Suicide Kings

35

Thursday,

December 31

New Year’s Eve

Bunia

People’s Paradise of Africa

Bunia was a fume of smoke and gunpowder. Bunia was tumbled buildings and burning husks. Bunia was the stench of death and destruction.

Jerusha stumbled as Noel released her, blinking in the sunlight. “Holy fuck,” she heard Bugsy comment behind her. Ahead, there were people stumbling through smoke and ruin. There were also several bodies, their outlines fuzzed by clouds of black flies. The husk of a tank sat in the middle of the road leading into the town. There was little left of the vehicle except the caterpillar treads and plastic bits, and the wreckage was half lost in a mound of orange-red powder.

Wally’s work. It had to be.

“You’re sure this is where you want to be?” Noel asked. She felt him touch her arm and pulled away from him angrily.

“Wally said he’d be here. He is here.”

“Fine,” Noel answered. He pulled off his dark glasses. His eyes were molten gold. “Bugsy, can you send a few wasps out, see if you can find Rustbelt?”

Jerusha was tired of waiting. Tired of half measures when she was so close. “Wally!” she yelled, as loudly as she could, her voice shrill and the effort tearing at her throat.

Noel hissed and looked as if he were about to jump somewhere else, his gaze sweeping around them. Cameo’s eyes went round and large, her hand to her mouth. Wasps scattered from Bugsy’s neck. “Are you insane ?” Noel asked. “You have no idea if-”

“Jerusha?”

The faint call came from farther up in the town. She saw a crowd of people there dressed in ragtag fashion, some of them brandishing guns. There was a much larger figure in their midst, and Jerusha laughed-sobbed with relief at the sight of him. The rust on his body was terrible and thick, and she could see bandaged wounds and blood on him. But it was Wally. Alive.

She started walking as quickly as she could toward him, hating the old woman’s shuffle that was all she could manage, hating that after only a few steps she had to stop to rest. He was staring at her as if she were some apparition, as if he didn’t recognize her. There was a child standing alongside, a young girl; he had one arm around her protectively. “Jerusha?” he called again, and now he stirred. “Cripes, Jerusha!”

He limbered into motion like a locomotive, gathering speed, wrapped her up in his arms, lifting her, and she was laughing and he was laughing and she didn’t care that it hurt. She hugged his massive head, she kissed his hard metal mouth. “Ow,” she said finally. “Put me down, Wally. Ow… Really. Please.”

He seemed to realize how tightly he was holding her, and his eyes went wide. He put her down gently and held her at arm’s length. His gaze traveled up and down her skeletal body and settled on her thin face. “Jerusha… what’s happened to you? How are the kids?”

“It’s a long story. But the kids… the kids are fine. I got most of them out. Most…” She stopped, seeing again the faces of Efia, of Hafiz, of Naadir, of Pili and Chaga. Helplessly, she started to cry, and Rusty folded her into his iron arms again. She sobbed into his chest, then pushed away, wiping at her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me that some home-cooked meals can’t fix,” she told him, hoping that he wouldn’t hear the lie.

She glanced back to Noel, at Cameo and Bugsy. Cameo was smiling, and it was impossible to tell what Bugsy might be thinking, but Noel stared at her accusingly. Jerusha realized that her laughter had again morphed into helpless, joyous tears. “Wally, I missed you so much. I’ve been so scared for you, for both of us…” She could say nothing more, only put her arms around him. She felt his massive hands on her back, holding her as if she were a stick that might break if he pressed too hard. She kissed him again. “You stayed alive for me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.” He sniffed. He seemed to notice the trio behind her then, and the steam-shovel jaw crinkled into a stiff grin. “Hey, Bugsy! Cameo! Noel! You guys came, too? Cool.” Then he was looking at Jerusha once more, and the concern was back on his face. “The kids? They’re really okay? You’re okay?”

“Yes,” she told him. “They’re okay. Noel helped me get them to the States.”

He sniffed again, nodding at Noel. “Good. That’s really good. I missed you, Jerusha. I tried everything I could to keep those leopard fellas away from you.”

“You did great, Wally.” She touched the bandages around his arm and gave a laugh that was a half sob. “We’re a heck of a pair, aren’t we?”

“We’re back together,” he said. “That’s good, isn’t it?” He looked at her as if he were half afraid she was going to say no, and his vulnerability made the tears start again.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s good. It’s all I ever wanted.” Over his shoulder, she saw the little girl coming up to them. Or more precisely, floating toward them; her feet didn’t seem to be touching the ground. They were all being watched by the crowd, many of whom were pointing and smiling toward them. “Who’s this?” she asked.

Wally craned his head, not letting go of Jerusha. “Oh,” he said. “This is Ghost. I found her… Well, she found me, actually.” Jerusha felt him start under her embrace, as if something had just occurred to him. “Nuts,” he said. “Jerusha, the lab-that big one that the files you found talked about-I know where it is. Just outside of the town here. I found it, and I gotta go stop them and get those kids out. I was getting ready to do that, but these fellers over there”-he pointed to the crowd of poorly armed people on the street-“keep following me. If you could talk to them in French, tell them to stay here in town so they don’t get hurt, then I can go to the lab…”

Fear stabbed her. He looked fragile, the rust nearly covering him, his skin bubbling and crusted with it. She also knew she could not stop him, that he wouldn’t stop until he’d done what he came here to do-and that if she wanted to be with him, she had no choice, either.

“I’ll go with you,” Jerusha told him. “I’ll help you.”

“You’re okay?” Wally asked. “Really?”

Crowds were surging through the streets. Many carried weapons, real and makeshift. Many more carried goods looted from the stores and houses. A pall of smoke hung in the air over the city. The smoke was adding to an already beautiful sunset.

Noel rested his hands on his hips and took a slow 360-degree turn. “Well, word of the events here will certainly be winging its way to Kongoville.”

“So, we gotta get going before they send any more soldiers,” Rusty said. “We gotta get out to that Red House place right now!” He started away, his metal feet sinking into the soft asphalt road.

Noel leaped after him, and caught him by the wrist. He noticed when he took his hand away his palm was covered with rust. “Half a tic. Rusty, dear fellow. We might do well to talk this out a bit first.” Noel paused and surveyed the big iron ace. “The quickest way in will be up the western slope. That will undoubtedly be rigged with motion sensors and cameras. If it were my task to guard this facility I’d also lay down claymore mines for an added surprise. Our best hope is for a two-pronged attack. Bugsy, Cameo, Gardener, and I will slip in from the west and cause enough of a ruckus so the alarm is sounded. Then Rusty will advance down the road and through the front gate. We had best wait for cover of darkness, however. And we will need some chicken wire.”

Cameo looked up. She was wearing the battered fedora so it was Nick who looked through her eyes. “Chicken wire?”

“It will handle the RPGs that Rusty can’t dodge. Trust me.”

“Why am I not reassured?” Bugsy muttered.

“I’m counting on the guards to weigh the relative threats. Given a choice between dealing with gnat stings-”

“ Wasp stings, please,” Bugsy said. “Not that it’ll make a damn bit of difference.”

“Stop being so damn negative,” Nick said with Cameo’s voice. Bugsy subsided.

Noel went on. “-or a big iron imperialist at the front gate, they’ll vote for dealing with Rusty.”

“That puts Rusty in terrible danger,” Gardener said.

“I’ll be okay. I’m pretty tough.” When Rusty looked at her his heart was in his eyes. Noel wondered if he realized that Gardener was dying, and that nothing could be done to prevent that outcome.

