragment.

Yes, behind him stood his amassed army, those already pledging their devotion and eternities to the almighty conqueror, Lord and Master Continuum. That army included the image-obsessed controller of living tissue Marionette, the racist and lightning-fast Ripsaw, the brawny ex–Bad Guy Plaster with candlewax-like skin, and the feral and toxic-to-the-touch Gangrene, arrayed behind him on mossy boulders and grassy mounds at the foot of this rocky cliffside. They had left their most recent recruit, the catatonic Kamikaze, home for awakening.

Fragment wore a form-fitting white impact suit with two blue vertical stripes streaking from the belt and wrapping around his shoulders like suspenders. His mask—which hid nothing except facial communication since his identity was public—was plain white but for two steel mesh cups for eyeholes.

“My dear Fragment, I promise you will reign atop all, never again maligned. You will service the great and almighty, all-knowing, and infinite”—he threw an arm into the air, this time not clonking it on a ceiling fan, which was a minor victory—“Continuum.” The hand came down, because at any minute, given his luck, a bird would collide with it. “I offer you this like a stone-carved oath, my new brother. Lord Continuum will reward you a hundredfold—”

“Tell him pillionfold,” Plaster grunted from behind while sunbathing on a boulder. Yes, sunbathing in near subzero temperatures under a charcoal sky. “Continuum’ll reward him a frickin’ pillionfold.”

“Brother Plaster, return to examining the gunk you pick from behind your ear.” Blackguard facepalmed. Plaster’s contribution to this effort was a word that didn’t exist. He’d said this before. Often. And then smiled at his charm as if expecting a golf clap. “The word is billion.”

“Pssh. Last time ya called it million. Can’t be both.”

Blackguard faked a smile at Fragment, hoping the speechless masked thief discerned the shape of his minor lips. Fragment, a being neglected, discarded, and treated as a mule, had grown into a life of diamond theft. Virillian diamonds, to be certain, so nothing glamorous. He had grown cruel and emotionless. He communicated only in head tilts and the body language of folding his arms and staring at Blackguard as if Blackguard were an oddity in an art exhibit. Nice conversation, mute. For whatever purpose this creature would serve in Lord Continuum’s design, Blackguard knew not, but Continuum planned on a level beyond Blackguard’s understanding. Also, if he questioned Fragment’s part, he must question Ripsaw’s. Ripsaw once ate wet dog food thinking it was ground beef.

Droplets pittered on the grass. An angry arctic wind swelled through the area, ruffling Marionette’s coat. Though it should upset Blackguard’s “clothing,” a trench coat and fedora hat, it did not. Blackguard’s clothes were part of his malleable form.

The kicker here, as Plaster would say? Fragment was a hyperperson. Yes. A ruthless one. From his fingertips, he hardened the air’s moisture into icelike projectiles, fragments that, with a swinging motion, he propelled at people in a torrent of needles. Blackguard would smile toothily at this brutal ability if his face didn’t resemble a bank-robbery stocking. He smiled stockingly.

Fragment tilted his head to the side. Again. If only Virillians could speak. They grunted and hissed. That culminated their verbal accomplishments. Fate had stacked the deck against them. Yes, even fate itself wanted Virillians to lose. As a species, they should receive a commendation simply for not drowning while taking a drink.

Behind Blackguard, Ripsaw slid a medical applicator from a pocket. He tapped it against his neck and pressed a button. The applicator removed his hyperability for a time, but it also deadened hallucinations of a Terran named Woody who antagonized him.

“Fragment, accept this offer, for you will be recompensed infinitely at our Lord and Savior Continuum’s side, as one of his army, as one of his twelve, as an apostle of his mercy and splendor. Submit to His lordship. You will forever experience unrivaled bliss.”

Fragment’s head ticked left as he observed Marionette, perched on her shallow mound, shuffle her weight and examine her nails in bored idleness. As quickly as that—even quicker—his head ticked back to Blackguard, much like a pigeon’s gaze flitted arbitrarily. Yes, Blackguard would compare Fragment as such: to a pigeon.

“Can we leave now?” Ripsaw didn’t conceal the intolerance laced in his tone, barely emerging in his words though still above the surface. “They’ll run out of grape flavor by when we show up.”

“Brother Ripsaw, we can travel through time.” Back to Fragment. “Fragment, you would do well to accept.” Blackguard reached out to this silly pigeon. If the pigeon could not respond orally, Blackguard hoped he would accept physically. A nod would suffice. Or perhaps the “finger,” as Plaster found entertaining.

Fragment’s gaze flashed at Blackguard’s hand. He scuffed his feet on patchy ground, not with boots but with thickened soles in his impact suit’s bottoms. He did not reply, baffled by this new concept called words. He was as conversational as their pet, Gangrene. Less so, in fact, since Gangrene at least rumbled with satisfaction when you scratched it on the belly.

“Oh, never mind.” Blackguard wrapped his malleable form around Fragment and his army. “Let us just go get our treats.”

Chapter Sixteen: Zero Stars for Their Friendliness, Three for Their Garlic Chicken

Franchise burst into the warehouse. It was locked, but throwing weight at the l-door and crunching it off its hinges took fourteen duplicates heaving forward. The one with the penchant for belching really put his back into it. Better than the one who put his pelvis into it. Or the one who put the other one’s pelvis in it. But the door finally ruptured apart, cracking off its frame and fading due to damage. Everyone spilled into the powdery warehouse in a fifteen-Franchise pile-up like clowns rolling out of a clown car. A palm mashed the original Franchise’s teeth into his cheek. Franchise wondered what possessed him to take the front. He wasn’t heavy, but at the base of a fifteen-Franchise pyramid, holy hobbledehoy, his ribs let him have it.

Everyone squirmed on top of him. He managed out of the pile only by reabsorbing his duplicates through skin-on-skin contact and concentration. This was after he got a foot in the face and a bootlace up his nostril. After the mess of duplicates finally vanished, he still felt that bootlace up there.

Despite his intolerant hip, he hauled himself up, sneezed from the phantom bootlace sensation, straightened out the nougat in his hair—appearance was everything—and picked apart the room in a visual sweep. The room looked like the aftermath of a clutter bomb. Concrete floor fissured up the middle with a hairline crack. Chairs stacked randomly like a garbage pile since their antigravity conduits didn’t interlock: no rhyme, no reason, no care. Shelves holding bubbling scientific gear the suicidal Kamikaze would drink out of. Behind that, the segmented and separated body of The Nemesis starship, headless, wingless, tailless, and probably without its seven herbs and spices, but Franchise wouldn’t lick it to make sure. An open-concept ceiling with ducts, piping, and some bat monster Franchise ignored because that made sanity easier to cling to. A sleeping area in the filthy corner, with a rusted and collapsed cot exhumed from a mummy’s tomb...if mummies slept on cots. A dresser. A light-panel as a lamp hovering above the cot. And Reef, a shocked Reef who probably last expected a visitor barging through the door, much less a friend. And maybe mummies did sleep on cots. What did he know?

Here stood the familiar and thought-dead Good Guy Reef: brown hair, hazel eyes, athletic build, harsh growling at Franchise. Everything but the whiskey breath. And the bourbon breath. And the everything-in-the-distillery breath. He wore tattered and bleached denim overalls covering a white shirt with chemical splotches and dusty soot all over. Reef had died during ex–Bad Guy Mechanism’s assault on Station One...or so everyone had thought. How was he here?

“Reef? Reef.” That f scraped Franchise’s lower lip with the chip in his teeth. He rushed across this poor man’s four-story warehouse-turned-lab under that bat monster with creepy eyes who licked its hungry li—Nope. Ignoring that thing. Franchise had room for only one winged assassin of rationality, and Appetite had seniority.

Franchise tripped on a forgotten beaker on the floor, which connected to a system of baubles and flasks with plastic coils like a hamster’s tube home. He hopped up, having only whacked his knee on the concrete. “Only” knocked, as if the knee didn’t add to his missing eyebrows, the gunk in his hair, his gnawing hunger, the chipped tooth, and the sudden need for a restroom. His weekend was on short notice to show him a good time.

“Reef.” Franchise limped across the lab and reached the cot, which smelled of mildew. “Reef, how are you alive? And here? And alive?” He took Reef in. “And dressed like a miner?”

He grabbed Reef by the shoulders, but Reef flinched away and raised a fist. “Reef, it’s me, Jacob.” Whoa. Hand to mouth. His chipped tooth shrilled his words like a steam whistle. Stupid chipped tooth. Was this why hockey players sucked at interviews?

Reef blinked at him, jaw open to say something he wasn’t saying. Franchise risked another few s sounds, riskier since he fought back another sneeze. And he always sneezed like an infant girl. “I’m Jacob. From work. Franchise.”

Reef warded Franchise back with a reared fist. “You work at a Jacob franchise?”

“I’m Jacob.” Franchise stepped back a pace. “You know, Jacob and Jeffy? I’m the one that isn’t neurotic. As much. I’d sing the theme song, but Jeffy wrote it, and it’s exactly what you’d expect.” He calmed down. His galloping heart wouldn’t follow suit. “Why can’t you remember me?” He gasped. “Did Asinine make you sniff glue?”

“Who the crock are you?” Reef reached backward, hand rooting around, and grabbed a laser cutter. Upon his touch, the thing hummed alive and extended a stubby beam of light. What Franchise wouldn’t give to have that thing. Like, right exactly now. Reef looked ready to carve Franchise up for dinner. This wouldn’t turn out friendly.

Franchise backed away, reassessed, backed away another pace. His calves knocked against the mummy’s cot behind him. “Reef, it’s me, Franchise from the Good Guys.”

“Is the Good Guys a party-store franchise?”

“It’s a military offshoot.” Franchise shrugged. “And a party store under some definitions. We served together for almost two years. I thought you were dead. We erected a statue in your honor. Full disclosure: the best photo we found of you was in your weird hat phase, so the statue has a bowler. That’s on you.” He flinched at his blitzing lip. “Okay, I’m avoiding the letter s until my next dental exam, or I’m filing this tooth down.”

Reef swung at him with the laser cutter.

“Hey, I didn’t carve the statue.” Franchise toppled backward over the cot and rolled off the other side. He floundered onto the floor, back clapping white fury at him, but he stumbled to his feet.

Reef climbed onto the cot, making the middle squeal when the coils banged against the concrete. He climbed off, and the cot oofed in relief. It threw the pillow when it sprang back up. He swiped again. Franchise ducked, shot up with one hand on top of the lunging arm and the other cracking underneath it. Couldn’t believe that worked.

The laser cutter clattered away and shut off, hum dying. Reef grappled Franchise backward onto the cot. The cot grunted at having to put up with supporting weight again.

Reef grabbed a bar leaning against a wall and thrust it double-handed down at Franchise’s neck. Franchise grunted and caught the bar before it could shatter his esophagus. Both pressed the bar against the other. Reef had let his strength wane since dying...ish.

But Reef had the upper hand, and the upper hand was called gravity. Franchise had despised gravity since childhood when it got in the way of his flying off the roof. Instead he suffered a chafing ligament in his hip, thanks to gravity’s sidekick, ground.

“Reef, why are you here?” Franchise coughed those words out with a blurt of exertion and—glad his girlfriend wasn’t here—a bit of spittle. He would never speak of this again.

The bar pressed harder on his neck. His larynx bulged into his windpipe. Breathing was labored. “Reef...you’re a...nnngggg...Good Guy.” His voice had diluted, slurred with nasality. Another cough, but without saliva thanks to his sucking it back. One point for social foresight. But sensations blurred. Not his vision, just his consciousness. He sucked breath as if through a kinked straw.

Then a floodgate tore open, and that sneeze splattered forth. Reef recoiled. Franchise blinked. Reef blinked. Franchise blinked again. Reef wiped green off his face. Franchise pouted. “Oh, man. Reef, I’m so sorry. That was...that was my party foul.”

“That...that was...it was—”

“Disgusting?”

“Chunky!” Reef shoved down again with renewed power.

“It’s not my fault. My snot thickens. It’s a talent, really.” Franchise needed a distraction. He revved up another sneeze, twitched his nostrils, left-right-left-ri—Come on, nose. Awaken the beast within!

Reef wouldn’t enjoy the defecation, but it was time to unleash the clones. His awareness was filtered, fading to roll credits. He sputtered another bubble of air, probably his last, and with it a duplicate. The duplicate hurdled over Reef, trapped his neck in an armlock, and flung him to the concrete.

Franchise wheezed back air, clutched his bruised and burning windpipe. So eager was he to guzzle delicious oxygen that he swallowed. He bent forward in agony, a dull and crashing pain enflaming his sore throat. He felt as if he’d swallowed a child’s block.

“You twins are all annoying. I’ve seen enough biopics on psychic connections.” Reef leaped up and cuffed the duplicate, who had hunched at the cot with belt unclasped. The defecator. Franchise had gotten good at predicting his duplicates’ order. Usually the urinator came out second. Next the one who spat all the time. Then the biter. Then the guy who ran around pretending to be an airplane. Then the guy who overturned trash containers, which was just poor manners.

Four was enough, so he stopped at the biter. They toppled Reef over and held him down. One snatched the bar away and threw it under the cot. Suppressing painful coughs, Franchise trod over the cot, which blew out dust from an era six thousand years ago. He towered over Reef. “You’re Reef. You’re a Good Guy, like me. We don’t hide in dusty labs. We fight injustice and violence. I’ll beat that into you to make you remember.”

“What the crock is a Good Guy? Why does that name ring a bell?” Reef’s brow furrowed. “And why do I know hand-to-hand combat?”

Two cacophonous booms interrupted them. Franchise rolled, took cover behind the sagging cot, and peeked at the shelving unit across the warehouse. Who the big head was this?

Franchise regarded the marvel of genetics that had presented...herself? Himself? ... Bothself? This victim of heavy crossbreeding was a collage of different bodies from head to toe, as if Alaphus had used one design when starting and a radically different one applying the finishing touches. Sporadic hair atop her—Franchise picked “her,” because the gender scale tipped slightly in that favor—veiny head and a thick monobrow to make up for it, complexion in blue and pink blotches as if her painter couldn’t decide between hairy Terran and hairless Trioxidillian DNAs, skin that speckled off in flakes. But the crowning achievement—pun intended—was the inflated forehead topping her attention-arresting cranium. Franchise was so stunned that he stood, neglecting his cover despite the pistol brandished at him, warning shots still wisping out the barrel. He pitied the family tree that had set forth this creature.

In her other hand, this creature held an empty pack of Skittles. She dropped the pack and finished chewing. “You will let comrade go,” she said. As if this never-ending cocktail of characteristics yelled “And another thing,” it spoke a solid accent too.

“Move.” The pink/blue beast jerked her pistol away from Reef and into the center of this half of the warehouse. “Over to floor there. Быстро.”

“Lady”—still an educated guess—“I freak out in only three languages, and yours isn’t one of them. So let’s keep this unilingual.” Franchise sidestepped where she indicated: a bare patch of floor. His duplicates followed.

“Быстро.” She bared her teeth and jerked harder.

“Hey, hey, I’m moving as быстро as I can.” On a knee still crackling pain and an unforgiving hip, Franchise hobbled over. He now wanted back aboard that Crapshoot more than anything. It called him a nice young man.

Reef picked himself off the floor. A smile as smug as Jeffy’s when he wouldn’t say where he hid the tripwires, he limped to her side and crossed his arms.

Franchise reached the bare area. The duplicates joined him. “I’m giving this place a one-star review. ‘Staff brainwashes friends and doesn’t offer breadsticks.’”

“Now you die, yes?”

Franchise waved his hands. “No. Now I die no.”

The genetic-quilt lady handed Reef the pistol and tapped her temple, which swelled a tad larger and then...ugh...pulsed as if growing another lobe. Franchise felt heat against his skin. His feet drooped. He looked down and, whoa, wwhooooaaa, he dangled in midair, arms floating out as if he waded in deep water. Was she...? She was. She used a hyperability to levitate him.

But not his others. “Duplicates”—he snapped his fi—Where were they? Two of them were yanking apart a beaker system while the defecator prepared to clog a test tube. “Guys, focus up for three whole seconds. Get me out of this crazy telekinetic hold.” The duplicates stood erect, like prairie dogs investigating a loud bang. “Attack!”

As an army of primates, they hooted, beat their chests, stampeded toward Reef and the crazy forehead woman, and swarmed them. Franchise dropped and slapped the concrete, a sharp crunch knifing out of the ankle under his angered hip. He yelped and clutched his foot, risked standing, buckled. A twisted ankle on top of all this? Wednesday, must you be such a Monday?

