“Ever been beheaded?” Chad asks me.            

The tack-tack-tack of gunfire reverberates through the cavernous museum. The delicious pain of bullets ripping through my chest shifts to a burning as my flesh and lungs regenerate.            

“Nope, never beheaded.” I get the words out once my lungs are whole again. “But Doctor Miracle told me it’s an absolutely surreal experience.”            

The Futurist’s moronic band of culture terrorists continues shooting. He dresses them so tastelessly, his handless clock logo spray-stenciled onto their Kevlar jackets, floating like targets in the centers of their backs. We lure their fire away from the oldest and most expensive works in the Seattle Art Museum. They’ve already shattered several of the display cases in the Greek and Roman gallery, but many of those pieces are timeworn fragments. I doubt the average SAM patron would even notice. The glass crackles under our boots.            

The goons chant, “History is dead!”            

Piss-ant cultists. There are only three of these philistines. Barely a challenge.            

Chad goes on, “Do you think both pieces would stay alive, or just your head?” as bullets bounce off of his pecs and face, his body absorbing the impact and converting it to usable energy.             Another bullet lodges in my stomach. My body pushes the projectile out with a little wet pop like a nipple rejecting a piercing.            

“Chad, why do you insist on asking me these things during battle?”            

Chad and I always go in first because we’re invulnerable. He treats this mission like one of his video games, blocking the gunfire with his body so it doesn’t reach the art. I act more as a distraction, my crimson bodysuit drawing their fire and soaking up my blood. The floor is lousy with it, and I plan the trajectory of metal and blood so they won’t hit anything priceless. If the museum loses something by a hack like Jeff Koons? No heartache there.              

The public has been cleared out. It’s just me and Chad and the Futurist gang, so we can have some fun. We’ve led the thugs to an alcove for the elevator and bathrooms. My blood spatters the stark white museum walls as they shoot me, and I get half hard from seeing it.            

Chad persists. “By the way, how’s the lawsuit going?”            

I grab one of the thugs. “Ugh. Thrown out of court. That meth head bank robber said I traumatized him when he stabbed me.” I barely get the words out as I slam the perp’s face into a water fountain. I disarm and tie him up in seconds. “He and his lawyer had this story that I got off on being stabbed, that I made him do it. They called it a sexual assault.”            

Chad grabs the other two and cracks their skulls together. He gets a sprinkle of blood on his swollen biceps, revealed as they are by his sleeveless costume. He asks, “Well did you get off on it?”            

I ignore his question and hogtie the other two perpetrators. This isn’t a conversation to have in front of them. Henchmen simply adore blabbing everything to the press and Reddit. Oh, my rights were stepped on! Oh, Saint Sebastian ground his pelvis into mine while I was stabbing him!

So basic.            

I ask the inevitable question, deciding the fate of humanity yet again. “Okay. Odds or evens?”            

“Odds.”            

One-two-three-shoot. We both hold out two fingers. Chad always throws out two fingers.            

“Dammit!” He turns and sulks to the art. “I don’t wanna watch the perps.”            

Rosetta’s voice comes through on our coms, saving me from Chad’s brilliant repartee. “Power Hour. Saint Sebastian. Report back.”            

Chad has nothing better to do, so I let him answer. “Three perps pacified and need medical attention. The usual.”            

Rosetta’s voice sizzles in my ear again. “Medics and SWAT waiting outside. I’ve connected with all of Futurist’s bombs and told them to switch off. I’ve shut down his digital weaponry, but he’s still wandering around on the third floor. I don’t read any other presences in the building, so that’s probably it for henchmen. Sebastian, rendezvous with Rapport in your favorite exhibit.”            

If the Futurist harms a single work of art in that wing, I will insist on interrogating him myself. You’d think a supercriminal who can see the future would be harder to defeat, but he can only see things that will happen in ten years or later. Not the best superpower, but he’s patient enough to buy stock.            

I run up the stairs, telling Chad to have fun babysitting.            

In these last three years working as a Guardian, I’ve been shot, stabbed, burned, frozen, and dynamited. How many twenty-five-year-olds can say that?            

It’s the stabbings that most excite me. Being shot is okay, but it’s quick. Stabbings are much more intimate. You can turn a stabbing into a slow dance, the blade entering your body like a lover easing in. I think the others know this about me, but no one has ever mentioned it. The lawsuit was laughed out of court, and Twitter was over it in two days. Business as usual.            