He shook off the sudden burst of melancholy and continued. “All of us are going to be in terrible danger. Rustbelt’s better able to withstand the attack. You are rather like a tank, Rusty. Gardener, you’ll need to deal with the claymores with fast-growing vegetation that will force them to detonate. Will you be able to do that?” She nodded. Noel was worried that the one sentence she had uttered had left her too weak to speak again. “We will then all converge on the Red House. Between Rusty’s strength and Gardener’s tree roots we ought to be able to crack it open.”

“Can we go now?” Rusty asked.

“And what about all those soldiers with guns?” Bugsy asked, ignoring Rusty’s plaintive question.

“They’ll be focused on Rusty. I can account for a fair number of them, you as bug-boy can certainly discomfit them, Cameo as Will-o’-Wisp will add to the butcher’s bill, and when that house starts to come apart I will lay you any odds that most of them will throw down their guns and present us with a charming view of asses and elbows.”

“So what’s the one big wild card, if you’ll forgive the pun?” Nick said.

“Weathers. Our task is to hit fast, hit hard, destroy this final lab and their virus cultures, and get the hell out before the Radical can arrive.”

“Will they send for him?” Bugsy asked.

Noel shrugged. “I would. But he’s been totally focused on me and the Sudd. I think we’ll have time.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then it will be our asses and elbows presented. Once the sun has set, Lilith can get you all out, though I’ll have to take Rusty separately.”

Rusty frowned at the setting sun. “How soon can we go?”

“Soon enough.”

“Good. So where do we get this chicken wire?”

The Red House squatted in the darkness, unaware that a hundred thousand wasps were making their way through the brush, past the fences, into the air ducts and hidden trenches and outbuildings. The insects avoided the light, gathered in small clumps on the underside of leaves, followed along behind the soldiers who thought they were alone in the night.

Bugsy’s head and part of his torso sat in the backseat of an improbable ’67 Cadillac, nestled in the dense underbrush. “Okay, kids,” he said. “I’m pulling the trigger.”

Inside the compound, two soldiers walked through their patrol, bored and smoking. Then hundreds of small green wasps were crawling under their uniforms, stinging their mouths and eyes. One of the soldiers panicked, and his screams and gunfire brought the camp to life. Through thousands of multifaceted eyes, Bugsy watched the lab’s internal security force rush to respond.

He kept on stinking the newcomers until someone dug out a flamethrower. “Okay,” he said. “That’s as distracted as I can get ’em. I’m pulling back.”

“Let’s go,” Cameo said.

Clangclangclangclangclang…

Wally charged down the middle of the road. He carried a wide, hastily built cage of iron rebar. A pair of spotlights followed his every stride. Somewhere, in the darkness outside the lights, automatic weapons chattered, kicking up little puffs of rust and dirt and blood.

Yeah, he had their attention.

He headed straight for the compound. Finally, finally, it was time to break that place. They could have started hours ago, but…

Rustbelt, fellow, you’re rather like a tank, Noel had said. Let us consider the possibilities. And then he’d gone on and on and on about tactics and feints and RPGs for what felt like forever. That’s why Wally carried the cage. Something about armor-piercing warheads and liquid copper and other stuff Wally didn’t- ka-RHUMP!

An explosion against the cage knocked Wally off his feet. It splattered him with what felt like lava, like white-hot rain. He heard rust sizzle, felt iron bubble. It hurt bad enough to make him cry out, but the round didn’t cut him in half like it was supposed to.

Okay, so maybe Noel was right.

Wally reached the perimeter. Under a hail of grenades and small-arms fire, he grabbed two fistfuls of fence and went to town.

Jerusha found herself crouched in the darkness under the trees, with the fence of the compound a hundred yards away. Wally was on the west side of the compound. She worried about him more than herself. He was all alone out there.

The ka-RHUMP of RPGs and the chattering of small-arms fire suddenly erupted on the other side of the compound grounds: Rusty’s feint after Bugsy’s initial probe on their side. They could hear shouting and see lights swaying and careening over the grass. With an audible foomp, two huge searchlights kicked out, their blue-white fury pointed toward the fencing on the far side. “Go!” Lilith hissed at Jerusha. “It’s your turn.”

Jerusha started to shuffle toward the fence, moving as quickly as she could. It wasn’t fast enough for Lilith. She hissed audibly and grabbed her.

After a moment of coldness, they were there. “Can you do this?” Lilith asked. Jerusha nodded, not certain whether she was relieved or angry. She plunged her hand into her seed pouch, feeling for the kudzu seeds: she found them, and tossed them to the ground, opening them as they fell so that leafy vines rippled under the moonlight.

It was harder than she’d expected. Her exhaustion and weariness, the hunger that gnawed at her constantly, all made wielding her power more difficult. She rooted the vines hard, then wrapped the tendrils around and through the chain link. She leaned back as she guided the vines, pulling with them in sympathy as they tore at the fence. The smaller vines snapped from the strain, and she thickened them as the fence leaned, groaning, the metal protesting.

A pole snapped from the ground, trailing fencing, then another, and the vines pulled a section of the fence entirely down. Gardener nearly fell herself as the fence went down. Cameo started forward. Lilith waved her back. “Let her finish!”

Bugsy’s wasps were hovering over the mines he’d found; Jerusha threw more seeds, this time letting the vines curl out along the ground, thrashing the ground where the wasps indicated. The mines exploded in gouts of black earth and yellow-orange bursts that nearly blinded them.

She staggered. She nearly fell. The edges of her vision had gone black, and she hoped none of them noticed.

“Now!” Lilith said. “Go! Gardener, let’s get you to that house.”

Cameo and a clotted swarm of wasps slid past her. Jerusha shuddered. Lilith came up behind her, dark hair and silver eyes, and folded her arms around her.

Ka-phoom!

“What the hell?” Michelle muttered. The jeep bounced and jumped over the dirt road. Every time Michelle flew up and smacked down hard on the seat, she got a tiny zing of power. Night had fallen and all the shadows had fled. There were muted pop-pop-pop s of gunfire. The jeep slowed and she noticed that the driver was gripping the wheel like no tomorrow. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just get me close and I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

The driver didn’t look very relieved. He stopped the jeep and pointed into the jungle. “Take the path and you’ll find the main road to the Red House,” he said. “But you shouldn’t go there. You will die.”

Michelle jumped out of the jeep. “That’s so sweet of you,” she said. “But if there’s any dying to be done, it won’t be me who does it.” He shrugged and jammed the jeep’s transmission into reverse and spun around. In moments, he’d vanished down the road.

The path would have been difficult to see in daylight, but now it was almost invisible. But Michelle found it and plunged into the jungle.

It was a shock when she burst from the jungle onto a paved road. She’d expected to be struggling through the bush forever. There were more gunshots. And she started running up the road.

When she reached the top of the hill, she saw the Red House compound. It was chaos. The front gate was busted in. Smoke hung in the air from RPGs. There was a maze of holes blasted into the ground. A gunshot pinged into her. It was impossible to tell where it came from.

Perched above the jungle, the huge brick mansion and its ornate edifice looked out of place here. Fingers of vines were shooting up one side of the house, moving crazy fast. Jesus Christ, Michelle thought. What the hell is Gardener doing here?

Then she saw Rusty running around the other side of the building, grabbing weapons and hitting anyone he could get his hands on. The rage in his expression shocked Michelle. He was a sweet kid from Minnesota. He had no business having a look like that on his face.

But at least she had some help. She wasn’t alone. And even in the midst of the smoke, gunshots, and screaming, that cheered her up some.

People’s Palace

Kongoville, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Sun Hei-lian sat on the edge of the bed in her room in the vast People’s Palace in Kongoville.

The only thing that moved about her was her eyes. They tracked Tom’s every move as he paced back and forth in front of her. His tennis shoes made overlapping red tracks on the hardwood floor and throw rug. “I knew it all along,” he said. He was talking so fast he was tripping over the words. “Okay. Okay. Not all along. Not when we were, like, squatting out in the bush together. But I knew he was going bad for a long time.”