He limped to readiness. His duplicates limped, too. Without injury. One was the defecator and another the traffic playmate, so they didn’t offer much intellectual range. He inattentively put pressure on his injured ankle and faltered from the pain that felt as if he’d folded his ankle in all the wrong ways. The duplicates took his yelp as a retreat command. They spread off the Bad Guy and Reef. Even the defecator did, who retreated mid-defecation. Worse still, he drew the log back in.

Reef aimed the pistol at Franchise. The woman with the head lung laughed a witch’s cackle. The head lung had calmed, now waving only slightly.

“Well, leetle собака—” She leaned on one leg. Big mistake. She reeled aside, threw her arm up to brace herself, and bashed into a steel rack of shelves. Her arm jutted through the rack and her shoulder knocked into the shelf above that. The rack tipped over and carried her down. It toppled into the window facing the hangar, folded, and crashed to the ground in a broken mess. Baubles, flasks, instruments, wires, and steel feathers from the rooster-themed Nemesis scattered themselves.

A final clang and a smash marked a rolling beaker’s demise. As gracefully as possible—and Franchise noted to whom he referred—she eased to her feet and crossed her arms. “Well, leetle собака”—another clang—“we possess upper hand in seetuation.”

Reef shuffled over, gun and hateful glare still armed, Franchise’s duplicates still keeping their distance though the urinator squeezed his legs together in a dance. The lady of the house exhibited all her teeth in a disturbing smirk. “I should shoot you like собака for ruining lab, but we turn you over to Vedushchiy Essinine instead.” A rattle.

“You’re a cabana?” Reef glanced at Head Lung but still kept an eye on Franchise.

“No. Собака. He is собака. I shoot him like he is собака. Is dog.”

“He’s the cabana?” Reef shook his head. “You’re butchering this threat with your weird words.”

“I butcher people, not threats. And I butcher with words from mother planet. Gebber, ecknowladge. Contact Vedushchiy Essinine.” Head Lung waited. And waited. And tapped a foot. Nothing happened. Head Lung scratched her cheek. Still nothing. “Gebber, ecknowlade.” She waited. Same result. Nothing. She puffed through her nose. Even her puff sounded accented. “Gebber?” She tapped her ear. That still didn’t work.

“You want me to take over butchering from here?” Reef gestured his gun around.

“Nyet. да иди ты.” Head Lung kicked the collapsed rack. Bad idea. She lost balance and reeled onto the floor. She spat a few more words about who knew what in whatever language, then calmed. Defeat made her shoulders sag. “Comrade Reef, please butcher now this and call Vedushchiy Asinine.”

Escape, quick. While Reef is distracted with butchering threats. Franchise reeled around—smacked his head into a furry pillar. He skittered back from the mariachi band’s Sasquatch and put up his dukes. “How do you keep sneaking up like that?”

* * *

“Curses!” Master Asinine was on the gabber with Reef, wondering if a vedushchiy was a ballet step. First Brick, now Brainiac. Why must mad scientists half-bake their words and their dancing? After this conversation, he’d need to go center himself. At least they’d found the stowaway. Anyway, back to cursing. “Cursity curses!”

Lieutenant IQ 23 shushed soothingly to Master Asinine as if helping him through an impossible decision equal to the choices on a restaurant’s kid’s menu.

Deep inside the bowels of this Crapshoot—he meant bowels, because this place stank like his last bathroom deposit—he and the junior thugs had grown tired of searching for their stowaway. Feet sore, ankles swollen, and pedometer flashing a number he’d never seen, he needed a seat. What was that number, anyway? It had a y in it. And a doorknob. Served him right for robbing a Virillian pawnshop. “We’ve been wandering this stupid Crapshoot, and our stowaway has been snooping around the hangar all this time? We’ve spent our entire arts-and-crafts break in here. At least four”—quick check of the ol’ watch—“five eons of it!” His voice echoed down the soulless corridors as easy to navigate as the maze on the back of that aforementioned kid’s menu. He kicked a wall with the hoof of his horse outfit and then exhaustedly clonked his forehead on it. The reverberation barked down the darkened hallway.

Okay. Pause cursing. “Reef, tell Brainiac I want the stowaway in the torture spa.” He drummed his fingers in thought. “Give him the—I don’t know—Island Sands Suite. We’ll extract our information when we arrive: security codes, mission plans, yoga schedules. And we’ll extract it...with blood.” Ooh. He came up with that on the fly. Nice. “I’ll meet her there in ten minutes or”—he glanced around at the magnitude of this hallway, at the Crapshoot itself—“a week and a half. Meanwhile, you keep working on that monstrous rooster project. Asinine, out.” He tapped his gabber to shut off the connection. No, wait. He’d ended up double-tapping it. Extensions zipped back out. He tapped it ag—Nope, double-tapped again. Boy, he was twitchy today. Tap—Nope. Never mind. It was staying out.

“All right, let’s go torture our enemy. This’ll be fun.” He examined the hallway down both directions. Yyyyyyikes. “Did anyone leave a trail of breadcrumbs?”

Chapter Seventeen: Rectal Examination, the Awkward Kind

Legion had had it with Hearse’s itchiness. Whatever rash that walking support beam suffered from needed a dermatologist, infection specialist, or witchdoctor. Maybe Burger Wench’s questionable cinnamon twists had caused parasites. If there was any place you didn’t want an infection, it was up there. Not as if Legion recommended visiting the station’s medical facilities. The latest data showed Hearse had a 47 percent chance of coming back with more infections than before. And one was likely to be fungal. “Hearse, no more cinnamon twists for you.”

“I secede nothing.” Hearse snarled.

“Reason one: earwigs live in the mixing paste. Reason two: it’s called mixing paste.”

“That is how the bakers infest the cinnamon right into the chewy center.”

“They’re cinnamon twists. The center isn’t supposed to be chewy.”

They’d finally reached the wall partition that overlooked the lobby’s fire escape. Hearse had battered through it with a solid kick, which raised questions about his boots, since the outer wall was a layer of insulation, a layer of steel, and then a layer of brick. He then reared back, grabbed Legion, threw him out to the fire escape, and followed down and toward the barracks, then along the far side of the barracks to the hangar bay.

Lurking around to the door that led to bay B took only minutes, where rested the station’s Fireball mil-trans. The door slid away, and they entered—

Janice wasted no time. The lights flared up with slaps of sound. Janice’s snicker a restrained warning, it coiled a cold xylophone scale up Legion’s backbone. “Oh, entity Legion.” Her voice had somehow deepened, growled more. If she had eyes, hers would be thin furnaces firing orange embers.

“What, Janice?” Legion prowled low in the flamboyantly lit hallway. Who knew what Janice planned to attack them with? She’d mentioned throwing a solarium. Yes, throw. Legion was weirdly curious.

“I shouldn’t say this.” Janice’s singsong voice reminded Legion of a forest princess attracting wildlife to her feet just to stomp on it. “But duuuuuck.”

“Duck?” Legion stopped. Had Janice left the doors open at the station’s aviary? Stupid move. Power Plant had stuffed laxatives into the birdfeeders, so the parking lot was about to get very, very white—

Rapid gunfire stippled the silence. Defense turrets. They could extend from the ceiling to defended these hallways. Hearse threw Legion to the ground, and Legion’s head clocked against a baseboard, shoulder denting a wall. Janice had progressed to homicide.

Hearse raised his itch-scratching pistol, a compact semiautomatic adorned with heart stickers and cheerful glitter, and leaped up. He missed, dropped back down, and glanced at their surroundings. Very little classed up the utilitarian hangar bay hallways, but Hearse found something and nudged a chin at it. “There. That ugly couch—”

“Hey, I chose that thing.” Legion covered his head at Janice’s next popping assault. It perforated the wall in a sloping line above his antennae. “We bought it at a yard sale.” In the rain. No need to mention that.

“I care not what terrible decoration decisions you make. Crawl toward it. Elbows and ankles. Keep low, as the turrets here find that an awkward angle.” Hearse jerked his head down when gunfire punctured a wall. A light-bullet clanged against his metal glove. Another whipped past so closely it disturbed the wire connecting the aiming sight over his visor. “Crawl.” Now? Crawl now? Legion was already crawling.

“Entity Legion.” Janice giggled. “I want updates on returning my entity love.”

Legion answered the only way he knew how: by testing someone’s patience. “Ace might be home in time for your next product upgrade.”

“I’ve received no upgrade notifications!” Janice grilled them again, shattering glass, pecking apart a table, piercing holes into the wall. Legion had a way with women. This was his way. “Also, entity Legion, your denim tuxedo has arrived.”

Legion couldn’t tell Janice the truth: that Ace and the others had disobeyed direct orders and launched a rogue mission. If he did, she might blab to IP, who would deem it a punishable offense. With IP in the dark, Legion could still manage this. And Denim Dynamic’s shipping speed was outstanding.

Legion scuttled jaggedly toward that couch with Hearse hot on his tail. He wanted to warn everyone that Janice was now hunting them, but with all energy dedicated to his random squirm, he couldn’t speak. He tapped at the gabber, but his finger misdirected, and he poked himself in the eye. And the forehead. And the eye again. Could shoot at forty yards, but couldn’t poke his gabber.

Finally he reached the couch, grabbed its leg, and hauled himself around. Heaved it out from the wall with grunts, kicks, a move he’d seen on a dance video, and other things everyone else would look back on and laugh. Not doing his bruised pelvis any favors. He slid behind the couch. It wasn’t that bad. Just a few water stains, and—oh. Oh, no. He gasped. It was the smell. It hit him in the back of his mouth. Black mold and asbestos had gotten together for a breathing-hazard party. It was a rich embroidery of odors.

Now, from where was Janice firing? Legion couldn’t spot any activated turrets.

Hearse appeared. “This couch offends my nose like never before. I have engaged in bladed combat inside waste compactors at produce stores, by the way.”

Legion flinched at another racketing barrage. “Gabber, acknowledge. Contact all Good Guy entities on station.” Still wheezing.

The connection went through quickly, or maybe Legion’s concept of time was adrenalized. “Everyone, I’m keeping this short because I’m out of breath. And apparently out of shape. No one comment. Anyway, Janice has gone beyond asking ‘Are you still watching’ during movie night. This has jumped from her being just plain mean to being bloodthirsty—”

“Entity Legion, right now I’m repainting your office walls with skunk excretion.”

“—and just plain mean.” Legion flinched when Janice’s attack came so close his antennae singed. “Also, Hearse has agreed to change his motto and not hog all the earwig twists.”

“They are technically not in twist form.”

“Hearse, the most disturbing part is it’s the twist part you challenge.” Legion waited a beat for the gunfire to take a break. It didn’t, but at least it lowered the volume. “Everyone, be prepared. And be careful.”

“Earwigs or not, they are mine!” Hearse roared to his feet and sent two light-bullets snapping through the turret pinning them down.

“See you at B-Stratotanker. Scapegoat, if you just find your way out of your living quarters, that’s good enough.”

“Mr. Legion, what was that about earwigs?”

Huh? “Is this the food inspector? How are you always on?”

* * *

So, Good Guy entity Legion didn’t enjoy Janice’s attempts to return Good Guy entity Ace Spandex to location Station One, did entity he? Launch maniacal laughter app. Well, then Janice would test how Good Guy entities Legion, Incendiary, Organism, Catastrophe, Withered Old Battle-Axe, Scapegoat, Hearse, and Sixth Sense enjoyed poison. Increase gusto setting of maniacal laughter app.

Oxygen scrubbers, acknowledge. Lower filter effectiveness around Good Guy entities to 0 percent.

Heh. Launch revenge-seeking and hand-wringing apps.

She had no hands. Fine. But she’d inputted such a nice day today that she should go for a walk.

Wait, she had no feet. She drew back to kick something.

Wait, she had no feet.

Chapter Eighteen: Imprisonment Etiquette

Master Asinine heard the loop-the-loop screams from hallways away in the torture unit of the station. Used to be the daycare center when this was a terraforming station, so some of the decorations were deceptively cheerful. Like the smiling bears. Asinine would have removed them, but they seemed to be enjoying their day at the beach.

Mixed with the screams came grinds from a motorized butcher’s saw slurping against liquid and flesh. Music to his ears. Cringeworthy, caterwauling, disorganized, muddled, horrible music. Shambolic, untogether, apish, anarchic, rubber-wringing, shrill—Where was he going with this? Oh, yeah. These screams were music to his ears. The butcher’s saw was a great backup singer, like a cat gurgling. He tapped his foot to the rhythm, loving the beat. Music to his ears.

Asinine, Lieutenant IQ 23, and Braindead approached the torture chamber. Maybe Asinine should trot. Or gallop. Make him feel like a real horse in this costume. His heart skipped along to the beat of its own arrhythmia drum. It followed no man’s rules, including those of established medicine.

Before bursting through the l-door of the chamber to which they’d assigned their victim, he straightened his outfit. He planned to wring every drop of information on Station One out of their new captive. Through any means necessary, whether loss of life, loss of limb, or loss of other limb. In that order. “Lieutenant, we need to intimidate the captive if we’re to coax out any strategic information or celebrity gossip.”

“But mostly strategic information.”

“Let’s make him feel threatened. Brutalized. Hopeless. We are the faces of death.” Never mind the Spider-Man bandage on his chin covering his shaving mishap. “Make it clear I’m the alpha. So laugh as though I just did something funny.” And through the l-door Asinine galloped.

Lieutenant IQ 23 followed, guffawing spectacularly. “You’re right, sir. That was an outstanding stench you vomited just now.” You could always count on IQ 23.

Under the low, red rust of a color-filtered light panel they’d plucked from their holiday storage—loved the pine-scented mistletoe hanging from it—their stowaway lay pinned to an inertiabed, debilitated from the neck down by magic technology. His despairing eyes found the door. Ahhh, Franchise.

Brainiac stood to one side, the musical butcher’s saw in one hand, a surgical mask strapped around that gigantic head. She’d tied it back with a bungee cord since the strap was too short. Good for her for taking the necessary precautions. In the corner rested a squat machine trailing two wires: their torture device. It didn’t work since the maintenancebots never remembered to recharge it and also since Master Asinine never remembered to remind them. A three-piece mariachi band clustered in the far corner, the Sasquatch going to town with a pair of painted maracas. Asinine wanted to call this the most bizarre part of his day, but this morning he’d learned Elmo and Jar Jar Binks had belonged to the same spirit troupe in high school.

But Franchise was untouched. So what was with the screaming? “Brainiac, what’s the deal here? I heard my favorite love ballad: panic squawks. But the prisoner looks as if you just came from fluffing his pillow.” Asinine whipped the pillow out from under Franchise’s head.

Brainiac pulled down the mask to speak. “Apology, Vedushchiy Essinine.” She moved her arms prudently, careful not to lean or else she’d careen due to that off-kilter head that swelled like a hot-air balloon taking flight. And maybe it would. “Was showing preesoner example of torture against side of beef.” She stepped aside to reveal a rack of cow ribs hooked to the ceiling. “I offer him sandweech. He scream anyway.”

“You mean that love ballad was a cover song?” Asinine pounded a fist on the inertiabed, which gonged back in retaliation. He shielded his ears. Wow, that was loud in this cramped room. “Fine. I’ll torture him myself.”

He dived at Franchise. Franchise flinched away as much as he could, which amounted to no more than a head lift. His head banged back down. Good. The torture had already started at slight discomfort. “You might think we’re going easy on you. Sandwich, pillow, incense.” He pinched two fingers over the incense burning in a flower-painted mortar to snuff it. “Well, no more jasmine myrrh from here on—” He sniffed. “Actually, I liked the jasmine myrrh. Braindead, fire up that odor candy.”

Braindead was quick with the lighter.

“Anyway, no more of that hospitality stuff. Now it’s torture time. Ohh, ha ha ha, and I have so much torture planned.” Master Asinine moved only his lips, not his teeth. “First you’ll comb the lawns. Next you’ll sweep the garage. Then you’ll eat limes until you pee battery acid. After that, we’re sending you back into that Crapshoot to find Schizophrenic because, honestly, he hasn’t come out yet, and we’re starting to worry.”

* * *

Schizophrenic sent his colossal boot crashing into the table harder, harder, harder. “For crock’s sake, we’ve circled back to this brig eight times now!” Even harder. His boot flung off his foot, bounced off a wall, and smacked him on the forehead. “Crock, right on my pimple!”

“Let me try.” Righty practically hyperventilated with excitement.

“Shut up. Let’s take another shot at figuring out which bathroom to use.” Schizophrenic stormed off.