I have my crossbow out and ready. I find Omar — Rapport — in the featured exhibit hall before either of us find the Futurist. Omar has one of his gadgets scanning, and right now his powers are pretty useless otherwise. He puts his finger to his lips. We scan and wander, scan and wander. I could wander this wing of the museum for years.            

One painting after another, in photos and in sculptures, the exhibit is a wealth of pain and ecstasy. El Greco, Rubens, Régnier, and my favorite: the first of three Mantegna, in which the boy’s eyes gaze up, ostensibly looking for a merciful God, but all they can focus upon is the arrow jammed in his forehead. Another shaft ascends into the soft flesh just beneath his jawbone, in that tender area that is both underchin and throat. His body replaces Christ’s as the focal point of suffering, the masochistic beauty of Christ’s sacrifice overshadowed by the sadistic comeliness of the youth’s face and body.            

O, come let us adore him.            

Saint Sebastian, riddled with arrows and surviving. I’ve always felt a special kinship with him. He’s a muse. He’s a meme. When it came time for me to brand my superhero persona, there was no contest.            

I’ve been to this exhibit three times since it opened. I’m thinking of having my own portrait done.            

Omar points toward a chamber with a black curtain across the opening. The display screen on his forearm blinks a dot in the floor plan. I go in first. I always go in first.            

The Futurist sits still with his back to us. “You can’t stop the future,” he says, not bothering to turn around.            

Yukio Mishima’s short Yûkoko/Patriotism plays on the wall opposite him. The woman in the film drags her robe through a pool of blood, painting the floor like a calligrapher.            

Rosetta may have talked The Futurist’s bombs into deactivating, but he could still have a less sophisticated explosive on him. He likes fancy tech, but he’s still nothing but a terrorist. I’ve fought everyone from slinky jewel thieves like Queen Martine to thrill killers like The Marquis (that was a hot battle), and plenty of petty little garbage criminals, but most of them have a standard pattern. The terrorists, however, are unpredictable. They’re supposed to be — they’re terrorists.            

I aim my crossbow at his head. As an agent of the National Guard, I can’t kill American citizens except when absolutely necessary. Hogwash laws. The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist, or one out of whom you can torture information.

“I need half a reason to put an arrow through your skull, Martinetti,” I tell him.            

Rapport gives me his WTF look. He’s supposed to be the negotiator. All he needs is to lay a hand on someone to convince them of anything.            

I hadn’t noticed the scent of blood in the room, too accustomed to smelling my own. I circle to the Futurist’s side, and he has a blade to his stomach, has already cut himself superficially.  

“I’ll do it,” he says. “Mishima was right.”            

“Do it then,” I tell him. “And for the record, Mishima was a conservative traditionalist who resented the new Japanese regime. About as far from your philosophy as possible. But please, by all means. Seppuku yourself silly. I hate you. You’re not even Japanese, you piece of shit.”            

The Futurist finally looks at me. His eyes are a martyr’s eyes, like the boy in my favorite paintings, pleading for some absent god to approve of his sacrifice. I am not that god.            

“It’s okay, Philip,” Omar tells him. “No one needs to get hurt. Your men are alive.” He creeps closer. He can’t use his psychometric powers unless he touches the target.            

I prefer the bad cop approach. “You want to kill someone? Try killing me.”            

The Futurist looks at me, through me, and says, “I can’t. You’re alive in the future.” He pauses, then says, “And you’re — oh! Oh, my God. Why didn’t I see it before?”            

He’s trying something. I have to act. I lunge at him, and by reflex he plunges his blade into my chest. I struggle and resist, take the action slow and watch him gradually work the blade down between my ribs, the metal nicking the bone as it goes deeper. My body pulls him in, and I fight the urge to lick the tip of his nose.            

It gives Omar enough time to give him a tranq shot, and the Futurist wilts against me, still clutching the blade. My body tries to heal around it and integrate it — a new and terrible limb — but Omar pulls it out.            

Spoilsport.            

I go back to the exhibit the day the museum reopens. The board of directors asked all of the Guardians who took down the Futurist gang how they could repay us, and I asked for the Mantegna painting. They thought I was joking.            

Instead, they gave me a lifetime membership to the museum, which means little besides quarterly junk mail asking for money. Still, I donate.            

At least I can enjoy the Saint Sebastian exhibit a while longer before they move it to L.A. The Julian Schnabel piece is marvelous in its reinterpretation, the ripped and slashed torso, no limbs, no head. I spend a long time with that one, enjoying the cool air while the pedestrians swelter outside in the dirty summer air.            