Hei-lian still said nothing. That was righteous. He had more than enough to say. She was just a woman, after all. And hadn’t Brother Stokeley said, back when he was righteous, that the only place for a woman in the movement was prone?

A knock at the door made him jump and yell, “Shit!” Hei-lian jumped, too, going very pale. He wondered why she was so tightly wrapped.

“What the fuck do you want?” he hollered.

The door opened tentatively. A youthful aide wearing a colorful dashiki leaned in. “I beg your problem, Comrade Field Marshal,” he said. “There… there is a problem at the Red House.”

The Red House

Bunia, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Lilith had teleported them up the steep slope to the house, then vanished again, saying she was going to check on Rusty. Jerusha was so tired. So hungry. So empty of energy. But she had no choice, not if she wanted Wally to be safe.

She took a long, shuddering breath, trying to dredge up the will to remain standing. She could still hear the firing to the west, where he was. Around the corner of the massive structure of the estate house, she could see bright lights flaring where the main entrance must be. “Lots of soldiers there,” Bugsy said. There was only his head and torso on the ground near her. “They’re not liking the wasps much, though.” He grinned.

“It’s all yours, Gardener,” Cameo said. She was still panting a bit from the climb. “Get us in there.”

Jerusha could only see what was directly in front of her; all the rest was gone. Her hand slid again into the seed pouch, her fingers finding the two large baobab seeds she had left. She took one in her hands. “Back up,” she told Cameo. Bugsy had already dissolved into a stream of wasps curling around the side of the house. “This is going to be messy.”

She glanced up at the red brick walls-it was a shame, to tear down a grand, rambling Victorian edifice like this, and for a moment she felt regret at what she had to do.

So tired. She closed her eyes. But you have to do it. For Rusty. Jerusha took another slow breath. Tossed the seed to the ground at the base of the house. She could feel the life inside, feel it wanting release. She gave it permission.

The baobab tore roots into the ground and erupted upward, the trunk growing more massive by the second. She could feel the roots, plunging down and under the house, tearing into concrete, splintering supports.

The Red House moaned under the assault, and Jerusha moaned with it, the roots of the baobab seeming to tear at her own soul. Jerusha pushed the tree, forcing decades of growth in the space of a few seconds. A fissure opened in the foundation, running in a wild zigzag through the mortar of the bricks and climbing. Jerusha changed the direction of the baobab’s growth: a crack appeared around the mass of the baobab’s trunk. The house visibly lifted, and a mass of bricks fell from the second story to the ground, walls opening as the branches of the baobab tore at the wreckage. She could see inside: offices, desks, workers running wilding away from the destruction; people in lab coats, one in full biological hazard gear.

Jerusha stepped forward, still directing the tree’s growth, making the hole in the side of the mansion large and easier to traverse. She was standing alongside the tree, her eyes slitted, her hand on the trunk so she could feel its life. Leaning against it because if she didn’t, she would fall.

So tired.

Wally set off a couple of mines as he barreled through the perimeter; they blew shrapnel up into his feet, cratering the rust. He’d let the pain take over later. After he smashed this place to rubble.

The defenders let up on the RPGs when Wally closed with the Red House-a sprawling, brick mansion. It was a relief to dispense with the cage.

The spotlights followed his every move, making him an easy target. Gunfire raked him from half a dozen directions. A few at first, then more and more bullets found their mark. They ripped through his corroded skin with little explosions of rust chips. Something hot grazed his waist. A shot dented his temple, blurred his vision, and left his ears ringing.

He made a big show of tearing through the defenders. Punching them, kicking them, smacking them with a length of rebar he’d pulled from the cage. And he disintegrated every weapon he could touch.

Wally didn’t discriminate between the people in uniforms and people in lab coats. They were all part of this. They had all killed Lucien.

The house shook. It lurched, like something huge had grabbed and lifted it. Wally heard a momentous crash, like ten tons of crumbling brick. It came from around back, where Noel had taken Jerusha and the others.

All right, Jerusha!

She’d done her part. Now he just had to get her safe. Wally started working his way around the house.

Gardener’s vines had pulled down one side of the house. It had happened so fast, Michelle couldn’t believe it for a moment. Then she started running toward the collapsing side. Gardener was bound to be close by.

Michelle wanted to know what the plans were. And she wanted to know how the hell Gardener and Rusty had ended up here. It was too damn dangerous for them.

Bullets hit her and RPGs exploded close by. That just plumped her up more. She released a barrage of bubbles as she ran. There were screams and some of the guards went down. They weren’t dead-at least they shouldn’t be. The bubbles were hard but rubbery. She didn’t want to accidentally kill someone friendly. She had no idea who might be here with Rusty and Gardener.

As she got closer to the house, Michelle saw a shrunken, emaciated figure leaning against a massive tree trunk. The tree was still growing up into the air. No, she thought. It can’t be. But in her gut she knew. She felt a chill run through her.

She stopped in front of Jerusha. The person leaning against the tree didn’t look like Gardener anymore. Even in the gathering gloom, Michelle could see her sunken cheeks, the gauntness of her body, and the faraway look in her hollowed eyes.

Michelle knew that look. Jerusha was dying.

“Terrible, isn’t it? One of the child aces bit her. She’s been wasting away ever since.”

It was Lilith. She was hidden by the shadows, but Michelle knew that voice. “Why am I not surprised you’re in the middle of this,” Michelle replied. “Why is she here? She should be in a hospital.”

“She was. She wanted to come. For Rustbelt.”

“Stop.” Gardener opened her eyes and said in a whispery voice, “Stop. Please. Just destroy the lab.”

“I’m sorry, Jerusha.” Michelle gave Lilith one last hard stare, then ran into the Red House through the gaping hole that Gardener’s tree had torn.

Inside, she stumbled over bricks and debris, past desks and fallen filing cabinets. A fluorescent light swung by a long electrical cord, unmoored from the ceiling. A guard appeared in the doorway and started firing at her with an automatic weapon. Most of the bullets hit her. She threw a bubble at him and he went down with a whimper.

Two more guards appeared, and shot her as well. She threw bubbles at them, too. Then she struggled through the rubble until she came to the staircase. She’d seen some labs on the second level.

The staircase had broken apart. A big gap separated the two sections. Michelle wasn’t sure she could jump it at her current size. She wasn’t sure she could have jumped it when she was skinny. But she had to get to the labs, so she gave a grunt and leapt across.

Her foot hit, then slipped. She went down hard on her knees. Another zing of energy. The banister groaned as she grabbed it. She pulled herself up and then ran to the top of the stairs.

A sheet of fire met her.

The heat. The light. Memories of New Orleans washed over her, and for a moment she could not move.

But what had happened with Drake hadn’t hurt her. It had changed her. Michelle walked through the fire, curling her hand, forming a bubble in her palm.

When she emerged beyond the flames, she saw a small boy blowing a stream of fire from his mouth as if he were blowing soap bubbles. When he saw her, his jaw dropped and the fire stopped. Standing next to the boy was a man in a lab coat. He looked as surprised as the boy did. She released her bubble and it exploded on the floor in front of them. They were thrown back by the impact. She fired more rubbery bubbles to keep them down.

The doctor began to scramble to his feet, but the boy started crying and fire shot from his mouth again. The doctor shrieked. His lab coat caught fire and there was a nauseating smell as his hair began to burn. He started running, past her and down the stairs. But he didn’t make the gap. There was another scream and a sickening crack as he landed on the floor below.

Michelle turned back to the boy. She said in French, “I’m not going to hurt you.” But he started screaming. Flames shot out of his mouth again and the wallpaper in the hall caught on fire.