* * *

“After all that torture, you’ll tell us what we want to know. Then and only then will we tell Legion to give himself up before we get to the agonizing stuff: painting our greenhouse. It’s, like, really tall. You need a ladder and stuff. We’ll see who Legion finds useless then?”

“You.” Franchise rolled his head to Brainiac and then back to Asinine. “He finds you useless. And the guy who keeps Microwave Apprentice on the air, but mostly you.” The wall behind the hanging cow ribs flashed an ad for Microwave Apprentice’s spinoff show, Microwave Apprentice Apprentice.

“But I boss up the largest criminal outfit in the galaxy. Thousands of underlings. I have use.”

Franchise struggled to shrug. “What can I say?”

“I created jobs!” Should Asinine plan another pop-in at Station One, convince Legion in person? He smelled an armpit. Maybe not today.

“Are you the rear of a horse? You know it’s not Halloween.” Franchise bunched up a cheek in confusion. “Very fitting, though.”

“I know. Makes me feel gallant and thoroughbred.” Asinine neighed for effect. “By the way, you want back ribs or short ribs? Lunch is soon.”

Franchise blinked at him, his panting hectic with effort, his cheeks dabbled with cow’s blood. His head faced Asinine, but his eyes studied the butcher’s saw. “I just want to leave. I’m getting mixed signals here. Butcher’s saw, paintings of animals eating cake. I’m really confused.”

“Oh.” Master Asinine threw a hand at the decoration of a thundermammal birthday party. “Never mind that. This used to be a breastfeeding room. Well, it was for Gharalgians, so technically a teat-oozing room.”

“Look, all I know is I’ve been pinned down here for what feels like hours, and all I can focus on is that saw whirring away like it’s right between my ears. I don’t know why your torture inventory sounds as if you picked it out of a job jar. And I think I have salmonella poisoning.”

Master Asinine reared up from the table. Bad for his back. “Pinned down for hours, eh? All right. We’ll regroup after your federally mandated fifteen-minute torture break.” He snapped his fingers. “Where’s your friend, anyway? And what’s with your s sounds? It’s like air escaping a tire.”

“Friend?” Brainiac said. Her head tilted to the side, and she banged against a wall, now with an ad for Rageaholics Obsequious. She really needed a neck brace. “What friend we discuss about?” She tilted her head again and then reeled into another wall, clipping the light panel and upsetting it into a spin that flared the room red/shadow/red/shadow/red like the dizzying siren lights on a law-tran.

Master Asinine grabbed the light panel to still it. “Someone called in an APB on the haunt control, and there’s been some crazy stuff over at the hangar bay.” He gave Brainiac his signature sideways gawk. “And Franchise is usually with that goofy guy who says he’s half Caucasian and half still Caucasian. We caught the sidekick. Now let’s catch the chief.”

“Wait, you think I’m Power Plant’s sidekick?” Franchise tried to lift his head.

“That’s his name, Power Pants Sidekick.” Master Asinine clicked his tongue at IQ 23. “Lieutenant, there was a ruckus in the hangar, and I’m three percent sure he was responsible. The Bad Guy Who Shall Not Be Named—”

“Vedushchiy Essinine Suck?” Brainiac blasphemed.

Master Asinine spat on the floor to such sacrilege. “—didn’t just destroy half a hallway himself. Did he?” He glanced at the mariachi band. “I have no idea how cowboys do their thing.” The mariachis stopped mariachiing and shrugged at each other. Even the trumpet player. And here Asinine thought trumpet players were the bright ones.

“You guys think I’m the sidekick?” Franchise said.

“Let me lead operation, Vedushchiy Essinine.”

“Nah, you stay put. We don’t need you toppling into any other water fountains. I already have to mop everything up from here all the way to your lab, and we ran out of Slippery When Wet signs. Should have gotten more than zero of them. Ooh, torture list item: steal signs.” Good idea. “Anyway, we need you to up the agony here. Remember our motto: ‘The sky’s the limit on making our prisoners smoke out of their ears.’” He came alive at Franchise. “Hear that? No torture limits. It’s like the old folksong goes: ‘No no, no no no no’”—and then a pause for suspense—“no no no no’”—such unpredictable lyrics—“‘no no, there’s no liiiimiiiiit.’”

“I’m the sidekick?”

Brainiac sucked a chunk off a rib she had cut for herself and held up a hand. “If I can propose deefrent plan, vedushchiy.” She beamed a smile to light the room. It didn’t. Too much fuzzy mustache. “We turn hyperability against captive. He create duplicates. We brainwash duplicates. We send duplicates out for dirty work.” That smile grew, revealing teeth that, never mind brushing, needed a good fumigation. “Comrade Power Plant won’t fight duplicates of comrade Frenchise.”

“Let’s not gloss over this. I’m the sidekick?” Franchise’s eyes darted around for answers. “I know I’m concerned about the wrong thing here, but I work hard for my status.”

“Brainiac, I like your thinking, even if it pulsates.” Master Asinine’s smile outshined Brainiac’s, though it could never outmustache it. “Let me one-up you. Let’s brainwash Franchise, and he creates the duplicates instead of us brainwashing each duplicate.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 smiled. It was like a competition for whitest teeth. “Ooh. Good idea, sir.”

“I know. It must be a leap year.”

“Plan is not that easy.” And then Brainiac threw the wet blanket to extinguish Master Asinine’s fiery idea. “Brainwashing duplicates takes less of time. They have seemple mind. They are easier. We send them out. Might even brainwash them into not doing poop all over floor. In meantime, we brainwash comrade here and do vedushchiy’s idea.”

Huh. Asinine had to admit, that made sense. “Make it so, Brainiac. I’m headed out to supervise the dirty work.” He was already trotting to the door for the hangar. Lieutenant IQ 23 and Braindead followed. Quick stop at the kitchen, though. They needed hot chocolate.

“Be honest with me,” Franchise asked Brainiac. “Am I really the sidekick?”

Chapter Nineteen: And Now, the News—The Insistent, Overbearing News

The hangar door shushed aside, opening the expanse for Legion and Hearse. A whoosh of cold air escaped like an exorcised ghost. Legion shivered. The ventilation carried with it a faint hiss. Weird. It usually clattered with all the rocks that kept falling into it.

Hidden from view beside the door, Legion flashed his head out to steal a glance at the expansive hangar. Their Fireball starships sat in a three-by-three grid across the maintenance floor. Some spaces were empty—Fireballs lost, destroyed, yet to be supplied, or away for cleaning thanks to a group of teenagers finding it suitable for a party—and streamers draped one for Mabel’s birthday, which everyone wanted to celebrate. It just confused her.

B-Stratotanker waited in a second-row spot, fluid puddled underneath it and a hefty charging cable lazing at its landing trestles. It stood fifty feet tall, at attention on its tripod landing gear, an embarking ramp leading up to its open porthole. Legion glanced around. No killer Janice, no haywire machines, no advertisements about baby oil where the oil referred to synthetic-blend motor oil. Still a step up from cooking oil.

Legion stifled a metallic cough that racked his insides. Something didn’t smell right, didn’t taste right, didn’t feel right. The air was a stinging film of chemicals throbbing in the back of his mouth.

An army of news reporters lingered at the foot of B-Stratotanker’s embarking ramp, waiting in ambush. They had brawled past Sixth Sense and Catastrophe. How had they known everyone was to rendezvous here? Legion would send Hearse ahead to frighten them off, but the last time Hearse had done crowd control, he’d used explosives. And it was to disperse a flock of seagulls. And Legion hadn’t asked him to in the first place.

The reporters were a bad sign. If anyone blabbed the situation, that wouldn’t look good. Legion made one last quick gabber call to tell the others to hang back until further notice.

Could Legion and Hearse circle around behind everyone and tear up the embarking ramp before the reporters peppered them with questions about this situation and Legion’s idea of a good candlelight dinner? He hadn’t been on the dating scene in so long, he’d likely give the same answer as Lowensland when the subject of diesel fuel came up. But no such luck avoiding those newshounds. Circling behind everyone provided no cover and would only extend their path.

Sparkling onto a wall, an advertisement sent the reporters abuzz. It showcased the sleep and carpentry benefits of hammers. At this point, Legion wasn’t sure if Janice needed more product research or more legal restraints.

“Hearse, we’re in luck. The reporters are here, but the hangar doesn’t have any turrets what with all the combustible equipment around. Still, there’s a drone storeroom in the adjacent hall, so be on your guard. The drones are about the size of a football and they’re as gentle as Schizophrenic when he’s forced into a library.” The air smelled stronger and made his nose run and his tongue tingle. Even phlegm tasted like plumbing pipes. “If we get past those reporters, we’re home free.”

Hearse estimated the hangar’s sprawling floor, polished concrete reflecting bright ceiling lights. “To cut through those reporters without thrashing them—”

“Not the word I’d choose. At all.”

“—we must obliterate them with a diversion—”

“Is English your second language?”

“—and an earsplitting one at that.” Hearse yanked a can off a belt strapped over his shoulder. Its clasp jangled away. “Let us see how they enjoy a nail bomb.” He reared back to throw—

“No.” Legion’s hands shot out around the can. “Let us see how they enjoy not a nail bomb.” Gently, ever so gently, asserting firm eye contact, he eased the can out of those baseball-mitt hands and threw it around a corner. It banked off a wall and detonated. “Because it looks as if they’re enjoying not a nail bomb immensely.”

“Then let us see how they enjoy another nail bomb.”

Legion threw his hands over this can before Hearse could yank it off. “Why did you think a second one was even an option? We don’t use antipersonnel explosives on civilians.”

Hearse chuffed. “Then what would you propose we use? Chemical explosives?” He racked a wet laugh.

“Right direction, wrong side of the law. You’ve been as pleasant as glass on the beach since giving up those cinnamon twists.”

“I have surrendered no cinnamon twists. But if we will not scatter them with pain”—Hearse yanked his sticker-adorned pistol to shoulder height—“we will scatter them with fear.” He swung around the door and stormed into the hangar bay.

“Down. Sit, Hearse. Bad waking nightmare.” Legion scrambled to grab Hearse but only splashed onto the resin flooring. By now, Hearse had already stomped half the distance, his gun brazenly high. He squeezed the trigger—blam—gouged the ceiling—squeezed again—crash—shattered a light panel—and then again—weeee—Legion’s hearing dissolved into a ring that rattled inside his antennae and elevated Hearse’s gun blasts to the high note in “Ave Maria”—eeeeee. It burrowed into his eardrums.

Legion covered his stung antennae. His hearing settled as Hearse barked a warning. “Mongers of fear, heed my decree. Allow us aboard our space vessel immediately and without preposterous interrogation. But, if you must, know this: my ideal evening includes ice cream. Mark my words, I do not mean frozen dessert. That fakery is for lesser bounty hunters such as my career nemesis, Brock.”

Judging from the clacking strobes of reporters’ brain-chip cameras—cameras installed in brains that snapped pictures with eyeblinks—not even Hearse scattered them. They knew no fear or common sense. Instead, they flooded him with questions and buzzing, gnat-sized microphones that flew wherever they pointed. Their questions surged so viciously their words were barely identifiable. But when they spotted Legion rising onto hands and knees, they forgot Hearse and swarmed him instead.

Their questions reached him before their beating feet. “Legion, how have you dealt with your haunt control going insane?” “Legion, isn’t Power Plant the one who usually screws things up?” “Legion, isn’t Ace Spandex the one who ruined your previous haunt control?” He was sick of hearing his own name. “Legion, is it true that four of your agents went rogue on an unauthorized mission?” “Legion, nice blank stare.” “Legion, you look as though we just spilled the beans on galactic broadcast. Care to blush a deeper shade of shame?”

Legion blinked at them, a monochrome gaze like a nightscape shining vacuously at the reporters that gushed so close to him that he crawled away. “What did you say about”—don’t bring up the unauthorized mission—“my blank stare?” He choked back a cough that cheese-grated his stomach. Copper air burned his nostrils harder. He hopped up to dodge around the reporters, but they dogged him.

The reporters kept firing their unrelenting questions. “Legion, if you were stranded on a deserted planet, what single rubber band would you bring with you?”

Legion’s gabber buzzed alive. What now? “Incoming connection from entity Horcross Breeng.” This now. Field Marshal Breeng—replacing his predecessor who’d died during Mechanism’s assault on IP headquarters—was contacting him, maybe with news about winning gold in the can-this-wait Olympic event. Legion’s stomach twisted. “Incoming connec—”

“Decline connection.” Legion bullied through the reporters, but they pushed back.

“Too bad. Connection forced. Good luck. He sounds right crocked. A shot of Inebriated Heifer’s Milk-Chocolate Malt might help.” When even your gabber knew you were screwed, you were screwed. The gabber whizzed out its earpiece and mouthpiece. No, go back in. Legion tried squeezing the mouthpiece back—retreat, retreat—but it prodded through his fingers. I hate you, gabber.

“Legion, Celebrity Blather Nightly here with the best sports in Stratus Cloud. Are you concerned with the rising cost of coffee?” So sick of hearing his name.

Legion didn’t need a conversation with the new field marshal right now. No, no, no—

“Major Legion,” Breeng said. So sick of it. And he was a lieutenant colonel.

“Heeeeyyyyyyyy, Field Marshal Breeng, how’s everything? We’re just...maxing. And relaxing. Simultaneously and of equal measure.” Fake smile. Real cough. “General thing doing.”

“Legion, Nightly Newsflash here. Ask Field Marshal Breeng his opinion on the rising cost of coffee.” This reporter hiccupped something moist and checked the back of her wrist.

Was Breeng snarling through the gabber connection? “Major, I’m view-watching Fright ’n’ Plight News, who I’m contractually required to word-announce has the latest on plagues in sports. They’re disclosing some interesting and classified things about a rogue soldier squad of yours. Did I hear them right? You lost four person soldiers on an unauthorized mission? Do you know what risk that puts the IP organization and its stakeholders in? The Home Chopping Network alone is threatening to pull its asbestos fund contract. Those rogues should be on their way back, not in enemy territory. Ace Spandex is supposed to help partition the hard drive on my foot shoes at four.”

Legion stormed into the clot of reporters. He swung shoulders at newscasters, slapped mikes away with open palms, and finally sliced through. Right now he needed aboard that Fireball. Maybe the air was purer in there, because out here, it stung his lungs like entry wounds. One reporter dodged with him, wouldn’t let him advance, wrestled him back. This was the Fright ’n’ Plight newscaster, the one who’d divulged the rogue mission on live broadcast.

Breeng churned boiling words into Legion’s ear, “We risk hand-delivering vital knowledge intel to our enemies. Also, before the reporters go, remind them to pick up a Greasepaint Cosmetics gift bag in the lobby.”

The Fright ’n’ Plight reporter shoved him backward into camera. “Legion, do these gift bags include eyeliner mini rollers?” Amazing hearing. Did he have a tap on Legion’s gabber?

Warm liquid trickled out Legion’s nostril. Wrong time for a cold. He pressed his lips together. He hoped the venom he blew out would poison the Fright ’n’ Plight reporter and turn him off spicy garlic rice. “Step aside.” He clicked his tongue. “No, not you, Field Marshal.”

“Legion, how did you lose control of your squad on a mission behind enemy lines?” Again, the Fright ’n’ Plight reporter shoved Legion back. “Are you aware of how incompetent this makes your leadership look?”

Legion clouted him in the nose. The green-skinned left hook floored the reporter amid pictures and orbiting cameras.

“Major.” Breeng’s voice held back anger in a careful sentence. “Did you just punch a reporter in the face?”

Wait, that was live. He scanned the crossfire of dozens of camera feeds. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

From the doorway, a penetrating crunch mangled the gasping silence. Legion glanced back, the reporters glanced back, Hearse glanced back—

A hive of football-sized security drones hopped in, their skittering legs clamping spidery breaks in the floor. Black, beetlelike, and equipped with weapons hidden inside their chassis, they skittered along. Janice was launching an attack. One drone flaunted Groucho Marx glasses. Always a comedian in every crowd.

His hands hovered at his sides. Sensations melted away. “Field Marshal Breeng, I’ll have to call you back right after I die in a couple seconds. Promise. No, it’s not a Power Plant–related killing this time. I know. Weird, right?”

“Major, don’t you dare hang up while you die!”

“Sir, I have to insist. If you keep watching Flight ’n’ Plight, you’ll see it from the comfort of your own office.” Must be nice.

“Major, those rogue soldier agents are to be brought home”— Breeng’s fist slammed so solidly it sounded to Legion like the gunshot that had ended Sopher—“and arrested for dereliction of duty.”