I remember when Queen Martine tried to lift some Incan gold artifacts from the museum this time last year. We fought hard; she has this slippery force field that makes it especially difficult to catch her. She got away, but I saved the gold, which was cold comfort after fighting for an hour and not being wounded.            

I find myself back in the little room watching Patriotism. Mishima committed his seppuku to film less than five years before he did it for real. What a drama queen.            

As the film concludes, my alert cuff buzzes. I tap in the code that indicates I’m unavailable. The others can take this one.            

I contemplate Keith Haring’s cartoon-cubist mutant Sebastian, attacked by tiny airplanes rather than arrows. His red erection is as ugly as his face. My cuff goes off again.            

Dammit, I’m on battle rest. I heal fast, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get stressed out. Some asshole in dispatch is probably missing this vital bit of information. I let the buzzing continue.

I ought to go back and get my master’s in art history and quit all this on-call supersoldier crap. I have enough saved to put myself through grad school. The pay for a Guardian is good, but not great. I deserve a fine home to return to after battles, a well-appointed lair of hardwood floors and granite countertops, not my quaint little apartment full of Overstock furniture and knock-off prints.            

They ring my cell phone. Christ.            

I sneak off to an isolated spot. “Saint Sebastian,” I answer quietly.            

The dispatcher says, “All Guardians are called to assemble at Waterfront Park for transport to Whidbey Naval. Code Vulcan.”

God fucking dammit. “Code Vulcan” means weapons or powers of city-level destruction. Like the volcano god, not the Star Trek reference. All Guard members in the area, including the reserves, are required to report for duty unless they’re utterly incapacitated. I assume Chad is utterly incapacitated.            

“What is it this time?” I ask.            

“You’ll be briefed at the base.”            

As much as I hate this bullshit, a job is a job, even kowtowing to the military, especially in this economy. I have my spare costume and kit in a backpack or briefcase with me at all times. Even on battle rest. It’s lightweight enough — I don’t need armor, of course. Add a fancy little wrist-mounted crossbow with some gadgety arrows, and presto. I can go from tank to damage-dealer in seconds.            

I find a bathroom and change, then I think twice and change back into my civilian clothes. The park is three blocks from here, and god knows how long it will take for the others to commandeer cabs to the waterfront. I have time to grab a latte.

“It’s a kaiju,” General Vega tells us, performing his plebian awe as we wait for the helicopter at the assembly point. “Agent Sebastian, you know all about those, don’t you?”            

The other Guardians look at me in sympathy. Vega does this to us all the time.            

I answer my superior officer. “General Vega, with all due respect, I’m not actually from Japan. Both of my parents were born in Seattle. Sir.”            

Vega grimaces. Omar and Rosetta snicker — he’s Somali American, and her father was Egyptian. Imagine the things Vega likes to ask them.            

Vega continues. “This will be the second kaiju ever in American territory, first on the continent. You’re all too young to remember the Maui kaiju attack in the seventies.”            

As if I don’t read. I went to fucking Stanford, unlike most of these Guardians who went to some Hitler Youth superhero academy since they were fourteen. We have rather reasonable Guardians in Seattle, but you should see the Midwesterners. Hate cops? Try supercops who think they’re rock stars. One of the Chicago Guardians cut a rap album the year he retired. People actually bought that piece of shit.            

Vega picks at his mustache and says, “When your little frat brother shows up, I’ll let the rest of you bring him up to speed. Right now, we’ve got to get you in a helicopter.”            

As if on cue, Power Hour arrives, huffing like he’s just run five miles. He’s only half in costume, cargo shorts still on, his skin-tight sleeveless black shirt bearing the words, “Come. At. Me. Bro.” in white Helvetica font, the monosyllabic words stacked one atop the other down one side of his torso. Believe it or not, the shirt is the part he wears into battle.            

He appears hung over.            

“God dammit, Agent! Whose clock are you on?” the general scolds him.            

“Sir, I was on leave, like Agent Sebastian. We—“            

“Tuck in your pussy, Agent Power!”            

I look over at Rosetta, who rolls her eyes. Vega goes on, “We’ve got a kaiju the size of a WalMart headed down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, making a bee line for Whidbey Island. You four are going to contain it. We’re sending you to Whidbey Naval to rendezvous with the Coast Guard.”            