“Great,” Michelle muttered. “Just great.” She hopped over the hole in the floor, crouched down next to the boy, and grabbed his arms. She began to form a bubble around him. In a few seconds, he was encased. The bubble wasn’t going to last long, but if he started breathing fire again, he’d use up the oxygen inside and knock himself out. She needed him out of the way while she destroyed the lab.

The first door she tried was stuck. Michelle blew it to pieces and stepped through the hole. Inside the room were lab tables and various pieces of equipment she didn’t recognize. In one corner, three men wearing lab coats cowered. They began begging her for mercy.

“Get out,” she said. They scrambled to their feet and ran past her. Michelle blasted everything in sight. Pieces of metal and glass flew into the air and rained down on her. Instead of going back out into the hall, she just blew a hole into the next room.

This room was like the last one. Tables, equipment, glass, cowering men in lab coats. Rinse. Repeat.

She worked her way through the labs on this side of the hallway. When she got to the end of this row of rooms, she went back into the hallway and checked on Fire Boy. He was sitting quietly in the bubble. He turned and looked at her quizzically. The bubble wouldn’t hold much longer, so she needed to finish up quick. She bubbled and blew a hole in the door across the hall, and then went through it.

This lab was different. There were cots lining one wall. On the walls were brightly colored pictures of smiling children. It reminded Michelle of the lab she and Joey had found in the jungle. She felt sick.

She worked her way through the room, destroying the beds, the pretty pictures, the cabinets filled with syringes and bottles of the virus. Then she bubbled her way into the next room. More beds. More smiling pictures. It felt good to blow them up.

The last room contained rows of built-in refrigerated cabinets. They didn’t last long. Room by room she systematically obliterated everything she found. She was thinner when she came back into the hallway.

Fire Boy was still in the bubble. Smoke was filling the hallway. Flames licked up the walls. Michelle touched the bubble and popped it. The boy looked up at her, giving her a small smile. She smiled back. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and a wave of fire enveloped her. He clamped his hands over his mouth.

Michelle squatted next to him and said, “You can’t hurt me, but you should try not to open your mouth when there are other people around. At least until you figure out how to control your power.”

He nodded. Then he smiled at her again. She smiled back. She couldn’t help it. Then she said, “Come with me.”

Battle flashed and crackled all around the rambling Red House with its complicated compound roof.

Tom landed on well-tended lawn before the front portico. The first thing he saw was a sheet-lightning flicker of muzzle flashes beyond the prefab barracks between the main house and the gate. The rattle of automatic fire was near continuous.

Eyes beginning to water from the smoke that twined around him, he started to trot in that direction. A brilliant blue-white flash seemed to light the whole night sky ahead of him, accompanied by a nasty crack like the sound of lightning striking nearby. An RPG had gone off nearby. As he passed between two of the lightweight wood structures a window with a wall in it exploded outward toward him. A huge figure loomed there, misshapen and dark, like a hybrid of man and steel drum. A vast arm swung toward him, trailing wood splinters.

He bent his will to going insubstantial, to allow the powerful blow to pass right through him.

He didn’t go insubstantial.

Fury spiked in him. That bastard Meadows stole Cosmic Traveler! Then a fist like a medieval mace clipped the side of his head and sent sparks bouncing off the inside of his skull. Tom spun down hard on his face on dirt worn bare by passing boots and compacted hard. The world reeled crazily about him. His stomach lurched.

Sheer anger drove him to push off from the merciless ground, snapping himself upright with unnatural strength. He found himself facing his attacker. The dude looked like the Tin Woodman on steroids. He had a lower jaw like a steam shovel. “So you’re the fella they call the Radical, huh?” the metal man said in a loopy Minnesota accent. “Tough guy. Well, it’s high time you picked on somebody your own size.”

Tom tasted blood, turned his face to spit out a tooth. Then he slammed an uppercut into the rusted-over steel plate that covered the metal dude’s gut. Iron groaned and buckled.

The metal man oofed and bent over. “Felt that one,” he said.

Tom slammed an overhand right into the bucket jaw. The metal man flew backward through the corner of the same wall he’d just burst through. A corner of the barracks slumped on top of him.

Tom turned to look for new enemies. There was a terrific commotion coming from the far side of the Red House, toward the west. By the light of flames he saw what looked like the branches of a huge tree looming above the high-pitched slate roof.

I don’t remember a great big tree there when I was here before, he was just thinking muzzily, when something like the steel jaws of a trap closed on either biceps.

He jerked his right arm forward. Skin beneath rust-roughened steel fingers. Tom slammed his elbow back against thick metal plate, felt it give. The iron man gasped in pain. The grip on Tom’s left arm slacked.

He ripped free, spun to begin trip-hammering punches into the metal monster. The armor began to dent in on itself, the steel man to sag.

Then suddenly there were wasps whining around his ears, stinging his arms and neck and cheeks, and trying for his eyes.

Bursts of automatic gunfire erupted to the south as the local soldiers regrouped. Cameo and Bugsy crouched behind the ruins of a jeep, its front wheels still gently spinning. “This is not going according to plan,” Bugsy noted.

“The earring,” Cameo said.

“What?”

“Ali’s earring. Simoon can force them all into cover.”

Bugsy took the chance of peering over the jeep’s fender. A bullet hissed by, and he ducked back down. “It’s in Central Park somewhere,” he said.

“It’s what?”

“Well… we broke up, you know?”

Ellen said something under her breath. She fumbled with something in her pocket, then the ruins of the fedora appeared. Nick lobbed a ball of lightning at the attackers, following it with ten or twelve marble-sized shockers as the first detonation was still rumbling. “Go!” Nick shouted. “Distract them, at least.”

“I’m on it.” Bugsy dissolved into an angry, living cloud. He flew in a funnel toward Weathers, weaving through the air in tight spirals, dropping low and racing to the sky, no tendril of wasps so dense that their loss would be crippling.

Tom Weathers’s fists rose and fell, Rustbelt shuddering with every blow. A lightning ball exploded just to the Radical’s left, illuminating him like a flashbulb-hair plastered to him by sweat, lips drawn back in an expression of inhuman rage.

Bugsy went in for the kill… or if not the kill, the serious annoyance. Fifty, maybe sixty wasps got in close enough to sting.

The Radical turned, shouting. Beams of terrible power leapt from his hands, sweeping the air, driving Bugsy back.

One beam hit Cameo.

Michelle came out of the Red House with Fire Boy in tow. Rusty was lying facedown in the dirt next to the front stairs. A blast of light came from Tom Weathers and streaked across the open lawn. She saw Cameo collapse. Bugsy was beside her, surrounded by wasps. Oh, God, Michelle thought, horrified. They shouldn’t be here.

And she was scared. Scared for them, and scared for herself. After what had happened in New Orleans, she knew Tom Weathers was capable of doing anything.

She ran down the steps and knelt beside Rusty, dropping Fire Boy’s hand. “Wally,” she said, gently touching his shoulder. Rust flaked off beneath her fingers. “Can you hear me?”

He opened one eye, sort of. His metal skin was cracked and red with rust, and leaking blood. “Bubbles,” he said. “How’d you get here?” His voice was weak.

“Oh, the usual,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Teleported to Africa with Noel. Came up the Congo. Found some remote labs. Killed Alicia Nshombo. Heard there was a party going on here.”

He tried to smile, but it came out as a wince. He rolled onto his side. “We gotta get rid of the lab. And Gardener…”

“The lab is done.” She wasn’t going to tell him about Jerusha. Not any more than he probably already knew. “Now you stay down and let me take care of Weathers.”

“You betcha,” he said with a groan.

Fire Boy tugged on her pants leg and then pointed to Rusty. “Friend?” he asked and he managed not to set anyone, or anything, on fire.