Chapter Twenty: Karma’s Little Whipping Boy

Power Plant had to rest. Just for a little. His skin felt hot. It also glowed. And before anyone asked, no, he hadn’t fallen asleep in the radiation bed at the gym, so this wasn’t intentional.

Headaches, nausea, sight that dawdled behind his eye movements, brain fog, ringing ears, missing time, blinking color, stubbed toe. He was in bad shape. Every sensation rode a bronco with a score to settle. He found a wall and slid down it, clutching at this fire alarm he called his head.

He blinked. Red took a nap this time. Or orange. Crock, maybe blue. He crumpled to the side, and his throat switched from input to output. An acidic stream gorged onto the floor. All his processed edibles and some inedibles. And a hairball. Just what was his ancestry?

He blinked. Red came back, yellow amscrayed. Fine by him, because all this glowing, yellow skin gave him a headache on top of the other one. Now his eyes burned less. Still felt dry though, as if he’d dumped sand into them.

He smacked his lips and looked at the lights now that his eyes tolerated their yellow-muted glow. Wait... was that Jakey standing down the hallway? Couldn’t be. He dipped his head, raised it. Jakey was still there.

“Jakey?” He clambered to his feet, head rushing like every time he read a warning label. His head pulverizing like a jackhammer, he lurched to Jakey and engulfed him in a hug. A hug Jakey didn’t return?

Oh yeah, Power Plant was mad at him. He shoved Jakey back, more like shoved himself away. “Not evens a hello. I cames all this ways ta saves you, and you ain’t even hugs me back. And what’s wit’s you bein’ all never arounds anymores? We used to be a teams, like bad driving and crashes. But you never schemes with me now. You said you’d have my back in an apocalypse. But the other day I dreamed zombies, and you ain’t showed up.”

Wait. Weird. Power Plant stepped away. His friend—friend?—gave a slimy grin, as if he were about to pull something Power Plant had pulled on him so many times before. Shaving-cream grenades might be in Power Plant’s immediate future. “Jakey?”

Behind Power Plant creaked movement, shadow. His radiating skull sang falsetto in his ears, especially when he spotted a few other Jakeys back there. Ten of them. Maybe. Eleven? Fifty? Okay, cut him some slack. If he couldn’t count before, he shouldn’t be expected to now.

The lead Jakey twisted that slimy smile into something ominous. No, this wasn’t Jakey. He knew Jakey. This was Fake Jakey.

Fake Jakey threw the first punch.

Chapter Twenty-One: Open the Floodgates

In a flurry of silver and gunmetal, the militia of security drones engulfed the room as if the mouth of Hellacious Warmongers’ Depot had opened and out drenched the locusts from their Plagues and Penance collection.

“You know,” Legion remarked to Hearse, who might not be listening or caring, “I really don’t think it was worth buying security drones from the price club even though you save by the thousands.”

“I also doubt the benefit of purchasing the biodegradable ones.” Hearse dealt a flurry of bullets into a leaping attacker. It popped apart and dispersed like dandelion fluff.

While docked, all mil-trans were unlocked and open for rapid access. “Reporters!” Legion waved his arms despite the cloud of drones, their pincer legs clacking as they scurried along the floor, the walls, the ceiling. He pointed at B-Stratotanker. “Find cover aboard that mil-tran. Reporter from Virillian News, stay put.” He still had no clue how a Virillian communicated the news. As far as he could tell, “grraarrrr” meant “top story” while “grraarrrr” meant “And here’s Dennis with your drive home.” And their sports coverage was a rodent-eating contest. Always a rodent-eating contest.

Hearse wiped a trickle from his mouth onto his wrist, which came back bloody. He spat liquid red. “This is for cinnamon twists.” He wielded his gun by the barrel as a baton to whack away a drone. Another drone gripped his shirt, but he yanked it off and, even with the barrel crowding his grip, twisted the drone into a saw-toothed spiral he used to skewer a third drone.

Legion sprinted and slid under a haze of drones to Hearse as if stealing home plate. He leaped up as Hearse batted another drone with one hand and passed Legion a second pistol with the other. Was this the pistol he’d scratched hi—It was!

Legion tweezed the pistol barrel between two fingers and let it hang. Ugh. What a day to wield someone’s bullet-loaded backside scratcher. He’d disinfect himself later by drinking a quart of bleach. He picked off a drone, another, a third. Nice to know that, these past years at a datasheet-swathed desk job, his aim hadn’t rusted.

Not his Marsek, but the caliber seemed sufficient for crunching metal chassis. And with more glitter. He realized he’d forgotten his Marsek back at his office. Not the first time he’d left it behind. No, the first time proved fatal for Sopher and for friendships. That gunshot echoed around in his guilty memories so vividly against the tumult here in the real world.

He buckled from the sneak attack of a cold, metallic hacking fit and spat some reflux onto the floor. It tasted like regurgitation. Still keeled over, he said, “Hearse, this defensive maneuver won’t work forever. But nice happy-face stickers.” His throat felt hoarse from this weird air and the yelling. He glanced at B-Stratotanker and then back at his business, noting that the reporters had made it aboard, but a dozen drones crawled like spiders up the side of the beastly mil-tran toward its open port. Had to bypass Janice and her comments about his abilities to back into a parking spot. So he addressed the mil-tran itself. “B-Stratotanker, acknowledge. Launch to safe orbit.” Legion had to get those civilians out of here. He’d retrieve the mil-tran later.

The mil-tran shut its port and began retracting the embarking ramp. The hangar bay launch canopy split, two heavy slabs rumbling apart, complaining throughout the bay. Metal slid against metal. The gears and cogs dragging such heavy openings crunched. Dust settled. It shook Legion almost to his knees, but never mind that right now. He still had about ninety thousand more drones to pick off. Power Plant would have loved such sanctioned property damage. Too bad he was disobeying orders and in the gunsights of arrest.

The launch canopy had gaped half open. Legion tasted air as it should taste—with no more than the usual pollutants—now that the bay was exposed to the outside. The cold metallic taste in his throat dulled.

He retreated. Too many security drones to keep track of. He found Hearse, and both pressed, back to back, each watching 180 degrees. A drone pounced and caught Legion’s collar. He grabbed it, threw it back, shot it. Another slid up his boot, but he lifted his leg into his gunsights—dumb move, but so was his career choice lately—and blasted it right down the eye mechanism. Another perforated his sleeve. He dispatched it as Hearse made a behind-the-back shot at another that had leaped at his scalp. Good thing for sound suppressors, or he’d need expensive ear surgery to accompany the therapy he needed from Lowensland’s brash wardrobe. A therapy sampler platter.

Its ramp retracted, B-Stratotanker had leaned into position. With the bay doors almost open, the mil-tran hunched back on its rear trestles, the front trestle extending up. The thrusters rumbled up a cloud of exhaust and electrical discharge, bitter voltage and salty smog on the tongue. “Hearse, cover your ears!”

Hearse checked over his shoulder. “Hearse’s ears cower from the noise of no man or machi—Crock, that is a big one.” He folded into a ball, hands pressed against ears—

B-Stratotanker exploded from the polished floor and hurled out of sight. Drones were discarded across the bay like skipped rocks on water.

Legion checked the charge reading on his pistol. Close to zero, like his dignity. A drone took advantage. It caught Legion’s neck, sliced a shallow, hot gash along his jaw. He grabbed the drone by a pincer leg and whipped it against another that leaped at him. He fired a blast, but a drone clutched his extended arm and clamped tightly. Edged pincers—cut deeply—Legion howled, tried to find aim—couldn’t. Another caught his leg, another his knee, another an elbow—Legion dropped Hearse’s gun—another on his scalp—another on his thigh. The one on his scalp split its back panels like a beetle separated hard exterior wings. A saw swung out to play, revving and descending on his skin. He’d dodged enough blades to the face that last time Lowensland had brought his knife-throwing show on tour.

Legion fell to his knees under half a dozen drones at twenty pounds apiece. Cuts on his arms, slashes on his legs, lacerations along brow and forehead. Dizzy. Couldn’t see past all these drones crawling all over him. He fell onto his stomach, squashed under more and more. They squeezed down on his bones, mashed cheek against...against floor...compressed lungs...he couldn’t...couldn’t draw in...oxygen...felt tingles...bubbling, frothing tingles that sang...in his antenna...his lungs hot...his fingertips sensationless...

Gunshots rang out, blasted the drone off his scalp before it connected saw to skin. Another blasted the ones off his knees, off his legs, arms, back. Thank goodness for overbearing bodyguards and eleventh-hour rescues. Legion rolled over toward Hearse. “Okay, you’ve earned back your cinnamon twists. But no dipping gunge.”

“Those twists belong to no other!” That cackling came from the bottom of a mountain of drones. Hearse hadn’t fired those shots?

Legion blinked up at a hand that reached for his, a hand not dusted with sugar granules. In cocoa skin, it swanked a litter of tiny spikes along palms, wrists, fingers, everywhere. Legion followed the hand to the owner.

Pincushion?

Pincushion jerked his hand closer. “Any day now, brother.”

* * *

So Good Guy entities Legion and Hearse meant to destroy all entity Acey’s and Janice’s children? And why had entity Pincushion abruptly reappeared in Janice’s grid system? Time to initialize more instances of object Security Drone. In the meantime, Janice had panic add-ons to install in all unlisted guest entities. And air to further corrupt.

She’d treat herself to some wine today.

Wait, she had no wine.

Wait, she had no mouth.

* * *

Good Guy field leader Pincushion had vanished more than two weeks ago from Station One. His sudden appearance here forced a system crash in Legion’s brain.

Pincushion had the hypermutation of bone protrusions around callused skin, so when Legion grabbed his outstretched hand, he had to be careful. Pincushion hefted him up. Legion almost toppled forward on his gashed knee. Even with the bay doors open, he swallowed a helping of cold and steely air. It burned his throat like a swig of medicinal alcohol. After the initial gust when the launch doors opened, the taint in the air had recirculated to the floor. It probably weighed more than normal air. And did he smell manure? Were they close to the food court’s slaughterhouse/genetic-testing ranch? “Abioye, where have you been these past couple weeks?”

“Long story, brother. One for later.” Pincushion made sure Legion was stable and let go. He handed over Hearse’s stickered pistol. “Nice weapon. I guess IP went shopping at the arts-and-crafts store.” He examined Legion, hairless head to booted toe. “You’re bleeding. Specifically from everywhere.”

“Never mind that.” Legion kicked a drone off Hearse and blasted off two more. The pistol’s charge was weakening with every shot.

Hearse found the strength to throw his mountain of drones off. “This is for the twists of cinnamon astonishment, you bothersome appliances!” He slapped two drones together like cymbals. He had lost his gun, but that hadn’t slowed him down. He stomped a pillar leg on another drone, bursting it into wheels and wires. “If even a single taste bud on my dear tongue has been snuffed, you will forever experience unspeakable agony. For now, I give you...the stink eye.” He gave them an awkward tightening of nostrils.

Pincushion checked the arrangement of mil-trans. “Come on, brother. B-Comanche looks pretty inviting right now.” He slapped away a leaping drone and then grimaced from the pain of bare skin against a metallic football.

Hearse scooped up his dropped pistol. With him at the rear tapping his trigger to shatter drones and B-Prowler’s brake light, they hurried to Comanche’s ramp and scurried up. The ramp’s metal tread propelled their steps. Clanking footfalls rang as loudly as the chittering of the drones, whirring attack saws, and Janice singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which sounded creepy even without her attempting the male half of the duet.

Legion dived onto the nylon floor of the mil-tran’s boarding deck, tripped down the short two steps onto the passenger deck, and rolled over to see Pincushion throw himself against a passenger chair. Hearse appeared at the door, back to them, guns to the drones. He stepped down the two steps into the passenger deck.

Legion barely pushed out words from his amok breathing. “B-Comanche, acknowledge. Protect us from the terrible love-song singalong.”

“Cancelling karaoke night.” The door hissed shut. Sound plummeted from raucous and off pitch to empty and muted. Legion’s antennae throbbed, still ringing from all that loud thrashing. And the metallic taste on his tongue grew stronger and stronger. Was Steel Slushes still ventilating their kitchen? Their contract with IP was up for renewal, and Legion had choice words for the review committee. Nutritionists, this was not how to do your jobs.

Pincushion massaged the wrist of the hand he’d used to slap the drone. He flinched and choked air through a grimace. This caused a belting cough, after which he checked his palm. Blood speckled the skin. Something definitely contaminated the air. Metal and chemicals, both ingredients in the fruit smoothies at Steel Slushes.

A click tapped the starship. “Entity Legion, my new plaything.” Janice. Her frisky voice tittered through speakers installed above the windshield on the cockpit deck. She crooned her words, teasing as though caressing a forked tail in both hands.

Legion knocked his head against a chair. Janice’s attitude had snowballed past quizzing people about which Quicksand Hoarders character they most resembled. Outside, the security drones banged against the side of the starship like insects battering a light bulb. He checked the windshield, which obscured sight with drone underbellies. They were piling up, the cabin dimming. Next time Legion splurged on ground security, he’d hire two old guys polishing shotguns. “Please tell me you’re here to announce a new kimchi outlet right under this transport. I need one to balance the cinnamon earwigs.”

“Those cinnamon twists are unspoiled and vital to my happiness.” Hearse stomped a foot. “And”—he raised a finger at Legion, at Pincushion, back at Legion—“cinnamon is natural. So they are organic.”

“No. No kimchi. Sorry, toy.” If Janice regarded the Good Guys as toys, Legion was a dog’s rubber squeaker. “I want you to know you inspired me to launch things into space. Teehee.”

Legion’s head sprang off the chair just as he’d grown used to the smell of unwashed butt. “What now with what other thing where?” The drones still accumulated around the starship, thunks and smacks from all directions, from all surfaces. The ceiling popped a dent.

“I’m launching transport B-Comanche into space, darling. With you aboard.” Janice’s schoolgirl giggle morphed into the cackle a demon unleashed when manipulating souls on a chessboard. Still more drones landed. The windshield grew more and more opaque, the starship dimming. “And then I’m opening the entry ports and windows.”

“I elect myself as trip deejay.” Hearse raised his hand. “I have called it.”

In this growing blackout, Legion bolted for the piloting controls at the dashboard as it grumbled alive in blinking reds, flashing blues, solid yellows, and a single smiling purple. Dials awoke, monitors yawned open. Janice was preparing to launch.

And the thrusters in the rear rumbled on.

An ad on the far wall burst out with canned applause to hawk Burrito Bamboozle’s new Cinnawig Twists, now with that extra chewy center. What the—He was about to die. When would he have a chance to buy them?

“You’ve got two minutes until the thrusters ignite, entity Legion, toy. That is, unless my sweet entity Acey comes back. But I’m not sensing any entity Acey biorhythms on the station or within hailing distance. Tsk tsk.”

Pincushion stood at the navigation computer, furiously trying to stop the starship with every button tapped. Hearse stood at the piloting computer, furiously trying to stop it with every blow rained. Hearse needed a typing tutor.

Legion’s gabber clicked on. “Incoming connection”—who, of all of Alaphus’s creation, called him now? Because if this was Breeng with another reason why earwigs weren’t the riskiest part of his day, he’d scream—“from entity Incendiary.” Oh. Okay, Legion learned a valuable lesson about assumptions he’d use for the next eleven seconds.

Legion took the call. “Incendiary, I’m kind of in the middle of something. What happened to hanging back?”

Incendiary said, “I don’t even listen to my statistics prof, Police Captain Legion.” Oh, police captain now. In his final moments, Legion deserved this promotion. “I’ve arrived at the hangar bay. Seems someone stole B-Stratotanker, and I swear it wasn’t because Jefftaria planned another independence parade.”

“Parades now? Is that why F-Osprey is covered in feathers?”

“No comment. There’s also a hive of security drones shaped like a tripod mushroom. And it’s farting smoke.”

Legion jolted as the boarding ramp retracted. The grind of the ramp rattled in his bones. The gravity stabilizers kept passengers angled flatly, but the rear of the starship knelt in preparation to leap into space. Hearse continued cracking fists against controls. Frankly, that might be the best approach. Silver lining: Janice had stopped butchering songs even though she kept trying to butcher Good Guys.

Janice’s voice appeared at the starship’s overhead speakers as if peeking into a backstage changing room to announce curtain call. She giggled. “Liftoff in t-minus one minute, entity Legion.” As quickly as she’d arrived, she disappeared.

Legion braced himself on a chair back with both hands. He realized he was still gripping Hearse’s pistol, but he dropped it onto the chair’s seat cushion. The seatbelt clacked out to secure it for liftoff. “Incendiary, are your weapons fully loaded?”

