Yes.
The alien motioned to Troll. The security chief took a grip on the knob, sucked in a breath, held it.
… The albino noticed Floater with Video riding piggyback on his shoulders, crawling in the window. He rose with blinding speed, uttered an oath, and drew a gun… "Now!" yelled Tachyon.
Troll forced the door. The lock broke with a scream of outraged metal and torn wood. Tach and Elmo tumbled into the room. The albino fired, and missed. Slither, disobeying or having completely forgotten her orders, came coiling up the fire escape like a hunting boa on a tree. She lashed out with her tufted tail and knocked the gun from the albino's hand.
"You fuckers!" Cards flew like frightened butterflies as the young man flung aside the table.
A right punch was coming in. Tachyon tried to deflect it with a quick outward block, but when his arm connected with Lockwood's, it stopped as if caught in a vise. Tach gasped. Troll, grunting with irritation, let loose with a wide, slow haymaker. His enormous fist slammed into Lockwood's jaw. No reaction. Tach and Troll stepped back, alarmed.
Croyd was trying to tie Slither into knots. Elmo waded in and was tossed contemptuously aside. He came back in, his arms driving like pistons. Ernie joined the fray. Floater was trying to scramble across the ceiling back to the window.
A sound like a side of beef hitting concrete. The pretty boy had landed a hit on Troll. The big joker doubled over. And Tachyon stared dismayed.
Thank you, Jesus, that he didn't hit rne! came the hysterical little thought.
Troll drove two hard left/right punches into Lockwood's gut.
Nothing!
Lockwood wound up and delivered a punch to Tachyon's head. The Network helmet withstood the blow, but the kinetic force threw the tiny alien across the room. He came up bruised and groaning against the far wall. Troll was raining punches on Lockwood. The young man grinned and hammered in a series of hits that drove Troll across the room. The big joker stood swaying, arms over his helmeted head. Lockwood kicked him hard in the groin, then brought both hands down on the back of Troll's neck.
When a tree falls in the forest this is just how it sounds, thought Tach inanely as nine feet of joker went down like a poleaxed ox.
"Shit," commented Floater from overhead.
Tachyon reached out with a powerful imperative. Silver lines of power flowed out from him but failed to wrap like a net about the man's mind. Instead the power sank like a stone in quicksand.
SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!!
The power washed back toward him, struck his shields, and passed right through.
Boomerang power, was Tachyon's last conscious thought.
He was dancing the most intricate and wonderful triple minor set, but there were no other men in the dance. Just him, and a long line of women. Blythe and Saaba and Dani and Angelface and M'orat, and Jane and Talli, and Roulette and Peregrine and Victoria and Zabb grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to cut in. Muttering and growling, Tach dug his cheek deeper into the pillow. The antiseptic smell and rough texture of the pillowcase infuriated him. I won't endure a bed like this. How dare they? The infernal cheek!
He forced up gummed lids, stared into Victoria Queen's frowning blue eyes.
Smiled up at her. "You dance divinely."
"Oh, wake up!" She jammed a needle into his arm.
"Ow!"
"Stimulant. Our hero. You finally meet someone with a superior mind-control power at positively the worst moment."
"He was not superior! That was my own power ricocheting back at me. Nothing else could have gotten past my-" He cut off, ashamed by his outraged justification, then continued in a chastised tone, "Did we get them?"
"No."
He dropped his face into his hands. "O ancestors, what a mess."
"Yes." She walked out.
Croyd escaped. And if Slither died? Another casualty of his failures.
The click of dainty hooves on tile. "What next, boss?"
"I commit suicide."
"Wrong answer."
"I go to the police."
"They'll freak," remarked the joker as he pulled tangles from his white mane.
"What choice do I have? I wanted to keep this secret, avoid panic, but Croyd now knows he's being hunted. He will go to ground. We must have manpower to find him. And this companion. Call Washington, have SCARE search their files for an ace with boomerang powers."
The Takisian rose stiffly from the bed. Winced as he explored a bruise on his elbow. Ran his hands through his tangled curls. "I handled this so badly."
"You couldn't know."
"How are the troops?" Finn bowed his head and inspected his hands. "What is it? What's happened? Troll? Slither?"
"Slither. She went into Black Queen reaction minutes after you went under."
"The incubation period…"
"Must be shortening."
"He's continuing to mutate the virus."
"So maybe it will mutate until it becomes nonviral?"
"I couldn't be so lucky. Everything I touch leads to death."
"Stop it! That's not true! We don't have time for you to feel guilty If anyone's at fault-I am. I let him leave."
"You couldn't have known he'd become a carrier."
"My point exactly. What's done is done. Let's get on with the future."
"If there is one."
"We'll make it happen."
"How did you end up so optimistic and well adjusted?"
"I'm too dumb to be otherwise."
All the King's Horses
VI
The big corrugated metal garage door rattled overhead as it slid back in its tracks. The opener was old and noisy, but it still did its job. Dust and daylight filtered into the underground bunker. Tom turned off the flashlight and hung it on a hook in the wooden beam supporting the hard- packed dirt wall. His palms were sweaty. He wiped them on his jeans and stood regarding the metal hulks before him.
The hatch gaped open on his oldest shell, the armored Beetle. He'd spent the last week replacing vacuum tubes, oiling the camera tracks, and checking the wiring. It was as ready as it would ever be.
"Me and my big fucking mouth," Tom said to himself. His words echoed through the bunker.
He could have rented a truck, a big semi maybe. Joey would have helped. Back it up to the edge of the bunker, load the shells, get them over to Jokertown the easy way. But no, he had to go and tell Dutton he'd fly them over. No way the joker would ever believe him now if the damn things got delivered by UPS.
He looked at the open hatch, tried to imagine crawling into that blackness and sealing the door behind him, locking himself into that metal coffin, and he could feel the bile rise in the back of his throat. He couldn't.
Only he had no choice, did he? The junkyard wasn't his anymore. A crew would be arriving in less than three weeks to start clearing away all the shit that had accumulated here in the last forty years. If the shells were still lying around when they showed up with their bulldozers, the jig was seriously up.
Tom forced himself to walk forward. No big deal, he told himself. The shell was okay, he could get it across the bay, he'd done it a thousand times. So he had to do it one more time, that's all. One more time and he was free.
All the kings horses and all the king's men…
Tom bent at the knees, grasped the top edge of the hatch, and took a long, slow breath. The metal was cold between his fingers. He ducked his head and pulled himself inside, swinging the hatch closed behind him. The clang rang in his ears. It was pitch-dark inside the shell, and chilly. His mouth had gone dry, and he could feel his heart shuddering away in his chest.
He fumbled in the darkness for the seat, felt torn vinyl upholstery, squirmed toward it. He might as well be in a cave at the center of the earth, or dead and buried, it was so black. Faint lines of light leaked in around the outside of the hatch, but not enough to see by. Where the fuck was the power switch? The newer shells all had fingertip controls built into the armrests of the seat, but not this old bucket, oh, no. Tom groped in the darkness over his head and jammed his fingers painfully on something metal. Panic stirred inside him like a frightened animal. It was so fucking black, where were the lights?