She nodded. The boy sat down on the steps near Rusty. Michelle wanted him to be in a safer place, but there was no safe place here.

She ran toward Weathers, releasing a barrage of bubbles. As they hit, his flesh ripped open. Ha! Michelle thought. An angry scream came from Weathers. It was frustration and fear. And it made Michelle smile. Now you’re scared, too. You bastard.

She hurled more bubbles. She made them heavy and fast. Weathers dodged the first few, but then one caught him and propelled him backward. He looked like a cartoon character, his legs splayed out, body doubled over. He landed in the shredded lawn and rolled. The next bubble exploded by his ear, and half of his pretty face was stripped to muscle and bone.

He popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “You bitch!” he screamed. A nimbus of yellow light surrounded him, bright as the sun. The beam that flew from his fingers was blinding, too bright to look upon. It hit her, threw her back, and made her fatter.

She lumbered to her feet and released another round of bubbles at him. “Why is it when a man is getting his ass kicked by a woman he has to call her a bitch? I mean, can’t you use some imagination, Weathers?” Anyone else would have been down. Anyone else would be dead. She didn’t know if she could stop him. And if she couldn’t, what would happen to everyone else?

Her bubbles threw him back again. He gave another shriek of frustration. “You slut! That hurt!” Then he hurled a light bolt at her. It lit Michelle up like Christmas. She blobbed out a little, and felt herself get denser. The power was fire in her veins again.

“Again!” She fired a huge, heavy explosive bubble at him. “With!” Another bubble. “The!” Another bubble. “Lame-ass!” Another bubble. “Remarks!” Another bubble. His face was hamburger, his clothes were rags, his lean torso sheeted in blood, but still the light poured from him. He would not go down.

“Great,” she said. “I’m going to have to keep listening to your blather even longer.” Her hands trembled. She kept bubbling. She had to stop him.

“You fat whore!” Another bolt of light. Michelle rolled her eyes as it hit. Her clothes were smoking.

“That’s horizontally challenged American to you,” she yelled. “And I’m not a whore. I’m just popular!”

God, I hate this guy. She hated him for what he’d done to Drake. She hated him for what he’d done to her. Hated him for helping turn children into jokers, killers, freaks. Hated herself for failing. For always failing everyone. She couldn’t be a hero. She didn’t even know how.

She put all the hatred into a bubble and let it go.

There was movement inside: someone coming toward her, not fleeing from the destruction. Jerusha opened her eyes wide, alarmed.

It was a child.

They’d talked about this, as they’d planned the assault. Jerusha had warned them. “They’ll have child aces, kids that they’ve subverted and twisted, with God knows what abilities. They’re dangerous, all of them. You may have to be ready to kill a child to save yourself.”

She’d warned them.

But seeing the boy, Jerusha hesitated for a breath: with uncertainty, with weariness. For all she knew this could be one of the kids on which they’d been experimenting, an innocent. One of those they’d come to save. “I won’t hurt you,” she said. “Do you speak English?”

The child did not move, did not answer. He stood and stared at her, his face a mask. He was skinny, homely, an ungainly boy with a bush of unkempt hair. “Do you have a name?” she asked him. “What do they call you?”

“Wrecker.” His accent was British, his smile cold. The sudden twist of his lips, the satisfaction and rage in the expression, told her that no, she was wrong. This was something dangerous. This was another one like Leucrotta, like the Hunger who had bitten her.

Jerusha started to reach for her seed pouch again, but it was already too late. The child was holding a red brick from the rubble of the wall in his hand. With a smile, he underhanded it in her direction, softly.

A foot from her, the brick exploded, suddenly and violently, the concussion tossing her backward, and Jerusha felt terrible, white pain rip across her abdomen. Her hands reaching into the seed pouch were suddenly slick and heavy, and there was blood-far too much of it-pouring from her, and she was falling, her seeds spilling to the ground below her, her red, red blood drowning them, and Wally was shouting but his voice came from a world away and night was coming and

…

“Wally,” she cried into the darkness. “I’m sorry…”

The flares and flickering glares of battle iridesced across the surface of the bubble as it swelled toward him. For a moment he saw his distorted reflection: face huge and swollen, small body dwindling to tiny legs, like a caricature drawn by a drunk Ren Faire artist. He looked beat to shit, one eye swollen shut, lips puffed, blood dripping over the war paint he still wore from the long-ago ritual in the Bahr al-Ghazal.

Moving faster than it seemed, the bubble clipped him. Tom screamed as it released its energy in an explosion that whited out his vision and consumed his right shoulder and side in shattering pain.

And then he was caught in a swirling blackness. It seemed to bear him up and up, like a drain spiraling him into the sky. He felt the shattered ribs and the bones of his shoulder joint knit themselves back together with a healing agony worse than the pain of the bubble’s destruction.

He had an impression of floating several stories above the world, buoyed by a black anger, a volcanic rage that dwarfed the passion that had consumed him so long. It was as if his consciousness were a tiny chip afloat on a sea of black lava, of elemental fury and mindless malice.

As from a very great height he saw a black-taloned hand the size of a minivan rise into his field of vision. A blue nimbus crackled about the crooked tips of its fingers, then leaped away toward the fat woman who stood on the ground glaring up at him. The lightning struck her, lit her like the filament of an incandescent bulb. Yet when the discharge died away to smolder on the ground around her, she still stood, apparently unharmed. She had only gotten fatter.

She raised her own hand, snapped it forward. A bubble swelled from it, zipped toward him. He took it in the gut like a slam from a sledgehammer mated to a cattle prod.

Pain exploded through him. He heard a voice that wasn’t his-or anything human-bellow from a throat that wasn’t human, either. Through the dazzling agony he felt strength surge into him like a hit of the strongest speed ever. Felt himself grow.

He had a sense of a vast tumescence surging from his loins, a quivering hard-on for everything that lived. And then he was swirled down into the blackness, the pit of rage that was the consciousness of the monster he had become.

“Wow,” Michelle said softly. “Didn’t expect that.”

Weathers was growing. Surging up into the air like Gardener’s baobab tree. His flesh turned the color of rotten plums. Horns sprouted on his head. Long white teeth like knives filled his mouth. His hands curled into claws. His eyes turned into burning yellow slits. He was ten feet tall, twenty, thirty. And an impossibly enormous erection grew from his crotch, pointing at her like an accusing finger.

“You should really put that thing away before something happens to it,” she said.

The thing in front of her bellowed. It was a mindless sound: harsh, earsplitting, filled with rage. Michelle had a moment of panic. She’d never seen anything like this. She had no idea what it was. But it didn’t matter. She was going to do her best until she couldn’t do anything at all.

The thing-the monster-bellowed again. Then it started toward her, Fire Boy, and Rusty.

“Hey!” Michelle hurled a medicine-ball-sized bubble at it as she led it from her friends. “I’m the one you want. Come on, big boy. Here’s where the action is.”

The monster howled in pain and staggered as the bubble exploded on its thigh. Lightning danced across its claws and crackled from its horns, blue-white against the night sky. A bolt stabbed down at her, just missing as she leapt aside. The earth smoked where it hit.

Michelle let a stream of bubbles go, aiming for the ground below the creature. A crater opened up and the monster gave a frustrated scream as it tumbled down into the pit. Michelle tried to bulldozer earth on top of it with a stream of bubbles, but it roared again and jumped out of the hole. It landed hard on its hooves, making the earth shake all around her. A turret on the Red House came crashing down behind them.

“Crap,” Michelle said as it ran toward her. The monster leapt into the air, and then landed on top of her.

Her body blossomed as she was squished into the ground. She bubbled, forcing the monster off balance. It staggered and slipped off her.