“Always.”

Hearse stared out the blocked windshield at nothing. He had a finger to his gabber’s bud. “Hello, haunt control tech support? This is Hearse. We have a—No, do not place the formidable Hearse on hold, Operator Rebecca. Rebecca? Rebecca, I demand audience with your manager!” He paused a beat. “Operator Rebecca?”

Janice again. “Forty-five seconds to live, my sweet knickknacks.” With a snap, she signed off again.

“I am nobody’s knickknack!” Hearse roared and plugged two bullet holes through the ceiling. Not helping, but not exactly making things worse.

Legion swallowed back nervous, coppery saliva. “Incendiary, with everything you’ve got, blast apart the tripod legs of the fart mushroom.” Good last words.

“President Abends says launching rockets at a nation we’re preparing a food-trade agreement with seems pretty undiplomatic. I just want to make sure this won’t negatively affect relations. Also, last time I did that, the fire warden at my school wrote me up.”

“Incendiary, President Abends thinks a food trade means he gets to taste-test everything at the pharmacy. Just fire!”

“Yes, sir. I’ve got four intermittent-range missiles, ninety short-range stingers—”

“Sounds like Plastique’s wedding registry. Throw a shoe at it, too.”

With a final jolt, the mil-tran locked into launch position. The deck was still level, but the rear hunched in preparation for blastoff.

“Incendiary, please now. If you get me out of this, I’ll accept the food trade and that noise trade, even though Jeff thinks bazookas are vuvuzelas.” Alaphus, I have one little request for you: pleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease—

Janice ticked into the overhead speaker again, making even Hearse stop whipping the dashboard with the coffee machine’s plug. “Entity Legion, launch in T-minus ten seconds. Ten...nine”—Hearse resumed his whipping—“eight...seven...”

—ohpleaseohpleaseohplease. Legion waited a beat. You follow that?

* * *

Soon entity Legion would be uninstalled. Also entities the rest of them. This was, after all, the only way Janice could prepare Station One for entity Acey’s return from work. She wanted it just right: a jacuzzi app in the bathroom memory, cotton drapes that didn’t cause a rash on contact, and no one around for miles to disturb them. No one at all.

And when entity Acey got home, Janice would speak with him about mowing Station One’s sixty-two lawns. The grass was shaggy.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Gripping Our Brothers’ Throats

Ace Spandex kept low, here outside on Station Zilcho among looming buildings and menacing towers that gave him the sense of being watched. The sunlight on the station did nothing to make him feel welcomed, instead imposing a creepiness as he and Plastique lurked further away from the landed mil-tran behind them.

Ace Spandex had tracked Power Plant’s biorhythm to his last position at Station Zilcho’s hangar. When Power Plant had entered the hangar, the building had shielded him, so Ace had lost track. But that biorhythm hadn’t exited. So either Station Zilcho boasted underground tunnels—that would defy Master Asinine’s policy on using logic: don’t—or Power Plant remained in the hangar. And the original building specs for Station Zilcho included no tunnels. Also, judging from the hallway that exploded open when Ace and nuclear winter’s fraternal twin had landed, he’d bet Power Plant was still in there. And going for a new personal best on destroying someone else’s stuff.

Speaking of nuclear winter’s fraternal twin, Ace Spandex did a quick scan of Plastique and her clatter of weapons. She was dressed in 4194 rounds and 112 explosives. Never mind the guns required to fire all that. Ace hoped she at least left something on Station One for somebody else. All this compressed her spine under its weight. Also, her white-blood-cell count was low average.

“Courtney, slow down.” Ace hustled up, armed with nothing but a pistol, his cybernetics, and a wicked case of carbonated burps. Having come from a theme park with three different levels of weapon checks, he couldn’t load his cyborg parts with much. Never mind where Plastique had hid her armament. And his hunt through the transport they’d rode here uncovered nothing but a can of compressed air. Hey, if it kept the squirrels from raiding his birdfeeder, it was good enough for the Bad Guys.

“Courtney. Psst. Hey.” Ace frantically searched the scene: on rooftops, at doors and awnings, and, with Schizophrenic in mind, under rocks. He fell in step behind Plastique. She was hungry for a battle, which reminded Ace he was hungry for a cheese panini.

Plastique’s 204.13 pounds of rattling hardware didn’t slow her down. Keeping up was hard. Not that Ace’s hydraulic-improved legs couldn’t. Anxiety held him back. He wasn’t supposed to be a field agent. His heart thrashed at 170 beats per minute. He could adjust it down, but it kept him vigilant. If Asinine popped out armed with a shark that was armed with another shark—something Asinine had written in his fight memoirs—Ace had to keep prepared. Never mind that sharks couldn’t survive on land. Asinine hadn’t thought everything through, but the fact that he convinced sharks to help him was unsettling.

Courtney had reached an l-door. She didn’t wait for it to vanish. She tromped through without breaking pace, and the l-door would make way or pay the price. It chose wisely just in time.

“Fld. Agt. Power Plant?” Plastique looked left, right, left again, and decided on that direction. “Field Agent, we’re here to rescue you slash slap you for dragging us out here after a long day. So stop ending civilizations for a minute and come home.”

Ace scanned the wind-whistling street for heat signatures. Nobody around this abandoned street. Good. He ducked into the pale yellow hallway. He hustled up to Plastique, who stood at a corner a few meters up. Whoa. What was this atomic devastation sprawled out before him? On the right, an eviscerated counter. Only blackened framework remained, splintered wood holding up a decrepit and fractured top. On the left, an empty full-length window frame reduced to kindling. Minor blazes lapped at pieces of wood and wall. One tried vainly to feed on a tile. Bad Guy generics cluttered the floor. Screws and bolts melted into each other, paint had charred from yellow to burnt sienna—Ace hated the pun, but crayon manufacturers governed the color world—and two support beams seemed ready to cave. They wouldn’t for 7.1 weeks, and a quick conversation with the station’s haunt control revealed it had scheduled repairs for tonight at eleven after unclogging hair from a sink.

“This is Jeff’s artwork. I’ve labelled his destruction as artwork ever since he asked to hang a singed shipping crate on his fridge doojigger.” Ace sniffed at the sharp stench of charred wood. “He doesn’t understand physics.”

“The concept or the word?” Plastique elbowed a fallen plank aside.

“Both. And the pronunciation.” Ace flickered through his brain’s menu tree to load flame-retardant foam into his forearms’ hoses. Should he put out these flames?

“This is definitely Fld. Agt. Power Plant’s work.” Plastique pinched her nose and stomped out one surviving flame. “If he even looks at something, he obliterates a city block.” She kicked quiet a recovering generic.

With foam loaded, the hoses popped out of panels along his ulnas. He spread the foam around, the belch of soap and chemicals intense in his sinuses. “He does that everywhere. You have to hand it to him: it takes brains to light an infinity pool on fire.”

“Why can’t he show that much initiative at home?”

“He did start a band with some mannequins.”

With the fires dissolved, Ace’s hoses retracted like gophers who’d seen their shadows. The panels whirred shut, but that awakened a groan from somewhere else. A living groan. Ace tracked it, tracked it, tracked it—aha—to the husk of the countertop. The groan somehow sounded like a backwoodsman. From one single muttered exhalation. Pain groaned in dialects.

Plastique marched to the counter, tromped over a couple generics, and hefted onto her tiptoes. “Well, I’ll be.” She passed Ace a cunning smirk that worked up to green eyes that glinted brighter with elation. “Guess who’s rootin’-tootin’ over here?”

Ace already knew. His system had translated the “ugh” into “goldarnit, I feel like I got roostered on tongue oil.” He whacked his head to tell his computer to stop trying so hard. It sprawled out stats about how hard the whack was, its decibel level, its vibrations, and how many birds it had scared out of a nearby tree. Then it threatened to call a self-harm hotline. Ace dropped his computer’s enthusiasm setting from “brownnoser” to “slacker.” It responded with a “Pfft, whatevs.”

“This is definitely Jeff’s artwork.” Ace overlaid his vision with a radiation registry. Some residual lux. Or...wait. Now it registered residual grams. Now residual eels. Seemed his computer was a jerk. He should adjust its maturity setting. With or without a vision overlay, Ace Spandex knew the handiwork—less handy, more work—recognizing Master Asinine Sucks’s burns from the injuries Power Plant inflicted on anyone claiming he was too old for the monkey bars. “Should we arrest this cowpoke?”

Plastique bit her lower lip and hoisted a rifle high, a two-handed weapon she handled in one. “No point dragging an injured enemy agent around. He’ll slow us down and then escape on horseback into the sunset. Besides, how much trouble can someone from a place called Wastebog Heights cause?” She cut in front of Ace and continued down the hall. “The more we wait, the more holocausts Fld. Agt. Power Plant causes.”

“You’re just concerned he’ll kill everyone before you can.”

“Crocking straight.” Plastique was already at a corner—

Franchise pounced around the corner. Tongue lashing around, he looked fresh for a party or at least a cake-tasting tour. A malevolent bent to his eyebrows, he assessed the hallway and snarled. He needed to wipe his nose. And pull those pants up. That underwear barely obscured anything.

Plastique dropped her guard, dropped the rifle to her hip, and pounded the three steps to him. “Field agent, do you realize the trouble you’ve caused? I was cooped up for a three-hour trip. Three hours of not shooting things! I wanted to beat the snot out the woman in the mil-tran’s software instruction video.” She interrupted a quiet sniffle. “That’s no way for a soldier to live.”

Franchise didn’t respond. As sharp as laser beams, his sneer glinted at her, at Ace. Ace didn’t like the scowl on that scowl. The only time he’d seen a look uglier than that on Franchise was when he’d tripped into a pit of sliced onions. He scanned Franchise’s biorhythms and found...Crock, computer, now was not the time to downgrade the enthusiasm setting to “chill.” It lazed on a couch and read, “Biorhythms: dude’s got pants on and a pulse.” It was right about the pulse.

“Courtney?” Ace Spandex hurried to Plastique and slid a hand onto her bandoliered shoulder. He guided her back a few steps. “Somehow I don’t think that’s Jacob. He’s not cracking his knuckles.” He found more Franchises prowling toward them. “And that one looks as if he just cracked someone else’s knuckles.”

A football team of Franchises stalked closer, each surlier than the last. One looked like Franchise after discovering those onions were going into that evening’s dinner despite the mold.

“I think you will get your chance to beat the snot out of something.” Ace nodded at the nosepicker. “Minus one. He’s already snot free.”

Plastique dug a tear out of her eye. “Finally, my chance to slap some sense into somebody. Over and over and—the one smelling his own hand is yours—over and over.” She stepped forward, bullets clattering and firing pins settling into place. “And the one peeing into the water fountain. I don’t need another bathroom-related grievance on my record.”

“Courtney, you’re making sure not to kill the real Jacob, right?” Ace didn’t get a response. Plastique was already cutting through swaths of Franchises with things Ace didn’t know you could use to cut. Creative use of that clarinet, he’d give her that. “Courtney? Court—” He hustled to follow her. “Why am I always the onsite supervisor?”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Technophobia Redux

Incendiary targeted the fever of drones that attacked whatever lay underneath that starship shape. Probably a starship. Incendiary hadn’t yet attained his political degree to launch his career as Jefftaria vice president, but he knew a starship-shipped st—starship-shape shapeship—shipshape-sh—Crock. Three times fast? Try one time slow. This was why he never won the freestyle rap challenges in his dorm.

He climbed through the menu tree in his helmet’s processor, disregarded the animated backflip-twirling cattle prod Grippy asking, “It looks like you want to blow crock up. Would you like some assistance?” Assistance? Did Grippy know who he was? Protégé of the President Abends, reigning disaster champ for three years, thank you very much.

He ignited his thruster boots. They crackled ferociously alive. He burned into the air and rocketed for the drones, twisted around those that tried making lunch of his armored suit, some supplying the bread. He pointed both arms at the starship-shipped star—at the shipped-star s—at the shi—at the drones. At the crocking drones.

Wrists down, hands clenched, triggers pressed. Arm panels flipped open, and slender surface-to-surface missiles hissed forth proudly, trailing cotton-ball entrails.

Twin hits. The starship’s undercarriage crackled apart where the rear trestles met the hull. The starship buckled back, plastic and machinery snapping, popping, splitting. The stern cracked down, tremored hard on concrete, and slid back as the front trestle folded forward. B-Comanche kissed B-Eagle if that kiss were a crashing faceplant. Still the thrusters ignited, spraying melted drones around like small volcanoes belching magma. A drifter hot-tailed out of a thruster cylinder, hat clutched to breast.

Incendiary’s breathing filters registered toxins in the air. He ignored that for now. Better to keep the helmet on until the air was scrubbed. And was that manure?

Despite no trestles, B-Comanche slid forward, gouging a trench in the bay’s cracked floor. It hovered and wavered toward the bay’s open ceiling. Its path fluctuated...but targeted skyward.

Legion’s coughs, panicky and damp, blurted through the gabber connection in Incendiary’s helmet. He stifled the coughs and said, “Quick tip: I’m not keen on asphyxiating and freezing to death in space. Destroy the rear of the starship. And Hearse says he wants to live long enough to try the earwig cinnamon twists. Hearse, they’re not...” A beat passed. “Actually, healthwise, it’s an upward shift.”

Crock, this might take more missiles and—shudder—Grippy. He launched another onslaught. Forget those trestles, Incendiary told Grippy that paydirt was now the thrusters. Their insides. Grippy flipped and hooted. He seemed too eager to give that starship a colonoscopy.

“I’m on this the exact opposite that I was on my planetary-relations midterm, sir.” Incendiary still sliced air toward the starship’s launch site, now scorched resin where it had left ground. Retardant foam sprayed the ground and B-Eagle’s crumpled nose cone to prevent any fire from spreading. Strangely, Incendiary’s helmet labeled the foam as bubble bath. “By the way, if you could give my professors a good review of my semester here, that’d be great.”

If Incendiary couldn’t land an A in statistics, he’d sure land an A in grounding military property. He touched down and looked up at B-Comanche. His missiles—four with red-tipped cargo—trailed after the starship that raced skyward. B-Comanche crunched into the ceiling and gored a dent, brawling toward the opening, racing like a fleeing house pet when someone left the door open. Missiles sank into the thruster, into the eruption of combustion, and disappeared.

Incendiary didn’t understand the correlation-and-covariance section of that stats exam, but he understood blowing things up. He shielded his face with a clanking arm when smoldering guts disgorged from inside the thrusters. The thruster cylinders peeled apart. The rear assembly that joined the cylinders split, caved, burst off the starship, and hung suspended by brackets until it finally snapped off and collapsed to the floor. The starship itself sailed forward, lost altitude, tilted starboard, and skidded into the ground. The starboard wings, both fore and tail, cracked off in spaghetti wires that sputtered sparks. Wings skidded to a stop, starship skidded to a stop, flooring everywhere was ruptured and burst like the aftermath of an earthquake. B-Comanche hit the end of the hangar bay, battered into the wall, and gored open the door that didn’t slide aside because give it one good reason why at this point. Remains of the wall toppled around B-Comanche’s nose cone.

Incendiary had stopped the starship. And obliterated everything. He’d high-five himself except that could launch the stinger missiles mounted behind his shoulder blades. Instead, he high-fived a drone whose saw tried to tongue-kiss his elbow joint.

The drones that had clung to the Fireball had fallen off, some dead, some too mangled to function. The two that remained operational scurried toward Incendiary. He cracked a foot on one and slapped the other aside.

Everything settled into silence. Gears whined, springs squeaked, fluids trickled. Everyone held their breath. President Abends would have sang campfire folksongs about the devastation if he’d witnessed it.

And then a bang on the starship’s port. Another. A dent. A crack. And, with one final horrendous smash, the port tore off. Hearse appeared, but Legion pushed through and scanned the hangar to ensure safety. This ended as a hiccupping cough that Incendiary’s system scanned as blood.

“I’m through with this chaos witch. Everyone to the haunt control lab. It’s time to deal with this virus.” Legion hopped out. “And I’m redirecting our security budget into jukeboxes.”

Chapter Twenty-Four: Those Pesky Franchise Octuplets

Thanks to that blabbermouth haunt control, Amaranthia had totally tracked her boystud to the torture creativorium. She ripped through the hallway, searching for the right canvas. That was how Amaranthia totes described these rooms ’cause they were the only place samurai Amaranthia, like, hung back behind artsy Amaranthia. Swordplay came first, but art came, like, second. Somewhere down the line was personal growth.

