Lance saw a thin black streak across the woman's forehead. "Wasn't me!" The grappling gun's hook was in his hand, but he couldn't move his arms enough to swing it at her.

"I'm going to save you for last," Slaughter hissed. She threw Lance back over the jeep. He landed on his feet, stumbled, and almost fell.

In front of the diner, Abby was holding on to her sword. Lance watched Slaughter streak toward her.

Slaughter was less than three yards away from Abby when she suddenly shuddered and stopped. The jeep scraped a few feet along the ground, towed by the grappling gun's cable.

Lance had attached the hook to Slaughter's belt.

Slaughter dropped to the ground, and Abby swung her sword.

CHAPTER 18.

Roz got to her feet in time to see Abby's sword slam into the side of Slaughter's head.

The blow was strong enough to knock the woman halfway across the street. She rolled along the ground, tangled up in the grappling gun's cable.

Please don't let her be . . . Roz ran, skidded to a stop two yards away from Slaughter. "Thank God!" Roz said aloud. "She's alive. Unconscious, I think."

Cautiously, Abby, Thunder, and Lance approached.

"I thought you were going to kill her," Roz said.

Abby slung the sword into its sheath on her back. "I used the blunt edge."

They peered down at Slaughter. She was lying on her back, breathing heavily. The left side of her face was already blossoming into a mess of purple bruises.

"What do we do with her?" Thunder asked.

Lance said, "Use the cable. Tie her up."

"She's strong enough to snap it like it was thread," Roz said.

Private Nazzaro limped toward them. "Finish her."

Roz stared at him. "You better not be saying what I think you're saying."

"I am. Which of you is the strongest?" He looked at Abby. "You. Wrap the cable around her neck. Strangle her. It's the only way to be sure."

"We're not doing that!" Roz snapped. "Anyone else got any ideas?"

"If you don't want to strangle her . . ." Nazzaro slightly raised his right hand, and Roz noticed that he was still holding his gun.

Thunder said, "Don't do it! The U.S. military does not execute prisoners!"

"Anyway, her skin is invulnerable, you idiot," Lance said. "You already shot her in the head."

The soldier crouched down next to Slaughter. "Skin's invulnerable. Right." With his free hand he pulled open her mouth. Then he pushed the muzzle of the gun between her lips. "Let's see how invulnerable she is with a hole in the back of her head."

Abby withdrew her sword. "I can move faster than you can pull the trigger. Now back away or you're going to lose your arm."

Nazzaro shouted, "What is wrong with you kids? She already nearly killed all of us, and when she wakes up she's not going to be grateful that we spared her life! You think she's called Slaughter just because it's a cool name? She will murder every one of us!"

"Even if you're right, we need her alive!" Lance said. "She's connected with The Helotry-she can tell us where they are!"

"You think that, then you're a moron, kid. She'd never talk."

Then Roz said, "You're going to let go of the gun and back away. Right now."

"Never gonna happen!"

"That wasn't a suggestion." Roz concentrated on the soldier's right index finger, used her telekinesis to pull it away from the trigger.

She could feel him straining to keep the finger in place. "Stop fighting me," Roz said. "I'll break it if I have to."

Nazzaro opened his hand, and fell backward.

Thunder grabbed hold of Nazzaro's arm and hauled him to his feet. "Go back to the jeep. If the radio's working, call for assistance. Got it?"

"You're making a mistake."

"No. We just stopped you from making a bigger one. And you're off the team, by the way." He pushed the soldier in the direction of the jeep. To the others, he said, "What do we do?"

"I have an idea," Abby said.

A little over fifteen minutes later an army truck screeched to a stop in front of the diner. Roz greeted a young soldier as he jumped down from the cab.

"Corporal Redmond, National Guard 109th Engineer Group," the soldier said. "Where is she?"

"Over there," Roz said. "We've got her tied up. Sort of."

"Sort of?" The man frowned. "Oh."

Slaughter was lying on the ground tightly wrapped in a thick cocoon of green and silver metal strips: Abby had used her sword to slice through the jeep's hood and side panels, its interior framework, its fenders and bumpers, and even one of the axles.

The corporal walked around Slaughter. "Still unconscious?"

"She is," Roz said. "Unless she's a world-champion faker."

"What are we supposed to do with her?"

"Take her with us. We need her to tell us how to find the rest of The Helotry."

Corporal Redmond nodded. "Take her with us. Right. . . . So, where are we going?"

Thunder said, "Good question. We don't know yet." He pointed to Private Nazzaro, who was standing at the side of the street. "And we want him out of here. He's a liability."

"What did he do?" Redmond asked.