As Michelle climbed out of the monster’s footprint, she started bubbling again. She was beginning to think there was no way she could defeat this thing. On the other hand, it didn’t appear as if he could hurt her, either.

“See what you’ve done now?” said Mark Meadows.

The hippie floated in what seemed like midair. He sat in full lotus, naked but for the long grey-blond hair streaming down around his skinny shoulders. The space Tom found himself sharing with his nemesis seemed lit by a violet glow. Behind Mark glowed, for want of a better word, a backdrop that looked like a sort of great big Rorschach blot tie-dyed in a gaudy rainbow of colors. The bright golden sunburst ball in the middle surrounded Mark like a full-body halo from a medieval painting of a saint.

“Fuck me,” Tom said. “You’ve got me trapped in a fucking hippie poster. And you’re quoting Oliver Hardy at me.” He shook his head. “All it’s missing is bad sitar music and dope barely masked by sandalwood fucking incense.”

Mark raised two fingers. Marijuana and sandalwood filled the air. Sitar music began to play. “Welcome to my subconscious. Or should I say, welcome back.”

“What happened?”

“You got really, badly hurt. The trauma shock was enough to kick Monster free. Now neither of us is in control. Happy?”

“Oh, I’m fucking overjoyed. You hippie piece of shit! ” Tom launched himself at Mark. The cross-legged man simply receded before him. As if he were chasing his own image in a mirror. Screaming with rage Tom raised his hands and willed forth sunbeams. They did not shine. “Your powers don’t work here,” Mark said, shaking his head half sadly, half in seeming gentle amusement. “The few that you have left.”

Tom launched a flying kick. But the floating man turned sideways. Tom flew past. Then, somehow, was facing him again. He tried throwing punches. Kicks. Spitting.

All had the same effect on his enemy.

At last Tom felt himself hunched over, clutching his thighs and panting. “Don’t think you’ve won,” he wheezed. “You can’t beat me. You’re nothing! I’m everything you could ever hope to be in your miserable pencil-necked life. I’m more!”

To his surprise Mark nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “I tried to bring you back for years. Dedicated my life, my whole existence, to that holy quest. Neglected my job, neglected myself. Neglected my family, even though I loved them desperately. I did it because I wanted to do right. Wanted to save the world. And because I wanted the girl. But mostly because I wanted to belong.”

“What are you rattling on about?”

“I never did. Never belonged. I was always the odd kid out at school. Always had my nose in a book. At home, too. My dad was a good man, in his way. I found that out later when we got to really know each other, like, as adults-back when I was first on the run with Sprout, and he swallowed a lot of his prejudices and preconceptions to help us because he thought that was the right thing to do. But back when I was a boy he was super competitive. Never could figure out why I wasn’t interested in athletics or following him into the military.”

Tom tried to say something. But Mark wasn’t paying him any attention. Tom lunged at his nemesis. And ran right through him as if he were less than shadow.

“I wanted to belong,” Mark said. “To be part of something. To have a sense of purpose. Have shape, you know? Then later, after I got you, got to be you for just one night, that wasn’t what I wanted anymore. Oh, I wanted those things too-got them all, too, in their own ways-and wasn’t always happy with how that turned out. But I found what I really wanted was something else.”

“So you turned out to be just a fucking adrenaline junkie? Just did it for the rush?”

“No. Well, maybe a little. But after I’d had a taste of being you-the Spirit of Revolution-I wanted that certainty. That wild, pure conviction of knowing you were right, and being able to act without doubt or compromise. Of being certain. That most of all. To get rid of my confusion. And that was the cause of my greatest sin: the hunger for the one thing I couldn’t have. Certainty. ”

“So you want to fucking atone for me. For me. The only thing in your life you ever got right.”

Mark smiled gently. “You see it the way you see it. I see you as the greatest mistake of my life. I did some good along the way, man. I helped people. It cost me a lot of pain. Along the way I made mistakes that cost others pain. But it was all just trying to do the right thing.

“And it turns out… that’s no excuse. Intention doesn’t matter. Results matter. If you hurt people, it doesn’t mean a thing that you thought you were doing it for your own good.”

“That’s why you’re such a loser, Meadows,” Tom said. “You were never willing to do what it took.”

“Ah, no. I was too willing. In that I was like you. That was what gave rise to you. And if you’re going to tell me you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs-that metaphor only makes sense if you’re a cannibal.”

Tom could feel titanic forces surging around them: electricity and explosions and equally palpable eruptions of rage and triumph and lust. “This can’t last,” he said. “Monster will run out of rage eventually. And then I snap back in charge. And you’ll still be nowhere, man.”

Mark shook his head. “No. There are too many of them. You’ve done too much damage-to them as well as others. You’ve made it personal. If you return to the world of form they’ll simply kill you.”

“That’ll kill you too, you stupid cocksucker.”

“Yes. We’re trapped in a burning house, you and I. If my death is the only way to stop you, and I believe it is, then I’m happy to die.” He shrugged. “That’s the way of the world anyway, isn’t it? No one here gets out alive. Did you think your ace powers made you any different?”

Tom’s thoughts had cleared. “They won’t kill me,” he said. “Not if I’m helpless. Their bourgeois sensibilities won’t let them. And if I’m not helpless-”

He grinned.

Wally felt like a sack of broken bones rattling around inside an iron whiffle ball. Except whiffle balls didn’t have as many holes as he did.

The Radical had hurt him bad. His ribs were broken. Maybe even shattered. If he weren’t a joker, they’d be sticking through his side right now. As it was, he could feel bone scraping on iron every time he moved, like fingernails on a blackboard. The pain spiked with every breath. It took everything he had not to pass out.

He tried to stand, to push himself to his feet. But a rivet on the inside of his shoulder caught something squishy, like a tendon or a flap of muscle. It pinched a nerve, chewed it, mangled it. White-hot pain surged up his neck and into his brain. Wally staggered, but he grabbed hold of a branch of the tree that had exploded through the Red House, and made himself keep going.

He had to get to Jerusha. She could still get out of this. They’d find a way to cure her. He’d failed to save Lucien, but he sure as heck would save Jerusha. Nothing mattered but that. The Radical fella had turned into a giant monster. Bubbles was fighting him, but that did not matter now. There was no more he could do to help. All that mattered was Jerusha.

A bullet pierced a weak spot behind his shoulder. It ripped through the meaty part of his bicep, but ricocheted back inside when it hit solid iron on the way out. It sliced through something else on the rebound. His arm went numb. It didn’t move right anymore.

Wally came around the corner just in time to see a boy emerge from the wreckage of the house, toward Jerusha.

“Jerusha! Look out!”

She didn’t hear him. She was watching the boy. It was too dark and chaotic to see what he lobbed at her.

But not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the fear flash across Jerusha’s face.

Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the explosion.

Not so dark that Wally couldn’t see the concussion fling Jerusha backward. Not so dark that he couldn’t see her land, crumpled, like a rag doll.

Not so dark that he couldn’t see the seeds pouring out of her pouch… the blood pouring out of her belly, black as ink. Then lightning flashed from the talons of the giant monster, and turned it red for an instant. So much red.

He staggered to her. “Jerusha!”

She called his name. “Wally. I’m sorry.”

And then he was kneeling over her, cradling her, stroking her hair, calling to her again and again. “Please don’t go,” he cried. “You’re the best friend I ever had.”

But she was gone.

The boy who’d killed her watched it all with a cold smile. His eyes were just as dark, just as soulless, as Ghost’s had been that first night she appeared to Wally.

Wally stood. “You killed my girlfriend.”

Something inside him screamed in rage, called for justice, demanded revenge. One punch is all it would take.

But something else inside him spoke with Jerusha’s voice, the voice of reason. He’s just a little boy.