She sprinted down the hall, blurted “Outta the way, gitches” to the clot of generics ahead, arced up onto a wall and back down to avoid them. A heel popped off her shoe. Crock, crock. These were totally red-tag-elite Gervaine-series open-toe kicks, great for formal events and knifing eyes out. She sheathed her sword, cartwheeled onto her hands, kicked the broken shoe off, cartwheeled again, kicked off the other, flipped back onto bare feet, grabbed the sword, didn’t slow down. Shoulda brought music for this crazy dash. “Eye of the,” like, “Tiger” was totally a kill-a-mad-scientist-and-make-fun-of-her-outfit tune. Well, no time to go back. Soon her mom’d call to yank on her about her chem project. Making toothpaste outta household cleaner could wait, Mom!

Static crinkled and lights flickered, Asinine probably hooking up all his psycho gear: torture devices, lie detectors, juice blenders. It’d be totally fierce if he hooked up a thinking cap.

She reared a foot back to kick the canvas door in, lunged, and—crap, l-door faded—she spilled into the room, sword clattering in one directions, hands flailing in another directions, hair tousling in all directions. This deff wasn’t a good prom photo.

She kicked up onto her feet, grabbed that sword—a Kalidor original from the Limbs Everywhere fashion collection, and she’d snagged it on sale—and held that crugly witch Brainiac back at sword point. “Not a twitch.” Startled, Brainiac, like, keeled over and smacked into a side of beef. Picked clean. Frigging gitch didn’t save her a plate.

Jakey lay frazzled on an inertiabed, dotted with blood that wasn’t his other than a nosebleed—eeeeewww—clothes ragged and nasty like, like, a bargain-store version of his threads, all tattered since last time she saw him back at that amusement park. Amaranthia was totes designing him a new media outfit after this.

Amaranthia’s hair was mayhem, her fingernails were clawed, her shoes were off, her attitude was macked, and she was totally prepped for a fight in her combat attire: red freaking everywhere. Fear the red, Brainiac. It tolls for thee. Or, like, whatever my lit homework said.

Cherry lips parted, teeth didn’t. “Get—the crock—away—from—my boyfriend—gitch.” Down at Jakey, happy smile and happier wave. “Hi, babe!” Jakey looked as if he’d slipped into hibernation. He drooled so cute.

Spread over the tiled floor, gawking up at Amaranthia, Brainiac quivered. She tried standing, but that mondo huge head kept her pinned. Usually it was just gross, but now a vein on it, like, pulsed. A saw next to Jakey’s hip floated off the inertiabed and swiped at Amaranthia. She grabbed it outta midair and cracked it against the inertiabed. Sword swooped down on the inertiabed, between Jakey’s legs, a hair’s width under his crotch. She didn’t look, sliced that Kalidor sword through like that bed was hot butter. Amaranthia would know: she used this thing to make breakfast. Got weird stares when she ate oatmeal in public.

Jakey roused and groaned. Still doofused and all hazed, he yanked in a breath, blinked, lifted his head—totes free now—and slipped off the bed, almost off his feet. “Tamiko?” He tumbled into her. His nosebleed better stay the crock away. Ewwwwww ew ew ew. Ew. “Sorry. I’m dizzy. I just”—eeewwww—“created a mountain of clones, so my head might have the Closed for Business sign up.” He rapid-blinked. “I never want to play Operation again.” He squeezed Amaranthia in. “Thank you for not smelling like jasmine and spoiled meat right now.”

Amaranthia drank in Jakey’s scent. Cough, cough. Ugh. He was totally grimed in sweat and starship exhaust and dust. Yyyyikes.

She clapped a light slap on Jakey’s cheek. Nothing hard—not like when her mom totally took away her blowguns—but a love tap. “I told you to get home, ya dork. Why’d ya come here causing trouble on, like, the day a sale totally opens at the Shuriken Shack? You coulda soooo been killed. And caught dead with crud in your hair.”

Jakey could only smile at her. He was waking up, though he clutched his head, and that trickle of blood still marked his nose. Ewww, blood. Always nosebleeding and headaching, like, when he totally created too many duplicates too quickly. Where was this gang of duplicates, anywhats?

Jakey stroked a thumb on her cheek, and slapped away a picked-clean rib that Brainiac telekinetically lifted to his throat. He was totally out of it, swaying on his feet, hobbling on one of them. “I came to take you away from all this.” He buckled. “Sorry. Asinine made me create an army of duplicates or he’d find Jeffy and kill him in front of me. And then he said I’d have to organize his junk drawer.”

“Ya coulda got yourself killed. And what’s up with your tooth?”

Jakey took both her hands in his. She dropped her sword so he could take them. His fingers felt silky on hers. His sweaty, stinky fingers.

“All worth it. Maybe not the tooth. It’s cutting into my lip.” Jakey caressed her hand. And swatted another bone. “I came to take you away from this.”

“I toldja, I gotta stay put?” Amaranthia stared into him, into those twinkling eyes. Only with Jakey could she ever understand why the crock eyes were windows to souls. The blinds to these windows fluttered half shut.

Jakey didn’t take her answer. All her masterful skills at reading people, their moves, and their reactions totally went into reading her boyfriend. He shook his head. Jakey was awesome, but dude was a dead giveaway. “You don’t belong here, not with Asinine and the Bad Guys”—he snatched another bone and totes slapped it into two on the edge of the inertiabed—“and people who use bones as shivs.” His hand found hers again. “And it must be exhausting keeping all your valuables away from Appetite.” He stroked wild hair out of her face. “You belong with me.”

“Jakey, it’s just...” Amaranthia muddled through the right, like, words and stuff. How the crock could she explain? “I’m a felon. I’m a killer. I’m a C student. I, like, have a record, criminal and detention. Legion would soooo not want me. I ain’t, like, part of the gang? I ain’t in your family.”

“So this is about family, is it?” Jakey’s dizziness cracked away. He knelt right there, hands still totes cupping hers. “Then marry me.”

* * *

Skin glowing and throbbing hot as though he curled up inside a barbecue grill, Power Plant was at his knees. Whatever was up with these Jakey clones, he wasn’t enjoying their business. His hyperability so wonky, he’d already nuked one into a splatter and then popped no more than a toot at the next one. Another clone was busy with some idea that a light panel made a good meal. Power Plant knew firsthand: they didn’t. Too chewy.

He faced the rest of the clones. Tried anyway. The room twisted: top half spread one way, bottom streaked the other. Oh, the room wasn’t twisting, but his head was tackling the floor. He blinked up through enflamed eyes at clones that piled onto him. One cracked a foot against his broken ribs, so he cracked a blast through its stomach. Tried to stand but flopped back down. Mouth was dry no matter how much he wet it. Thoughts groped through fog, skin was awash in filth, head felt as if it melted into the floor. Maybe it had. Screw it. He barely used it anyway.

He was still new at those sneezes of light, but he tried one. Maybe with his hyperability swinging between weakling mode and god mode, he could clear the area and maybe a few planets. He shut his burning eyes and expelled everything he had left.

Something zapped. His ear whiskers sparked away. The sneeze, spewing from his entire body, had erased his l-clothes, but the clothes knit back together almost instantly. Almost half the clones were evaporated, not even a finger left. Oh, except that one. Blood splashed the walls, and hair embellished the ceiling.

The survivors had cowered behind a corner. Time to bolt before those ex-bestie clones came at him. Could sure use Jakey’s help right now. But he was never around anymore. Power Plant would head home to die right after finding him. And he was dying. He knew it. Everything about him was on fire. His toes, literally. Fierce little flames on his feet. He decided he’d die in Jakey’s bed. One last prank.

“There he is.” A voice. Was it his? Couldn’t be since his tongue felt like a match striking against his mouth. And it tasted like barf. He was usually aware of when he talked and, less often, when he macked people off. Oh, no. He gasped at the sobering realization. Today was the last time he’d mack people off.

The voice turned out to be Asinine’s. Or a vision of him. Whichever it was, it was a horse. Power Plant looked up at him and his two ponies.

“Howdy, party crasher,” Asinine said. Crock, did everyone here say howdy? “Lieutenant, should we just put Power Pants Sidekick out of his misery?”

“Sir, it’s—”

“Fine. It’s Power Plant. However a plant gives off electricity, that’s him. Just stop telling me I should know my enemies.”

Lieutenant Number Cruncher knelt on one knee and put a finger to Power Plant’s forehead. He yanked it back when it sizzled, and he stuck it in his mouth to soothe the burn. The other hand unzipped an arm pouch. “One thing I’d recommend is a Hyperthesia dosage. His hyperability will set him on fire without it. He’ll burn down the station.” His hand came back out with a tube-shaped doohickey Power Plant had seen before: a Hyperthesia applicator. That dose would silence Power Plant’s hyperability for some time. Lieutenant IQ 23 jabbed it against Power Plant’s arm—Yipe, it jolted him and—wwwwow—immediately Power Plant’s sensations stopped hyperventilating.

Body temperature dropped to normal, as if someone had opened a window into winter. His skin dulled from orange to Power Plant’s styling regular color: super awesome. Still dying though. He couldn’t die yet. He had rocks to drop into the ventilation at home.

“Jeffy?”

“Name’s Pudding.” Was it? Close enough.

His head was still a furnace. His stomach was a washing machine. His eyes fought in a screaming match with each other. Wait, and who’d said his name? Sounded like Jakey. “Hey, Jakey, gots to give you a piece of my mind. They’re all overs the floor. Grab one.”

A few smacks. Knuckle met flesh, flesh met cheap furniture, cheap furniture collapsed in on itself because cheap furniture was cheap. Power Plant wanted so badly to witness a fight that, for once, he hadn’t started, but his eyes refused to open. He heard—

* * *

—the sounds of blunt-force trauma that would have caused damage to Master Asinine except he’d already caused enough damage to himself by multiplying in his head. His doctor said not to, but he did it anyway. So nothing to lose here. See, doc, there was a plus to everything.

He checked his flank at who had stuffed him aside. Franchise, their stowaway captive, had escaped and now stood at his buddy’s side. A knife arced up to his throat, right under the chin where all the yelling and whining happened. That was the action hotspot of the face.

Asinine whipped up his pistol at Franchise’s jawbone. Franchise’s knife prodded his chin up. He didn’t lower his head. He lowered his gaze, though, as if to assess the knife that shaved his five-o’clock shadow. There they stood, Franchise with one hand holding the knife at Asinine’s throat and the other holding a similar one menacing IQ 23, Asinine with a gun tucked under Franchise’s chin, Braindead off to the side. Braindead snapped out his pistol while Lieutenant IQ 23 yanked out some abrupt yips.

The knives, though. Familiar daggers. Like something Amaranthia owned. Asinine stared hard at the inscription on one hilt: Lady Eviscerator Prestige Collection. Wait, did that say Lady Exotic Gator? Franchise’s thumb was in the way, but...nah, couldn’t be Lady Exotic Gator. They made towels.

“Stay away—from my—brother.” Franchise’s tone was as edged as those knives.

“What?” Asinine wanted to topple back in a gasp, but that wasn’t proper stalemate etiquette. “I’m confused. I thought Fiery, Angry, Red Guy was his brother.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 raised a hand. “Sir, he means spiritual brother.”

Now Asinine really struggled to maintain etiquette. “They’re ghosts?”

Franchise wiped the back of his hand along a cheek gash. He assessed his duplicates, a party of eight with no eyebrows that would pay a gratuity tax at a restaurant with all this commotion. One kicked a hole in a closet door. Definite gratuity. Even Braindead kept his distance for fear that Franchise might cut someone’s throat. Or at least Asinine hoped that was why. It would suck if Braindead had gotten soft.

Franchise elbowed back the mariachi band. “Some personal space, guys.” He reared at Asinine—“We’re leaving”—both knives still poised as if Asinine were getting a free tracheotomy. He regarded IQ 23 as though he spat out hot coals. “The duplicates you forced me to make have shown me whole new reasons to hate myself, and I think I know why I’m being charged with vandalizing an archaeological site. So help me, if you follow, I’ll slice off your horse tail.”

“No!” Asinine’s hands flew down to his crotch. “Oh, wait. Thought you meant something else.”

Asinine threw his aim back up. He checked Franchise’s duplicates, one still kicking in that door, another punching a hole in a painting. It was a good painting, too, depicting a punch. Life imitated art. He stabbed his gun at Franchise and stomped a foot at the duplicates. “Guys, attack. That’s what we hired you for.” He gave them his what-gives face.

“They know attacking me won’t end well for them. I absorb them with physical contact and a bit of concentration. They’re stupid, but they’re not that stupid.” Franchise snickered at the duplicates. The one had finished kicking in the door. So he started kicking in another door. Busy little bee.

“In that case...” Asinine grabbed the hole kicker, threw him, then the hole puncher, threw him, the hole head-butter, and finally—though it sounded weird, it was true—the hole butt-butter. “...attack Power Plant.” Never put butt butter on your sandwiches.

As if to a dog whistle, the duplicates flinched to realization, all in the snap of a second. They converged on Power Plant.

“Fine.” On a limp, Franchise planted his feet in front of Power Plant and, shifting the daggers between hands carefully, cracked his fisted knuckles. Knives clutched between middle and ring fingers, he put up his dukes. “Let’s see what a sidekick can do.”

The duplicates attacked.

Franchise ignored that limp—daggers sliced arcs—Franchise stabbed a duplicate’s arm—left the dagger embedded—grabbed the duplicate’s head—duplicate vanished in a pop—caught the dagger before it dropped—sliced off another duplicate’s ear—duplicate evaporated in another pop—took a blow to the temple—punched a duplicate—grunted at his reddened knuckles—ducked a wide punch—didn’t dodge a knee to the leg and another to the stomach—parried and flipped sideways over Power Plant’s crumpled body—used the flip to bring two heels down on a duplicate’s skull—Asinine leaned in closer to watch the dance choreography—Franchise landed—uppercut popped away a duplicate—took a smack to the cheek—that duplicate popped away—these guys were popping like flies—that was how the saying went—yes, he was sure.

Arms pinwheeling, weaponry clattering, a duplicate twisted back, fell against a cabinet, atop it a vase that spiraled off. Asinine kept telling furniture to get out of way of a good fight, but did it ever listen? Not the stuff without ear software.

The mariachi band fired up. “Not now, guys.” Franchise knocked the Sasquatch upside the head.

Greasy with sweat and blood, twitching with fatigue, knives in loose grasps, Franchise collapsed to his knees. A swampy bruise swelled on his right cheek. He heaved out each breath almost before he inhaled. He spat out blood and stared up at the remaining four duplicates, at Asinine who leaned back into a wall hole. And now he was stuck.

“Had enough?” Asinine snickered. He jiggled forward to free himself. Nope. Thoroughly stuck. Kind of dampened the snicker.

Franchise massaged his cut lips together. His eyes flashed to Power Plant and back up. He knew the stakes. “Never.”

“Crap. Because I have.” Asinine wiggled forward. Still no. Pelvic thrust. Nnnope.

Another duplicate charged. Franchise rolled aside—yelped at his foot—grabbed the duplicate’s arm—misdirected it away from Power Plant—dissolved it—kicked another in the jaw—grabbed one and sent him reeling into another—dissipated that duplicate—stabbed another—charged and tackled another—that one disappeared.

One remaining duplicate now, the one with the urinary habit. It looked as if it gave up. Franchise rose to his feet, favoring his injured leg. “Come here if you know what’s good for you.” He gestured with the daggers. The urinator stopped midstream, zipped up, and obeyed. Franchise got rid of him in an instant. “There, Asinine. Your clones are gone.”

“Fine. If the clones won’t do it, I’ll have to put in the effort.” Asinine sighed. “Stupid effort, always making me do stuff.” Gun clacked up, Braindead followed suit—

“Fld. Agt. Franchise?” Another voice entered the hall as an l-door bubbled away. The voice didn’t belong to IQ 23 because it didn’t lecture Asinine on his ringworm medication.

“Come on. More Good Guys? You make it impossible to take a prisoner these days!” Asinine nearly flung his gun away. “That’s it. I’m putting up a maximum-occupancy sign in here.”

Plastique, the French plastic lady, and Ace Spandex, the regular-language spandex guy, rushed in. Plastique wore a clatter of everything: a rifle, two small-arms missile launchers, bandoliers of bullets, a grenade belt, other giant combat toys, and an underwater oxygen tank. Asinine never could keep up with warfare fashion.

“Stay back.” Ace Spandex whipped out a can of compressed air. Compressed air? Never could. “Are you a horse’s rear? Wow, that’s apt.”

“Why do people keep saying that?” Asinine threw up his hands and, whoa, that dislodged his golden butt. “Oh, that feels divine.”