"Stuck his gun in Slaughter's mouth when she was unconscious and wanted to shoot her. I'm pretty sure that's not the way you people do things."

"Not even close." The corporal's voice was suddenly cold. "I'll see to it that he's dealt with appropriately. But I've got to tell you, there's only a handful of us who haven't been infected yet."

"What about you?" Roz asked. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-one. I just got over a serious bout of the flu and the medics tell me that's what's keeping me clear so far-I've been taking a heavy course of Amantadine for three weeks. No idea how long that's going to last."

The corporal climbed back into the truck, turned it around in the road, and reversed it as close to Slaughter as possible.

Abby's great strength wasn't enough to lift her into the back of the truck. It took all six of them-even Private Nazzaro helped.

When they were done, the corporal asked, "So where are we going?"

Roz shrugged. Lance had told them about The Helotry's plan to bring back the Fifth King. But what does that even mean? Where do we begin looking?

"We need to get to the terrorists," Abby said. "They're immune to the plague and surely they must know something about what's going on."

Thunder shook his head. "Unlikely. They'd have been told only the bare minimum in case they got captured. And they're certainly conditioned to resist interrogation."

"Agreed," Roz said. What would Max do? But she knew the answer to that: Her brother would read the terrorists' minds and find out everything they knew, then he'd work from there. She turned to the corporal. "Is there any word on my brother's condition?"

"No change, last I heard."

Lance asked, "What about the other superhumans?"

"Nothing," the corporal said. "But most of the real news is blocked, anyway. SOP in a situation like this."

Lance and Abby exchanged a glance. "SOP?" Abby asked.

"Standard Operating Procedure," Thunder explained.

"But everyone knows by now what's going on," Abby said.

Corporal Redmond said, "No, they don't. If they did, there'd be mass panic, and that would cause at least as much damage as the plague itself."

From inside the back of the truck came the sound of creaking metal.

"She's awake!" Roz shouted. She had a brief glimpse of the metal cocoon bursting apart. A plate-sized chunk of steel streaked toward her head-and then Lance slammed into her side, knocking her out of its path. She recovered almost instantly, pushed Lance away from her, and jumped to her feet.

The others were standing still, staring up at the sky. Slaughter was gone.

"Blast!" Roz reached her hand down to Lance, helped him up. "Thanks."

Abby said, "What do we do now? Oh God, if she comes back . . ."

"She will come back," Thunder said. "And we should get well away from here before she does."

Roz bit her lip. "We don't have the raw power or speed to stop her. Quantum's not too far from here, in one of Max's safe houses. But he was the first one to get sick. . . . And without Max I don't know how to get in touch with anyone else. Thunder, can you use your power as a weapon?"

He shrugged. "How?"

"I don't know. My telekinesis works up to a point, but she's just too strong. She's been doing this for years, and she's absolutely merciless."

"Right. We need an edge," Abby said. "But what can we do? All the adult superheroes are out of commission! There aren't any other teenage superheroes that we know of."

Then Lance suddenly grinned. "Right. Absolutely right. I'm sure Slaughter knows that too. And that's our edge."

"What are you talking about?" Thunder asked.

"Not everyone who gets superhuman powers is going to be one of the good guys. There's a prison just outside a town called Oak Grove. There was a documentary about it a few months back. Any of you guys see that? It's where they keep some of the supervillains. . . . And there's one there who's pretty powerful. I think it was Titan who caught him, 'bout a year ago. He's supposed to have some sort of weird control over matter on an atomic level. Basically, he's a fire-starter. Pyrokine, the guy calls himself."

Roz suddenly shuddered. She felt her stomach clench and her heartbeat quicken. That name . . . It was like a half-remembered dream, a sense that somehow she had heard the name before, and that it was important.

Abby said, "That's crazy! We can't recruit a supervillain!"

"We might not have a choice," Roz said. "But there is one flaw in your idea, Lance. The plague, remember? All the adults are infected."

Lance's grin spread wider. "Right. But that's what part of the documentary was about. The prison is the only place strong enough to hold Pyrokine, even though he really should be in a juvenile detention center instead. Y'see, he's only fifteen."

CHAPTER 19.

"You failed," the old woman said to Slaughter. "They are mere children. Inexperienced. Weak. And yet they defeated you."

The old woman was, as ever, sitting in the shadows in her dark, unfurnished room.

Slaughter stood still, arms clasped behind her back. She kept her expression grim-she didn't want to give anything away-though the cuts and bruises on her face and her ripped uniform were clear signs of her defeat.

"Well?"

Slaughter began, "I did my part. The failure started with Marcus. He allowed himself to be captured. The next time-"

"The next time?" The woman pushed herself out of her chair.