If Ghost could be fixed, so could he.

Whatever the boy saw in Wally’s eyes, he turned and ran deeper into the ruined mansion. Wally caught him in a few strides. He pushed the boy down, pinned him face-first to a shattered tile floor with one foot on his back. Wally looped the rebar around the kid’s wrists and ankles.

It was difficult because he couldn’t use one arm. But when he finished, the boy who’d killed Jerusha was stuck hog-tied in an iron lariat.

Wally collapsed.

Ellen lay on the ground, staring up at the night sky as if in surprise. Her skin all down the right side was black where it wasn’t bloody. The fedora-Nick-lay five or six feet away, the last low flames smoldering in the ruined felt.

“Are you okay?” Bugsy said, but he knew that she wasn’t. That she wasn’t going to be. “Medic!” he shouted. He was standing naked in the middle of a battlefield. The roaring detonations of Monster and Bubbles drowned his voice, but he kept shouting.

Lilith appeared at his side. “Get down, you idiot,” she hissed, but Bugsy ignored her.

“She needs help,” Bugsy said. “She’s hurt!”

Lilith bent down and looked at Cameo’s ruined body with a passionless eye, and then shook her head.

“You can get her to a hospital,” Bugsy said. “Something.”

“I have an idea,” she said, and a moment later was gone.

“Bugsy,” Ellen gasped. Her voice was thick.

“I’m here,” he said, taking her hand.

“It hurts,” she said.

All around, people screamed and died. But the only thing Wally heard was Jerusha’s final words. I’m sorry. They echoed through his head, over and over again.

He’d failed Jerusha. He’d failed Lucien. He’d failed Simoon and Hardhat and King Cobalt. He’d let down everybody who had ever cared about him. Good old Rustbelt.

Wally rolled onto his side, on the arm that didn’t make him pass out. He teetered to one knee. A charred body- Cameo? -lay sprawled on the earth, curled in on itself, barely moving. Bugsy cradled her, crying. His tears glistened with flashes of lightning and the light of explosions as Bubbles battled the gigantic thing that Tom Weathers had become.

Lilith-Noel-surveyed the carnage with a strange expression on her face. From across the smoking battlefield, she looked Wally in the eye. Then a flash of lightning made her silver eyes blaze bright, and she was gone. Bugsy saw her vanish, too. He swore. Michelle was the only person still fighting, and she was losing.

Wally steeled himself against the pain. He gritted his teeth, but a moan still escaped his lips when he pushed himself upright. If killing Wally could occupy the monster for even a few seconds, maybe it would help Michelle, or give Bugsy time to get some help for Cameo.

I’m sorry, Ghost. Guess I failed you, too.

Chernabog, Michelle thought as she flew through the air. That’s what he looks like. That damn big demon from Fantasia. And I look like one of those dancing hippos. Only filthier and less graceful.

She smashed into a small grove of trees, flattening them as she landed. The monster had grown tired of lighting her up with bolts of electricity and starlight. Now it was tossing her around like a rag doll.

Michelle groaned as she got up. She was terribly heavy now, despite bubbling at him as fast as she could. As she moved toward the monster again, her feet sank into the ground. The monster roared at her. Its massive erection waggled.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “A huge, tumescent penis? That is one ginormous cliche, dude.” While she was talking, she formed bubbles in her palm: tiny, almost invisible, but extremely dense bubbles. Then she streamed them at the monster.

When they struck, it howled in pain and rage. Its hideous purple-black skin peeled back, exposing pulpy red muscle and bone, but the damage didn’t seem to slow it down at all. It dashed toward her again, trailing blood. Where the blood fell on the ground, the grass hissed and burned.

Michelle tried to run away, but the monster’s stride was too long. It grabbed her as if she weighed no more than a sparrow and hurled her at one of the smaller buildings. She went through the concrete walls as if they were paper. Her body blobbed out again. Dust, mortar, and cement block bits and pieces covered her as she rolled to a stop.

Michelle saw that Rusty and Fire Boy were no longer on the steps. As she glanced around, she saw Cameo, Bugsy, and Lilith. They were huddled together. At least Lilith could teleport them out if things got too bad.

As she pushed herself up, she glanced over her shoulder. The monster was bearing down on her again. She bubbled and blasted holes in its knees. That only pissed it off more. It grabbed her, hoisted her thirty feet into the air, and swung her around and around its head.

Then it released her.

Michelle saw the Red House coming at her at breakneck speed. It was burning now. When she landed, she would be buried in fire and brick. How the hell were the others going to fight against that thing while she bubbled her way out? And she was afraid again.

She hit with a deafening crash, scattering bricks in all directions and sending fire and ash into the sky. Walls crumbled as her body smashed into them. Weakened floorboards cracked beneath her weight. She smashed down through one floor, then another. As she came to a stop in what must have been the cellar, the roof collapsed above her. A moment later what was left of the Red House came down on top of her.

“Crap,” she said.

Kongoville, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

The glass coffin was thick. A sledgehammer would take too long, might not work, and the good citizens of Kongoville would come and tear him apart for desecrating their heroine’s grave.

Noel stood in the door of the mausoleum and looked up and down the street. Things were oddly quiet, though he could see some broken windows in shops where looting had broken out as the country coped with the idea that the Nshombos were dead.

At one of the construction sites the cranes stood idle, but a lone backhoe was moving the remains of the building that had been demolished to make room for another grandiose monument to the People’s Paradise of Africa.

He didn’t like teleporting into moving objects, but he didn’t want to take the time to run down the street. And that might draw the attention of the nervous policeman who stood ready to direct traffic if there had been any to direct.

Just like shooting. Lead the target. And he made the jump.

The driver yelled in terror as Lilith appeared, standing on his lap. He tried to eel out the door so Noel lost his precarious balance and fell sideways banging his head hard on the side of the cab. He managed to snag the back of the man’s shirt with one hand while with the other he drew his gun.

He drove the barrel into the base of the driver’s skull. “Drive or I’ll kill you,” he said in French.

The man’s head nodded with the speed of a needle on a sewing machine, and he resumed his place behind the controls.

“Drive to the mausoleum.” The man rolled a terrified eye at him. “Do it!”

As they rumbled down the street the traffic cop gaped at them and began pawing for his radio.

They reached the mausoleum. “Knock down the wall.”

“Sir, please…”

Noel fired a shot right by the man’s ear. He screeched, put the backhoe in motion. The wall came down.

Some of the debris fell onto the coffin. Noel saw a few cracks. “Move that crap and break the glass,” he ordered.

It seemed to be taking forever, manipulating the hydraulics, lifting the front bucket, using it to push aside the fallen stones. Finally the glass was exposed.

The driver’s hands were trembling. “Sir, she is our hero. To desecrate-”

“She’s going to live again and save-” His inventiveness failed him. Noel could hear sirens drawing ever closer. “You remember how she saved Tom Weathers, brought him back from the dead?” The man nodded. “Well, her power still lives and she’s going to bring Dr. Nshombo back.”

The man enthusiastically obeyed. On the second blow the glass broke. Noel leaped from the cab. Cops were clawing their way over the rubble. Bullets began to snap and whine around him. Noel snatched the medal off the corpse’s neck, then staggered as a bullet took him in the shoulder. For an instant he felt only extreme heat at the point of impact. He knew the pain was coming.

He made the jump back to the Red House.

The Red House

Bunia, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Ellen’s breath was shallow, her eyes fluttering. Lilith pressed the golden medallion into her good hand. Bugsy held his breath. Behind them, Monster roared, a sheet of lightning turning the night to day.

Ellen closed her eyes. Someone he’d never met opened them. He was suddenly very aware of being naked. “Hi,” he said. “I know this is going to seem a little weird, but the thing is, you’re dead? And I kind of need your help.”

