She forced her eyes open. Once more, she had no idea how much time had passed. She looked over and found Will Blackwater on the floor, limbs askew, his head oozing blood. Not far away, the white tiger lay dead, along with two shirtless men. Molech’s numbers were only increasing, though—ten or so henchmen had joined the party. Not that Molech needed their help.
Zoey sat up, her back to the caterpillar, the stupid football helmet in her lap. It didn’t even look like a real, regulation helmet. It was like a toy one, for a kid. She wanted to cry, but didn’t have it in her.
Molech noticed the movement and strode up to her, clenching his bloody robot fists. Scott was tracking him with the camera.
“I want to thank you and your tiger-owning father for giving me the most amazing piece of highlight video I’ll ever make. I’m probably the first human in ten thousand years to punch a tiger to death. Now, I hope you’ll forgive the delay, while you were out, I let my fans vote for what I would do to you. Want to guess what the overwhelming majority voted for? Because it’s winning by a ten to one margin over the next choice.”
A couple of the henchmen laughed. Zoey’s looked down at her ruined leg, transfixed by the sight of the leg bone’s exposed gooey pink center. Her vision was pulsing red, blooming with each heartbeat.
Scott said, “Skyline feed is back, too. We’re now live, everywhere. All the feeds consolidating right here, right now. Audience is sitting at one billion, with a ‘B.’”
Zoey tried to think, but the thoughts were shadowy figures barely glimpsed in a thick fog of pain. She could think of nothing else but the original plan. The one that so far hadn’t exactly been a raging success.
She swallowed a pint of blood and said, “We have … a kill switch.”
“Piglet, if that existed, you’d have punched it already. Now, I have a strangely specific request from my fans here. I’m going to need you to roll over.”
“Wait!” Zoey jammed the stupid football helmet on her head. It was still warm, from the machine. “This, uh, helmet! It’s the magic protection helmet! You can’t hurt anybody wearing this!”
Molech held out his metal hands. “Come on. This is just sad.”
He reached down, grabbing her blood-soaked shirt, as if to tear it off.
“No! Stop! STOP!”
Zoey squeezed her eyes shut, and waited.
And waited.
For a moment that never came.
After ten seconds she pulled her swollen eyes open again, and Molech was standing there, completely frozen. Every part of his body, save for his face, which was contorting itself in rage and confusion, fist still clutching her shirt.
Scott, sensing his boss was in distress, rushed over.
Zoey turned toward him and again said, “Stop!” and he, also, stopped.
She backed up on her elbows, pulling her shirt free of Molech’s frozen fingers.
“Oh. Oh, wow. Oh my god. It works. The helmet … oh my god our stupid lie was true. It really was. Okay. It’s voice operated. Um … everybody freeze.”
The dozen henchmen froze, almost comically. One guy was frozen in mid-run, like a living sports poster a kid would have on his bedroom wall, and immediately toppled over. One guy’s hand was frozen on his crotch, like he’d been in the middle of scratching himself.
Their mouths still worked, as crotch guy squinted and said, “Am I the only one who’s paralyzed right now? Is there a reboot or something I need to do here…”
Zoey said, “Okay. Um … everyone start spanking yourselves.”
There was no response to this command, as that one apparently hadn’t been programmed into the system. Zoey was deeply disappointed in Arthur but realized she needed to keep her eyes on the bigger picture.
Molech said to her, “Just deactivate the implants. Just turn them off completely. I’ll take on everyone you’ve got with my own body, my own brain. Come on, me against whoever you can summon with your daddy’s money. Take away the gadgets, I’ll show you who the better man is.”
Instead, Zoey said, “Scott, throw the camera.”
He didn’t. Another command that his body apparently didn’t understand.
“Uh … throw your left arm forward and open your hand.”
That worked. He chucked the camera past Zoey, where it crashed against the caterpillar. Up on the wall feed, the view scrambled and went to black. Blink immediately switched to the second most popular feed—incredibly, it was inside the League of Badass van, which was at this moment rumbling toward the courtyard. These idiots just did not give up.
The van slid to a stop near the gazebo, the group bumbling out of the sliding side door with their medieval weapons in hand. Zoey saw for the first time that they were chasing two figures—Andre, still in his stupid costume, and Echo. They had led them back to the estate, either accidentally or on purpose, and had ditched their escape motorcycle outside the fence. Andre, Zoey noted, still had a single cat stuck to his back.
To Molech, Zoey said, “What would you do, if you were me, right now? Command your robot hands to rip out your own throat? Pull your head off? Maybe do it slow, have you pull your own guts out of your belly? Spread the video of it far and wide, so everybody knows not to mess with me?”
Molech said nothing. His muscles were flexing, veins popping, trying to move the frozen machinery in his joints. At best, he could just wiggle his shoulders slightly.
Zoey continued, “And then some cohort of yours, some ’roided up lizard brain who’s sitting on his sofa right now cleaning his guns, he sees that video and he comes to get payback. And then the whole thing starts all over. Forever and ever, blood on top of blood, until somebody finally takes a breath and decides to just … let it go.”
There was a ruckus behind Molech as Andre stumbled through the hole in the wall, eyes wide, trying to make sense of the bizarre, frozen standoff taking place between Zoey and the array of shirtless men menacing her. Echo popped through immediately after, but there was no moment of confusion on her part. She saw the injured Zoey and flew toward her, actually skidding the last few steps, sliding on the tile floor and gracefully ending up in a kneeling position next to Zoey. The bitch trying to upstage her.
Echo said, “We have to get a splint on this—”
Zoey waved her off. “All right,” Zoey said to the frozen Molech, “we’ve got a brief window of privacy before the audience joins back in. Here’s what’s going to happen. Those dumb people in the van are going to pile through that hole in the wall at any moment. At that point, you can surrender and apologize, or threaten them and get shot with arrows. But it’s your call. Each of you. Stand down and live, or go out in a blaze of supervillain glory. I don’t care either way. I’m going to pass out now.”
Zoey lay back, wondering who all had been watching this ordeal. Her mother? Caleb? Bella? Carla Dubois, the slut who had stolen her boyfriend in eighth grade? Stench Machine sauntered up, sniffed her mutilated leg, and curled up and went to sleep at her hip.
As she slipped out of consciousness, Zoey heard the faint sound of shouted warnings, angry threats in reply, and primitive weapons impaling flesh. The last thing she heard was Black Scott saying, “Nah, man, I don’t even know these assholes.”