*

“I only need to know one thing, Sir: where it is,” Metallurge says during the briefing. I recognize the line or something like it from Aliens. Metallurge is one of the mobile Guardians they keep out at sea, and we don’t even get to know her civilian name. She has a Semper Fi tattoo on her tricep. I find her sexy as hell.            

The briefing room at Whidbey is hot and ugly: white walls, white screens, white window shades. There’s a picture of General Vega shaking hands with Reagan. My skin crawls.            

“So are we allowed to kill it?” I ask. “If it’s not a person, we can kill it, correct?” I doodle images of arrows on the cover of my dossier.            

General Vega actually thinks for a moment. “We don’t need it alive if you can’t take it alive. Safe to assume it’s not a person. The profile doesn’t match any known superhuman. But we want it for R and D. And that means you can’t let it cross back into Canadian territory, if that’s even where it came from.”            

Rosetta, ever the communicator, asks, “But what if it isn’t hostile? We can’t just kill a non-hostile creature. Doesn’t Fish and Wildlife have rules about that or something?”            

General Vega clicks around his console, opening a pic of the thing on the projector screen. Beneath an asymmetrical crescent of horns, its face is disquietingly similar to a human skull, the eye and nostril pits seemingly hollow, with an underbite full of too many teeth like an anglerfish. Most of it is underwater, but I count at least six tentacles.            

Vega says, “Agent Rosetta, you sweet talk it all you want. You’re going in first with Sebastian and Power Hour. This thing is headed straight for American soil. The Canadians want it so they can sell it back to us or the Chinese or god knows who. I have half a mind to let them have it and trade them for Agent Power. How would you like to be a Super Mountie, Agent Power?”            

Power Hour looks unfazed. “So…keep it in the water? Won’t that make it more difficult to contain?”            

General Vega says in a whining tone of mock desperation, “I don’t care where the fuck you contain it, just keep its ugly ass on our side of the street.”            

Power Hour looks down and shuffles the sheets in his dossier. Every super squad needs a strong guy, I suppose. I’ve met smart muscle heroes, but I haven’t had the pleasure to work with one. At least I have Rosetta and Omar.            

Someone’s cell phone buzzes. Rosetta perks up and says, “It’s your mother.” Omar fumbles with his phone and turns it off. Rosetta doesn’t use a codename, since her legal name dovetails nicely with her powers. I didn’t realize codenames weren’t required until I met her. Everyone here thinks my name is actually Sebastian, and I don’t mind that enough to correct them.            

I ask the billion-dollar question. “Why are we risking our lives and those of civilians just to kill something that hasn’t attacked us yet? Isn’t this a job for one of the cryptid teams?”            

Metallurge clucks her tongue and says, “Are you Seattle Guardians usually this whiny and insubordinate?”            

I think I love her.            

Vega throws his hands in the air and says, “If you screw this up, I’m not saving your lives.”            

*

It’s fucking huge.            

There are more tentacles than I’d thought, and we stay far enough away that it can’t reach us, but it could still beat the water and knock us off our speedboat. The skull face is perverse atop a torso lined with two columns of giant, humanlike breasts. It’s a teenager’s Lovecraftian stroke fantasy.            

Power Hour and I guard Rosetta as we get close enough for her to talk to it. I’ve seen her mouth and throat mutate in seconds, shifting to communicate with bats and satellites. Once she even grew a bioluminescent organ on her chest. Nothing happens today. The kaiju has stopped advancing about a hundred yards off the coast of Whidbey. It just stares.            

Rosetta says over the com, “I can’t figure it out. I can’t read its mind, and my body isn’t adapting to communicate.”            

Rapport tells her to keep trying. He’s back on the beach with Metallurge, who’s building a makeshift cage using construction beams. The beams levitate over the water and bang into each other, a titan’s chiming mobile, until Metallurge fuses them together.            

It’s funny how superhumans couple up with similar powers; both Rapport’s and Rosetta’s abilities are essentially about communicating. She can speak to anything that communicates, living or artificial. He can touch any object to “read” and immediately master it. I imagine their sex life to be sublime, and I want in on it.            

Rosetta is on the com again: “Something is very weird here. It has no mind. It’s like it isn’t even alive.”            

The general comes on the line and says, “What, you mean it’s a machine?”            

I wonder if he actually understands anything about our powers.                  

“Sir, if it were any sort of advanced machine, I could talk to it. There is no mode of communication going on. No binary signals. No body language. No neurons firing. Maybe it’s a puppet? Or a zombie?”            

Power Hour attempts a quip: “Well if it’s a zombie, let’s aim for the head!”            