“I know what I am,” the new woman said. Her voice had an African accent.

“Great,” Bugsy said. “Really that’s great. I was thinking if you could just patch Ellen back up, that would be really, really cool. Then we could-”

The woman sat up slowly. Ellen’s skin cracked and split, blood rolling down her side in a crimson stream. “No,” the woman said. “The time has passed for that. Help me stand.”

Bugsy took her good arm and lifted. She seemed lighter than Ellen. Less substantial. The Lady of Pain turned her head as if no terrible injuries had disfigured her. Her expression was frank and evaluating. Bugsy turned with her, and saw what she saw.

Bodies. Dozens of them. Men in the tattered uniforms of soldiers or the white smocks of nurse attendants. Children lying flat on the ground to avoid the violence all around them, or already dead. And beyond them, in the ruins of the Red House, Bubbles and Monster trading terrible blows.

With every strike that Monster landed, Bubbles grew, and with every exploding bubble that detonated against Monster, the creature became larger, its claws and penis waving in the African air. Each incapable of harming the other, and both wreaking terrible damage all around them. Monster howled at the moon above them.

It struck Bugsy that both the combatants were white, and the dead around them black.

“You do not know the pain I have carried,” the Lady of Pain said. He thought at first she was looking at the dead, but when he followed her gaze, it was on the charred remnant of Nick’s fedora. She turned to look at him. Cameo’s good eye narrowed. The burned one was too damaged to close. “With every healing gesture, I have carried the pain. Do you understand what I am saying? They call me an ace, and all that I have been given is pain.”

Ellen, Bugsy thought. This isn’t the Lady of Pain, whatever the voice sounds like. I’m talking to Ellen.

“Please,” Bugsy said. “Could you just heal-”

“This is no day for healing. This is a day for the ending of things,” the Lady of Pain said. “Tom Weathers has killed me. Let him take the pain that I carried.”

Something came out of her, a bolt of light that was not light, a heat that froze. The air between the Lady of Pain and the monster writhed and shuddered. Bugsy felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck rise.

And a world of hurt enveloped Tom Weathers.

It was as if he were being wrenched apart and crushed and suffocated and burned alive. All at once. As if it were happening to each and every nerve ending in his body. Every atom.

He struck out. The pain only grew, impossibly grew. It began to eat at his mind like flame at paper.

“Here’s what’s happening,” Mark said, his words clear through the horrific all-consuming agony. “One of those eggs you broke so cavalierly has been put back together again. Sort of. Just long enough to pay you back for all the pain you caused others. With that pain.”

Tom tried to say something. He could only scream. Even in his unimaginable torment he knew that Meadows felt every bit of it, as strongly as he did. Yet the old hippie spoke as serenely as ever a martyr did through flames.

“Remember Dolores Michel, Tom?” he asked. “Our Lady of Pain? She couldn’t just take on herself the pain of others. She could also give that pain back.”

The Radical tried to raise a final fist of defiance. But that emotion crisped and burned to ash as well.

And in that agony, he died.

The quiet seemed unnatural. Noel became aware of the whimpers and cries from the wounded. The medal gleamed against Cameo’s chest, her hands still clutched around it.

But the demon was gone. There was a form lying on the ground. Noel got to his feet and tottered toward the body. He had to draw the gun with his left hand. The wound in his shoulder had left his right arm useless.

Shock brought him to a stop. Instead of a powerfully built man in his forties there was an emaciated figure with long grey hair and a beard like the remnants of a torn spiderweb. Blood streaked the body, drawing the insects. Noel holstered his gun and laid two fingers at the base of the man’s throat. There was a threadlike pulse. “He’s not dead,” he said. “Even after all that, the bastard Weathers is still not dead.”

“He is,” came Bugsy’s voice from over his shoulder. “That’s Mark Meadows.”

Michelle bubbled away the last of the Red House, swearing as she went. When she emerged from the rubble, the monster had vanished. The gunshots had died away too, as had the explosions.

She brushed away ash and cinders as she picked her way through the debris. Bugsy, Rusty, and Lilith stood grouped around a man lying on the ground. Bugsy was naked. She didn’t see Cameo or Gardener anywhere and that scared her.

“He should be killed,” Lilith was saying, with the matter-of-fact air of a person discussing whether to take the bus or a taxi.

The man on the ground was slight in build, almost emaciated. His face was lined and there was a shock of grey-blond hair on his head. A long, thin, scraggly beard covered what looked like a weak chin. He looked about the same age as Michelle’s father.

“But that ain’t Tom Weathers,” Rusty said, confused. “I dunno who that guy is, but he’s some other fella. And he ain’t that demon thing neither.”

“Yes and no,” said Bugsy. “He’s Mark Meadows. His ace is to turn into other people when he takes drugs, and he’s been on a really long, lousy trip. He’s the guy the Radical, I don’t know… hijacked, I guess.”

Rusty shook his head. “He’s just lying there. Doesn’t seem right to kill someone that helpless.”

Lilith rolled her silver eyes. “However it happened, it could happen again. Weathers is too dangerous to be allowed to live. And the only way to kill Weathers is to kill Meadows. They’re one and the same.”

“Well, not exactly,” Bugsy said, “but killing him is still the smart move. Even if he’s not Weathers now, he might turn back into Weathers when he wakes up.”

“I’ll do it,” said Lilith. “What’s one more death in the midst of

…” She gestured at the carnage around them.

Michelle stepped closer. She wondered again how Niobe could have fallen in love with this man. “There’s been enough killing here.”

“This is Tom Weathers,” Lilith said. “I will not allow him to simply walk away.”

“You don’t get to choose,” said Michelle. “You’re an assassin. You murder people in cold blood for money. And as far as I can tell, you feel no remorse for what you’ve done. That makes you a sociopath. You can cut the crusts off it all day long and you’ll never make that anything but a shit sandwich. Yes, I’ve killed people too, but I’ve never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me. I’ve never killed anyone in cold blood. I’ve never befriended someone so I could sneak in their room later and slit their throat. And just so we’re clear, I have never felt good about killing anyone, even when the choice was me or them. You can’t wash off what you’ve done with tea and crumpets and pretty clothes, Noel. That’s the biggest difference between us. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t mourn and regret what I’ve done.”

“I had no idea you were the only one among us who possessed such moral clarity and purity,” said Lilith. “By all means hug that close, Bubbles. As for Weathers… do whatever you want. It’s on your heads.” She walked away into the darkness.

Then Meadows groaned and opened his eyes. He sat up and looked up at them, dazed.

“Time to shit or get off the pot,” said Bugsy. “He fucking killed Cameo. In Paris he killed Garou and the owl guy and a bunch of security. He almost killed Klaus. If it weren’t for him and the Nshombos, Gardener would be alive. And how many more? Hundreds? Thousands? Mark Meadows may not be Tom Weathers, but he created him.”

“I did,” Mark Meadows said softly. There were tears in his big blue eyes.

“Seriously,” Michelle told him. “Don’t contribute.”

“If things were reversed,” Bugsy went on, “if it was us sitting there crying, Weathers would be peeling our brains open, scooping out the innards, and pissing down our necks while he laughed his ass off. He would have killed all of us as soon as look at us.”

“Yes,” said Michelle, “and if we kill him now, we might as well be Weathers. If we kill him now, it will be revenge, pure and simple.”

“Fine with me,” Bugsy snapped back. “What do you suggest, Bubbles?”

“Mercy,” she said. She looked at Rusty. He was holding his arm, which hung at an odd angle. Tears ran down his cheeks, leaving streaks of brown. His pain was naked and raw. So was Bugsy’s. And Michelle had no power to fix that. “Rusty,” she said, “how do you vote?”