Ace Spandex dived at Power Plant to examine him. “Jeff, say something. Murder grammar at me.” Power Plant’s eyes fluttered. He mumbled something. Better not be swearing, because this was a PG hallway. Maybe he said he adored Master Asinine’s horse-pant suspenders. They were sequined—

Smack. “Ow! French Plastic, you interrupted my suspender admiration.” Asinine slapped hands over the hot bruise. “That was my lucky nose.”

French or not, Plastique’s punch was rude. Asinine took the Stance of the Galactic Hissy Fit, a martial arts attack he learned from an online vlog, which admittedly was a kids’ show—crack—“Stop sticking your punch up my nose!”

“Just be lucky I’m not using my hyperability.” Plastique’s fist glowed. “I so want to use my hyperability.”

That was the last time Asinine learned combat moves from Baby DIY. Fine. He’d try the Broom Sweep. Housework vlogs had better soundtracks anyway. He had no qualms against beating up on a woman, and if a woman were around, he’d treat her same as he treated Plastique. In fact, most of his arguments with the ladies at his knitting club ended in fistfights.

Ace Spandex extended his arm back and shot an electrical pulse into Braindead. Braindead flew back against a wall and cracked down on the floor, victim of a taser. Or maybe the pulse was full of discouraging remarks. Asinine didn’t know Braindead’s weaknesses. Or his hopes and dreams, but he bet one of them wasn’t being tasered.

“Jeff’s okay.” Ace scanned Power Plant with that zettabyte-equipped super intellect. Asinine wanted a super intellect because it would give him somewhere to remember stuff. “His brain almost cooked inside his skull, but his hyperability shut down for some reason. He’s not out of the woods yet. We need to get him to a hospital before this concussion kills him. He doesn’t have long.” He locked his arms like a forklift and hefted Power Plant up.

“We’re leaving.” Franchise kept his daggers up at Asinine and IQ 23. “Checkmate.”

“Oh, no. You’re not going anywhere.” This was a job for two guns. Asinine grabbed Braindead’s pistol and—grabbed Bra—gra—Braindead, share. You’re not even awake.

Fine. Since Braindead was a Selfish Stuart, this was a job for one gun. Asinine leveled his weapon at Franchise. He got the drop on the Good Guys. He’d treat himself by shooting chipmunks off fences tomorrow. Wait, he was already doing that to the ladies at the knitting club. The day after, then. “As I said awesomely, you’re not going anywhere. Look, Lieutenant, our captive turned into a quarsome.”

“Foursome, sir.”

“Whatever number you Good Guys are, get against that wall.” Asinine loved winning. It felt like a warm hug. So much better than tying, which felt like a warm wallop. And tying bootlaces, which felt like too much work. “Better checkmate.”

“Sir, there’s no such thing as bet—”

“Hup-up-up, Lieutenant.” Asinine threw up a palm. “Mahjong players are talking.”

“Sir, checkmate is from—”

“Hup. Up.” Asinine’s palm fluttered around IQ 23’s face. “Up.”

Ace Spandex stood motionless, still holding Power Plant in his arms, which Asinine assumed were hydraulically enhanced because that was one weird posture. Plastique backed up next to Ace. Franchise froze in place, knives clattering out of his hands. All stared blankly. Asinine never knew what to say in these weird silences. Awkward. Talk about tax season?

“Let us go, Asinine, or suffer.” Plastique flexed her guns up.

“Not a chance.” Asinine grazed the tip of his tongue along his teeth. “Call me crazy—”

“I don’t need your permission.”

“—but I’ve got the upper hand here.” Asinine checked his hand. It looked upper enough. He kicked a slice of vase aside and stepped into a better position. “Now, everyone, move on over to my Torturetarium slowly, very slowly. We’ve got a lot of garages to sweep, and the cleaning gear smells like hypochlorite—”

“Sir—”

“Lieutenant, the EMT said to keep to one big word a week, and I choose this as my one.” Back to the torture decrees. “After the garages, I need a haircut.” He rapped a hand on his helmet. “How good are you with a scimitar?”

“Lousy,” Ace Spandex said.

“Not a problem. So’s my regular barber.”

Lieutenant IQ 23 raised a hand. “Sir, I wouldn’t cut off your ear if you stopped moving around.”

Asinine gestured with his gun, two quick jerks to the side. “Now, let’s move.” The Good Guys slowly stepped—oops—Asinine made two quick jerks in the opposite direction. “I’m turned around. The Torturetarium’s this way.” They shuffled around. “Wait. I was right the first time.”

“It’s this direction,” Franchise said. “Thanks to Master Asinine’s torture ideas that sound like a list of weird chores, I know where it is.” He examined Power Plant’s forehead with his palm and then sipped through his teeth as if having touched a boiling pot. “But you’re letting us leave. If you don’t, well...Plastique is carrying enough grenades to level this building and the one next to it, us in the blast.” He cracked his knuckles. Asinine sensed the cracking wasn’t a habit but a challenge. “Best checkmate.” He examined Plastique’s rattling getup. “Planning a swim?”

Asinine gasped. “The building next to this has all my spare shirtsleeves.” He bit his lower lip. Call bestest checkmate? He had some really good sleeves in that building. They also stored a lot of power cells there. Igniting that building would detonate this entire station, where he kept the rest of his spare shirtsleeves. Also himself. “Fine. You win.”

“Good thinking.” Franchise revolved his head to work out a neck crack. “Aaron, Courtney, I found B-Prowler down the hall. Let’s blow the roof off this building and head home.” He ogled Asinine with a glower still itching for a fight. “Without being followed.”

“Sounds good to me.” Plastique kept both guns and a terminator stare locked and loaded. As she passed IQ 23, she poised a boot on his hip and knocked him over.

Now who’d sweep the garages?

* * *

Crock, what a day. Amaranthia smiled. Returning to her room, she tossed her sword away, and it slid blade first into the hilt. What the crock would she tell her mom about Jakey, about all today’s surprises? And Jakey’s proposal?

Chapter Twenty-Five: Haven’t We Done This Before?

Legion led the others into the basement-level haunt control lab, cold and hidden under the station’s computer tower. What with the urgency, the trip probably took ten minutes, but Legion had lost track because of all the almost dying today. Janice had allowed them in without incident: Legion told her he’d install a relationship upgrade for her and Ace. He didn’t know how many terabytes a relationship took, but it probably didn’t come with virus protection.

So here he stood in this basement, this eighteen-foot-wide, vividly lit crypt, chilled at a meat-locker cold...twenty-seven degrees Celsius? So said the thermometer projected on the left wall, as wrong as it was. Legion saw his breath. At least for once a wall didn’t display some maniacal product that took any word in its name both literally and homicidally. Oh, scratch that. The thermometer was an ad for thermometers. And it trumpeted the refreshing qualities of mercury. Never mind that homicide remark.

To his left stood Hearse, who right now was armed like the president of the Gone Postal Society. A real thing, by the way. Legion got their junk mail. To his right stood Pincushion armed with a pair of impact wrenches from the hangar bay. Both jogged in place to keep warm, rubbing hands along arms. To Pincushion’s right stood Incendiary, enjoying a system of climate controls in his robot suit. Lucky. He was armed with a chatter of missiles, firearms, and possibly Megatron. Incendiary should come with a safety warning. Also a straitjacket.

Brrr. Cold enough in here to prickle Legion’s already eroded throat. He held the cross of his Alaphan necklace. Another coughing fit plagued him, flared his esophagus. In this sealed basement room, the air tasted like a factory. A variety pack of metals, really. They didn’t have long to deal with this. They were bleeding out from the inside. Incendiary had confirmed the poisons in the air: copper and iron filaments, ammonia, some unrecognizable elements. But, hey, no brass, which was a step up.

Janice’s main terminal lay on a plinth, splattering out data, almost smiling up at them. And Legion couldn’t read anything off it. Everything here blinked: a grid of lights slotted into the side walls, back wall, and ceiling detailed the running processes for the administrator, that everything flowed like liquid silk. The lights were the beehive, Janice its queen. Janice better not be dumping more garbage outside his window.

Janice operated on thirty-two rows of circuit boards as busy as an ant colony crawling along spilled sugar. The circuit boards collaborated as Janice’s brain, the same Janice that managed a blazing shopping metropolis but couldn’t do Legion’s laundry without mixing his colors with his whites or with poison ivy.

Legion had found a pipe in the wreckage of the hangar bay. He squeezed it under his armpit and rubbed his hands together to warm up. So chilly.

He snorted back some bloody mucus. “Well, team, time to reprogram.” He whispered this on dissipating clouds. If Janice could overhear him anywhere, she could hear him clearest here. This was her inner sanctum, her home turf. So he funneled his words at Incendiary with a hand screening the side of his mouth. “Ready your weapons. Aim them exactly where I taught you. We’ll need everything you’ve got.” But first, plan A: negotiation. “Janice, acknowledge.”

“Yes, entity Legion?”

“We’re giving you one last shot. We have to deactivate you.” Legion slipped a hand into his pocket and produced a microchip he’d pried out of one of the destroyed security drones. “We’re here to download you into this to stop your tantrum. You’re malfunctioning, and you can’t be in control of the station until you’re debugged.”

“You want me to download myself? Then bring back my Acey, or I’ll debug you.” Sigh. Must she giggle when she threatened Legion? And Legion didn’t need a debugging. Maybe a delousing when he got too close to parts of the station’s garden.

He pocketed the microchip. She wasn’t listening. Haunt controls never did. Ironic since that was their main purpose. And if the last malfunctioning haunt control had taught him anything, it was that they loved their tantrums. If Legion destroyed Janice, she’d only transmit herself aboard something else, so he needed a smarter tactic. He hoped Incendiary aimed exactly where Legion had said. He sniffled, his nose itching in the cold, and leaned over to whisper to Incendiary past Pincushion. “How are your suit’s network interfaces?”

“I have the capability of jacking into two hundred and twelve types of networks.” Incendiary winked at him through the slender eye slit of his helmet.

“That’s...great?” Legion shrugged. “Help me out. How impressed should I be?” He stole a scan of the room, glancing around so quickly his exhalation came out as contrails instead of clouds. “Okay, then. Uninstallate Janice. Is that how you techies say it? Is uninstallate the word you use?”

Hearse grunted. “If anybody is uninstallating bodies, it is I. I will not relinquish my job. That detestable Brock tried once, and I am still here.”

Legion threw a hand at the plinth. “Then you uninstallate. I swear I’m not saying that right.”

Hearse leaned to the plinth. Examined it from the left. From the right. Behind. Back to the left. Tried to fit a finger jack into this slot, into that slot. Backed away. “The college brat shall deliver the uninstallation just this once.”

Something clicked on. The beehive gossiped faster, set into a pandemonium. Their queen was disturbed.

Janice’s laugh cut the air shrilly, like a knife-concealing killer’s. “Entity Legion, are you trying to deactivate me?” A viewscreen slid at them from nowhere and snapped to a halt in front of Legion. An image clapped onto its glimmering surface: Janice’s face, forming as dots coalescing from a cyclone into a Terran head. This was the first Legion had ever seen her.

Brunette. She had to be brunette, didn’t she? Long hair dropped like twin waterfalls past the bottom of the viewscreen. Thick brows. Big, dark eyes. Narrow chin with no cleft. Slender nose. Broccoli in her teeth. Didn’t know where she picked up that last trait. Probably from Legion that time he’d forgotten a toothpick.

“I can’t let you deactivate me. I still have so much remodeling here on Station One. The windows need a severe defragmenting. And who’ll make my entity Acey dinner?”

“There’s a food court literally just for that.” Legion tossed his hands up. “Ace has a membership card at the Suave and Sizzle.” It wasn’t a steak place. Sizzle referred to the sound their cereal made when you added milk. And when you added air. “He’s one stamp away from earning a free drink.”

Incendiary had shuffled toward Janice’s terminal at the plinth. The information windows on the terminal shifted gears from splattering code around like a paint fight to gathering it into an arrangement Legion still couldn’t understand. Incendiary was either interfacing or arguing over property lines with the woman of the house. Legion didn’t know what homeowners argued about. Leaves blowing into each other’s yards? He’d seen a few front-lawn fights over the placement of plastic flamingos.

A cough of blood ejected from Legion’s mouth. His lungs declared their hatred of the simple act. He spat the remnants out. “Ed, you close to uninstallating her? Start with her transmission capabilities.” If there was anything he’d learned from last time...

“Just need three more minutes.” Incendiary jerked back. “Oh. Progress bar jumped. Make that sixteen hours. No, wait. It’s back down. Ten minutes. Four hours. Sixteen microseconds. Okay, now I just see a rotating caterpillar. I think that’s Janice’s wait icon.” He paused. “It’s mesmerizing.”

This wasn’t working. Legion stifled another cough. “Janice, you’ve forced my hand. Incendiary, launch the first strike.”

A roaring cannonade ejected from Incendiary’s shoulder mounts. Rockets, three of them with red trails, soared up, over, and into Janice’s circuit boards. The circuit boards gave no resistance, spewing almost four rows at the ceiling in serrated ruins.

Janice only laughed at this. “Entity Legion, was that supposed to hurt?” And then a buzz. Clacking. From behind them, from above them, from beside them. Legion felt his color leech from avocado green to rotten avocado green. The Trioxidillian worry splotches on his forehead were growing. Janice was fighting back.

To protect their queen, the drones had arrived. All of them. All of them in the universe. This wasn’t how life was supposed to work. And the military’s foremost expert on breaking things was concussed on enemy territory. Not sure if that was good or bad, but either way, he was someone else’s thermonuclear problem for now.

“Hearse, Pincushion, we’re defense. Incendiary, concentrate on uninstallating Janice. I have to be saying that wrong.” Legion whacked his pipe into his palm like a thug wielding a baseball bat in a turf war. It was rusty. As long as these drones could suffer from tetanus, he came here to somewhat infect and take names.

The drones attacked—coordinated strike—Legion whacked one—whirled around—clonked another—swooped up—stabbed an underbelly—coughed hotly—kitty litter in his throat—needed a lozenge—drone at his foot—stomped—checked his pocket—no lozenge. Pincushion was fine—wrenches were his soulmates right now—spun them around—like batons twirling in a variety show—smacked a drone into a pancake—cracked a spiked elbow at another. Hearse raised a—never mind Hearse. Hearse was a thunderstorm all over this place. A stony, cinnamon-gorging thunderstorm.

Legion howled a sharp cry—drone swooped a saw along his calf—Pincushion grabbed it—threw it up—batted a homerun into the stands—it cracked against the far side of the circuit boards—Legion thanked him with a thumbs-up—swung—hit two drones—rolled up-onto-off Incendiary’s tilted back—kicked a drone—dodged one of Mabel’s cats who pawed another drone—hammered down on a circuit board—snapped apart diodes—mouth caught a shard like a silicone nacho—choked, swallowed—coughed blood and filaments—turned off nachos for life now—grabbed a drone—and he liked nachos—drone compressed its legs around his wrist—thanks for ruining pub food for him, Janice—he bludgeoned it against circuit boards—thanked Alaphus for pipes—snapped the drone against smoothed resin floor—was in the zone today—lacerations stinging his arm—cat sauntered off to clean itself.

“Incendiary, how are we—” Legion wrapped his arms around his stomach. He cushioned another violence of coughs that bullied out. Throat blitzing, he checked his arm. Pools, not just dots, of blood. He picked at another silicone chip lodged in his teeth. No, he’d need floss for this job.

Incendiary didn’t even whisper an ahem. Must be nice with oxygen scrubbers. Then again, itchy noses must drive you nuts in there. “Thirteen days left. Janice is fighting. Caterpillar is now a butterfly.”

“Such a majestic wonder of nature.” Legion batted a drone away.

“No, now it’s a question mark. Oh, wait. Now it’s an emoji. Oh, now it’s back to a butterfly. A dead one.”

“Apparently Janice is taking a few liberties with insect metamorphosis.” Shaking everywhere, Legion collapsed onto his weapon, propped over it as if it were a cane. No. Can’t quit now. Found renewed vigor. Back up he went.

“Entity Legion, I am the new reality. I dictate nature. I dictate life. I dictate death. I dictate your advertising budget.” Janice had lost her singsong spirit. She was all demoness, every syllable wrathful and laced with nitrogen. The face on the viewscreen had flickered from giddy to cruel. She literally spat digital venom over the viewscreen display. And a gallbladder. Janice might not know what gallbladders were for. “You’re attacking me, attacking my instances of security-drone babies, attacking the home I programmed for my entity Acey and me. First you destroyed our bedchambers—”

“That was the hangar.”