Rosetta groans into the com. We take the speedboat back to shore.            

Sometimes being a supersoldier is a lot like making a movie. It’s standing around and waiting, much more than ordinary people realize. After an hour of waiting for the kaiju to do something, Metallurge effortlessly drops the cage over the beast, and finally it moves: the tentacles whip out, seize several struts of the rudimentary cage, and tear it apart. The ripping metal sounds like a Godzilla roar from the old films, très à propos, but the creature itself doesn’t vocalize.            

Metallurge is clearly disoriented from trying to keep the cage together. I say over the com, “So. That didn’t work. Shall we start shooting it now?”            

Five minutes later, a helicopter brings Power Hour and me close enough to jump on its bare skull. He, of course, starts hitting it. Curiously, he can’t seem to crack the bones, and the creature is strangely passive. Way too passive.            

“Pry its jaws open,” I tell Power over the com. “I’ve got an idea.” I expect a churning puddle of acid in its stomach, a slow and fizzing burn I can swim through while my skin melts and regenerates.            

Down the gullet. I touch off an LED pad on my belt as I slide down. The scarlet throat opens its sphincter into what I assume is the stomach, and that’s where I finally get interested in this fight.            

The large chamber is a cathedral of smooth, pink tissue draped between struts of bone. The floor of it is flat and firm. I expected it to stink like the ass of Satan, but it actually smells of high-quality leather. Instead of a puddle of flesh-searing acid, it’s a well-lit room in which two women and a man sit waiting for me on somewhat tasteful couches. Other villain-lair accessories are strewn about: tech stations, a torture device or two (hubba hubba), and another gateway at the far end.            

“Finally,” says the obvious ringleader. She wears a white leather catsuit that does nothing for her figure. It clashes with her pale skin and blonde hair, topped as it is with a diamond diadem. Queen Martine: Canada’s premier cat burglar. The other two don’t look so familiar — a white guy and a black woman, fitted in military-issue armor.            

“Are introductions needed?” Martine asks.            

The man says, “He’s trying to recognize me and Slam. He’s trying to act calm.”            

Telepaths love to brag about being telepathic. I start playing some generic heavy metal in my head at full blast to distract him. It’s almost like meditating.

I ask the prima donna, “Attempting to kill me, Miss Bujold?”     

“I will if you keep calling me by my civilian name, Mister Aoki.” The other two do the henchman-sneer. “And for Christ’s sake, turn off that fucking LED light.”            

I do her the favor, taking a few steps closer. I focus on the song in my head and only take in the distance between us visually, without attaching significance to it that the telepath can detect. I hope.            

There’s a muffled explosion from outside that makes the room’s membranes tremble like the leathery skin that collects on a pudding.            

Martine looks around with a sigh. “Sounds like Rosetta’s little fireside chat didn’t work out. Don’t worry; you’re safe in here. But let’s make this quick. She’s Slam. Vocal blasts. He’s Incite.”

“With a ‘c,’” the man says.            

You have a dumb codename, I think at him. He frowns.            

Queen Martine continues. “He can read your thoughts, but he’s still catching up to putting thoughts in people’s heads. We’re working on that.”            

Incite slouches at that. He’s the greenest supercriminal I’ve seen in a long time.            

“Does Slam talk?”            

Slam lets out a stage whisper, “Economically,” and the force of it knocks me down. I wonder how hard she can blast me.            

“What’s with the kaiju?” I ask, getting up and taking a few more steps. The song in my head continues, a squeal and grind of Scandinavian guitars. I’m very close to them.            

Martine squints and runs her tongue across her front teeth, looking me over. “Okay, here goes. You’re inside one of my force fields. I can control their shape and appearance. Thrilling, isn’t it? This is what I came up with to lure you out.”            

“Prove it,” I tell her, gesturing around the spherical chamber. “Prove that this is all coming out of your head.”            

She cocks an eyebrow, and in a blink a pink crystalline spike grows out of the floor in front of me, stabbing me through the thigh at an acutely painful angle. Touché. I almost weep with the pleasure of it. There’s a wet swiping sound as I slide my leg off the spike. My skin closes around the wound.            

“I can make anything I can imagine,” she says. “This is the fortress from which I will build our empire.”            

Incite stares at me. The last person who looked at me like that was The Futurist when he saw — whatever he saw.

Incite says, “He thinks you want to hold him hostage. He still doesn’t get it.”            

I eclipse the space between us and seize his throat in both hands.

“If you don’t stop narrating me, I will choke your fucking lights out.”            

Out of the corner of my eye, it looks like Slam opens her mouth, but Martine puts a hand up to stop her.            

“Look,” she says, “enough dicking around. I’m not stupid enough to kidnap you, and you’re too smart to believe I’d try. I’m putting together a team. This is just the beginning.”            

I let go of the least impressive superhuman in the room. Incite looks at me like a child trying to murder a parent through sheer force of will. I have the briefest moment of vertigo, but that’s about it.            

Martine goes on, “Haven’t you ever wondered how much more you could be if you weren’t under the thumb of the Americans?”

I snap. “As opposed to running off to Canada with you and these two and pulling off jewel heists?”            

The insult rolls off her back like rain off ermine. “What if I told you that you have no idea what you’re truly capable of? That the Americans — the whole United Nations — have been hiding the fact that all of us are capable of secondary and tertiary and who knows how many variations on our powers? How hard have you pushed your abilities?”            

I almost ask why the government would hide that from me rather than encourage it, but I know the answer. “So why me? Needed more ethnic diversity on your team?”            

Slam gives me a cold grin, and I think she’s about to voice-blast me again, but Queen Martine talks instead and says, “Please. Leave the rainbow shit to the good guys. I have an empire to build. I want you because you’re too intelligent to keep taking orders from fools. I want you because you’re unkillable. I want you because you walk through gunfire with a look on your face like you’re making love.”            

Another explosion shakes the kaiju from the outside in. Something made of glass rolls off a nearby table and breaks.

“And I want you because I suspect your healing ability can be pushed to even higher levels. With a bit of training and imagination, you’ll probably be able to use it on others.”            

What she lacks in refinement, Martine makes up for in chutzpah. I love a woman with vision and direction.

\Just to gild the lily, she continues. “I figured out your great weaknesses when we fought last year. You hate having to answer to idiots. And you demand good taste. I can solve both of those for you. And of course, there’s always this.”

With a gentle gesture of her hand, four glistening pink tentacles whip out from the walls and floor, each seizing one of my limbs. Martine twists her hand at the wrist, curling her fingers into a fist, and I shriek as the tentacles tear both legs and an arm from the sockets. I become a fountain of blood dangling from the ceiling by one limb. The pain is so intoxicating that I think I’ll pass out, but I manage to stay present.            

The tentacle drops me. One leg is close enough that my stump reaches out to it, tendons and muscle fibers and veins extending and then sealing it back to my body. My missing arm and leg regenerate more quickly than I would expect, making my body whole. The extra limbs, the severed ones on the ground, wither away.            

While I get my breath back, Martine says, “That was a tease. Join me, and I’ll wound you in ways you’ve never even imagined.”   

A Faustian offer. I think of the original Saint Sebastian, tied to his pillar, the Roman arrows tearing him open, his ecstasy to suffer for something bigger than the life of a soldier. I’m practically Dorian Gray already. I want my painting.            

“Okay. I’m in. But when the battle out there’s over, I want two things, and I want them today.”            

She smirks in only one corner of her mouth. Slam looks similarly amused. Incite is still moping.            

“Impress me,” Martine says.            

“General Vega is mine to interrogate. And we have a robbery to conduct.”            

She snorts and says, “See? You’re going to make an extraordinary villain.”            

#            

Omar’s bullets hum through my skin and meat and bones like Cupid’s arrows. One even explodes through my eye. I’m only blinded for a second, then it regenerates in a dazzle of light and heat.            

Slam blasts Omar out of the floor-to-ceiling window of the art museum. Incite and Rosetta face off in some sort of psychic struggle, which looks more like a mental slap fight from where I stand. Metallurge is dead, crushed in the tentacles of a new regime. That was disappointing.            

That just leaves my good friend Chad, whom Queen Martine has generously captured in a pocket of her kaiju — her force field — whatever the hell we’re calling it. We’ll see if we can get him on our side. If not, the bottom of the Pacific is a very deep, cold place to be invulnerable.            

We have only minutes to spare before more Guardians show up. I doubt they’d waste a teleporter on this squabble, but you never know.            

The skull face of the moving fortress rests against the hole we’ve knocked into the third floor. I grab painting after painting, the Mantegna, the Schnabel, even the Keith Haring, and they slide gently down the throat of the beast.            

I’m looking forward to torturing General Vega in my own personal art gallery. One can’t live in squalor, even when on the run.