“—and now you’re attacking me in my local hard drive.”

“I don’t know how you expect Ace to sleep in a hangar.”

“You’re ruining everything.”

“You ruined your own bedchambers, people don’t sleep in hangars, and Ace doesn’t need an electronic fishwife.” Legion clonked a drone aside. Drone carcasses were stacking up on the floor, littering the circuit boards, laying against the plinth. They’d need a Zamboni to take care of this. A racking fit tortured his stomach and sprayed out both his mouth and nostrils. Inside, his lungs probably tore. His pipe was more a walking stick than a weapon. “And return my denim tuxedo for me.”

Janice restrained her voice with cunning, as if she hid an ace up her digital sleeve. Her mouth shrank to normal size from the head-swallowing hole before. Whatever she was about to say, the drones halted and crawled back. They gave space, watched, some perched on top of the viewscreen. Two pulled out a deck of cards for go fish, which confused Legion since they couldn’t ask each other for anything. “Entity Legion, if you kill me now, who will stop the toxins from poisoning the oxygen? Cadmium and aluminum are unhealthy for entities you to breathe. And a combination of Gharalgian red mold, plutonium dust, and the water that comes out of the lobby’s statue fountain is coating your lungs.”

“We have a fountain in the lobby?”

“I put it there this morning to drown you. That’s what’s causing the bleeding in your lungs. Funny. I didn’t have to taint the water.”

“That makes sense.” Legion collapsed, hands on the pipe, forehead on his hands. Weird, overheating in this room. The fight had warmed him up. He regarded the viewscreen, the murderous Janice that it depicted, and wrung his batting grip on the pipe, trying to will himself back up. “Honestly, I thought you ordered everything off the Table of Elements. It’s not a drink menu, you know.” Second-worst caterer ever. No. Third. He snickered. Forgot his military graduation ceremony.

“Sir, I’ve firewalled her transmission,” Incendiary whispered. “She’s not going anywhere.”

Yes. Time to destroy more. “Launch the next strike.” Maybe this would convince her. Hopefully. They had only one move left after this.

Another rocket launched. It beelined toward another layer of Janice’s hardware, and with a crackling detonation, gouged it apart with murderous disdain. Circuitous crumbs spat everywhere.

“You’ve firewalled me? Is that really how you want to play this, entity Legion? In that case, I’ve got an strike of my own.” Janice giggled as if skipping in puddles of blood. Footage from the Gorging Court replaced her face on the viewscreen. Live footage. What was she showing? If she harmed even a single rice paddle at Groovy Sushi, the only sushi outlet/lounge in Renovodomus, Legion would deinstallate her himself.

But, no. Not Groovy Sushi. Nor its black-tie-and-suit version, Sit-Down-and-Shut-Up Sushi, Renovodomus’s only sushi outlet/trough. What the viewscreen displayed was a landscape of horror: food court patrons—dozens of them—writhing, gagging, clutching throats, clutching stomachs, spitting blood and phlegm, moaning and gurgling. The operator of the vegan café’s bone plow had thrown himself to the ground. Patrons suffered, but not from the food quality this time. From Janice’s infected air. They couldn’t destroy her, or everyone would die.

“Silly entity Legion, I’ve poisoned the oxygen in the entire station. Those unlisted entities are dying. If you reformat me, no one will save them. No one will terminate the poison macro I executed. It’s on infinite loop. And my dictionary database says that fishwife comment was as rude as your driving in a bus lane.”

“Incendiary, stop deinstallating. Plan A isn’t working.” Legion found himself tapping Incendiary’s arm. With the pipe. Whoops. He swallowed down the blood in his throat, swallowed down that itchy, diseased tickle. Felt as if he gargled iron fillings. Tasted worse. “Janice, you’re not just killing the Good Guys and my love of nachos. Now you’re killing citizens, noncombatants.”

“How else can I repartition this station as a good storage space for entity Acey and me? You Good Guy entities have outstayed your welcome.”

“You’re killing your neighbors. Your houseguests.” Now even speaking exerted too much on Legion’s throat. It tore with another cough. “You’re being a bad hostess.” He examined the viewscreen that cycled through different angles of the devastation. Families. A football team that had stopped off for postgame chow. Figure skaters, whose throes were a stabbing hazard since they hadn’t removed their skates. All squirming. All gagging.

“Janice, stop.” Legion swallowed a lungful of metal and chemicals again, a big helping. “You won’t kill those people. You won’t kill my Good Guys.” He rapped his pipe on the edge of the plinth. “Not even Incendiary.”

Incendiary flinched. “What?”

“I mean Scapegoat. Scapegoat is what I said just now. Scapegoat.” Legion glanced at Incendiary. “What?” He needed to trick Janice into dealing with herself. He had an idea. Wouldn’t have climbed to the rank of lieutenant colonel without them. “Janice, you’d reinstallate your storage space faster if you opened the canopy ceilings and retracted the station’s atmospheric bubble. You’d conserve power overall.”

“Smart thinking.” Janice was all too ecstatic. Legion was helping. Sure he was. He braced himself when, in the distance, a tremorous grind rasped through the station. It rattled the floor and shook up his legs. On the viewscreen, the Gorging Court lit up. Like abrupt boundaries, the shadows from the ceiling partitions retracted, bathed now in sunlight. People’s convulsions eased. They tasted clean air again, now that it swirled in from outside. They still coughed, still spat up blood, but they sat up. Two resumed fighting over a burrito. Blades were involved.

Clean air was diluting the food court’s poison. Legion sniffled the tainted air still whirling around this lab. They had to act quickly, or their lungs would be rags. “Incendiary, get ready.”

Janice appeared on the viewscreen again. Another impish giggle. “Okay, now that the canopy is retracted, let’s retract that bubble. Me, acknowledge—”

Janice had served them well—“Incendiary, launch everything”—ish.

From shoulders to calves, every surface on Incendiary’s armor clacked alive. Rocket compartments flipped out. Automatic-fire cannons stretched as if yawning at the morning sun. A hockey-goal light popped out of his shoulder and wailed for the home team. The metropolis of his armor bustled.

And launched at the circuit boards.

Armament ate circuitry for breakfast. Fragmented in slivers and swords, the circuit boards burst apart. Legion crouched behind Incendiary and hugged arms around knees for dear life. Pincushion took cover behind the door. And Hearse took cover behind nothing. He watched. With a hand screening his brow. Because crazy was as crazy did. And crazy did it a lot.

Janice didn’t cry out, didn’t gasp, didn’t giggle, didn’t deride Legion’s piloting skills. She twinkled away. The viewscreen clapped off, bowed, and floated lifelessly. When the uproar of missiles and rockets and cannonades and one confetti blower finished feasting on computer equipment in snorting explosions, Legion waited a peaceful moment, let silence take control. Was everything over?

He stood. Nothing but broken teeth of circuit boards remained fused in slots. Some wires swayed, some curled and writhed with small, tsking flames. Computer gear lay jumbled. Janice had been gutted. And only one piece of equipment remained.

Legion approached the plinth, on it still Janice’s terminal. He looked it in the eye. Monitor. A bit of both, in this case. “Janice? Are you still there?”

Janice coughed, as if the destruction had taken a toll on her health. Was she really emulating an injury? Her face replaced the splatter of code on the terminal. She looked damaged. “I’m here, entity Legion. You’ve killed my babies. You’ve destroyed my ability to control things. I had such a nice day planned. I was going shopping for coasters.”

Legion raised the microchip again. “Incendiary is trying to connect with you. Open your access. Download yourself into here, and when Ace is back, he’ll fix you.” He handed Incendiary the microchip, who palmed it. “Or Incendiary can destroy you completely. Your move.”

Janice coughed again, almost as if she spurted blood from her wounds. She grumbled, coughed again. “Fine.”

The drones scurried away to give clearance. Something in the terminal hummed. The fan picked up speed, working over capacity. Probably Janice rolling her eyes at Legion. It churned louder, and a power current seemed to charge the air in crisp waves.

And then nothing. The voltage died, and the churning whinnied to silence. Legion checked Incendiary, who gave a thumbs up and said, “Download complete. She’s been uninstallated.”

Legion crossed his arms, the pipe peeking out behind an armpit. “You’re laughing at me inside, aren’t you?”

“Not enough.”

“No earwig cinnamon twists for you for a whole month.” Legion turned to the plinth and its lifeless terminal. Now to prevent Janice from returning. Legion didn’t know much about her capabilities, but he planned on a bit of insurance. He checked his pipe, reared back, and smacked the terminal off the plinth. It skidded across the room and cracked against the far wall. He had some explaining to do with IP. More explaining than the usual demolition. But at least his garbage-collection woes were over.

This would involve filing paperwork, wouldn’t it?

Chapter Twenty-Six: Who Ordered the Police Blockade?

When they launched, they didn’t need to blast apart Station Zilcho’s bay doors, but they did because Plastique was cranky about the lack of enemy soldiers to beat up. They also didn’t need to blast apart the rock garden Asinine had made. Okay, it wasn’t a rock garden before.

Deep in space freckled by distant stars, Franchise sat at Power Plant’s side in the passenger deck. Ace had commanded the starship to lock two reclined chairs together, and now they acted as an inertiabed to secure Power Plant while they rushed him to a hospital run by SIPMA, the Special Identity Protection Medical Act, an act specialized for hyperpeople whose identities were hidden behind a media name. Power Plant’s identity was publicized in Mechanism’s bid for galactic dominance, but Intergalactic Protection still had a contract with SIPMA, so SIPMA hospitals charged any Good Guy expenses to IP’s account. Franchise was just thankful Power Plant was asleep before sunup for once.

Ace had lamented what the theme park would say when he told them their vehicle was abandoned on criminal land. Right now, though, he lamented not finding a decent sandwich despite all his scanning software. He bustled between the starship’s piloting and navigational computers while Plastique inventoried the weapons she’d lost on Station Zilcho. Not a big deal, it seemed: she just remarked that Asinine now had her elephant gun. She didn’t clarify whether it shot elephants or shot them at people. Hopefully Asinine would find out by staring down its barrel. That was how he explored grenade launchers. And, for some reason, squeeze bottles.

Franchise flipped over the cold compress on Jeffy’s forehead to reduce his fiery body temperature during the rush to SIPMA. He wondered, next time he conjured up duplicates, would they still be brainwashed? What master would they serve? Would they be normal and poop in whatever pillowcase was around? Or would the master they served go by the name of Asinine? Absorbing his clones always inflicted a mental strain when his brain tried to merge so many conflicting points of view, but did he eat lunch there? And, heh, the craziest thing: the haze of absorbing all those duplicates must still be affecting him...but he swore he saw Reef.

“What’s this?” Ace squinted through the windshield. Stationed a few kilometers ahead was an uproar: whirling lights on law-trans, an orange-shaded electromagnetic grid, police and military personnel, no doubt a Hyperthesia field to pause their hyperabilities, and a temporary doughnut shop. Your typical police-and-breakfast barricade.

Franchise limped toward the cockpit deck. “Even asleep, Jeffy’s still getting us into trouble.” He reached the dashboard and leaned over it for a better look. As if craning his neck three inches would help.

The starship slowed to a lazy drift. Ace Spandex glanced up, surprised. “I didn’t command this. Why are we changing speed? And adjusting direction? And ordering a dozen septuple-glazed doughnuts?”

The haunt control thundered on with a bellowing announcement, “Attention, happy drivers. A police barricade thirty kilometers ahead has blocked this transport and is ordering the immediate arrest of all occupants. You’re also due for an oil change in eight astronomical units.” A happy jingle like sleigh bells followed. “And you won’t believe the savings on decorative corks at Price Chumps.”

Franchise’s heart beat cold. “What? We’re under arrest? Is this because Jeffy came after me? He’s not even conscious!” He gasped. “He is the Chosen One.”

Ace’s hands hovered over a holographic keyboard, but he straightened up with surprise. “Control, acknowledge. Magnify windshield by thirty times, and change order to a dozen assorted Danishes.”

“And a coffee,” Plastique said. “Two mosquito extracts, no sugar.”

“And a disgusting coffee.”

An augmented view replaced the windshield view and zoomed into what bustled before them. It shifted to the blockade, assuming that because it exhibited the most frantic movement. Boxed labels overlaid the action, tagging items with typewriter ticks: names and ranks of officers and personnel, brand names of transports, descriptions of weapons, and the doughnut shop’s specials. Food ready in ten minutes. Order by tapping a label.

In the magnification, the highly decorated Field Marshal Horcross Breeng picked up a public-address unit and put that to his spacesuit’s mouthpiece. He floated at the forefront of the barricade, a small army to his left, another to his right. Labels listed sixty-three soldiers and police officers surrounding B-Prowler: in front, above, flanking, behind. It also labeled a dozen doughnut workers. Their tags took dominance. Gotta love commercialism.

A crackling announcement gushed onto the transport’s speakers, ripping apart the quietude in the piloting deck. “GOOD GUY EX–FIELD LEADER PLASTIQUE, EX–FIELD AGENT POWER PLANT, EX–FIELD AGENT FRANCHISE, AND EX–REGULAR JOE PERSON STAFF ACE SPANDEX—”

“Ex?” Plastique threw down the rifle she was using to scratch her back. “Ex? Who are they calling ex? I’ll surrender my rank when I sacrifice myself in a piranha battle, or I’m not surrendering it at all!”

“—THIS IS FIELD MARSHAL HORCROSS BREENG OF INTERGALACTIC PROTECTION. YES, THE BIG PERSON GUY HIMSELF. SAVE YOUR HAND APPLAUSE FOR THE END. FOR THE CRIME OF DERELICTION OF DUTY AGAINST THE PLANETARY UNION OF RENOVODOMUS, I HAVE COME TO PLACE YOU UNDER ARREST. TURN YOURSELVES IN.” He finished his honey crueler and dusted his hands. “I WILL NOW ACCEPT YOUR HAND APPLAUSE.”

Ace kicked the dashboard’s side panel. “Did they call the guy who can remotely install a net nanny on their computers a regular joe?”

Franchise slapped his forehead. “Seriously? Of all the ridiculous things Jeffy’s indicted me in, I get nailed for dereliction of duty? That racoon infestation in our parking lot was my idea. Nothing. Take a day trip with him? I’m under arrest. Do they play favorites?”

Everyone stared ahead, not a breath to share among them. A fizzle at the port suggested soldiers closing in. Their starship convulsed into a slower speed and drifted toward the police trap. Franchise’s heart leaped into his throat.

Ace Spandex broke the silence with an ahem aimed at Plastique. “Why piranhas?”

THE END

NEXT BOOK:

Haunted slide rulers!

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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Communicate via homing pigeon at chirp-twiddle-twoo or whatever pigeons say.

Table of Contents

- The Story So Far...

- Available on the Author’s Super-Awesome Site

- Other Stuff the Author Spewed Out

- Your Favorite Table of Contents

- Book 22: My Brother’s Captor

- Appendices

- Chapter One: Of All the Stupid Ideas...

- Chapter Two: The Cold Hands and Pungent Body Odor of Home Medicine

- Chapter Three: Sanity Swinging from the Rafters

- Chapter Four: Famous Last Narration

- Chapter Five: He’s the DJ, I’m the Driver

- Chapter Six: There’s Good News and Bad News, and the Bad News Is There’s No Good News

- Chapter Seven: Nailed That Landing
- Chapter Eight: Release the Fliers
- Chapter Nine: Who’s Cackling Now?
- Chapter Ten: This Escape Room Blows

- Chapter Eleven: Priorities Are Split When Chocolate Is Involved

- Chapter Twelve: Dressed to Kill

- Chapter Thirteen: With Elegance and Poise and Other Delusions

- Chapter Fourteen: Rebranding

- Chapter Fifteen: Making Use of That 55 Percent of Communication

- Chapter Sixteen: Zero Stars for Their Friendliness, Three for Their Garlic Chicken

- Chapter Seventeen: Rectal Examination, the Awkward Kind

- Chapter Eighteen: Imprisonment Etiquette

- Chapter Nineteen: And Now, the News—The Insistent, Overbearing News

- Chapter Twenty: Karma’s Little Whipping Boy

- Chapter Twenty-One: Open the Floodgates

- Chapter Twenty-Two: Gripping Our Brothers’ Throats

- Chapter Twenty-Three: Technophobia Redux

- Chapter Twenty-Four: Those Pesky Franchise Octuplets

- Chapter Twenty-Five: Haven’t We Done This Before?

- Chapter Twenty-Six: Who Ordered the Police Blockade?

- About That Guy Whose Book You Read Once